At the department store

"Let's just pop in here," she said.
I waited, as she changed...
and...

It was as if thrown down there, a challenge.
Then...
all around me fingers pointing, clutching, teasing, victory and scorn, claws and talons sharpened, in ranks, and banks, and thanks to this one special one, the Superfear gripped my lungs and squeezed out all the air, sat on my feet and sucked out all the juice from my thighs, spun my head four hundred times a second and called me names I can't repeat, lifting me and slamming me into the floor over and over, clamping my arms like twigs tied up in a bundle of firewood on the back of a horrible witch in a scary fairy tale...
and me...
alone and adrift and only the thrashing of blood in my ears and the sentinel, the sentinel, sent from hell and sent to terrify me, staring at me, barring me, daring me to move or blink so it can rip me apart...
and I...
I stand frozen and sweating, screaming with no sound, stiff as jelly...
until...
until it goes away, a faded duel, leaving just a non-threatening, discarded or lost accessory.

"All right?" she says when she comes out. "It was kinda big."
"Yes" I reply.

I have panic attacks when she takes me shopping.