"Pardon?"
And she repeats the question. I open my mouth to answer just as I had practised hundreds of times the night before. But no thoughts are forming.
I can feel my body almost radiating the desperation of my ballooning panic. I'm a minuscule clay man figure inside my own huge, useless brain, mindlessly trying to grasp at something. At anything. I nearly snigger.
This reminds me of something actually. Popcorn. A tiny little secretly brooding corn was triggered to explosion and the insubstantial puff dominated every corner of my brain, squashing all coherent thoughts into indecipherably compressed, perhaps into the equivalent of computer zip files.
And she repeats the question. Again.
Fighting the impending doom of crushing failure, I try again. No, I am suddenly fixated on the previously envisioned fluffy white puff. I never did like popcorn.
One word presents itself clamorously, defying the dense puff.
"Canard".
Duck.
Duck.
Duck.
It's too late by the time I've realised I've just murmured the word out aloud.
Now it's her turn to ask,
"Pardon?"
