The longer she challenged the fear, the more difficult it became for Anna to blend in.

Over the next few months, her free moments began to slice up her life. She discovered the snooze button and slept the extra ten minutes. If she missed the bus, she walked or rode a bicycle to work. She hadn’t even known she owned a bicycle. There was no use worrying about arriving late. She realized she could fit herself into the schedule without much notice.

It still wasn’t easy. She didn’t go without the moments of gripping paralysis, her lungs seizing and her heart crushed inside her chest. There were still the horrific waking nightmares. Sometimes she saw everyone around her dead, the city nothing but ash and rubble under her feet. Other times she saw her own corpse, lying twisted and unnoticed on the pavement or her living room carpet. Unlike the rest, Anna refused to give in. Something inside compelled her to take the torture and continue on.

A neighbor was the first to confront her. Perhaps the changes were obvious from the start, but it was hard for Anna to remember. Had she ever noticed anything or anyone else before her transformation? Perhaps the compulsive fear forced everything else out. Or it had until now.

The woman living across the hall stopped her in the hallway one evening. Anna was on her way inside, while the rest of the building was on their way out for their Monday-Wednesday-Friday run. In retrospect, it took incredible courage and strength for the woman to stop her. It meant she also had to stop. She would be moments late starting her run, moments late completing the run, and moments late for everything until she fell asleep that night. It would give her terrible, haunting visions that would scare her away from ever speaking to Anna outside of appropriate discussion times again.

But in this single instance, despite the consequences, she stopped. She resisted the urge to grab Anna’s wrist, folding her hands together and squeezing them as she spoke. Touching was never allowed. It spread disease and disease was dangerous.

“I don’t know what is happening to you, but we notice.”

The woman’s voice shook, her words cracking and strained. Her eyes constantly darted into the crowd streaming down the stairs toward the exit.

“You think you can fight it, but you can’t. The fear will find you. It will find you and force you back with us.”

Anna turned pale. She could feel the anxiety, like a stranger’s tiny, cold fingertips creeping up her spine.

“Do you think you’re the first? Others have tried and they have all failed. You will fail too. It’s only a matter of time.”

The anxiety was hot in her face now. Her cheeks flushed, her palms grew clammy, and her fingers began to twitch. There was nothing here they could fix, but they had to try. She clenched her fists.

“The fear never goes away. The only way to escape the fear is to follow the ritual. Keep to the schedule and do not stray from the path.”

Anna couldn’t stay and listen any longer. She couldn’t let the fear win. She opened her door and threw herself in, slamming it closed behind her. Laying in the entryway, heaving burning sobs, she tried to expel the dread that consumed her.

Her body was desperate to get up. It needed to go out the door, down the hallway, down the stairs, onto the street, and run. It ached to run from seven twenty-five to seven fifty-five, reaching the cold, metal steps of the building just as it was getting dark. It begged to walk up the steps, down the hall, in the door, and into the bathroom to scrub the outside away. The outside was dirty, dirty meant disease, and disease was dangerous.

Instead, Anna remained on the floor and cried. She cried her body’s compulsions away until, finally, both fell asleep there in the entryway.