Their chirping cut through her and her head throbbed once, twice, as she sat up in bed, her eyes closed. She let her neck fold over on itself to the right, considered slumping back into her blankets, but then remembered that today was the last day of her agonizing two-week stretch of deadlines and ridiculous tasks at work.

So, instead of drifting back off for a few more minutes of rest, she groaned and swung her legs over the side of the bed and shuffled to the bathroom. The small loft was dark and quiet around her, the rest of the world still slumbering. This was how she liked it. Empty. Once she was standing her head throbbed again, a small lightning storm inside her mind, and then receded. She refused to give into it.

Katherine was five minutes late in leaving her apartment, thanks to her toilet, built in 1969 and whose tank overflowed for the second time that month. She'd turned the water off successfully, left the puddles surrounding the bowl and seeping underneath the bath mat, and hurried out to her car, her left sleeve damp with toilet water.

Subsequently, because she was five minutes late leaving, she was five minutes late entering traffic, seven minutes late taking her preferred exit onto the highway thus sitting for an extra few minutes boxed in and barely creeping three miles into the city, and then ten minutes late pulling into her favorite garage. A white Oldsmobile now occupied her favorite spot, and Katherine was forced to find a spot on the fourth level down. Even as she strode towards her building, she knew she would be late for the morning meeting, and as she jogged up the escalator to the entrance foyer to her building, her spirits sank lower as she spied the buyer group crowded to one side, waiting for the next elevator.

After waiting through two cycles of elevators for one to take her to the twelfth floor, she was by then twenty minutes late, had missed the morning meeting, and resigned herself to sitting at her desk, waiting for the influx of emails and paperwork.

It was only at five twenty-three she stood up, kicked her chair under her desk, grabbed her bag, and stalked out of the office. Katherine didn't bother turning off her office light or locking the door; she simply headed straight down the escalator and out to the street. Her head had been throbbing all afternoon since two-seventeen exactly. She'd had so many lately that she'd taken to writing down all of them, when they started, how bad, and how long they lasted. So far she had not drawn any conclusions, since her headaches seemed to occur at random in their timing and intensity. Just then, as she entered the parking garage, another bolt of lightning tore through her brain. It caused her to stop. Fuck, she thought. I need to go see a doctor about these.

She stayed still a moment, knowing that the longer she waited, the worse traffic would be. But she couldn't move, as badly as she wanted to drive home, sink into her bed and forget the world, she was rooted to the spot with this pain, this shooting pain going from temple to temple.

Time passed.

Katherine didn't know if it had been only a minute or ten, or if half an hour had gone by with her frozen, slumped against the entrance, her bag on the ground at her feet. But suddenly, the pain departed. It left her body shaking, and she opened her eyes and stood up straight. What had just happened?

She walked to her car and slid into the driver's seat still wondering if the pain would come back again as suddenly as it had left. Would it? Would she be able to drive if it did?

When she turned on her car, the time read 6:10 PM.

"Shit," she muttered. Almost a half hour had passed.

She started the engine, her heart fluttering. She'd never lost time before. Never. The car eased out of its spot and took her back up to the main road, where Katherine drove home in a trance. And now, her mind raced, to be completely pain free, as if nothing had happened! It was incredible.

At that moment a black Cadillac honked, pulled around her on the right, and cut back in front of her. Katherine could see the driver yelling angrily as he passed her. Katherine shook her head. Although her blood began to pound, she kept quiet, gritting her teeth and tightening her grip on the wheel.

If there was one thing she couldn't stand more than random headaches, it was traffic. What a city she lived in, too, the city with the fourth worst traffic in the entire United States.

Katherine tried not to be an aggressive, angry driver, but days like today, she felt the beginnings of road rage creeping up on her. And spontaneously recovering from her terrible migraine had not helped her mood any. She turned onto the beltway and seethed; the traffic was backed up, as always, well past her exit, with no hope of clearing up. The road was a parking lot.

"Great!" Katherine muttered.

Just then, another SUV who'd been edging up behind her swerved and pulled up the shoulder around her, then tried to wedge its way back into her lane. A school bus full of happy, waving children was slowly blundering up the lane as well. Katherine had been slowly advancing with her foot on the brake, and to avoid a collision, stomped the pedal down. Her car halted with a jerk.

"Fucking asshole!" Katherine screamed. She honked her horn and the driver did the same, gesturing wildly with both middle fingers.

Katherine lost it for the second time that day. The moment would always recur to her in a strange way, almost as if parts of her memory were missing. Or maybe the way in which she had perceived the world had been profoundly different in that moment; the events had been unreal. With one hand she mashed the horn down, and with the other she waved the car in front of her off. Her intent had been to brandish her middle finger in response to the rude gesture from those in front of her, but at the very same moment she had been distracted by a sudden warmth gathering in her stomach. Oh no! she thought. Was she going to throw up? It could happen, she thought, since had just recently suffered a headache. They did that to her sometimes. But then, then there was more curious feeling; the warmth that had been turning her stomach suddenly moved up into her chest-- a heart attack?! she thought wildly--and then into her extended arm and then finger, where it promptly left her body.

And then the SUV who had cut in front of her overturned, no, flew into the school bus full of children to its left, the back windshield shattering with a deafening crunch. The school bus shuddered as the car impacted its side, and several windows broke, but the bus itself stayed upright.

Katherine jumped backwards in her seat. For a moment she could not comprehend, could not understand. What had just happened?

People somewhere were screaming, a woman, maybe more than one. Maybe the children. Katherine couldn't be sure. A sound like rushing wind filled her ears, and she opened the driver's side door mechanically, automatically. Got out. Stepped up and looked around her, then at the accident. Smoke issued from underneath the SUV's hood, and from somewhere she smelled burning rubber and melting metal. Feeling the heat from the disintegrating vehicle, Katherine shielded her face with her arm but stepped forward. The school bus had trundled up another fifty feet or so, but the bus driver was waving his arms at the children, telling them to stay in the bus. Other onlookers were coming to the vehicle's aid, and several were on their cell phones.

Coming around the side of the SUV, Katherine could see a woman scrambling frantically away from the broken glass and remnants of her car. Blood rain down the side of her face and forehead, and it was she who was screaming.

Katherine felt sick.

"Ma'am! Ma'am!" one of the passersby called. "Are you all right?" Other bystanders were getting out of their cars, rushing at the school bus to see if the children were all right. Katherine didn't care much about them, only the woman who'd crawled out of the car.

The injured woman continued screaming.

"Someone did this!" she started to yell. Katherine thought this further added to the confusion. The wind noise in her ears increased, now accompanied by the workings of the highway, a million engines idling at once.

"Someone did this! My car flew! It flew!" she sobbed, then sank to the ground. A man pushed by Katherine and ran to the woman's side to help her.

Katherine backed away slowly. It was all happening too fast. Had she heard the woman right? Someone did this. My car flew! The woman's screams echoed in her ears as she felt for the metal door frame of her car and got back inside.

Seized with a sudden panic, Katherine gunned her engine and pulled out wildly into the shoulder. There was no one in the shoulder, not on that side, and the ambulance and policemen were not there yet. Her mind raced. She would make it. Cars began honking as she passed them all on the right shoulder, narrowly missing several by inches. She would get away. It didn't make sense. Her heart felt as if it would burst. Did she make it happen? My car flew! she heard again. She drove away, faster and faster, then took the first exit ramp she came to and drove blindly until somehow, much later, she was home.

The first thing she did as she stepped inside was run for the bathroom, where she promptly threw up all of her lunch. When her stomach was done convulsing, she lay on the floor and pressed her cheek against the tile. It was still damp from the morning's flood, but she didn't care. Someone did this! she kept hearing. My car flew! Katherine remembered the burning that had started in her chest and then came out her fingertips. Could it have been her? What was happening?