Habit Is A Hard Thing To Break

At the back of her neck, right at the top of the cervical vertebrae, thoughts gather. Some quietly exchange barbed insults; others remain poised and still, building up steam. A gut reaction bursts in – sent by the whiff of a closed and musty classroom, the glimpse of a lock of hair that looked, but wasn't, familiar – then settles into a morose and vicious circle.

Still the thoughts gather, though the gathering becomes louder, more raucous, less contained. Words bounce off each other, reverberate across the ear canal, down the windpipe, soundless.

The head gets crowded. A fond memory is elbowed by a repressed insult, a fanciful hope is briefly entertained by the very beginning of a cunningly-woven lie. Thoughts take sides and turn more boisterous, less self-conscious. Maybe it is the memory of a slight taken too well and now regretted.

Soon there is a bubbling, a jostling, and a mean streak pops up to nudge the roiling thoughts over the edge, and they take off, racing in mad swaths across the trajectories of rogue synapses and déjà-vues. Wishes of youth fly past like the seconds on a ticking bomb, and turn, one after the other, into beggarly pleas. They leave streaks of yellow and green across the back of her eyes, making her want to dip her head into the rapids of an ice cold river. 

She rubs her temples with the tips of her fingers and wonders what would happen if she 

A very untrifectan 244 words, for , one of which is FLY (intransitive verb) 3a : to move, pass, or spread quickly   ;  b : to be moved with sudden extreme emotion   ;  c : to seem to pass quickly

(And yes, it did end there.)