What Are You Really Afraid Of?

We all have our own little fears: spiders, dark corridors, porcelain dolls. Some people have some very strange and obscure fears like things not being organized. Some people are afraid of not being perfect or being alone.

But we have to be choosy about the things we decide to fear. Someday, perhaps in our dreams or slowly creeping into reality, those fears will take over our lives.

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Spiders will invade your home; they will be in every cabinet, skittering over the walls and crawling over you in your sleep. Their small, beady eyes will stare at you from all of the walls of your home and you will never be able to leave your home again. Soon, all you will be able to see is spiders. All of the pictures on your walls, the windows in your house, the food that you try to eat, will all be covered with the eight legged creatures. Spiders of all sizes and species will crawl along with your every footstep, and some big black ones will jitter into corners when you enter the room. The spiders will nip at you until there is nothing left.

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The dark corridor that you walk down every day will never end. As you pass open doors, you will see unspeakable scenes of torture, malice and horror. Dark shadows will follow at your heels and your sides, whispering disturbing things that add to the terror that the dark corridor installs in your very bones. The corridor is a bit warm; perhaps it is heated by the fires that you can see spewing in some of the room. You will never get used to the things you see in the corridor; the things that slither out of the doors and bite at your heels and arms only hasten your pace. If you somehow reach the end without giving into madness, you will be swallowed up by the darkness and thrust into the pits of anguish along with the other who have walked this corridor.
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Porcelain dolls. Some choose to admire their perfect white faces; their painted beauty remains eternal. Others cringe when they meet the gaze of their faultless eyes. The crack splitting from the eye to the chin looks like a dark, shattered tear. You break its gaze and look down, but there’s another one. In fact, the room is filled with the dolls in varying sizes and colors. You feel a cool grip on your ankle that makes you jump. One of the dolls has grabbed your ankle. One of the bigger ones on the chair stands up stiffly, walks behind you, and starts to shove you into the room. Your struggling and fighting does nothing. All of the dolls begin to climb off of their chairs and shelves and walk to the center of the room to slowly begin tearing you apart with their small, cool hands, limb by limb, skin and muscle from bone.

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Your life will condemned by organizing. You will constantly run around your home, adjusting every detail. The fingers on your hands will be red and raw, occasionally leaving bloodstains on the things that you pass. You’ll have to clean that, too. Nothing will ever be perfect in your eyes. Eventually, you’ll snap. First, you will polish the silverware and place them into neat piles. Then, taking one of the shined spoons, you will gouge out your eyes to save yourself from seeing the rest of the unorganized world. But, realizing that the spoon is now bloodied and the red droplets are beginning to cover the floor, you will begin to feebly attempt to clean the mess.

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The room is all mirrors. Your face reflects from every angle. All you do is stare at yourself and try to perfect the reflection you see. You can never get close, though. People have come in and told you that you look beautiful, but you never believe them. Eventually, they stopped coming, but you didn’t care. Now you had more time and fewer distractions to try and make yourself the image that you have always dreamed of. Things like eating don’t matter too much anymore, though you do eat and drink a little bit every now and then so you can survive and continue your ever-present task. One day, though, it becomes too much. You scream your throat raw and claw at your face until your hands and arms are coated in blood and only your skull remains.

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The concrete walls are like a jail to you. But they are, in fact, a jail: There are no windows or doors, just an old fashioned lamp dangling from the ceiling. The silence is so loud you feel like screaming to break it, but you can’t. The emptiness paralyzes you. You bury your face in your hands, so you don’t see where they came from. One second, the room is empty, but the next, there are black forms spread throughout the room. The relief that you were expecting didn’t come, only fear. The things open their mouths and begin screaming like you thought about doing. These screams were both human and inhuman, but you don’t care. All you care about is that they’re loud. Really, REALLY loud. They pierce your ears and numb your brains of any thoughts besides the black forms and the screaming. Your ears begin to bleed and you head starts to split as you now wish that you were alone again.

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You see? Fears can lead to some horrible things, things you may regret when the time comes when they come for you. Now, REALLY think about it, what are you really afraid of? Because you don’t want it to be something you will repent when your time comes. . .