Things in the Night.

I currently have the plague. I slept until about 2:30 this afternoon, finally driven out of bed by my aching hips and the need for food as well as a few errands that simply didn't care that I am currently on death's door. Cins has been charged with avenging my untimely death, so wherever Typhoid Mary is, she's going down. I've seen Cins mad-- it's scary.

In order to distract myself from, you know, death, I decided to make a pointless list of things that scare me. I would love it if youse guys reading this would contribute, too! This also saves me from reading The Analects of Confucius, which I have to write a paper on. I wonder if I could get an extension if I died?

Now, I'm not talking the obvious scares here-- you know, loss of loved ones, that kind of thing. I'm talking the heart-clenching, bolt up-right in the bed kind of irrational terror that we all carry around. The kinda stuff you should have shucked before puberty and just never got around to doing.

In no particular order:

Basking sharks. I don't know why, other than that some part of my brain screams in a tiny, high voice that NOTHING should be able to open its mouth that wide. I have a recurring daymare where I envision getting accidentally sucked into its maw, and I can't get out. I'm trapped in a slippery, horrible pink hell that touches me all over. Urgh.

Public toilets. Another one I have no explanation for, other than vulnerability issues, I guess? I hate hate hate the bathroom at the local Red Lobster and refuse to go in there alone, no matter how full my bladder, because I am firmly, irrationally convinced that something unkind is watching me. Makes it hard to pee. I also have these horrible fantasies that come to me when I'm trying to pee in an unknown public bathroom-- what would I do if these dirty, bare feet staggered up to my stall door and just stood there? Maybe there is horrible, ragged, pained breathing as well? What do I do? Do I hope it goes away? Do I make a sound? Why am I convinced that it'll be upon me if I make a single noise?

The abandoned (?) camper trailer on the other side of my fence. There is a horrible, beat up old camper that someone dumped, just on the other side of the privacy fence that encircles my backyard. I have dubbed it "the rape trailer", and have never been able to get a straight answer from my landlady about ownership of said assault mobile. I have a hard time checking the mail at night as a result of that damn thing.

Something lurking either in my closet or under my bed. I am almost 32 years old, for fuck's sake, and I'm still convinced half the time that scaly, cold claws are going to clamp around my ankles and drag me under the bed some night when I have my guard down. I'm also convinced that if I go to sleep with my closet door open, I will awake to find something malevolent watching me sleep. I'm afraid something like Narnia will happen, only it'll be to the dimension that the Event Horizon jumped to in the movie of the same name. No prancing fauns for me; no, instead I get barbed wire piercings.

I have also learned that a quiet, metallic click in the middle of a sleep-muffled night will wake me up better than my alarm clock. It's even worse if the cats wake up, too.

Scissors, opening and closing in the dark. I think my heart would actually fail if I had to go into a blackened room with no sounds other than those emerging. There is nothing good that can come from that noise, in that setting.

I shall close this now, before more of my psychoses makes themselves known to the world. Also, I need to go barf up a lung. Please share what scares you so that I can feel better and we can all cruelly laugh at one another.