When Fear Turns Logs Into Demonic Crocodiles

Let us open with an anecdote illustrating what an absolute genius I am.




Last night, I had a brief internal discourse with myself that went something like this: Say, you (being me), you're quite an imaginative and creative, reading, writing sort of person whose wild imagination has, of late, been causing you to have a lot of problems with irrational fears and worries. I say, look at this book you've just started reading. You know from the synopsis on the back cover and from the prologue that it features monsters. Slimy, black, betentacled monsters with saggy skin and malicious intentions.




Why don't you stay up after midnight reading this book? I see absolutely no way you could possibly come to regret such a decision.



See how freaking brilliant I am?


No, seriously, I had that conversation with myself. I considered that reading a book that I knew was going to be creepy after dark was probably a really bad idea. And I did it anyway.




And now for an understatement: last night wasn't the most restful night I've ever experienced.




And now for the truth: I spent most of the night slightly terrified. To be more specific, even lying on my bed, which is shoved up against the wall (in other words, even lying in a position that made it impossible for there to be anything behind me) I had to keep craning my head and looking behind me to make sure there wasn't a blind man in a bathrobe there leering at me (I'm sorry, did I forget to say that the monsters take human form, looking perfectly normal except for their pupil-less eyes?).




I also spent a good chunk of the night reading this book because, as previously stated, I'm a genius who always makes good and positive life decisions.




Like flipping to the back to look at the list of illustrations (it's an illustrated book) for the express purpose of finding a picture of a monster in blank-eyed human form. Which I then proceeded to look at.




WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IS WRONG WITH ME?????




Additional factors which made last night even more fun:
1. It was quite windy and there are trees surrounding our house. Thus, the branches clunked against the walls and roof. A lot.
2. My sister's hamster's wheel squeaks, making a constant, very quiet, high-pitched whine that it took me some time to identify.
3. I got thirsty midway through the night and was impelled to creep through the darkened house. The darkened, cold, wind-battered house.




Has anybody else ever been in a situation where you're scared halfway into paralysis, and every time you come to a doorway or a turn you quickly glance around it, and the reasonable part of your brain knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's nothing there, but that part of your brain is being shushed and overridden by the panicky part which is convinced it's going to see an old man with pure white eyes grinning evilly at you?




That basically sums up where I was last night.


The rather depressing thing is that sleeplessness isn't new to me; I just tend to be peacefully or even productively sleepless and not tremblingly, jumpily sleepless.


(An interesting thing to note: the teenage, male narrator of this book happens to be a nervous, stressed out, easily spooked sort of person. I'm not quite halfway through the book and so far he's already fainted twice, suffered from multiple "wake-up-screaming nightmares", had a lengthy, headache-inducingly intense sobbing fit, and spent several nights sleeping on the floor of his laundry room because it's the only room in his house with no windows and a door that locks from the inside. I can really relate to this guy.)


But getting back to my sleeplessness. While I've had my moments of fearful restlessness all through my life, whether they be caused by Orcs, Weeping Angels, or the bizarre specters I created myself as a toddler, the constant watchfulness that I've been suffering from for months officially began on June 13th, when a house in my neighborhood was blown to smithereens thanks to a natural gas leak. Despite the fact that no one was seriously injured and I don't know the unfortunate homeowners (or anyone in my neighborhood, for that matter) at all, I felt violently confronted with my own mortality.


Yes, that sounds melodramatic. But the fact is that a little stubborn worm of a thought sneaked into my highly imaginative mind. What if it had been your house? it asked. And what if you had been inside, asleep, when it happened?


Me being the person that I am, my ensuing mental state shortly thereafter made me think of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.


At the beginning of that famous film, Snow White is scared witless by the news that her stepmother is trying to kill her. Immediately afterward, in her already-frightened state, Snow goes tearing into a dark forest full of gnarled trees. The trees have eyes and their branches fly out, grabbing at her cloak. She even falls through a hole in the ground into a pool of water only to be lunged at by vicious-looking, eyeless crocodiles.



At least, that's what seems to be happening.


Later, when the fear has faded and she's surrounded by cuddly creatures, Snow White sees that the forest is really a bright, peaceful, safe place, populated by friendly animals and jocular dwarfs. And those possessed-looking crocodiles? They're mere logs.


Where fear exists, more fear follows. As soon as I started worrying I was going to lose my home in a fiery inferno, everyday occurrences began to feel increasingly threatening to me. Unexplained chest pains became heart attacks. Headaches became brain aneurysms. Stomachaches became appendicitis. Creaks in the floorboards became burglars and serial killers.


Logs became demonic crocodiles.


In all honesty, it was almost refreshing to have a night spent in paralyzing, heart-hammering fear of something that doesn't actually exist. I would rather fear the utterly inconceivable, the shadowy specters and expressionless ghouls that vanish at sunrise, than those other, realer phantoms which can haunt my mind and plague my nerves even in the daytime.


This post is going in a rather different direction than the one I'd originally intended it to. Originally, the thesis was going to be some achingly beautiful statement about how terror stems from creativity, how writers and readers and dreamers see ghosts where there are none because they see possibility and stories in everything. Now..... now I don't know what it is. A confession, maybe. Hi, how are you, my name's Pearl and I have trust issues and I'm a hypochondriac and I rarely sleep at night. And also I sometimes do silly things like reading scary books after dark.


Maybe it's some sort of hidden cry for help. I don't know. You decide.


I'm going to keep reading the book, of course. (Allow me to reiterate how intelligent and good at decision-making I am.) But the thing is, despite the creepiness, I'm really enjoying it, and I don't allow my fear to rule me. Much. My fear of getting into a car wreck doesn't stop me from getting into cars, and likewise my fear of a fictional creature won't stop me from reading a good book.


So HA..... and stuff.


Fare thee well.


~Pearl Clayton


"He's scared of everything: spiders, snakes, wicker furniture!" (Place the reference and get a free commendation!)