The Fear

There is nothing as terrifying as fear. I don't even know what that means, except that I do. It is not what you think when you think of fear. It's not as simple as being afraid of THE DARK, or SPIDERS, or MIDDLE AGED MEN NAMED LUCIOUS WHO WEAR TOP HATS.

It's too smart for that. It stays vague but rooted. It won't let you see it, pin it down, fix it. Yet it will come and wake you up in the middle of the night and whisper in your ear, "I have a secret, and if you can figure it out you can get rid of me. I'll give you twenty guesses." And then it smiles. A sick smile. The smile of a killer.

That is how it begins to eat at you. You begin to think of all the things it could be. You relive the fabricated failures and regrets of your past. You think not only of the things that have hurt yourself, but the things that hurt others. You expand a singularity into a new universe of mindless doubt. A single event becomes a global dread. You know how to control it, but forget what control is.

It prods you to examine, and in doing so you begin to poke daemons, and shake the cages of old memories. You begin to draw a diagram of your past. To try and connect the dots and write large a pattern that will be the solution to...Everything. When you think you are done you pull away from your work with blurred vision and trembling hands and see that you have drawn a circle.