#true fears

I'm afraid of dying old

I stayed over at her place a few times in middle school, and had the creeps every time. Her family had several buildings on the property. When I stayed over, it was at a flimsy outbuilding where she told me a bunch of stories about horrible tortures that had gone on in that building before. They were plausible tortures, but I had the hardest time sleeping when I remembered the impossibility of massive claws raking through the flimsy walls and the Tall Thing with Long Claws simply Getting us. When our school bus would pass her property, I could see into her land, those few shaded acres under young redwoods, and I could never help but imagine What If There Was A Very Tall Thin Thing. 

What is so interesting is that I lived, as I say, half a mile from that place at most. I always simply walked down the road to visit her. My own place was a one-acre plot my grandma had built her house on, and her house had a living room with tons of windows. My upstairs bedroom was a narrow, tall slit, which it would have been very spooky to imagine something peering into, and which the thing I Felt Like I should fear would probably have been exactly tall enough for its eyes to reach. 

Those big hands with their long claws? Those long, gangly, arms with their sparse, coarse hair? They could have sure gotten into there. I did even imagine that. I imagined it hard enough to draw it and tell my friend it was my cool new demon friend called “Grendel” who came to my window (I always thought “Grendel” was a pretty name for a monster), but I never imagined it hard enough to be afraid of it.

I feel like he would take one look at me and make that face....you know...the "you are a disgusting human being and I don't want to be in the same room as you" face or the "I'm repulsed by your very presence" face.

If I saw that look on his face...I'd be devastated.