Phobia (9 page)

~ 17 ~

I sat nude in front of my bedroom mirror, applying makeup – something I had gotten in the habit of doing since going on webcam with Colin. It didn’t bother me that he could see me even if I couldn’t see him. I wanted to make myself pretty for him, and it gave me a sense of purpose. I imagined Colin was taking me out on a romantic date at a fancy restaurant. I’d never seen his face; I’d only heard his voice, but I knew in my heart he would be perfect. Our evening would be perfect. I would be a normal woman with no odd habits, no phobias and no excess baggage. He would love me on sight, and I him.

Something about my reflection looked strange, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then I figured it out. My surroundings were in black and white. I also noticed for the first time that I was wearing a bridal veil.

I saw a dark splotch near my collarbone, a smudge of dirt or something. I rubbed it with my fingertips, but it wouldn’t come off. In fact, I’d made it worse. Now the smudge was larger and had spread to my hand as well. I gasped as I watched the darkness spread, advancing over my shoulder. It branched out, creeping down over my breasts and up my neck, arm and cheek until a network of spidery lines like black blood vessels covered every inch of exposed skin. The space between the lines filled with charcoal colored shadow. I rubbed frantically at the smudge on my chest, until one of my breasts crumbled and fell away.

I tried to scream but the only sound I managed was a feeble squeak.

A charred corpse stared back at me from the mirror, white teeth, eyes and veil in stark contrast to my blackened face. I helplessly watched my image decay, crumbling like chunks of charcoal. The veil turned gray, then blackened, disintegrating along with my flesh.

My eyes snapped open.

* * *

The creepy bride dream didn’t surprise me much. I had a pretty good idea what it meant.

Weddings – I hated them and always made a point of avoiding them. My own, or other people’s – it didn’t matter. I didn’t want to be anywhere near any wedding, ever.

My aversion to the traditional marriage went far beyond a simple dislike for the ritual. Upon closer examination, it became clear that my avoidance of all things marriage-related was based in my fear of commitment.

I had always held the position that all men were jerks. Were they? Or just the ones I had dated? Maybe I was the jerk. Did I drive them away? I had been engaged before but bailed when the wedding date drew near, and blamed my cold feet on him. Thinking back, I couldn’t remember what had made me break off the engagement. What sin had he committed to make me walk away from a potential lifetime of love, companionship and security? How could I have forgotten something so important?

I’d long ago concluded I was a magnet for idiots, therefore it was inevitable that all of my relationships would end badly. I accepted that I was not destined for happiness. I subconsciously chose relationships that were doomed from the start, to have an excuse to leave before things got serious. If a relationship went too well, I sabotaged it.

To me, marriage was like prison. The wedding – a day that should have been the happiest day of my life – equaled standing before a judge and jury to receive a life sentence for a crime I didn’t commit. Marriage represented a number of things that frightened me:

Reliance – on someone else, and of someone on me.

Loss – of freedom and privacy.

Humiliation – when I had to face everyone after the inevitable failure of the marriage.

Disappointment – for me, when it didn’t work out, and for him, when I failed to meet his expectations.

Expectation – that was a big one. I couldn’t have things expected of me. The pressure was overwhelming.

By the same token, I didn’t like being put in the position of having expectations of others either. Expectation led to disappointment.

Disappointment was like being slapped on the forehead with a big
I TOLD YOU SO!
Sticker. With every disappointment came the question, “Why didn’t I see this coming?” I would feel stupid, and therefore feel humiliated. To avoid humiliation, my solution was to avoid disappointment. Since disappointment was usually preceded by expectation, the logical thing to do was avoid expectation in all forms.

I couldn’t fathom sharing my life with another person. Giving up my personal space; being forced out of my comfort zone into unfamiliar territory; being forced to socialize and interact with others – things I abhorred – was a living nightmare.

Dating led to cohabitation, which ultimately led to marriage, which led to the inevitable divorce. Disappointment was waiting in the wings, so why bother?

I knew it seemed crazy, but with Colin, I felt like I might be willing to take a risk. He was the type of person who might be able to break through the barriers I’d built to avoid commitment.

My fear of commitment was also the reason I didn’t have any pets and had no intention of ever bearing children. I couldn’t stand the idea of having another life depending solely on me for survival. I just wasn’t dependable – my father had reinforced that fact early in my life. I’d learned my lesson first-hand at eight years of age, when the goldfish I’d begged my parents for had died from me overfeeding it. As I watched Goldie circle the toilet bowl twice before disappearing forever, I vowed to never again subject another life to my negligence.

It was my irresponsibility that had killed Goldie, according to my father, as he ranted at my mother for giving in and letting me have the fish to begin with. He made the death of my goldfish sound like a tragedy of epic proportions.

“I told you this would happen, Marlene! You let her have the damn thing and now look what she’s done! Killed it! I told you she was too damn irresponsible but you didn’t listen. Now look what’s happened! Disgraceful!” he spat.

My father ranted often, over practically anything and it was our duty to shut up and listen without talking back.

Even when he interjected the occasional, “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” he didn’t actually want a reply. Anything I tried to say would be wrong and regarded as, “Being A Smart-Ass.”

To him,
everything
was a disgrace.

A spot of grape jelly on my already worn-out and grass-stained play shirt –
Disgraceful!

Giving myself a haircut playing Beauty Salon –
Disgraceful!

Playing dress-up in a pair of my mother’s old pantyhose, using a safety pin to take up the slack in the waistband; I had been proud of my six-year-old ingenuity but I was wrong. It was not clever at all. It was disgraceful, for a reason that still eluded me so many years later.

For some reason, my father lived in constant fear of disgrace, and he identified everything as such. I was a constant source of disgrace to him – something that equaled humiliation in his eyes. To avoid being humiliated himself, he took every opportunity to humiliate those around him.

He was a bully.

My father’s bullying had shaped me into a perpetual victim. I was afraid to try; convinced I would fail, and failure meant disgrace.

In anything I encountered in life, I was defeated before I began because I, too, was afraid of humiliation – a fear that permeated so many corners of my existence. To avoid it I headed off as many situations as possible in which the outcome might be embarrassing.

I lived by the underachiever’s motto –
you can’t fail if you don’t try
. Make up an excuse for why it’s pointless and then don’t give it a second thought.
If it’s challenging, then surely I will fail… so it’s pointless to try.

My self-analysis of why I was single made plenty of sense, but it didn’t bring me any closer to becoming a suitable mate for any man. Especially not one as special as Colin.

Colin deserved a woman who was as intelligent and educated as he was, not some insecure, fear-riddled whack-job who would end up breaking his heart. The kindest thing to do was set him free before things went any further. The problem was, I didn’t want to let go of him. I wasn’t even sure if I could.

~*~

~ 18 ~

It was dark, as usual. Something had woken me up but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t remember turning the TV off because I never turned it off. My TV was the only company I had and I left it on 24 hours a day. The background noise and soft light of the screen relaxed me and distracted my attention from the constant activity inside my head. My insistence on having the bedroom TV on while I slept had lost me more than one boyfriend. He couldn’t sleep unless the room was dark and silent; I needed the TV. In the end, the TV won and I lost the man.

I couldn’t fathom how anyone could sleep without lights or sound in the background. I found silent darkness terrifying – suffocating. If forced to lie in bed in the dark, my eyes would bug open, furtively dashing around the room, trying to see something, anything. Every little sound would be amplified. Worst of all, the noise in my brain would be amplified.

Letting my thoughts roam wild through the darkness wasn’t a wise thing to do. They always ran to the shadowy recesses of my mind, the places where my deepest fears lurked. Mundane worries became monstrous challenges. Phobias that I struggled on a daily basis to control ran amok in that dark silence to wreak havoc on my psyche.

For this reason, I relied on a combination of mindless comedy and Valium to keep the demons leashed until I could fall asleep.

Waking up in the middle of the night in that dreaded silent blackness unnerved me. I looked for the digital clock on my bedside table and couldn’t see it anywhere. I groped for the lamp in the darkness. I couldn’t find the table. My hand grasped at empty air. The power was out again and I must have shifted position on the bed because the nightstand wasn’t where I expected it to be. I squinted in the darkness, looking for any source of light – the door, the window – anything.

I could no longer tell which direction the door was supposed to be. I had lost my bearings in the inky blackness.

No! Not this again!

At least I was in bed this time. I resolved to stay where I was until the electricity was restored. I would be safe as long as I didn’t go blundering around in the dark.

Safe, or helpless? Shut up, brain!

And then I heard it.

A hiss, followed a sucking sound. Then another hiss. The hissing monster had returned.

HISS. SUCK.

HISS. SUCK.

I couldn’t tell where the noise was coming from; it might have been outside my bedroom window or it might have been inside the room with me. I imagined an unworldly creature – a demon, perhaps – crouched on the floor at the foot of my bed, drooling on the carpet, waiting for me to move. Or maybe it prowled outside my window, sniffing around the cracks, looking for a way in. I wanted to scream at it to go away but I was afraid I might attract it instead. Surely it could smell my fear.

I don’t know how long I waited, frozen on the bed, listening to the hissing monster, but it felt like eternity. My legs were stiff from being clutched to my chest and my butt was numb from sitting in the same position for so long.

What would happen when the light returned? Would I see the thing that made the sound? Or would it disappear, the way so many nightmare demons did?

I waited and waited.

HISS. SUCK.

HISS. SUCK.

What did it want with me? Why didn’t it just attack me and get it over with?

I tried to imagine what the thing looked like. It was probably a hideous pig-faced demon with yellow tusks and warts all over its body. Its toes probably had razor-sharp talons capable of eviscerating me with one swipe. Or maybe it was covered with spines like a hedgehog. Poisonous ones, dripping venom that burned acidic holes in the carpet.

It waited, hissing in the darkness. Waiting for what, I didn’t know. I felt like I was floating in space from the sensory deprivation of being trapped in nothing.

I didn’t remember falling asleep but when I woke I was lying comfortably in bed, the power was on, and the clock wasn’t blinking. Six o’clock, it read. The PM light wasn’t lit, so I assumed it was morning, but I didn’t completely trust the clock, given its unreliability as of late. The lamp was there as well, in its place on the nightstand where I should have easily been able to reach it.

I couldn’t stay in that house any longer. I didn’t care what was outside; nothing out there could be worse than whatever was stalking me inside the house.

I ran to the front door and flung it open.

I stumbled backward, clapping my hand to my mouth to stifle the cry that escaped anyway.

It was either daybreak or dusk; I couldn’t tell which. The sky was dim, overcast with thick, gray clouds, but bright enough to show the devastated landscape.

The neat suburban houses on my street were gone, reduced to rubble by… what? It looked like a bomb had been dropped on my neighborhood.

How?

I hadn’t heard a blast. My home was intact. I hadn’t felt a…

The earthquake!

It must have been a bomb blast!

But how?

Colin hadn’t mentioned a word of it. If there had been an attack, surely it would have been in the news.

How do I still have power? Internet?

True, my electric service had been sporadic lately, my phone was out of order and my Internet hadn’t been working properly. I thought about all the strange occurrences that had taken place in my home the past few… weeks? Days? I wasn’t even sure how much time had passed since things had started getting weird.

How long had I been home from the hospital?

What the hell was the date? It seemed strange that the date hadn’t occurred to me before.

The calendar on the wall still said May. I wished I had thought to date my journal entries.

I remembered the date I’d planned to quit my job. May 21. I had waited until the day before payday to ensure that my last paycheck was a full one.

I didn’t even know if I’d been paid because the company I worked for paid via direct deposit and I hadn’t checked my bank account. It hadn’t occurred to me to check until now.

How can something that important just slip my mind?

I rushed to the refrigerator and opened it. A full gallon of milk sat inside. The best-before date on the milk was June 1. It was the same jug I had gotten in a grocery delivery the day before the accident. From my best guess, I had been home for at least a month, but how long had I been in the hospital before that?

I opened the jug and sniffed the milk. It wasn’t sour. In fact, I’d been making coffee every day that I could remember and using that milk in my coffee.

Every day.

Why was the jug still full?

I hadn’t left the house once. I hadn’t gone to the store and I hadn’t ordered groceries for delivery. If I’d been here for two weeks or more, the jug of milk should have been almost empty or gone altogether.

I felt like I was trapped in the mother of all nightmares.

Magical non-sour milk. Hissing demons. False power outages. Beeping microwave.

And the dreams. So many bizarre dreams.

How much time had passed?
How much?

How could the world outside (at least my neighborhood) have been destroyed without my knowledge? Surely I would have heard something! Where was the military?

Why wouldn’t Colin have told me?

Had he? Had I told him? Now I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

I was trapped inside the Twilight Zone and the world outside was an apocalyptic wasteland.

I tried to reach Colin on Skype but he wasn’t there. I picked up the phone and listened. There was a dial tone. I hung it back up. Who was I going to call? Who
could
I call? 911? I was pretty sure that if a disaster of the magnitude I’d seen outside had hit the area, 911 would be well aware of it.

It was so strange. I’d felt the blast, assuming that the ‘quake’ was actually the blast. Afterward, I hadn’t heard any sirens or other sounds associated with a major emergency.

What if everyone else is dead?

If the world is destroyed, then why do I still have phone and Internet?

Panic clutched my throat. I didn’t have any contact information for Colin. If we lost contact electronically, I would lose him forever.

I sent him an email consisting of my full address and home phone number, just in case the phone decided to work.

Just in case we lose Internet service, I want you to be able to find me, ok?
I added.

I updated my journal with the most recent developments – my attempt to venture outside and my discovery of the ruined landscape. For the first time, it occurred to me that I might not survive.

What would happen when my food ran out? Granted, I had plenty to eat; my pantry was well-stocked with canned goods and other non-perishables and so far (oddly) my fridge was still full.

From what I’d seen, a trip to the grocery store was out of the question. I imagined all the stores would already have been looted by survivors.

You snooze, you lose.

I had definitely been snoozing. I’d missed the entire event. I still didn’t know how that could be possible. How could I have mistaken such a massive blast for a mere earth tremor?

My mind traveled back to the strange dream about
Guh Ptarn-Bdarng
, the Quake-Maker.

Was the dream a prophetic vision of the impending disaster? Who, or what, was trying to warn me? The dream had taken place on an alien planet.

Was the vision alien in origin?

“A cosmic event?” I spoke aloud, grateful for the sound of a human voice, even if it was my own. What if the destruction outside had not been caused by a bomb at all? What if the planet had been struck by a meteor or something? Maybe alien beings had been trying to warn me through my dreams.

Yep, it’s official. I have flipped my lid. I’m just a half step away from licking windows.

Aliens? Was it really so far-fetched?

I had never bought into all the crap churches tried to force-feed everyone. I found it impossible to believe Earth could be the only planet with intelligent life. If God was all-knowing and all-powerful as they claimed, it was a slap in the Creator’s face to say that WE were the best He could come up with.

No, there had to be more – I’d always believed in the existence of other intelligent life forms, which explained my dreams about being on other planets. The dreams were probably based on my own fantasies of visiting other worlds.

Then how did I explain the meteor?

If, in fact, it
was
a meteor.

I needed to find out for sure. I turned the TV to CNN. Surely a disaster of this magnitude would be constantly in the news feed.

There was nothing. Just the usual crap. Politics. The Middle East. Economics. More politics. Nothing out of the ordinary, yet nothing new and nothing to indicate the date. I flipped through a few channels and found only repeats of the usual drivel – talk shows, soap operas, infomercials.

How could that be?

I tried Colin again but he still wasn’t there. I sent him another email, asking him to contact me ASAP.

A chilling thought crossed my mind:
What if Colin was killed in the blast?

Worse yet, what if he had met someone else? Maybe he had decided he was wasting his time on me. I couldn’t blame him. What man would want a woman who couldn’t even leave her house?

The thought of Colin discarding me for someone normal evoked a mixture of emotions in me: Fear, heartbreak and then anger.

The anger quickly transformed into determination.

If I wanted to keep Colin, I needed to grow some balls, recover from my helpless state and take charge of my life. The only way to get over my fears was to face them head-on.

It was time to take Colin’s advice.

~*~