Fear

• Holly Monroe, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2015

Spiders are everywhere. They’re crawling up my arms and legs, straight into my mouth, choking, suffocating me. I can’t stop them. I’m paralysed, stranded, helpless…
I jolted awoke to the sound of my mother calling for me. My palms were glistening with sweat, and my heart was in overdrive. I had the same nightmare as last night. I was being eaten alive by spiders. I threw the sheets off the bed and was preparing to waltz downstairs just as my younger sister, Jolie, barged into my room. “Sophie” she bossed sternly, “mum wants you downstairs for breakfast. Now.”
“Sure Jolie, one minute” I replied. I quickly threw on some clothes, pinned up my hair and practically jumped down the stairs.
“So, Sophie” my mum pestered me, “how did you sleep?”
“Fine.” A few months ago, I told my mum about my weird dreams. That was a mistake. “On a totally unrelated note, I was wondering whether my friends and I could go kayaking down at the river this afternoon?”
My mother’s spoon clattered to the table and her eyes glazed over. What had I just done?
“Jolie!” I screamed, “Get a heat pack, hurry!”
My mother has an extreme case of Galeophobia, also known as fear of sharks. Every time we mention anything to do with sharks, she blacks out. Even if we say the word ‘ocean’ her knees would buckle. When you think about it, it’s kind of like my fear of spiders.
As the lunch bell rang, students slowly moped towards the locker bays. Soon, I was on my way to the first lesson of Psychology. A few minutes later, I had arrived, and was finding a place to sit. Our teacher, Mr Andrews, strutted into the classroom and took a seat.
“Fear” he started, “is such a mystifying thing. Why are we afraid of what we are afraid off? How does our body, physically and mentally, react to it? Well, that’s what our first lesson is all about! Students, grab your laptops. I would like you to do some research on your biggest fear. You will present this to the class in 15 minutes. Begin.”
He sat down, no longer paying us any attention. I opened the lid of my computer and typed into the Google search bar, ‘Being eaten alive by spiders’. The first thing that popped up was a newspaper article of a young girl, who had been eaten alive by spiders back in 1999, three years before I was born. The girl’s name was Amelia Parker. She had been eaten alive by spiders when she was 19 years old. It was totally unpredicted, in a dark cavern near her house. The weird thing was, she looked exactly like me, just 5 years older. A spooky thought crossed my mind. What if that was me, but in a different life? What if I, Sophie Morton, suffered from extreme arachnophobia because my past self, Amelia Parker, had been eaten alive by spiders? It would explain everything, even my mother's fear of Galeophobia. No way am I sharing this with the class.