The Drink Tank 370

Fear

James Bacon ~ Editors ~ Chris Garcia

Copy~editing by Vanessa Applegate

I am nothing if not a collection of my Fears. When Istartedthinkingaboutthis issue,myfirstthoughtwas “I’m going to have a lot to say,” followed by “James will have so little to say.” That’s the big difference between us - I am a bundle of Fear, uncertainty, and especially doubt. James is certainty, dedication, and powering through. We’re very different there, and it’s part of why we work so well together. I am unsure if we’re on the right path - he knows it’s gonna work. In the end, neither of us are completely right, but together we hit the nail on the head; we have a vision and it doesn’t 100% turn out, but it always happens. It’s one of the reasons that I get so upset when folks question James’ involvement with The Drink Tank. Without him, The Drink Tank would not exist now. He handles the Fear. My Fear. And that’s where things get interesting. I’m seeing a new woman, Vanessa. She gets that I am a bundle of Fears in a way that is very different from James, and anyone else I’ve dated, it seems. She’s seen some of them, and she tries to soothe them, which is nice, but she doesn’t deny that many of them are real. Some Fears are obviously not, even I know that, but she gets the ones that are. I’ve no greater fear than death. You all know that, I’ve written about it before. I’m 40 soon, and that scares me. Decades tend to flipmeout.DeathistheBIGDEALandI’mscaredofitanditcolorsmy entire perception of the world. It’s not an easy thing and I can’t see a time when it will not be a looming presence in my mind; that hive of wasps each with a little bit of panic attached to the stinger that can pin-prick you again and again. It’s my cross to bear, I guess, but it also keeps me safe. Limitsme,yes,butyoumayhavenoticedI’m39yearsdyingand not yet dead... So here is our issue about Fear, in all its forms!

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A Table of Contents

Page2-EditorialbyChristopherJGarcia

Page 4 - Two Mouths Rock - An Analysis of the Alien Movie Franchise by Tonya Adolfson

Page11-TheGiftofFearbyGavindeBecker

AReviewbyChuckSerface

Page15-SoNoShitThereIWasbyLenoreCorvus

Page18-ASelectionofHorrorFilmsJudgedByTheirPhysicalEffectsonMebyChristopherJGarcia

Page 22 - What Scares You? Facebook Answers That Very Question...

Page27-WhatIFearbyChristopherJGarcia

Art Credits

CoverandPage10byEspañaSheriff

Page3,19,22-23-ArtbyVanessaApplegate

Page14andBackCover-ArtbyCheliseHyatt

Page17-ArtbyBillRotsler

Two Mouths RockAn Analysis of the Alien Movie Franchise

by Tonya Adolfson

When Alien popped into viewers’ nightmares in the summer of 1979, it showed us a worldunimagined by most when they think of the movie classification “Thriller”. Alien was drama, science fiction, and psychological trauma all disguised as asimple salvage operation, and it launched a franchise that has spanned generations. Some of the movies have been criticized as not being appropriate or not good movies. I will admit that an analysis of the franchise will offer questions and inconsistencies. However, I still own all of them. Alien started everything and, like Jaws (also a personal favorite), it produced a virus on the psyche that has infected normal, simple basics. Alien is to space what Jaws is to water, though I don’t know if we’ll ever get a Xenomorph Week onNatGeo. Pitytoo. I would so watch that until, of course, they tried to say the facehugger at the end of Prometheus was still alive. Alien brought fear in the form of acid blood and an ability to be in places we couldn’t see them or fight them, like theshadowsorour intestines.Theywere fast and strong and it didn’t matter if it was just a guy in a rubber suit. It wasn’t a guy in a rubber suit. It was the monster that killed the main character. And the peripheral characters too. It stepped outside the commonHollywood trope of the LeadingManwinningagainsttheBadGuy.ItwasgroundbreakinginthataSupportingActressNPCwastheonewhowon

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the day and she didn’t do it by being the best at anything. She did it by being the only one left and scared as hell. Then came Aliens and the whole feel changed. The second installment was an action flick, not a psychological thriller. Itintroduced Vasquez and Drake to the mix, the couple that, to this day, never felt to me like they did anything sexual, but Drake admired and crushed on Vasquez, and she let him. She didn’t do it in the harsh Heathers-style of the popular high school girl. She did it in the manner of a warrior alpha, recognizing a male who offers to beta himself for her. When Drake died, Vasquez was trashed. She had to push it down to do the job. And when Vasquez died, it was awarrior’sdeathfightingtogivetheothersachance. Ithinkherlast thought wasn’t simple. It was vengeance, acceptance of her fate, andpossibly“I’mcoming,Drake.”Nosinglethoughtwonthatfinalspace.Itwasa3-waytie. All the relationships in Aliens had that intricacy without the clutter of airing emotions. Ripley and Newt. Ripley and Hicks. HudsonandHicks.AponeandhisMarines.Gormanandeveryone.AndthelevelofhatredthatformedforCarterBurke.Istillheartheline, “They can bill me” whenever someone tries to think of money over people in amovie. Luckily, I don’t know enough corporatetypes to have anything like that happen in my real life. Wherethefirstmoviegaveushintsofcrewrelationships,thesecondgaveusclearloyaltiesandfriendships.Thefirstmoviehad value in laying down the threat, then picking off the crew until the last human carried the cat into the cryo-chamber after spacing the monster. The second movie showed the emotional scarring that came from surviving that encounter and the closure of facing the threat and coming out the other side. While the second movie enjoys the distinction of being one of the best sequels in movie history, right up there with Empire Strikes Back, the third movie is often treated like it has no place in the storyline. I strongly disagree. Alien 3, or as we call it, “Alien Cubed”,hadaveryimportantclueaboutthenatureofthemonsterrace:Whythecatwasignoredinthefirstmovie.Itwastoosmalltoserve as a host. What’s more, Jonesy seemed to know that. Jonesy waspurringwhenthealieninthefirstmoviescopeditout.Now,

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cats will purr when content but they will also purr when hurt, sick, stressed, nervous or near death. The funny thing about that point was that we, as humans, have published studies on the times a cat purrs but most people don’t know those facts. A purring cat as the Alien scopes it out for viability was confusing and gave the impression of smugness and pleasure instead of fear. It was like Jonesy knew something we didn’t. In this case, he knew that the alien needed a host at least the size of a Rottweiler. Alien 3 revealed that the alien takes on the properties of the host animal, running on all fours. This gave me an idea to write afanficpiecewheretheAlienQueenispickedupinspace,frozen,byaspacearkcomingfromEarth.Theshenanigansthatensuedonthat were pretty damned impressive. Alien sharks, alien rhinos, alien panthers,aliencondors.Canyouimaginealiencondors?Itwouldbelike a roc with two mouths! There were a lot of very lethal options to consume the poor crewmen on that ship, which I dubbed the Noah. Alien 3 also revealed that Ripley had a queen in her. That was an important fashion statement. It showed the monsters had real staying power, that cryo-sleep is one of the best things to happen to alien space travel. It also indicated that the aliens can choose how long they stay in vitro, at least they can when they are queens. Most of the other hosts were killed within twenty-four hours of implantation, but Ripley didn’t. She walked around with her alien for a few days before it popped out, long enough for her to decide to throwherselfintofierydeathinthesmelter. Alien: Resurrectionbaffledmanyfansoftheseries,andmostof us weren’t confused by the cloning or the attempts to make a Riley-alienhybrid.Mostfanswerebaffledbythecontinuityissueofthe “infant”. We see experiment after experiment in living, breathing horrorinthelab,butnothingwasaswrongasthebossfightattheend. It wasn’t that the infant was frightening, as much as it was the wrongchoice.Ialwaysclosemyeyesduringthatfightscenetoblockoutwhatwasapparentlyawriter’sstrike,aproducer’sstomachflu,or a sudden change in directors. When the monster was ripping its way out of the alien hybrid queen’s stomach, it looked through

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the membrane like it was going to be Sigourney Weaver. There were dark nails like hers, and dark hair like hers. There was even a small head, again like hers. When the white, doughy alien infant was theresult,meandmyfamilyandfriendsattendingthefilminthetheaters just frowned. We didn’t understand. WewereallreadyforthebossfightwhereaRipleywithasecond mouth and acid blood took on the other Ripley in the cargo bay. She could even have an alien skull plate since those were also dark. In truth, it was seriously the best way to get the Ripley that WeylandEnterpriseswas trulyafter.Andthefightneednothavegone a different way. In fact, having the newborn Ripley die the same wayworkedjustfine.Itjustwouldhavemademoresensethanwhatthey did. Thiswastrulymyfirstdoubt intheseries.Whentheendcredits rolled, I felt like there had been a mistake in production. I wanted to call them up and say, “Hey guys, what happened to the footagewe shotwith Sigourney?You know, the end fight scene?Did someone lose something?” I even had the ending bleed into a new ending for my ark story, where Ripley was the corporate personchoosingtolethumanitygetclaimedforhosts.ItfitnicelyintomyfanficabouttheNoahandgavemeatimelinewheremylittlefantasyfitin.Thebizarreinfanthasalwaysstruckmeasabadchoice because it wasn’t as much nightmare fodder as it could have been. The Ripley Infant Alien dollsintheactionfiguressectionalonewould have paid the salaries of the SFX guys who would have done the work. The AlienDoughBoywaskindofaflop. Of course, this is also during the time when Aliens vs. Predators was altering canon. The little joke by a prop guy in the Predator 2 movie launched a huge fandom, so bright and strong that it got its own franchise. When AVP launched, I was okay with it. The idea that the Predator race used planets like ours thousands of years ago as ahuntinggroundforritesofpassagefitintomyAlien universe view justfine.Didthatalterourhistoryonaglobalscale?Well,yeah,buthello? Aliens. Already different. It was no problem for me to wrap my head around that concept. When the Alien queen was dropped into the arctic sea, I wasn’t deluded by the idea that she was killed. It had already been

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proven that she spent the last however many millennia frozen in thebowelsofthetemple.Granted,theseaisnotlikespaceinthatthe pressure in the deep is absolutely crushing. The commoner alien skulls could be crushed with a boot, but the pressure under the sea is equal on all sides. Without the concentration into a single area, it’s possible the queen’s elaborate skull was an evolutionary trait to stop her from being crushed in that environment. Yeah, I could still buy it. And the alien-predator hybrid at the end was delightful!

I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

Alien But in all families, there is the black sheep, the one childpeople pretend to forget they have. For the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, it was the second one, for The Matrix, it was the third one. For both the Alien and the Predatorstorylines,itwastheColoradoone. Requiem was confusing to those of us who watched the movies because the people making it clearly never had. If an alien, ouralien,gotlooseinaforestinColorado,thatwholescenariointhe North Pole would have gone down in two days. We already know thealienscangestateinsidesomethingassmallasaRottweiler.Let’sgiveitelk,anddeer,andeaglestonestin.Orbears.Bearsaregood.With a food source as vast and varied as the wilds of the Rocky Mountains during hunting season to choose from, that alien ain’t visitingthelocalpizzeriainGunnison.Ifahumanwithacellphonegets off his path, he might not be found for the entire winter. I doubt the alien-predator hybrid would have a lick of trouble camping down in a bear den and generating a queen to lay eggs for three months.Then along came Prometheus, and the world went nuts. No one cared that Requiem’s premise was ridiculous because frankly, all of us just ignored it and decided it didn’t make any sense. Prometheus gave us back our original director and producers and was widely regarded as being a prequel to the Alien movies. Ridley Scott himself indicated that, although the universe was the same, it was an original

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film,notaprequel.Theancestorsof theAlienracewerepresentbuttheEngineersmightnothaveanythingtodowiththePredator timeline. Understanding this, and understanding that the Alien ancestorsdidshowinthefilm(likeFOUSes,FacehuggersofUnusualSize), having a T-Rex sized monster at the end that was reminiscent of the original source of John Hurt’s indigestion does make us questionthatintent.Bysayingitwassetinthesameuniversebutnot the same storyline feels almost like an attempt to hand wave the changes to the main established story. It’s unnecessary. Not all critters evolved the same way. We know the ship that crashed on LV426hadanEngineerinit.Wesawthat.Weknowithadacacheofeggs in the hold. You seriously don’t need to explain more than that. They thought they were transporting a weapon somewhere. Turns out they were right. As fans of the franchise, we don’t always need something elaborate as an explanation. These things are dangerous, and even when they are known, intelligent beings like to think they can control these things because they A) are arrogant and believe these creaturesactsolelyoninstinctandnotrealintelligence,B)thinktheyarejustatooltobeusedagainstenemies,likeamagnesiumflare,C)don’t really realize what they are up against, or, most often, D) all of the above. A) is refuted by the Alien Queen operating the elevator. B)isrefutedbythepresenceofthealienontheescapeshuttleontheNostromo,usingitsabilitytoseeaplacetocamouflageitselfandstillescape,andrecognizingtheneedtoescape.Itcouldn’tflythedamnedship.Bettertohideuntiltherewasnogoingback.C)was every movie in the franchise. We see corporations and military get away with things in the real world all the time, sneaky stuff that, when discovered, results ina jackettugandaM.C.Hammerattitude.Theonlyreal justicewe get against banks that destroy the economy or food chains that impose their phobias upon our sandwiches is the glorious fact that the Aliens would use them as hosts and kill them with a chest burst.After all, “You don’t see them screwing each other over for a goddamn percentage.”

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The Gift of Fearby Gavin de Becker

A Review by Chuck Serface

Fear, not worry or anxiety which are many times voluntary, is a reaction to signals from our environment that tells us we’ve entered unsafe ground. This gift of evolution doesn’t emanate from a mystical third eye. It doesn’t involve spider-sense, cosmic awareness, or whatever makes that robot from Lost in Space wave its arms and shout, “Danger, WillRobinson,danger!”Evolutionhasgearedustolearn through the process of living, to learn what isn’t safe, whether we realize it or not. We need only to listen.DeBeckerofferstheexampleofKelly,ayoungwoman who saved her own life by allowing instinct to run its course. Aman approachedKelly as shearrived home with groceries. His manner and style of communication set off alarms for Kelly, but hedidn’t seem immediately dangerous, so she dismissed her feelings, eventually allowing the man into her apartmentwhereherapedher.Later,themanwouldhavekilledKellyhadshenotescapedwhenthemanleftherbedroom.WhatmadeKellydecidetogetupand walk out of her apartment to a neighbor’s while the man rooted around her kitchen? Not panic, but fear. If she’d panicked, perhaps she might have frozen on her bed until the man came back to complete his horrificplan. Fear,however, inspiredher instincttoget the hell out of there, so it wasn’t a decision so much as a reaction.

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Whileneverblaming thevictim,deBeckerdiscussescaseafter case in which a client relates details that would have aided in predicting or preventing dangerous situations. The way someone speaks, certain gestures, and even humor can provide the ingredients necessary for successful prediction and prevention. An entire list of behaviors or “pre-incident indicators” (PINs), might awaken our “messengers of intuition.” Does someone force you into feeling like a teammate regardless of your unwillingness to do so? Does he discount the word “no?” Does he negatively typecast in a way that subtly coerces you? Does he offer too many unsolicited details about himself? In The Gift of Fear,readerswillfindaclearlist of these and other behaviors that trigger fear responses. And asIhaveintheabove,deBeckerpurposefullyusesthemasculinepronoun throughout his book, because the predominant number of predators are indeed male. Several chapters in the book are dedicated to specificoccurrences, such as overly persistent people who won’t go away, occupational hazards, intimate enemies (domestic violence), date stalking,violentchildren,andattacksagainstpublicfigures.Eachofthese chapters contains descriptions of PINs, those factors which help to explain why we get that tingle in the back of our brains and how we can listen to avoid later complications. One section within the chapter on violent children gave me pause, however. After citing astatisticfromDavidBlankenhorn’sFatherless America about how the prevalence of young men in juvenile detention centers were “raisedwithoutfullyparticipatingfathers,”deBeckerposits:

Fathers are important because they teach boys various ways to be men. Sadly, too many boys learn from the media or from each other what scholars call “protest masculinity,” characterized by toughness and the use of force. That is not the only way to be a man, of course, but it’s the only way they know. (272)

Canwomen not teach boys various ways to bemen, orcounter the messages they receive from the media about toughness and the use of force? Surely the causes of crime are multivariate, so I’m leery of placing so much emphasis on any one factor, especially given the prevalence of same-sex parent families and single-parent

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familieswithsonswhoaredoingjustfine.Idoagree,however,thatwe can’t underestimate the effects of childhood abuse and neglect. What’s one method for countering the advent of violent persons? Be lovingandresponsibleparents, regardlessof genderor familymakeup. Gun-rightsadvocateshavetakenexceptionwithdeBecker.While supportive of self-defense courses like IMPACT, and veryclear that he in no way challenges an individual’s right to bear arms, he does advocate for sensible control. He suggests the following, a system he calls “bullet control”:

I propose that we hold gun manufacturers to the same product-liability standards we require from every other consumer product. Imagine if caustic drain opener weresoldineasy-pour,flip-top,pistol-gripdispensersmadeattractive to children by the endorsement of celebrities. Now, drain openers can’t hurt people, but they aren’t made for that purpose. Handguns are made precisely for that purpose, so shouldn’t manufacturers be required to build in safety features that have been technologically practical for decades? Even electric drills have safety triggers, yetrevolversdonot.(389)

This eminently practical reasoning has appeared in other sources. Other methods surely provide better protection, the ones having todowithpredictionandpreventionaspresentedinTheGiftofFear. Overall,deBeckerhasprovidedausefulguide,includingevena lengthy list of questions parents can ask schools about policies they’ve adopted to prevent violence. At times, the atonal plop of name-dropping, or at least the indication that he knows important people,impedestheflowofdeBecker’sprose,asdoesanarrativepuffery that reveals that in part this book stands as an advertisement forhisfirm. Nonetheless,valuable informationabout learning tofocus our internal instruments resides herein. All would do best torememberthatlettinganotherdowneasyrarelyworks.Knowwhentowalkaway.Learntotrustyourinstincts.Predict,prevent,and manage that greatest of survival instincts: fear.

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“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm,

a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”

Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

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So No Shit There I wasby lenore corvus

So no shit, there I was naked and tied spread eagle to the bed; the ropes winched so tight I could hardly wiggle. As he slid his leather belt over my head and pulled it tight around my neck with one hand, he used the other to press the blade of his knife into my throat. As he whispered some cliché into my ear about total power and control, all I could think was... “Great, I’m sure I’ve seen aCSI episode that starts like this.” I could picture the camera flashes overthe corpse before they cover the body with a sheet. “How am I going to explain this one?” He loosened his grip on the belt long enough for me to gasp for air. This caused the knife to dig in a littledeeperbelowmyear.Ifroze,eyesfixedstraightaheadontheceiling.“Beige,Ithinkweshallpainttheceiling beige...” I closed my eyes hard, making sure my eyelids were the only muscles in my body that so much as twitch. “What the fuck is wrong with me?!? Shouldn’t I be in a full blown panic right about now? I don’t think most people would be making a boring sex joke if they were in my shoe... err... Shackles.” “Awww, love, are you afraid? Do I scare you?” He said, while scanning my face for traces of emotion and caressing my cheek with the knife; his words dripped in a warm, honey-like, sarcasm he then proceeded to lick frommyneck.“Because I shouldscare you. You don’t know what I’m capable of. “ Heslidthecoldflatsideofthebladearoundmy neck and down my chest. And asked softly with an inquisitive child-like quality, “Do you fear me?” As he

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loosened his grip on the belt again so I could breathe and answer, I involuntarily snorted in absurd indignation, and just as suddenly, like the slow motion train wreck that you can’t do anything to prevent, I choked back laughter in a sharp inhale that was cut short by a quick snapofthebeltinhisfist.IclenchedmyteethandwincedinpainasI felt the blade come down on my breast and break the skin. “Oops! Did I do that? My, myyy, Well I suppose the song goes..,” as he says in a singsong manor, and drags the blade in an x acrossthefirstcut“...crossyourheartandhopetodie”hetwistedthe tip of the blade in the center of the x. I watched the skin yield. The small crimson droplets stream into a pool, as a secret smile crept to the corners of my lips. In my head echoed my reply, “...stick a needle in you eye!”

“Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.”

Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

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A Selection of Horror Films Judged by their physical

effects on me

by Christopher J GarciA

i love horror films. I do. They’re not myfavorite genre, and there are things in horror filmsthat I have a hard time watching. It’s a sad fact. As Matt Jackson, the director of the awesome Love in the Time of Monsters, said “I saw you squirming. Dude, you totally had your geek card revoked!” Horrorfilmshavephysicaleffectsonme.Theyalways have, and thus I don’t see as many of them as I could. Why? Well, here is a sampling of what horror filmshavedonetome.

The Control film - Freaks - Todd Browning Freaks is an incredible film, and technically ahorrorfilmaswell.Supposedlyitwasveryscarybackin the day, and I loved it from a young age. I re-watched it after several years the other night. I recognize that there are things that are meant to be creepy, while not being outright stings or scares. And after it was over, I went to bed. While laying in bed in the hour or so it takes me to get to sleep, I kept seeing one image: a dwarf with a switchblade in his hand. I’m not sure why, but that image, that single image, even more than the final image of theNormal turned into a freak,stuck with me, and it might have pushed back my actual falling asleep by a few minutes.

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Scenario 1 - The Blair Witch Project So, I love Blair Witch. It’s a brilliantly constructed horror world, a back story the likes of which very few novels manage. Its a veryeffectivefilminthatitcausestheviewertofallinwiththewayit’s shot. Those stories of people getting motion sick are a testament tohoweffectiveitwasasafilm.Also,itsaysthatmorefolksneedto watch Verite documentaries. I watched it several times, and the firsttimeIsawitwitharegularaudience,Ihadagreatexperiencewatching. Now, after I got home, I was all alone. I was still living at home at that point, so it was rare that there was no one else around. I settled into my bedroom, turned off the light (I had glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, so there was that) and tried to sleep. It weren’t gonna happen. Every sound, every twinge in my body, every everythingcausedmetojump.Evenpullingtheblanketupovermyheaddidnothing to diminish my fear. It got me deep. So what did I do? I waited until morning. I stayed up until 7am or so, then went to bed inthefulllightofday.ThiswasthefirsttimeIcaneverthinkofdoingthat.Itwas1999,andIdidn’thavetoworkthenextday,soitdidn’thurt much until that Monday, when I had managed to get my sleep schedule back slightly towards normal.

Scenario 2 - Love in the Time of Monsters Matt Jackson and folks are good, good people. I had seen most of Love in the Time of Monsters on disk, but I went to see the actualCinequestpresentationinthetheatre,becauseseeinghorrorin a theatre has so many advantages over watching alone at home, even if that means you can enjoy a lovely glass of absinthe while eatingGirlScoutcookies! So, in theCamera12’s luxurious screen10,Vanessaand Itook seats behind the rail, my favorite seats in the theatre because you can put your feet up and not have them bothering anyone, right inthesmackmiddleofthetheatre.Iwasalsoannouncingthefilm,so I gave it one of my all-time best introductions, because I am so thoroughly loving the movie, and the guys who made it! So, the movie started, telling the story of a pair of sisters who go to Uncle

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Slavko’sAll-AmericanFamilyResortandendupfightingzombie-likecreaturesdressedinBigfootsuits. Yeah, it’s THAT kind of movie. So,thefirsttwentyminutesorso,there’ssomegoodstuff,and then we suddenly come to moments of some gore. I did not take it well. I found myself having to hide my eyes every time anythinggore-tasticcameonthescreen.Eventually,Vanessanoticedand leaned over saying “You don’t like blood, do you?” Well, duh. She also started putting her hand up in front of my eyes when anything gross happened. So I spent the movie hiding my eyes a fair bit. Now, that night I slept like a baby, but in the theatre, it was thoroughly physically uncomfortable.

I’m a New Yorker. Fear’s My Life. RENT

Scenario 3 - The Conjuring I have a long and stories history of loving ghost stories, especially true ghost stories.TheWarrens,oneof thefirst ghosthunter pairs to get any real media attention, were folks I’d been aware of for ages and this story, based on the haunting of the Perrons family, was incredibly well-acted. The script was pretty cliched, but VeraFermigna,PatrickWilson,RonLivingston,andLiliTaylorareallexceptional in it. Now,afterIwatcheditattheCentury21,Iheadedhome.That night, when I tried to sleep, it was a lot like The Blair Witch Project night… only far far worse. You see, I was over-thinking every sound, but more than that, things i would normally be aware of became monsters. For example, I sleep with a bunch of pillows. It basically build a sort ofnest (askGlugorWarrenBuff and they’ll tell youwhat Ido!)and sometimes the pillows will fall off the bed, now if I’m sleeping under a blanket, the pillow might get tangled up and pull down the blanketasitdescendstothefloor.Usually,Ibarelynoticethis,butithappened that night and I literally sat completely up-right and said, out loud to nothing I could see in my apartment “Who did that?”

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Scenario 4 - Hannibal (OK, it’s a TV series, but stick with me…) This is easily the goriest show on TV right now. Bates Motel, my favorite show on the air at the moment, ain’t exactly clean itself, but here there’s a fair bit of gore and viscera. It’s a smart, smart show, with an excellent performance by the great Mads Mikkelsen, but they do go for the gross sometimes. So, after a particularly long marathon of the show, about 1/2 of Season one in a sitting, I decided it was sleepy time, and when I wenttolaydown,IputonmyCPAPmask. Only, my body wasn’t having it. For some reason, it was rejecting the mask. I’d put it on, lay down and it would feel as if I’d stepped into a bear trap. I’d put it on, and after a couple of minutes, I’d feel like I was having trouble breathing, and then I’d have to take it off, and after a while, I’d feel better, try and put it on again, and that would make me feel trapped again, and I’d have to take it off. It was so weird, that sort of thing had never happened to me before, and I can only blame Hannibal for that.

It wasn’t my most courageous moment. I didn’t sleep that night at all. Not a wink, which sucked because I had to go to work the next day. I went him can slept for an hour or so until the sun went down, and that actually woke me up. For the next week, I was on the weirdest sleep schedule of my life. I actually could not sleep with the lights off. Not just a night light, butfullonLights-on!Itwasweird,andittookmethebetterpartoftwo weeks weeks to recover!

“I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.”

Veronica Roth, Allegiant

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What Scares YouFacebook Answers that

Very Question

i asked a simple question - What Scares You? And my Facebook friends, bless them, were willing to answer them1 Here are some of the answers with my odd commentary!

James Murray “Fear” I do not fear fear at all. Fear, as it stands in my head, is a good thing, a preservative, if you will. It’s kept me alive so far, and while it has held me back at times, it’s saved me far more often!

Sam Frazier Jr.“badscreenings&unfulfilledgoals.” Ah, the filmmaker’s dilemma! Is it better to be out there and have things go wrong, or better to just do what you’re gonna and maybe strike out. The answer is neither, of course. The answer is Be A Genius! I’ve got nothing but unfulfilled goals in my life, so many. The things I’ve managed have never been goals - they’ve been things I’d love to have happen, but I never really worked towards them as goals. They were just things I wanted to do and something came out of ‘em, sometimes for no good reason. Also, Sam is one of the best filmmakers I know!Earl Cooley III “poverty” “Never be poor, kid.” John Paul Garcia. I’ve never made much money, but compared to my Dad in the last 1/2 of his life, I am King Midas. Doin’ my best, Pops! Doin’ my best.

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Arthur Chenin“BUGS!!!”Marya Murphy “so much spider”Michele Wilson “Spiders and snakes.”Debbie Bretschneider “spiders”Kathrin Elsholz Jones “Spiders and death” For a guy who is afraid of a lot of things, I ain’t particularly adverse to spiders. I don’t like touchin’ ‘em, but they don’t wig me out. In fact, if I find one around the house, I usually put it on a Trail of Tears-sort of ride, putting it in a garbage can or in some deserted corner, once in while outside, so it can live out its little existence away from my sight, but happy, nonetheless.

Brad W. Foster“Iamterrifiedofpeopleaskingmewhatscaresme.Because, actually, I never can thinkof anything.And then theythink I am lying, so they -try- to scare me, and it just escalates...” That’s positively Garcian in it’s abstract paranoia!

Andrew Trembley “The day vending machines take over the world. Wait. That’s what Doctor Doofenschmertz is afraid of.” If you’re not watching Fineas & Ferb, you’re wrong!

Yvette Keller “Everything, but only during occasional, random,split-seconds.” My superpower is I can be afraid of anything!

Pat Turner “Velociraptors being raised on secluded tropical islands.” I love Jurassic Park, but I really want to see Jurassic Park: The Musical (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufch21YBok4 for ref.)

Elizabeth McCarty“Beingunabletothinkfororcareformyself.”Janice Gelb “senility” This has never been one of my fears. I would not mind losing my mind, so long as I kept my life. It might even be nice...

Guy Lillian“Badflights,certainbugs,rubberballoons,needles,thedentist.” I hate flying. It scares the hell out of me. Needles are a BIG fear for me nowadays, but rubber balloons?

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Lloyd Penney “Science being overwhelmed by the idiocy of religious zealots.” Not one of my fears, but I can see how folks might have that one.

Jennifer Liang“WakingupfromacomaandfindingmyhandshadbeenamputatedlikethatpoorgirlhereinGeorgiaafewyearsagowhocaughtaflesheatingbacteriawhileplayinginacreek.Iwouldnever stop screaming.” Great, you’ve added another something that I was NEVER afraid of before to the mix! That’s not cool, man!

Beth Zuckerman“Earthquakes.Recessions.Depressions.And,ofcourse, people dying.” Got a sorta sampler goin’ on there!

Vanessa Applegate “My cat eating my face. More specifically,sudden keeling over from a massive coronary or a pulmonary embolism and having my kitty come over to see if I was ok. I fear that hewouldgetabout3licksinbeforenoticingthatIwasdeadandhewould just start devouring my face. And I would still be stuck in the “blink” space between death and departure...” I’m 100% certain that is a universal fear.

Nova Mellow “Skiing” I don’t do much skiing, but it’s not that scary. Of course, I have hurt myself skiing, so maybe that wouldn’t have happened if I had a better fear of it.

Tom Frankenberger “My wife when she’s on her period.” Ouch!

Eva Whitley “Sadly, the next guy who tells me he loves me.” That is the saddest thing I think I’ve ever read.

Matthew Legare“Fire.AngryBears.BearswhichareonfireandalsoAngry.Butcanyoublamethem?” Bears, man. I knew it was them all along...

What I Fearby Christopher J Garcia

i am the sum total of all my fears. All of them. And they number in the thousands and they weigh me down,holdmetotheEarth likeamagnetofmentalblocks. I will list the biggest of them now. Death - Always, constant, powerful Loss in those moments when the world is kind Embarrassment when trying anything Having my weaknesses discovered Never finding my true path Flying and related - Falling, or more accurately landing. Hurting others more than I hurt myself. Hurting myself too greatly Facing the monsters I created myself Letting people down and,finally I’m afraid of that feeling I get when I try and face my fears, but they are obviously stronger and thereisnorealwaytofightthem. Those are my fears, in a rough order. I do not fear fear itself; I understand it too deeply to fear it, but I am of it winning. Becauseitsooftendoes...

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