For some it dances to the symphony composed simply by the endless possibilities of whom or what might be lurking in the darkest corners of a room. Others might find that it coincides with life’s constant, often tragic, unpredictability. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a select few can wield it as an unseen weapon, forcing it down the throats of those they wish to intimidate or control. Applied in a multitude of ways, fear is any image, event, or thought that instills timidity, worry, or occasional panic.

Paranoia stalks, constantly creating the footsteps heard echoing behind and breathing down the necks of those struggling to sleep. A method with no madness, it has mastered the art of spontaneity. The mind acts like a spider, swiftly weaving one strand of thought into an elaborate web of imagery. Lying in bed late at night, that thought could be an observation of the eerie qualities of the blue light thrown onto the wall by a digital clock. The spider spins its web and, suddenly, the room becomes laced with the paranormal. Shadows appear to flicker violently on the walls, a slight creak becomes more audible than the gunshot executing the wrongly condemned to the ears of the guilty, and peripheral vision paints portraits of killers at the bedside. Escaping these illusions proves nearly impossible. The more violent the struggle to avoid nightmarish or adverse thoughts, the further they engulf every other thought that happens to be wandering the mind. A fire that treats water like gasoline, it spreads in reaction to its own antidote, making it a devastating form of fear.

Many people contract certain levels of discomfort from time stoically crawling onward. Possibilities of tomorrow flow through the mind as often as blood through veins, and more often than not those possibilities traumatize. It is not without reason that parents attempt to shield the eyes and ears of their children from news channels and the stories they convey daily. The media inadvertently vomits fear directly into the psyche of the people in the form of reality itself.  Knowledge of the world around us is a gift wrapped so elegantly with barbed wire. Curious minds stay well informed regarding current events, the inner workings of our government, and even the inner workings of other governments, but eager hands collect a scar for every tragic story and the gruesome images that illustrate the final pages. Collectively, those blatantly real stories and images form a collage of horror movie scenes in everyone’s minds in which they fall victim to events as common car collisions, or slipping and falling in a sense that the corner of a table quickly becomes the murderer that will never confess.