Life has been, to say the least, rather busy.

Action packed enough for me to momentarily forget my little corner of Scrine. So, time for a quick stop, to blow the dust off the table and stir up the spiders with the broom.

It’s funny, but I’ve never been afraid of spiders.  Cautious, to be sure, but not irrational or fearful.  I save my screaming heebie-jeebies for the loathsome cockroaches and others that I daren’t mention here for fear of crushing them with the force of my breath over my lips.

Even after a rather awful incident earlier this year with a spider that has left me with a small physical scar, I still don’t have that gibbering, breathless fear of spiders.  I’ll not nestle in with them, of course.  Who knows which will be poisonous or necrotising? 

How do the throat-constricting fears form to such dizzy heights?  It isn’t just an event or two.  After this year, I really should be feeling completely irrational about it.  It would only be sensible.  No, it’s something else.

The fear in the story-teller’s eyes as she retells the frightful night that the spider was found under the bedcovers is a very personal thing.  That look goes straight into the hindbrain and has nothing to do with logical thinking. 

For some it’s the obvious, such as spiders, snakes and things with claws.  For others that fear is exposed with the silliest of things, like the clown, the bunny rabbit or the… no, it’s true name I shall not speak.  Fragile is it’s byword.

It isn’t the big fears, the life rending, grief-filled fears.  Not the real and crippling fears of living life.  Not the hunted running, not the starving, not the murderous and torturous. 

It’s that squirmy fear.  The one that drips away in your mind as you try to sleep.

I think that whatever ‘spooky thing’ it is that we fear, it is a thing of fancy. 
These ‘little’ fears are the reflections of our very human imaginations.

Although, I could be imagining it all.

Wait.  Can you hear that fluttering sound?