Phobia

Phobia

“Time to face your fears.” Called out a friendly female voice from behind us, as I and a group of seven others, stood In front of a darkened hallway. We were all here for the same reason, to find a solution to our different problems. We all stood, anxious about what lay ahead and reluctant to proceed, who was to go first through the doorway. We all turned to look at each other; I first looked to my left to see a serious faced teenager, with short blonde hair and he was staring at the person in front of him, a taller woman of around 30 with medium cut brown hair. I then turned to my right to see a woman of average height, in her early twenties with long, wavy red hair that seemed to go halfway down her back. She turned to me, her emerald green eyes full of anxiety, still unsure of if she should go first or someone else. I swept my thick black hair back and with a pounding heart and adrenaline, I pushed my way past the group and stiffly walked into the lightless hallway.

The Voice from behind us called out congratulations to me, but it was muffled with the sound of my thumping heart, my blood pounding faster, my temples ablaze with nerves. I felt hot, sweat began to form into beads onto my brow, and the only sounds that remained were the pounding of my heart and the rushing of my blood. I gingerly walked onward, not knowing where I was and then, as I heard voices, whispers that hung in the dark like the odour of blood that surrounded me as well, I was quite uncomfortable in my surroundings, the blackness around me, the whispers being judgemental and condemning around me.

Suddenly a light shone in front of me, something from nowhere, it was abrupt it was almost blinding at first, immense pain filled my eyes as I saw its silvery brightness. As my eyes adjusted I could see at first shadows of creatures, almost like spiders. I shook my hands violently in shock, but when I looked again there was something more horrific than spiders on them. My hands were covered in a warm red liquid, it was blood. I shook with horror, what had I done? I have never hurt anything in my life and seeing what was before me was truly horrifying, a dead body of a young woman, she was in the group with me not five minutes ago, when had she come in and how did I manage to do this? She laid there, blood coming from her open neck and chest, her heart was pulled out and it had just stopped beating. Her emerald eyes staring back at me, and yet the more I saw in detail of this crime, the more I could not believe. Was what I was experiencing earlier not real? As I asked these questions the light moved and the body started moving.

She began to move her head, then her back and soon she had pulled herself up and stood, in front of me, and then she leant over and picked up her own heart. The heart had begun to start beating again as she inserted it back into the open wound of her chest. I stared in disbelief as I began to see her fade away, her heart still beating and the wound still visible. Eventually she had disappeared completely and I began to start walking, still shaking from my experiences earlier. As I continued walking, I saw a small mirror and then another and another. Soon I was able to see about a hundred mirrors, all staring back at me, or not facing me at all.

I looked around and saw that I was surrounded by mirrors, with myself staring back constantly. There was silence as the mirrors copied everything that I did. I looked and then went to touch one of the mirrors, our fingers came closer together until at the point of the glass in which our hands would both be met by glass. I felt a cold solid presence, which at first I mistook for glass but it was soft, bending to meet the shape of my finger. My hand was grabbed by the icy hand of my mirror image, and the image was pulling tightly enough to pull me through. I tried to pull back the other way but the grip was too tight and it began to crush my hand beneath the strength of his. He pulled me in so far that the mirror was starting to bend to my shape, and with my head going through almost felt like I was underwater. With a final desperate attempt I pulled back hard one last time and my mirror image just let go. With that the mirrors around smashed making a shrill noise that cut deep into my ears and make my head throb. All of the broken glass seemed to melt away seemingly shaping for a split second to form the word Denial and then disappearing into the ground, being absorbed into it like soil absorbs water. For a second I saw a skeletal figure crouching on the floor, screaming at me, its bony hands covered in blood, dripping from its pale talons was the endless river of life essence just streaming and flowing out like a constant river on its course, the screaming was loud and shrill and echoed around me as If everyone was screaming around me. As the skeleton disappeared into the black I carried on.

I continued walking afterwards, shaking in terror to what could be next and I felt a great heat around me, a fire of some kind. I could no longer move as my hands were forced behind my back by an unseen presence, a chain was wrapped to my hands, the metal was not cold but warm as if it had just come out of the furnace, and it was very solid. The fire began to come closer and before long I was almost surrounded by it. The crackling fire began to reveal figures inside the darkness, and saw the original group all unharmed, but pointing. Their faces pale and their hands rigidly stuck, they pointed at me as the fires grew, the heat burning my hands and filling my whole body with pain. It was enough to kill someone with fright alone, and that was when I noticed that my heart had stopped, I could no longer feel the beating of my heart, panic took over in my mind, as the fires and the pointing fingers began to fade to black.

My eyes were almost blinded by the light as I came too. I felt the cold floor on the cheeks of my face. I saw the group I was with at the beginning and the end. I looked around at each of them, all looking intently to see if I was alright. The female voice from behind us was right next to me now. “Are you alright? You collapsed before you could hit the room; seem to have passed out for a few minutes.” I turned to see a smartly dressed Hispanic woman, with neatly tied up hair and a burgundy business jacket. She wore a name tag, although I couldn’t make out the name clearly, but I remembered who she was. “Dr. Abella…” I began weakly “… I can admit that I have a problem… I need the therapy… we have a lot of work to do.” I finished. The room filled with the sound of applause as I stood up and walked to one of the treatment rooms. I can only hope that the rest of the group can find that they too have a problem, so that we can begin working against our phobias.