FEAR

By: IceChildOfNight

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I know Fear.

I know that what people say is wrong.

Fear is not cold. Fear does not freeze your muscles in place and immobilize you whilst Death marches close.

Fear is hot.

It pounds through you like sick, sluggish blood, wrapping into your arms and legs so tight you can't ever hope to let it go.

I can feel Fear now.

I feel it swimming through my veins and arteries to my aching legs, lifting my feet before pounding them down aching into the dead grass, pumping my heart so fast I'm scared it will burst inside me.

I feel Fear in the hot breath of the Death that brushes my neck, in the ghostly pounding of padded feet behind me. I feel it in the torn remnats of my shirt, already ripped from slobbering jaws.

Fear is in every cell of my body, pulsing and pumping in time to the mantra in my brain.

Don't stop running don't stop running don't stop running don't stop running don't stop running.

I hear a howl, filled with Blood Lust and Hunger; I hear it filling the air and pouring into my ears and stabbing into my Fear-choked brain. The Fear welcomes the Howl, taking the sound and turning it into more Fear, more hot sick blood that's running through me, blood that I know will be spilling out into dead grass and dirt the moment I stop running.

But Fear is losing.

Exhaustion takes a stand; Exhaustion pushes away the Fear and drips inside me, turning my legs to weights and my lungs to burning coals.

I wonder how long I've been running.

I hear myself scream—Mommy! Daddy! Where are you? Help me! Help me please someone help me help me help me!

No one hears.

There is only the birds, the quiet rustling of trees and clouds and rain as powerful jaws clamp down over my arm, pulling me to the ground and drinking in the hot, thick Fear and the slow, leaden Exhaustion that has become so much a part of me I can't remember when I haven't been tired or afraid.

Those jaws pierce my skin and drag meat from my bones, and I scream, scream out all the Fear until it is just fear, just the fear of a tired little boy whose life, whether by death or discovery, is over.

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