AUTHOR'S NOTE:For some reason I feel I owe a slight apology for this story, but it has been bugging me for ages to get it down in some form. This is not a subject I am terribly comfortable talking about, but it insisted. Believe me, this is much tamer than my original story!
"Well John? Are you going to talk about the rabbits?"
John folded his arms deliberately and favoured Gordon with his patented fish-eye stare.
"No."
"Aw go on Johnny."
"I said `No!', Gordon!"
"But I mean, cute little iddy biddy bunny rabbits, Johnny! How can you be afraid of bunny rabbits?"
John sighed and turned to Scott for support. Scott, however was grinning widely, thoroughly enjoying the entertainment. He suddenly realized John was glaring at him, and he straightened his face, doing his best to look innocent.
"Scott, tell our little brother to leave me alone."
Scott's grin slipped back into place for a fateful second before he regained control over it again.
"Sorry John, you're on your own. I can't help being…er…curious myself. I don't recall you ever being scared of bunnies when you were a kid. Gramps had a cageful of them on the farm, and we used to take them out of their hutch and put them in a large run on the lawn. You used to enjoy watching them mating!"
John's glare turned icy-cold. Gordon's grin widened even more.
"Did you get bitten by one of them or something, John?"
John felt his heart rate rising and fought to calm himself down.
"Gordon please! Stop talking about…"
John's words were cut off as he started to hyperventilate, and he started to struggle for real. Virgil leapt forward, glaring at Gordon.
"John, lie down on your back." He commanded in a low, calm, clear voice. "Slow breaths, in….out…. slow breaths John, slow deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. In…out…that's it John, it's alright, easy there, slow, easy breaths now…good."
Gordon's eyes became as round as saucers.
"You really are scared John! I'm really sorry. This is so not funny!"
His brothers watched in sympathy, as John regained control over his breathing once again, Virgil close beside him. Once he was calm again, Virgil and Gordon helped him to sit up, and Alan clutched his hand.
"You ok bro? You scared me for a minute!"
John nodded wearily.
"I'm fine, Al. Don't worry." He turned to Gordon.
"Look Gords, I know you meant no harm, but everyone has things they fear, or hate. For example, we all know about your love affair with arachnids."
Gordon shuddered at once. He hated, feared and detested spiders. Even small ones sent him scurrying from a room to fetch a brother, usually Alan, to remove it before he was attacked. He nodded shamefaced.
"I was wrong to make light of it, John. I would hate to be teased for my fear of spiders."
John nodded acknowledgment.
"But Gords, why do you hate spiders?"
Gordon shivered.
"Their eight legs, and the way they scurry along. Yeurgghhh!"
John smiled faintly.
"So, if I was to take a tarantula and remove four of its legs, it would be less scary for you?"
"No, it would still be a spider!"
"So, the eight legs and the scurrying are only part of the problem then. Crabs have eight legs, and they also scurry, but you're not scared of them, are you?"
"No, but they're not spiders. They're crabs!"
His brothers smiled at each other. John nodded.
"So, the fear of spiders can't be only about what they look like or how they move. So why are you so afraid of them? Have you ever been bitten by a spider?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"So, your fear of spiders has no logical reason?"
Gordon nodded.
"I guess that's so. That's why they call it a phobia, John!"
John smiled gently.
"So, it is. An unreasoning fear of something that has little or no true danger. You have no idea why you are terrified of spiders, only that they give you the creeps whenever you encounter one."
He heaved a sigh and looked his little brother in the eye.
"To answer your question partly, Gordon; Yes, I hate rabbits. Yes, I have a fear of rabbits, but no, it is not a phobia…at least I guess it is now, but it did not start out as a phobia. I can trace my dislike of rabbits back to one specific event. That one event gave me a good reason to hate them, and a darned good reason for not wanting to bring it up again. Meaning, it has taken me several years to get rid of the nightmares it caused. I don't want to start them all over again!"
Gordon nodded ruefully and glanced at Scott.
"We're never going to learn what happened to make our Johnny hate rabbits, are we?"
Scott shook his head.
"Probably not, but let it go Gordon. There are plenty of other things we can talk about. John, any phobias that you are willing to talk about?"
John shook his head.
"Not really…I had an odd phobia when I was a kid, but I grew out of that years ago."
"What was that?" Alan asked, his eyes locked on those of his big brother. John grinned at him, then looked up at Scott.
"You remember Scott, how we discovered I was allergic to eating shellfish?"
Scott nodded, grimacing.
"Yeah! The summer production at school. A pantomime…what was it John?"
"Puss in Boots!" John replied, grinning. Scott nodded.
"Ah yes, of course. You played Dick's mother didn't you, all dressed up as a pantomime dame, complete with full padding!"
Alan, Virgil and Gordon laughed. Scott grinned, then wrinkled his nose at the memory.
"You came on for your second scene and started violently vomiting right there on the stage in front of the whole school, the teachers and all the parents too!"
John nodded, even the memory making him turn slightly green about the gills.
"I remember feeling under the weather, but I had no idea that was going to happen until…" he shuddered. "I felt awful. Far too ill to be embarrassed at first. The embarrassment came later. At first, I felt so ill I thought I was going to die."
"Poor John!" Alan exclaimed. "What happened? Did they stop the play?"
Scott shook his head.
"They halted the play for half an hour so that the stage could be cleaned up and the drama teacher got into a similar costume and he took over the role. John was rushed into the school's medical room."
"I couldn't stop vomiting for ages." John told them. "Then when my throat started to swell up, they rushed me into hospital. Mom and dad were right there of course. It turned out that the lobster dinner we had before the play didn't like me. The hospital found that I was allergic to almost all kinds of shellfish."
He shook his head, as his mind went over the memories.
"After that I became terrified of vomiting, and especially if I was out in public. I was teased badly at school for a few months because of the shellfish episode, and I started to refuse to eat anything unless I knew I was going to stay at home after the meal. If I knew I had to go out, to school or to town or anywhere else, I would refuse to eat in case something similar happened again."
"That meant you went to school every day without breakfast? And no lunch at school either? How did you get away with that?" Gordon asked, aghast.
John shrugged.
"I just gave my lunch to my friends. There would always be someone nearby willing to eat extra sandwiches or fruit."
"Johnny got really skinny." Scott told them. "He kept it hidden with extra tee-shirts and sweaters, so we didn't realize he had a problem until he got sick with measles, and mom had to treat his spots with lotion. It took a lot of time and effort to help John realize that he was safe with any food except shellfish. That the other things he had always loved would still be safe for him to eat. But that must have been an awful time for him."
John nodded.
"It was. I did eventually learn to eat normally again, just avoiding the shellfish, but the fear of vomiting in public took a lot longer to fade. In fact, it was one of the last things I found I had to conquer for my NASA training. We were warned that around half of all new recruits going into space got space-sick at first, and then ground-sick on their return to normal gravity, and we had to learn to handle it like pros."
"You still get sick occasionally, don't you John?" Virgil asked him. John nodded.
"The first few hours back on earth after being on Five for a while, and the first few hours on Five after spending more than a couple of days on the ground."
"Was that the reason you always preferred to stay up on Five all the time rather than coming down to see us more often?" Alan asked. John shrugged.
"Well, it was a factor, certainly." He smiled. "If you were in my place Alan, and you knew that returning to Tracy Island would mean spending the first twelve hours with your head in a bucket, would you be overly eager to make the trip regularly? Especially if you had a long-term aversion to vomiting?"
Alan hugged him.
"I see what you mean. Well, you could stay on earth with us. That would sort it!" he declared with feeling. "Or, you could get Brains to design you some anti-sickness pills…or…"
"Or?"
Alan glanced across the cave and grinned sympathetically at virgil.
"Virgil vomits a lot. You could always ask him how he deals with it."
Gordon rolled his eyes and grimaced.
"Not that I'm unsympathetic or anything, but this is an unsavoury subject. Couldn't we talk about something cute and harmless?"
"Like what?" John asked him, unthinkingly. Gordon shrugged.
"Um…what about…bunny rabbits?"
AFTERWORD: Forgive me for the teasing about the rabbits. Clearly this is something that John is unwilling to discuss. I'll see if I can persuade him to reveal all, but I promise nothing! - Lili de la field
