RemembeRED: Why It's A Phobia

For this week’s memoir prompt, we’re going to let narrative take a backseat. Choose a moment from your personal history and mine it for sensory detail. Describe it to us in rich, evocative details. Let us breath the air, hear the heartbeat, the songs, feel the fabric and the touch of that moment. I will probably have nightmares about this one!


*scritch*

*scritch*

I open my eyes to darkness, pitch black, heart thudding in my chest.

What?

*scritch-scritch-scritch*

I wake up fully, and the darkness seems more ominous, more threatening.

*scritch-scritch*

It is a stealthy sound, tiptoeing. Furtive.

*scritch*

I am not afraid of the dark, I tell myself.

Is it coming closer? It is impossible to tell over the sound of my heart trying to escape from my chest.

*scritch*

My brain is frantically trying to identify that sound, that whispery scratching sound. If I don't move, maybe whatever is making that sound will go away.

*scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch*

I am not afraid of the dark, I tell myself. What concerned me was what might be IN the dark with me.

*scrit-scritch-scri---*

I have never been the kind of person to wait for approaching peril, and finally I can stand it no longer. I jump up in the darkness to find the light switch. I turn to confront the monster.

And freeze.

There, on the stack of printer paper NEXT to the bed, right NEXT to my pillow, right NEXT to where I had been sleeping...was a cockroach.

An extremely large cockroach.