Fear Personified

As the author peered around the corner, he realized that he must look crazy to any onlooker. The journey from his office to this street corner was a wild one, and was not likely to be believed by a common civilian. How could the author explain that his worst fear--normally nothing more than figurative--had become literal and was causing a very literal panic attack? Hey, accountant. Has a difficult statistical anomaly ever chased you out of your own office? Hey, dentist. Has a cavity ever sprang to life and pursued you through the waiting room? Hey, teacher. Has a failed test ever laughed at you and stalked you through the halls of your school?

Nope. Never. The author realized that this was absurd. But just as he was contemplating the irony of the situation--my, what a great story to tell later!--the scuffling sound resumed. It reminded him of someone dragging a refrigerator down a sidewalk. But it was a sluggish scuffle--as if the person dragging the refrigerator was far too small for such an undertaking and was struggling under the weight. Well, he thought, at least it isn’t moving very quickly. At least I have time to escape. But as that thought occurred, he realized that this was the heart of the problem. It was true that he had nothing but time. There was nothing in front of him. The fear was behind him, pushing him to...where? Even if the fear drove him for eternity, there was nothing but time to escape. If he failed at this, the consequences would not arrive quickly. They would be long and drawn out. It would take a while for his checking account to dwindle, for the bank to foreclose on his home, for starvation to occur.

No, the problem was not that a lack of time. The problem was a lack of direction. To where would this fear push him? Was there an endpoint? Perhaps the endpoint was the return to his former job of reading manuscripts for a major publisher. The job that he had quit confidently after the modest success of his first novel. The job that slowly but surely--by sheer boredom--stole his will to live.

The fear thrived on a lack of direction. It sucked direction right out of his body. It was as if every time he sat down to write, the fear stole incrementally more direction until the only direction left in his head was simply RUN!

The scuffling intensified as the author scoured his brain. If there was a diminutive person lugging the refrigerator, he or she seemed to have been joined by a slightly bigger person, and they were demonstrating effective teamwork. The author sweated a little more profusely and looked this way and that. But all he saw was nothing. There was nothing in his mind; it was blank. He took off down an alleyway but quickly discovered that it was a dead end. He turned down a wide-open boulevard--one that normally provided inspiration--but it was deserted. He tried climbing a fire escape to see if there was any route he may have missed but found only cloudiness.

Meanwhile, the sound of the fear sounded suspiciously like laughter. The scraping had taken on the tone of a raspy, harsh cackling. And boy, was it close. So close, in fact, that he felt a lukewarm, uninspired hand grasp his ankle. Trying to think clearly, he kicked out of the clutch and climbed higher on the fire escape. If I could just think harder, focus more, give it more time…he thought. But of course, that never works. Once you get to this point, it’s almost impossible to recover via pure willpower.

As his heart pounded, he made a decision. He picked up the phone and called his former boss. The scraping and scuffling ceased immediately. The author breathed a deep sigh of relief while he waited for his former boss to pick up the phone.

“Well, well, well--lookie who it is,” his boss chuckled. “I suppose we have a spot for you, although your old office is taken. But we’ll find a place for you. And don’t worry: you’re not the first to give in to writer’s block.”

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This story was inspired by a Reedsy writing prompt: Write a story in which you are an author trying to run from writer’s block, which is an actual object trying to chase you.