What Scares Me
Written by Chiz

When I said that I would write something special and scary for the Halloween issue, someone looked at me funny and asked “What do you find scary?” I had to think about this. I've seen many things that other people called scary: movies, autopsies, Willie's ass. I've even done a few things that some people deem scary: rock climbing, the giant swing thing at Elitches, thankfully not Willie's ass. I've been in car accidents (f**king New Mexican drivers). I've been on the waiting bench outside the gynecologist as my girlfriend was exploring an abnormal pap smear while every woman walked by with pure hate in their eyes, and I knew what it was like to truly be a man. But, none of these things every really scared me. I once had a bit of vertigo on a monkey bridge, but that was more dizziness than fear. Don't get me wrong, if I get to go through life unnoticed by which ever fate has the fetish for making people s**t themselves, I'll die a happy man. There are some things that scare me and that I think about when I stare into the darkness. I don't mean supernatural demons and goblins, that would just be the proof I've been waiting for that God exists. I don't worry about random violence. You don't want to know how many times I've imagined myself going through Cherry Creek Mall armed only with a flame-thrower, a katana and a cock ring. What really scares me is ordinary people. You know the ones, people who think they're smarter then they really are and have more authority then they ever deserve. For instance, the other day I was behind a couple of guys in line at Wendy's. They were bitching about paying taxes for schools their kids didn't go to and social programs that they never would use. These same people jumped all over the poor teenager working the cash register for minimum wage because he couldn't make correct change. They scare me because never in a million years will those two ever figure it out the hypocrisy they were spewing. They live in the closed system of their job, their S.U.V., and their nagging family; never to open their eyes and see the world as it is. Another example of what scares me, I was walking through the plaza in Santa Fe and over heard two women talking as they walked behind me. I swear to Zular who lives in the lake this is what she said, “It's so progressive, its retro.” And the other fashion victim said “yeah its so cool and early eighties”. By the time I was done looking for something I could buy from the stall to smash in their heads, they were gone. For those of you who have never been to the Santa Fe Plaza, be warned. Its impossible to arm yourself adequately for under twenty bucks. They only sell “art” and the heavier, better-to-kill-someone-with the “art” is, the more expensive it is. But if you have to do this I suggest one of those howling coyotes they make from concrete to be used for lawn arguments, a little more then 20 bucks but they're about 2 1⁄2 feet long and have a good heft to them.

To quote Warren Illis “I don't care how hard your fairies are, or how big their teeth are. I don't care if they wear leather jackets and drink cider. They're elves and fairies. They're not scary.” The super natural doesn't scare me. I'm the kind of guy that dreams about the curses of vampirism or lycanthropy. I have spent many years studying the school of Get 'um Some more. So I when knock down my monster in the first reel of the movie, unlike other “scared” idiots, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure he can't get up. It's hard to be scared of a large grease spot and fifty zip lock bags distributed to all the states. Helplessness is only scary for the first few seconds, then beautiful mind-cleaning hate takes over. I might not be able to kill the demonic midget with the horns on his head, but the little f**k is going to know exactly what a baseball bat up the ass feels like. I don't fear the Wrath Of God. I've lead the best life I could and if God says otherwise, I'll swing on him too.

But you wanted to know about things that would be scary to me. I can think of a few things that would scare me. Imagine this, you just finish a long sweet kiss with the woman you love and when you pull back you notice the deep red color of her lips. You think to yourself how moist her lips look when the deep red color starts to flow down her chin. You open your mouth to say something, but your lips feel chapped. You reach up to touch your lips expecting to feel that the same thing has happened to you, but instead you feel your lover's lips, or at least the skin that use to cover them, stuck there. You reach out to stop the bleeding and every place you touch her the same thing happens. Your flesh pulls her skin from the underlining muscles and fat. You can see the white of bone when you pull your hand back from the cheekbone that you had tenderly kissed just a few minutes before. You have to stand back and watch as the shock takes her, unable to even hold her in your arms. You watch the final vain twitches of a body trying to fight to keep its vital fluids. Instead, she just spray them across the bed sheets that she had brought over to your apartment because she was tired of sleeping on the same sheets you've had since college. This is scary because its fast, unexpected, and you have no one to hate. That's the ticket. That's why it's scary.

But most people don't like that kind of scary because it's a type of fear can't become hate. They can't point their finger at something and say, “You scared me, so I hate you.” Humans need that. They can't seem to just hate random chance. I do, but I seem to be in the minority. They need a noise in the bushes, a monster, or the seemingly hate-of-choice, skin color. They want the fear that can be converted to hate. As a rule, people fear what they don't understand, and hate what they think they do. So the subject of my scary story only one real option (well two really, but going into a catatonic stupor is so 80's), he has to turn the hate to himself. At which point, he has to off himself. This story doesn't make for good reading, that's why most authors turn to the monster, or the germ, or the stalker.

I think that I've been frightened a lot less since I learned to hate Random Chance. My boogie-men are meaningless statistics where I just happen to fall into the 99th percentile. That one-in-a-million chance something random and involving the word “chunks” will take me out for no apparent reason. With the realization that I hate something that I cannot change, that I'm no longer frightened or scared, there comes the intense freedom that can only arise from knowing that you and your life is completely f**ked.

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