What Frightens Fascinates
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As any horror movie fan can testify, humans have an ancient fascination with what terrifies us most. We watch our deepest fears unfold on the screen and tremble with glee, feeling the adrenaline course with every heartbeat. I am certainly no exception, and what enraptures me today was the material of my childhood nightmares.
I recall sitting in a trance, my white-knuckled hands gripping a threadbare couch terrified beyond reason by my mother's bookshelf. I would cautiously tiptoe around those battered college texts, and run full bore past the shelf as if absolute necessity dictated it. The reason for my fear was a nightmare and an overactive imagination.
My mother had been forced to take me to a biochemistry lecture one night, where I promptly fell asleep, snoring softly. Unfortunately, my subconscious self picked up words like "heart", "blood", and "disease" and my first-grade imagination filled in the rest. I woke howling, in the middle of the class, to my mother's mortification. She escorted me from the classroom, but the walk home was one that still seems fresh in my memory...