Genesis of Fear
by John C. Mannone
1954
Who gives a shit what a six-year old feels inside while they're yanking his teeth out?
The stove in the doctor's office, enamel white, whiter than his coat, sat against the wall. It seemed to guard the escape door. The glass, rumpled, blocked my view to the outside. Blue flames licked a dark-colored bottle. They dripped the hot chloroform on a cotton bib draped over my face — soon, only darkness. Though I could hear the murmur of voices — Dad's, too — aloneness entrenched its fear in me. Felt it stalk me in the darkness with sharp metal tools I wasn't supposed to see: the needles and awls, the gripping pliers. I screamed, but no one heard me, except for my monster, hiding like a giant cockroach, braced in his corner ready to lunge. How can I run when there is nothing to see, nor any ground beneath my feet? I couldn't run nor even move, yet I sensed motion as if tethered to a long invisible swing. I knew the amusement ride feeling — the tightness of the g's at the bottom of the fast swoop, the lightheaded stomach at the top of the downswing. I'd yell again and I knew they could hear me, Stop! I want to get off! But they'd lie when they said, "Just another moment." They were in my mouth and I could not scream anymore. But I screamed inside, in the genesis of my fear, in the nauseous darkness that had that sick-sweet smell of death.
1961
Mr. Hallman warned me, "Be careful with that paring knife," as he watched me peel and cut potatoes. It was my turn for KP duty at the Broad Creek Boy Scout camp. The weather-worn picnic table under the pavilion sported a bushel or two of russets. An intimidating pile of earth lumps; would've had more fun heaving them as heavy stones. I clamped one spud in my left hand, skinned and ready for the quartering, but didn't get too far into the porous wet flesh before I had to force the not-so-dull blade through the potato and well into my hand between thumb and index finger. I'm not sure which hurt more, the careless slicing of those tender nerves in flesh or the sight of my own blood oozing out. It was hard to find a doctor; to this day I wonder whom they did find. He came at me with needles; delirious, I ran crying. It took several men to hold me down. The quack convinced them that the long-needled Novocain would make me feel no pain. The fucking liar. I remember his instructions to the large men, to shackle me under brute strength as I writhed under his curved hooks, as if the scorpions threaded the sutures. I still have scars after fifty years.
1971
You'd think manhood would have dulled my sissy pain. I would only wish. What's the point of discussing the root of fear when there is no way to weed-wrench it out? Like the extrication of tonsils that have become useless to the body — a sponge of sickliness. Yet I'd rather have endured the days out of work than to chance a golf-happy surgeon with a serrated spoon in his hand and no one able to hear him holler "fore" half-way down my throat. No, I only felt the after-pain, but I remember the Haldol nightmares, or whatever the hell it was they pricked my ass with. You don't have to be a delusional hippie to know what a bad trip is! I woke up from one nightmare into another — pain of light in my eyes and the burning pinch of the I.V. stuck to my vein. I slept through recovery. But back in my own hospital room (I was told) I flung an ashtray at the nurse and said a few choice words to her. You'd swear I did a gig in the Navy when you heard me wake up to all that shit. And my throat hurt like hell.
1983
Wyoming was full of ugly women when I was there outside of Casper — all the pretty ones were married-off. But loneliness doesn't care if you're pretty or not. And it followed me there one October. Funny thing about Halloween, you can put on a monster face and hide the real you that's inside, clamoring to get out. What a stupid thing to do: dress-up like a Mr. Hyde of prehistoric times — a deranged, half-naked caveman wielding a stump-like club and carbon black smudging my face. What the hell; I didn't find Jane that night, but the cognac flowed well. Struttin' into the bar, I let the club, as a mallet, fall on the countertop. "More wine for Polyphemus," I would belch. I felt no pain (thanking the gods the waitress didn't know how to pour the Courvoisier as I toasted to her health, the snifter full to the rim). That night, stupidity followed loneliness back to my room. The unsettled room, somewhat tilted, slowly spun, so it appeared, as I denied drunkenness. I lost my balance in my vanity. A large vanity, with all that glass, didn't keep me from crashing and slashing the palm of my hand. Yes, that same left hand tortured as a boy. I suppose luck was my roommate; well, it was Charlie's wife (I had crashed their place after the Idaho work dried up, together with my first marriage). She was a nurse and knew how to lie real good (because she knew the monster inside me — the fear I can't talk about too well). "Butterfly stitches." She said that's all I needed, for if she told me the truth, I never would have gone to the clinic. I didn't mind the pungent smell of the Betadyne wash, but I should have suspected foul play when he grabbed my arm and tucked it under his. He jabbed the invasive probe into the deep gash. He had to know if the nerves were damaged. Since I levitated four feet above the floor, he was happy; I was livid. And the pain throbbed me deeper into that tight phobic hole.
2009
The devil must have planned the evolution of fear real well. There's a monster inside of me and I can't even form the words that spell his name. He'll see me and make me cringe — my insides fold to keep it trapped. I can't breathe in; only exhale those words on paper. They're blurred now, the parchment soaked with fear. Ink dissolves as if my blood smeared across the page. But the swaths are rational, even funny sometimes, until the next shuddering of my guts and the uncontrolled suppression of my thoughts drip as mucous from my nose. What is this fear that I dare not even think of it? It takes so many forms! It is always cocooned inside my mind. Then metamorphosis of a momentary smile into protracted fear; the thing flutters in between breaths. I am asphyxiated with terror. Yes, the thought of needles prick me to the heart and the roaches make me throw up in my mind until my throat is squeezed and my eyes bulge. But the thought of loneliness haunts me, hunts me. It prowls into every sanctum I can find until it catches me naked against the wall and swallows me whole before my heart can stop beating. I yell out, but no one can hear me scream inside my mind. And I can't even hasten the dying, for that would fulfill the fear of lonely death. Yet I am horrified that it is killing me even when I'm not looking.
