Trypanophobia

Last Friday I wrote about those creepy, crawly critters that so many find so frightening:

Arachnophobia.

In this week’s post I tackle a fear that is so real for so many: the fear of needles.

I used to be afraid of these sharp little things myself, until I received so many that my arms, (baring witness to hundreds upon hundreds of medical tests and required blood work) gave me little choice in the matter. I had to face my fear and accept that the anticipation is usually the worst part. Not in the spooky tale below however.

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3.
Needles. We hate sitting in the doctor’s office. Tapping our foot and waiting for a nurse to register our flu shot. Just before the needle goes in, we grow anxious. We wait for the sting, knowing it’s coming and knowing it’s not worth the stress. We torture ourselves in the final seconds as anticipation has become one of our most agonizing experiences.

***

The room is dim and shadowy. These shadows play tricks, dancing shapes on the wall in the early morning light.

Suddenly I jump when I realize there is someone else in the room with me. What room is this? I don’t even remember where I am or how I got here.

“Who are you?” I see the shape, this time of a nurse in a cap and white uniform. She looks like she does not belong in this decade, or even this century. “What year is this?”

“Please just give me your arm,” this stranger, this supposed nurse demands. “You will feel much better, very soon.” Something in her voice makes me doubt her promise.

“Where am I?”

“You are in the best place for you. That’s all you need know.” She doesn’t say it, but she seems to be hiding some piece of information I should have been given. Why would this woman keep something from me?

I want to rise from this…bed, was it? This room smells of disinfectant. I hear a low murmur just outside the door. I have the urge, then, to scream. Maybe someone out there could answer my questions.

“Just relax. Stay still. I need to give you your medicine.”

“Medicine? What medicine?” I feel like this situation calls for some questioning, some resistance, but before I can find it in me for either of these, I feel that sharp sting and the damage is done.

“It’s just something to make you feel better,” was all this mysterious elderly lady will say. She appears, even in this fading light, to be more frail than I am, as if she’s barely even there at all. Maybe she isn’t.

If only I could find the strength to sit up. I am sure I could take her on. If only I could get past her and out into the hall. Now it’s too late. The fog that rolled away just moments ago, to reveal my surroundings, comes roaring back with such ferocity that I can not push it off of me.

The woman remains, staring at me, but soon her shape becomes fuzzy to me and a blur with the shadows returning to their dance routines on the walls of my prison.

All that remains of reality: the stinging, burning sensation in the spot where I was stuck and now I am stuck for good, in a land of shapes and shadows. Each time I feel my control and consciousness begin to return she appears with that sharp tool in her hand and I feel the familiar stabbing pain once more.

***

check out the post responsible for the Fiction Friday Halloween-themed posts here on KKHerHeadache this month:

5 Fears And What They Say About Us.

Thank you Young and Twenty, for this. For your Halloween writing prompts and I shall be back next week with the second-last instalment in this series: fear of heights.

Do you have some level of Trypanophobia or do you find needles, like me, to be no big deal?