TEDOPHOBIA

                                                                      by
                                                                 Claudia
 

 “Don’t you  ever come back here,” Sandy screamed, opening the front door of the
small house and tossing out her husband’s hurriedly packed suitcase.  It landed with a
thud on the front walk and opened, spewing underwear, socks and assorted wrinkled
clothes over the lawn.

     “You’ll hear from my lawyer as soon as I find one, you, you, weirdo,” she continued
as his briefcase, laptop computer and fishing rods followed the suitcase.  Fortunately, the
laptop landed on a large evergreen bush and appeared unharmed.  The fishing rods didn’t
fare as well breaking in half, spewing fishing line, unwinding in tiny circles across the
walk.

  “But Sandy,” her husband, Clive, protested.  “Where am I going to go?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care, just as long as I don’t have to see you again.  I can’t take
any more of your craziness, she replied

 Clive looked around the living room that had been his for almost five years and
sighed.  His wandering eyes paused on the stuffed bass hanging over the fireplace, his
first ten pounder.  He felt Sandy’s eyes watching him.  He pointed at the fish.

  “Would it be all right?” he asked.

 She let out a grunt of laughter.  “For God’s sake, take the hideous thing, I never
could stand it anyway,” she said.

 He walked to the mantel, carefully unhooked the unwieldy trophy and cradled  it
in his arms.  He turned and walked slowly to the front door.  “Are you sure you want it
this way?” he asked trying to keep the pleading tone out of his voice.

  “Damn sure,” she said.  “You need help Clive, real help and I can’t be the one to give it
to you.  I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

 He nodded and walked down the front steps.

 She stood in the doorway and watched as he made his way to his car and tenderly
lay the long dead fish in the trunk.  He returned to retrieve his assorted belongings from
the front yard and looked up at her.

  “Let me know where you are and I’ll send the rest of your junk to you,” she said.  “I
don’t want you near Bobby again.”

 Once again he nodded.  He supposed she was right, he wasn’t good for the baby,
not the way he was, not the way he had always been.
 

 That had been five months ago, five long months.  He’d found and apartment in
an old building, not really an apartment, he figured, more like a glorified room with an
adjoining bath.  The kitchen, consisting of a tiny gas stove and miniscule refrigerator, was
a corner separated from the rest of the big room by a long bookcase and curtain.  His
bedroom was a studio couch, badly stained by  what he didn’t even want to consider, and
a night stand with one leg shorter than the other.  An overhead light fixture hung from the
ceiling in the middle of the room, bare bulb swinging ominously without provocation.

 He hated the room, but the building was occupied by mostly older people without
small children and that was what he needed.  He couldn’t take the chance of there being a
baby or child in the area who might own one of “them”.

 He’d been seeing a psychologist for three of the past five months and had made no
headway at all.  In the beginning it had been terribly embarrassing to even admit the
nature of his problem.  He’d kept waiting for the doctor to laugh or at least snicker.  It
wasn’t so bad now, Dr. Hillborne hadn’t laughed or snickered, but then he hadn’t helped
much either.  He’d tried to explain to the doctor how dangerous they were, but a wave of
dismissal was all he received in return.

 “Facing ones phobia has to come sooner or later.  Facing the object of ones fear
would lead to overcoming that fear.”  He’d repeated that quote from Dr. Hillborne so
many times in the past three months, it came automatically and constantly into his mind.
Of course it was easy for the doctor to say, easy for him to tell himself, but actually doing
it was another matter.

 This coming Friday was the day, the day Dr. Hillborne would hold up one of the
dreaded objects and he would be expected to look at it, not without fear, of course, at
least not at first, but without running screaming from the office.  He had serious doubts if
he could do it.  He’d practiced his relaxation techniques hour upon hour to little avail.

 Tuesday passed quickly, too quickly.

 Wednesday’s hours came and went in a flash.

 Thursday seemed not to exist and Friday dawned before he could adequately
prepare for it, although he didn’t know what he could have done in preparation anyway.
He’d had the nightmare again, the one that came every few weeks and left him sweating
and shaking upon waking with only vague, fleeting memories of what it had been about,
but always the same, the small boy, the toys, the blood, the smell of death and the endless
screaming.  This was the worst possible thing that could have happened the night before
his confrontation with the “thing”.  He left work an hour early dreading the doctor’s
appointment.
 

 He’d previously tried discussing the terrifying dream with Dr. Hillborne but the
doctor wasn’t of the school that took dreams particularly seriously and dismissed Clive’s
nightmares with a wave of his hand and a gentle denial of its significance.    Clive
occasionally  wondered if the good doctor was really very efficient at his job.  He did
seem to spend an inordinate amount of time making silly quotes on the subject of fear,
and didn’t  believe in alternative methods of treatment such as medication.  Clive, being a
thorough individual, had spent a number of hours in the library and on the internet trying
to figure out just what was wrong with him, why, and how to fix it.  While he found
hundreds of stories of people like himself who were deathly afraid of one thing or
another, few had much positively to say on the subject of relieving oneself of that
particular fear.

 After parking in the lot next to the doctor’s building Clive turned off the engine
and sat with his arms crossed over the steering wheel,  his head resting on the horn pad.

  “I can’t do it,” he murmured aloud.

  “Tush! Tush! Fear little boys with bugs.”  Clive could hear that silly quote ringing in his
ears.  It was one of Dr. Hillborne’s favorites.  Some Shakespeare thing, he’d thought the
first time he’d heard it.

  “I can’t,” he repeated.

  “Tush!.”

  “Shut up,” Clive yelled to the persistent voice in his head and opened the car door.  As
he slammed it, he wondered if Dr. Hillborne purposely repeated those quotes over and
over to be used at times like these.

 He walked as slowly as he could to the front door of the office building, opened it
with a shaking hand and stepped inside.  He could feel cold sweat forming on his
forehead and his stomach roiled with bitter acid.

 The young, smiling receptionist looked up at him.  Her cheerfulness was
nauseating.  “Dr. Hillborne is expecting you Mr. Archer, go right in.”

 Clive wondered if she knew what he was facing.  Probably not, if she did she
would be laughing instead of smiling.  How could a grown man be terrified of something
as benign as a teddy bear?  The image of himself rushing to his baby son’s crib and
tearing the offensive object from his child’s grasp, screaming and wailing, with his hands
burning from the touch of it, ran through his mind.  He’d run to the back door, wildly,
screaming obscenities, and thrown the thing as far as possible into the yard, slamming
and locking the door behind it.   He’d fallen on the floor after that, crying, sobbing,
unable to control his bladder or the shaking of his entire body.  No wonder Sandy had
thrown him out.

 The worst thing was, he couldn’t explain why.

 He paused in front of the doctor’s office door.  He reached for the knob, grasped
it, but his fingers refused to turn.  He grunted with the effort, his hand aching with the
strain, his knuckles turning red, then white.

 Suddenly the door opened and Clive staggered through.  Dr. Hillborne had opened
it from the inside.  Clive’s eyes wildly searched the room, dreading seeing one of “them”,
knowing he couldn’t face it.

 The doctor’s kind eyes saw his confusion and dread.  “It’s alright Mr. Archer, we
will come upon it gradually, you can do it.”

 Clive was too frightened to speak, he nodded when all he wanted to do was run.

  “Sit down, won’t you,” Dr. Hillborne said indicating the chair in front of his wide desk.

 Clive sat, eyes still searching the room.  Where was it?  He knew it was there.  In
the desk drawer?  In the big cabinet?  In the bathroom?

 Dr. Hillborne walked around the desk and sat in his squeaky swivel chair.  He
crossed his hands over his ample stomach and looked at Clive through thick glasses that
made his protruding eyes look even larger.

  “As you know,” he began.  “We are going to start the process of desensitizing you
today.”

 Clive nodded, wiping the sweat from his forehead.  He wished he had some
Maalox or something equivalent to ease his heaving stomach.

  “It’s not an easy task, especially the way you have chosen to do it.  Generally, the
process would be carried out over a period of time, you have elected the “flooding”
method which means your exposure is continued and intensified over a single time.”

 Clive nodded again.

  “Are you ready?”

 Clive wanted to scream “No,” as loud as he could and bolt from the room.  Instead
he nodded again.

 Dr. Hillborne shook his head as if in mild disagreement with Clive’s decision to
rush the treatment and pulled a huge shopping bag  from behind his desk.

 Clive gripped the arms of his chair, hard enough to hear the plastic crack.  He
closed his eyes and felt his body begin to shake.

  “This is simply a child’s toy, Mr. Archer,” Dr. Hillborne began in a calm,  gentle tone.

“A toy made of cloth and a bit of plastic.  It can’t hurt you, it can’t speak, it can’t move, it
is completely at your mercy.”

 Clive heard the rustle of paper as the object was removed from the bag.   He
willed his eyes to open but they wouldn’t.

  “I’m going to get up from my chair now and sit the bear in my place.  It’s a lovely toy,
Mr. Archer, pink and white, with a happy face and a bright red ribbon around it’s neck.  It
can’t harm you, I promise,” Dr. Hillborne said.

 Clive heard the chair squeak as the doctor rose.  He could see in his mind’s eye,
the doctor putting the dreaded creature in the chair and moving away.

  “Open your eyes, Mr. Archer,” the doctor’s voice came from behind him now.

  “I can’t,” Clive answered through clenched teeth.

  “Yes, you can,” the doctor said.

 It took every bit of strength in his body just to open one eye a crack.  He saw the
pinkness, the whiteness, through his slitted eye, he saw the glittering beady eyes.  He
turned his head away quickly, not wanting to see more.

  “You must,” Dr. Hillborne said.  “Face the teddy bear, the child’s toy.”

 Clive turned his head to face the desk, eyes squeezed shut.  He heard the doctor’s
footsteps as he walked back around his desk.  “Don’t go near it,” Clive screamed.

  “It’s only a toy,” Dr. Hillborne said.

 Clive opened his eyes then, too afraid not to.  His gaze settled on the teddy bear.
He thought he was going to vomit but choked the bile down.  The bear sat in the doctor’s
chair, unmoving.  It was large, maybe three feet high, pink and white as the doctor had
said.

 Dr. Hillborne stood behind the chair, his hand resting lightly on the back near the
bear’s head.

 “You’re doing fine,” Dr. Hillborne said.

 Clive watched the bear, waiting.  Was that a twitch of a white paw?  Did one of
the black eyes move?  It’s mouth, it was smiling, were those sharp white teeth inside?

  The bear suddenly grinned and with amazing strength, reached with one pink foot
and pushed the desk into Clive’s legs.  Clive saw the doctor snatch his hand away from
the back of the chair in surprise.  Long, razor sharp claws erupted from the white paws,
whipped around and sliced through the doctor’s throat.  Blood spurted over the bear and it
laughed, licking the hot fluid from its furry lips.  The doctor fell to the floor with a
resounding thud.

 Clive screamed and scrambled from his chair.  He rushed to the office door but it
was locked, the doctor must have locked it when his eyes were closed.  He whirled and
saw the bear as it lumbered down from the chair and approached him.  It wasn’t pretty
and pink anymore after being spattered and stained from the doctor’s blood.

 Clive looked around the room wildly, grabbed books from their shelves and threw
them at the laughing bear.  It overturned a table, sending it crashing to the floor on it’s
side, making a horrendous noise.  Clive screamed again and again.  It was going to kill
him too.

 He could hear commotion on the other side of the door.  “Help,” he yelled again
and again.  He ran past the bear to the other side of the room, behind the desk where the
doctor lay.  “I told you so,” he yelled at the corpse.  He slipped in the pool of blood and
fell heavily to the floor.  He couldn’t move, he was paralyzed with terror.  He closed his
eyes and waited for the bear to strike with its deadly claws.  Instead he heard a rustling as
it climbed back into the doctor’s chair and settled itself.  Time passed and only the harsh
sound of Clive’s breathing and muttering could be heard.

 Suddenly the door burst open with a splintering of wood.  Two policemen stood in
the entrance with weapons drawn.  One gasped at the sight of the bloody teddy bear.
Walking carefully into the room, one on each side of the desk, they looked down.

 Clive lay there still, huddled into a fetal position, his face and hands covered with
the doctors blood, crying over and over, “I told you so.”

 “Another nutcase,” one of the policemen said.

 “Them doctors should be more careful who they take on as patients,” the other
muttered.

 The pink and white, bloody bear sat on the chair unmoving but if you looked
carefully, but no one did, you could see a sparkle of delight in its shiny black eyes.
 

                                                                   end
 
 

.