Updated December 29, 2009
www.lovecounts.net
Mind Terror
A lonely fire road in the California hills. A bright sunny day that should have posed no threat. Taking a short cut across the hills, the young girl came across a lizard bathing in the warm sun. Not a very big lizard at all. Certainly not big enough to cause the young girl's blood to pound through her veins or to fill her mouth with the taste of sawdust or her stomach to churn in fear.
Fear. Terror. It comes unexpectedly without bidding and without welcome. The basis for such fear can be imagined or real but the result is the same quaking of spirit and overpowering feeling of helplessness.
So it was with the young girl. As it happened, she had learned the day before in class about the blue-bellied, poisonous lizard of South America. Without reason or logic she was convinced the small, ugly creature in her path would, if turned over, have a blue belly and that with a flick of it's tongue cause her pain and death. She would die alone in the hills with nobody to help her.
The young girl stood in the middle of the road, petrified into immobility. Sure that she would be defenceless against the creature, she waited in the icy grip of fear.
Time. It's passage kept pace with the pounding of her heart. Minutes became hours. Finally, when the game of waiting became intolerable, the girl took a deep, shuddering breath, gathered her courage around her like a shield, and ran for her life!
As she whipped by the lizard in dread and fear, it looked up with lazy grace and said,
Boo!
