4:00AM this morning I woke up in a complete state of terror.  Heart pounding, out of breath, paralyzed between the sheets kind of terror.  I had to keep telling myself that none of it was real and that everything would be okay.  Evil Dave, my husband's evil twin that comes to life when I'm asleep, had out done himself this time.  I don't recall all of the details, but damn it!  Evil Dave had tripped further over to the dark-side than ever before.  Normally he's just your run of the mill dirt-bag with a slightly sadistic streak.  Not last night.  No sir!

Now, before you start making accusations that I subconsciously think my husband wants to kill me, which he very well could,  I should mention that Evil Dave isn't my first somnambulistic serial killer.  I've got a pretty vivid imagination when I'm awake and a tendency to read books and watch TV shows that have serial killer story lines.  I also have a Masters in Social Psychology and have read enough about the real dark-side of the human mind to have a psyche rich in fodder for terrifying dreams. 

But serial killers aren't all I am afraid of. Not by a long shot. First there's bugs and spiders in particular.  The little fuckers creep me out and they know it.  They seek me out and tend to bite me with a vengeance.  In March I was attacked on a plane by a Hobo Spider who bit me 15 times, and I'm still sporting the scars to prove it.  But more than spiders, I get the skin crawling creeped out scared feeling by anything that comes out of a hole in the ground or another solid structure. Sand crabs, ants, termites, and worms to name a few.  In both our current home and our last home we've had infestations of Carpenter Bees that have sent me screaming from the yard and left me itching myself raw with the creepy crawlies.

Then you've got snakes.  I don't care if they are poisonous or not, they scare the hell out of me.  One summer when I was younger I leaped out the back door of our beach house and right over a coiled rattlesnake without noticing it, until I had leaped right back over it and into the house.  In sheer stunned surprise my grandfather called 911 and the Sheriff landed a helicopter on the beach in front of our home and two nice officers came up and blew the fucker's head off.  For the next 15 years I would only sleep in that house under a duvet, no tucked in sheets for my bed, as I was convinced the snake's aggrieved kin would be curled up in wait in the folds of my bed biding their time until they could slither up and bite me in revenge.  I have elsewhere discussed how Klaus Kinski rekindled these fears in me in college, and to this day, I am not okay with snakes dead or alive or even on TV.

I am none too fond of enclosed spaces either.  I don't even like to think about being in one or about other people being in one.  There was a news story I remember, about 15-20 years ago, similar to Jaycee Dugard, about a kidnapped woman who had been abducted by a couple and the husband kept her locked in a box under their bed.  The idea of being captive in such a manner seemed a maelstrom of my serial killer/claustrophobia fears and I couldn't listen to the news stories without being nauseous.  Then, in an eerily similar "ripped from the headlines" storyline, in the first season of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit there was an episode in which Andrew McCarthy was keeping a young Romanian slave girl in a box under his king size bed.  Don't think that didn't keep me up half the night, and I no longer see the Andrew McCarthy of Pretty In Pink, oh no.  Now I see the Angel of Death, or at least the Angel of Claustrophobia.

I don't like bodies of water that I can't see the bottom of.  I'm good with a pool or the sandy shore of the beach in Hawaii, but get me 3 miles out with no visibility past the surface and there's no way I'm jumping off the side of the boat to take a dip.  I tried it once, and only once.  We were off the coast of Catalina Island on a trip to San Diego  to watch the Americas' Cup and it was blazing hot and we thought it would be fun to jump into the deep blue sea and cool off.  So, off the side of our boat my sister Terese and I went.  No sooner had I hit the water than I realized I had absolutely no idea what was lurking under my feet.  Whales? Sting Rays? Dolphins? Sharks?  In that same slow motion state you get in dreams when you can't seem to dial the phone for help or get the key in the lock to open the door to safety, I swam to the steps dangling from the side of the boat convinced that I was one stroke away from being the girl in the opening scene from Jaws. 

 Okay... so now you all think I'm certifiable I'm sure.  You're probably right.  However, I am functional on a daily basis, for the most part, and don't require medication - unless you count liberal doses of Sauvignon Blanc on a nightly basis.