Phobias -- Flash Fiction

“Greg, don’t go alone,” Dr. Porter said.

She’s a nice woman, well-intentioned, but hard, hard, hard. And pushy. We identified my severest phobia and used exposure therapy to treat it.

We had many to choose from – agoraphobia, the fear of crowds or open spaces, I was afraid of crowds but not open spaces. I don’t know how I missed that one. Ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes, that’s not a severe problem. All I have to do is avoid the herpetarium at the zoo and my Uncle Matt’s house. How anyone can consider a snake as a pet, I’ll never understand.

Caligynephobia, the fear of beautiful women. It’s not that I think they’ll kill me and eat me like a snake really might. But I can’t talk to them. I can’t think. I can’t breathe around them. I know that’s a dumb phobia for a man to have. But are there any sensible phobias?

With Dr. Porter’s help I chose my worst demon to work on first. Acrophobia or altophobia is the fear of heights.

Those exterior elevators? I’d stand facing the interior wall, trying to ignore the rattle and shake as
they carried me to my doom. My co-workers in their business suits and shiny shoes would ooh and ahh at the vistas. I prayed for deliverance and hoped they didn’t notice.

And who can afford seats on the main floor at the symphony? I can’t remember how many times I’ve had to practically crawl on all fours to get up to balcony seats with a date. Actually, I can remember every single time with every single woman. None, of course, very beautiful, but mostly nice.

Seats at the top of stadiums? Indoors? Free tickets for basketball games? Forget about it. The court looked postage-stamp size under spot lights. A black hole threatening to suck me down past the writhing, screaming humans – Albrecht Durer hell, Twenty-first Century style.

Dr. Porter estimated it would take six months to see significant progress.

“Greg,” she said. “Let’s start small.”

Yes, let’s, I thought.

She had me climbing open stairwells. I stood on first floor balconies. Second story balconies. I crossed walk-ways six flights up in atriums. Or is that atria? Whatever. All in downtown Denver.

It may be The Mile High City, but the city itself never gave me a problem. Denver’s out on the prairie east of the Rocky Mountains. A nice city on level ground. No sense of altitude at all.

During that six months I also, at the good doctor’s urging, hiked with my buddy Steve. Mostly in metro-Denver’s open spaces. Some near the base of the foothills. Some within sight of Fourteeners.

Summiting Green Mountain was the goal that Saturday morning. Identified as a mesa southwest of Denver, Wikipedia puts Green Mountain’s altitude at 6,854 feet, almost seventeen hundred feet above the Mile High City.

The parking lot and trail head were part way up the mesa. Signs posted at the entry to the trail warned of possible dangers. Beneath what looked like a wild-west wanted poster of a coyote I read Coyotes are active in this area. The sign said to keep children and dogs under close supervision. Another warned Mountain Lions are active in this area and gave some information in avoiding them.

For some reason coyotes and mountain lions didn’t seem like real threats. For one thing it was 8:30 in the morning and those animals, as I understood it, were nocturnal in their activities. Or at least mostly active at dusk and dawn.

But a third sign hit me like a slap in the face. Rattlesnakes are active . . . . I couldn’t see the rest of the sign.

“Snakes are more afraid of us as than we are of them.” Steve said. I wanted to believe him.

Green Mountain’s trails are well used by the public – hikers, old and young, some carrying infants in back packs, many with dogs on leashes; bicycle riders, also old and young; and people on horseback. Motorized vehicles were not allowed on the trails.

At the first turn, I looked back toward Denver. A spasm shot through my chest. The city of Denver huddled in a haze far out on the plains and farther below me than I’d ever imagined possible. I'd never been so high up outside. Not cocooned in a car or a train or an airplane. When I flew I sat on the aisle and read a book or a magazine. The safety instruction card. Something. Anything. From take-off to landing. I never saw the Earth from a plane.

On Green Mountain, I quickly learned not to look downhill. And not to think about how I’d get back down.

I learned to step off the trail to let others pass. It made sense to me to step off uphill so if I fell, I’d fall up. Falling down that hill could go a long way.

A bird trilled. “That’s a meadow lark,” Steve said.

It was almost as hard to look up the hill to the sky. Where we were going. That much higher. I watched where I put my feet. Rocks pocked the trail, some as big as your fist, half buried in the packed earth. Grasses and wild flowers grew knee high or higher on either side.

“Mariposa lily and yucca.” He pointed at first one flower then another. “Hear that? Frogs. May was so wet, we have frogs.” Steve’s enthusiasm calmed my fear.

I did hear the frogs and the rasping sound of a grasshopper fleeing up the trail ahead of me.

I didn’t hear a cyclist until he was almost on me. Without thinking, I stepped off the trail. Downhill.

“Sorry,” the cyclist called over his shoulder as he passed me, hurtling down the mountain.

I grabbed handfuls of some plant topped with purple flowers to keep from losing my balance. The flowers were fluffy. The leaves and stems were not. It was like grabbing blades, knife blades. But if I let go I’d fall. Two feet of down-sloping terrain and those killer plants stood between me and the trail.

Then I heard it. To my left. Like dry leaves rustling. No, not rustling. Rattling.

“Snake!” I screamed and spun away from the noise. I stepped off the hill into empty space.

Unlike the cartoon coyote, I was not suspended in midair. I dropped like a dead weight, landing on my feet. Pain flashed up my legs from my heels into my spine. Then I was running as fast as I could trying to keep my feet under me. My toe caught on something and I plunged down that mountain head first.

When I regained consciousness, I was strapped onto a litter. A firefighter in complete regalia walked down the trail beside me holding an IV fluid bag above me.

The firefighter turned toward me. “You’re going to be all right,” she said.

A wavy lock of brown hair escaped from her helmet. Dark eyebrows framed her brown eyes. She scanned my face, my arm. She touched the IV port in the bend of my elbow.

Her straight nose led to full, perfectly formed lips and a cleft chin. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

I tried to turn my head away.

“Be still.” She leaned over me, her beautiful face too close. “Can you hear me?”

I struggled to answer her. I couldn’t breathe.

Her brows furrowed with worry. “Be still,” she repeated. “We’ve got you on a backboard and in a neck brace. You’ll be all right. Just breathe. Slow and steady.”

Lulled by the rocking motion of the litter and her rich alto voice, I took a deep breath and relaxed. My panic melted away.

She smiled. “You’re safe now.”