Last month you stepped it up with your challenges. The music challenge was good but this month I want to take it up another notch. This month’s theme is “The Ordeal” which is why I’m bringing back all the fears from “Fears February” and asking you to craft some challenges from them. For example, today I went back to my story about spiders. I’m really scared of them and if I have to get close, I usually run. Today I challenged myself to write my story while sitting as close as possible to the big spider in my backyard.
I started by taking this picture, I got up real close… less than a meter away and started freaking out. But you still couldn’t see the spider on my little phone camera. So I moved my hand… 40cm… 30cm… 20cm. I clicked the button and hoped for the best. Involuntary shivers ran down my spine.
I used to have a pet spider, it used to sit on the back of my hand and tap on my knuckles while I was typing. One day it curled up on the desk and never unfurled. I buried it in the garden. The next morning I began typing, and felt a tapping on my knuckles. I stopped and checked my hand. Nothing. But when I started typing, there it was again. There are millions of ghost spiders. They haunt humans all the time. Every time you get a shiver down your spine, that’s them, crawling on you. Every time you get a random itch. Every time you walk into a phantom web. It’s all ghost spiders. They’re not mean or anything, they just like messing about. Even now as I type this, I can still feel the tapping.
There we are, first “ordeal” of July and I think I created something even scarier than spiders… great thanks imagination. Now it’s down to you- I am scared of the sea, riding bikes, religion, public speaking, failure… what ordeals can these be turned into?
freyawrightbrough 