I Panic, I Obsess, I Flip Out

I try not to panic and I rarely succeed.

I panic. I'll get a little thought in my head and it will start to grow until I'm convinced I'm in the middle of a catastrophe. This is a stressful way to be. It's also an easily resolvable problem, all I need is someone to tell me it's not a catastrophe and I'm blowing everything out of proportion.

Of course, finding reassurance that everything is going to be okay is not always possible. Sometimes my fears are legitimate but I blow them out of proportion. Sometimes, I feel guilty for unloading my worries on other people. Sometimes, my worries are so silly, I can't bear to admit them.

Double-edged Sword

My imagination is a source of this problem. It gives my fears greater strength and creates new fears. My imagination is also the source of my greatest joys (writing, art).

I fixate on the nightmares my brain creates so I spend much of my time thinking up ways to deal with them if they came true. This doesn't make me feel better but at least I know what I'll do if the thing I'm afraid of happens. People sometimes comment on how calmly I take bad news but they seldom realize I had been imagining far worse.

This probably won't make anyone feel better.

I am afraid of making mistakes and suffering for honest mistakes. This is not something that anyone can tell me is not a reasonable fear. It could happen. I never intend to do anything wrong but I can only avoid mistakes as long as I know what the right thing to do is.

I could do something with every positive intention and still have it go wrong or be working from the wrong information and do the wrong thing. This could happen. That's it. My fears could come true.

I have many positive traits. I'm honest, reliable, creative, faithful. I'm also paranoid, anxious, self-defeating. I am better than I used to be. This panic used to lock me up inside. Instead, it sets into obsessive action.

Part of the problem for everyone, I think, is people try so hard to seem together, normal, and relaxed. So then I feel like I'm the only person in the world with this problem. It's not true. If you have this problem, know you're not alone. I'm dealing it every day.

Masked Freaks: The Lady in Black meets The Guppy

The Lady in Black meets the Guppy

The noise of the attack faded as the few remaining invaders fled. Zombie Knight took a deep breath and groaned. She would have to help track them down. The work wasn’t done yet. She got up. Her plackart poked her. She would have to fix that. The sounds of screaming hit her ears. She would have to fix it later.

Doorman cheered and raised his fists in triumph. His guns were still smoking.

She waved at him then pointed at the shiny monster running after the shiny girl.

He dropped his arms, nodded and ran after them. Lady was following.

“What the hell is that?” Doorman screamed over the radio.

“Save the guppy.” Lady answered.

“What’s the guppy?” Doorman screamed.

Zombie turned down the volume. Lady didn’t offer any further clarification on the guppy but Zombie guessed the guppy wasn’t the giant point glass dinosaur monster.

Zombie watched them from her vantage point at the top of the mountain while she decided what to do next. She felt no drive to move without careful thought. Lady and Doorman had the problem in hand.

The creature started falling behind. The girl slowed down. Zombie realized the guppy was leading the monster away from the Lady in Black.

The guppy stepped on a loose stone. The stone shifted. Her foot slid out from beneath her.

“Don’t you want to play? Play with me.” The glass monster called out to her.

She wanted to play. Zombie studied the girl’s reaction. She could sense it. It tempted her body, her mind and her soul and reminded her how empty she felt so far from the things that comforted her. Zombie’s held her breath while the girl made her decision.

She wanted to go home. Kneeling on the ground, she pounded the ground with her fist. She growled, “I want to go home.”

“Well, you screwed that. Play with me” The glass demon growled.

“That’s not home. Not them at all.” It hurt her to be so far from the place that she wanted to be. “Not home.”

Zombie gasped at the pain she felt in the girl’s stomach.

The glass monster moved towards the guppy. “Please play with me.”

Zombie watched with horror and the guppy ran at the monster. Zombie ran down the hill. She would never make it. She had a vision of shredded flesh. The vision did not come to pass.

The guppy hit the monster. The glass cracked. She broke off her attack and ran. She was such a little thing in the way bullets are little things. Lady threw herself into him.

“Thanks.”

“I’m Lady. Nice to meet you."

“I’m danger. Be wary.” She fell back in the dirt.

“Let’s get acquainted, Danger."

Zombie called to Lady over the radio. “Bad head injury.”

“And then some.” Lady responded.

“What?"

“Nothing.”

“It’s Poe, actually. My name is Poe.” She said.

“It’s nice to meet you, Poe.”

Flash Story: Lady in Black in the Bucolic Battle

Lady in Black: The Bucolic Battle

There’s an old saying, “You can’t walk through hell without getting poked in the ass by a few demons.” I’ve never met any demons but I have gotten poked by a few fools who regretted it when I cracked their skulls (A big part of my job).

Zombie Knight and Mr. Doorman came deep into the woods on this mission with me. Zombie had to be convinced. She was all for saving the world but preferred to do it in places that didn’t have insects.

Invaders don’t always attack cities and monsters don’t always stomp the coast. Sometimes they tear through the fabric of reality in the middle of an isolated forest. It wasn’t environmentally friendly but it was cheaper due to the lack of buildings and cars and there were fewer people to get killed in the crossfire (the more important part). So long as we could keep them from getting out of the forest, we were fine.

Zombie and Door were enjoying the fight with the horde. But they kept coming and they all wanted to kill us.

“Lady, dammit. It’s a flood.” Doorman screamed over the radio. When he was upset, he always forgot he didn’t have to scream.

“Give Zee time.”

Zombie said she had a way to cut off the flow. We had to let her work.

I couldn’t think about Zombie or Door at that moment. My over-sized, Cro-magnon problem swung the girl in his fist like a ragdoll. She had the same pink glow as the rest of them. She came with them (that was obvious). Without that glow, the girl would have just looked like a baby hero running into a firefight.

“Who’s side is she on?” and “What is she?” were irrelevant. Someone twice her size was crushing her throat. I fired three shots into the giant. He flinched and held her out as a human shield.

“I don’t think she’s going to run. Maybe I should crush her.” He smiled at the girl in his fist. He had nice teeth (nicer than mine).

I had seen the girl before the giant. She had gestured at me to run. She had tried to warn me. I knew it.

“Thus to heroes.” He shook her again. A guppy in the jaws of a shark. Her head would soon would be without her body. He was getting frustrated by her unwillingness to die.

The seconds flowed like frozen molasses while I aimed. The girl’s legs dangled. The megalithic man smirked. With one hand, she held on for dear life. She pulled a rock out of her pocket and threw it. Her attempt impressed me. She still had the strength to fight.

“Missed me.” He taunted. A plated monster with nails galloped into him.

The noises were terrible. Clang, clang, clang. Nails shredding flesh. Teeth buried into his butt. He screamed. Her bones against stone.

The girl crawled to get away. She strobed, bright and dim.

“I get to kill her. You don’t get to kill her. I get to kill her.” The plated monster screamed.

The giant laid on the ground. Blood spilled everywhere. The plated monster ran in the direction I assumed the guppy went. I followed. She hadn’t missed at all. She had hit the plated monster with the stone to draw the attention of the monster that wanted to kill her to distract the one that was killing her.

The light of the machine vanished. New monsters stopped coming.

“Zombie did it.” Door grabbed my arm.

“I know. The girl...did you see her?”

“I saw a giant sharp thing run past. We’ll probably--”

“--they’re after her.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I kinda do.”

“Where are you going?”

“To save the guppy.” I ran after them.