#86: Fear

Grace unlatched the shed door and immediately felt the fear shiver down her spine.

The last time she'd ventured down to the corrugated iron box was a few years ago, when Peter had joked about the finesse needed to avoid the cobwebs. He mimicked one of those heist films where the hero pirouettes between laser beams.

She had laughed only because she remained a good ten metres away. She had read somewhere that some spiders could jump up to five metres, so she stayed two jumps distance at all times.

But now, widowed and needing to get something from the shed, all her fears are unfolding. Is it a fear when the nightmare is actually happening? Being left alone with two small children was always her biggest cause of an anxiety attack. She remembers nights lying awake; the trepidation pulsating through her that the man lying asleep next to her would one day die, leaving her.

And sure enough, he did. She had had the premonition that he should have stayed home and not gone to work. And when at 2.13pm the phone rang, she knew.

And now, with one dead husband and a blown lightbulb, Grace needed to get into the shed. With her hand on the latch, she knew she couldn't do it.

Let the shed stay as her museum of her fears. Fears were real, and they came true.