With the benefit of age, there are certain things you can look back on and know in your bones to be true. For example, I never liked vultures. Still don’t. It probably wasn’t anything personal - after all, I wasn’t likely to encounter many in rural Derbyshire - but I despised them as a concept all the same. My first exposure was probably the 1994 classic, The Lion King, admittedly not a common source of night terrors. But let me remind you that this is a film in which every animal talks, and often spontaneously breaks into song. Even Scar and his army of cackling hyenas have a catchy little number with impressive choreography and (presumably expensive) pyrotechnics. Yet when a mourning and guilt-ridden Simba flees from his childhood home and passes out in the desert, a new type of creature appears. One that doesn’t talk, or sing, or dance. A grotesque shriek is the only communication they offer. They circle ominously, all shadows and crooked talons. Then they descend upon our vulnerable protagonist; a small child who has just witnessed the murder of his father, might I remind you. They gather around his unconscious body. And then they start eating him alive. No mercy. No words. They don’t even hum a ditty. Just a dozen of these shrill, black-clad demon birds pecking and stripping flesh. For a few seconds that seem to last an eternity, it looks like this is the end. But then the comedy duo of a warthog and a meerkat show up, scare the vultures away, and we’re - what - supposed to just forget it all happened?! I didn’t forget, Lion King. They were eating him alive. The only reason Simba isn’t ribbons of flesh and agony is down to sheer coincidence. The fact that a jungle pig just happened to be passing by. As a child, this was no comfort whatsoever. They. Were. Eating. Him. Alive. Of course, the nightmares came soon after. My father was sunbathing in the garden - again, unlikely to happen in rural Derbyshire, but these are the dreams of a child - and dark shadows circled overhead. In a flurry of unkempt feathers, hooked claws and beaks like the grim reaper’s scythe, the vultures surrounded my father. The man who gave me life, utterly helpless, as they began to peck and shred and tear. No Pumba to scare them off this time. Just the harsh reality of the food chain. I would awake in a cold sweat, struck with the same terrible thought looping in my mind. As though it were some vast, cosmic irony. They didn’t know he was sunbathing! They didn’t care, such was their lust for flesh. I ran to my parents room in floods of tears, desperate to confirm that my father was still intact. He was, but I was astonished to learn that my parents neither shared nor understood my fear of vultures. Looking back, I suspect I was something of a naive child. A laundry list of childhood illnesses (eczema, asthma, milk allergy, bad eyesight and buck teeth - which, yes, I’m counting) meant my mother was very protective of me. I can’t exactly blame her. My childhood eczema was so bad I didn’t have eyebrows until after I hit puberty. Like the rest of my skin, I just scratched it off at night. Even wearing socks over my hands like some desperate puppeteer, I would still itch in my sleep until my legs and arms were red raw and bleeding. Put that tiny violin away, I won’t keep on. My point is, I was a somewhat sheltered child, and my list of fears only grew over time. For example, water was completely acceptable when I was in the shallow end of the pool. I was completely at ease in the bath. But it became an unholy terror once I was swimming and my feet couldn’t touch the bottom. A fear which I blame almost entirely on some punk kid. It was my first time at the ‘deep end’, and our swimming instructor had lined up the class. Shivering and nervous, I heard a sugary voice drift up from the pool. “You wanna know how deep it is?” asked the punk kid, treading water, his voice dripping with faux sympathy. I nodded, at the time unaware what faux sympathy was, or how to spell it. This child of Satan - this stain on society - took a deep lungful of air, swam to the bottom and sat there, holding his breath for as long as possible. Maybe he’s still down there. The fact is, it terrified me. This pool was incalculably deep, and I was going to die. Did I mention I was last in the line? Child after child plopped into that pool without incident, but I was a tangle of nerves. Pretty sure I was blubbering as I swung my pasty legs over the edge. I clung to the side of that pool like a sea anemone. The only thing gripping harder than my little white knuckles was a newfound fear of drowning, the claws of which burrowed deep into my mind. After that, vultures didn’t seem so scary. It was like one fear made the other one pop out. For a while, I figured that was just the way it was. That people could only be afraid of one thing at a time. You’d be terrified of whatever, until something even scarier came along. Then you wouldn’t be scared of the first thing any more! Told you I was naive. Tales from Floor Fifty-Four (Volume 1): A collection of spine-tingling Horror stories |
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