What Scared You As A Child?

Sally Slater - Goosebumps

I was scared of just about everything as a kid. Worms, clowns, men with thick mustaches (I still have a mustache phobia)...but my biggest fears have always concerned my own actions. I was (and remain) afraid of death, and winding up alone. I'm not sure if my fears prompted the nightmares, or if the nightmares created the fears...

***

I wake up, alone, in an all-white room with a small slot in the door for a window. I'm lying on a bed, if it can even be called that. The mattress is hard and unforgiving.

I sit up, taking in my surroundings. In one of the corners is a small toilet, and I clearly won't be the first person to use it. The stench of it fills the room, thick and cloying. There's a shower, too, but by the looks of it, I'll be cleaner without it.

I know this place. I've seen pictures and movies. I once toured Eastern State Penitentiary, a defunct prison in Philadelphia.

I'm in jail. In solitary confinement. Where they send the most dangerous inmates.

I have no idea how long I've been here or how I got here. I'm not a criminal. I almost never break the rules and when I do, my guilty conscience overwhelms me. The worst punishment I've ever received is detention. My parents have never even grounded me.

My conscience doesn't bother me now. All I feel is fear and confusion. I've read the stories: people go crazy in solitary, and they stay crazy when they get out. Why am I here? What could I possibly have done to warrant punishment to this degree of severity?

The last thing I remember is parking my car in the lot of my high school. I opened the door to get out--and then nothing. I woke up here, with nothing and nobody.

Well, not nobody. I can hear the moans of other prisoners, and the sound of boots pacing back and forth. Guards, I assume. Guarding me.

Don't prisoners get one phone call in prison? I want to call my parents. They'll find me the best lawyer in all of Connecticut and prove my innocence...to whatever it is I supposedly did. I wish I could remember.

I pound the metal door with my fist. "Hey!" I shout. "I want my phone call!"

Nobody answers me. Another prisoner lets out a long, low groan, and those boots keep walking.

I bang louder, hard enough to bruise my knuckles. "Can anybody hear me?" I keep banging, hoping that the noise will disturb someone enough to come running.

I bang my knuckles bloody, but still, no one comes for me, or even tells me to shut up. Out of desperation, I scream, "Someone help me!" I'm not well-versed in prisoners' rights--never thought I'd have to be--but surely, they won't ignore a call for help. That can't be legal.

But my screams go unanswered. My voice is hoarse, and I've scraped most of the skin from hands. Knowing my luck, they'll probably get infected. "Carnie hands," they call me in school, because I have hands the size of a toddler's. Now I'll really have messed-up hands. I'll probably lose a finger.

I'm not sure how much longer I'm alone. I try sleeping to pass the time, but my heart's pounding too fast and I can't get over the smell of this place. Every time I get close, someone cries or moans or yells, snapping me out of it.

Time passes. I start running easy math equations in my head. 90 x 90 is 8100. The square root of 100 is 10. Three to the third power is 27. I always do simple math when I'm questioning my mental faculties.

Finally, I hear a new noise--the sound of a knob jiggling. There's no knob on my side of the door, but surely there's one on the other.

A moment later, the door swings open. I resist the urge to bolt. Running will only increase their suspicion of me. I'll get my day in court.

Two guards walk into my cell, big, bear-like men with no necks and crew cuts. A third guard waits outside. I should be scared, but frankly, I'm grateful for any human interaction.

I stand and hold out my wrists, expecting them to handcuff me. Instead, one of the guards holds out a straitjacket. "Seriously?" I squeak out.

"Put your arms through the holes," one of the guards grunt. His gaze holds no pity, only disgust.

I do as he says, and then together, the guards strap me in, pinning my arms in front of me. It's so tight I can hardly breathe, but I don't say anything. These men clearly hate me.

They drag me down the hall to another room, shoving me inside without any care for my safety. I stumble over a plastic blue chair, and just barely manage to right myself.

I'm not alone anymore. A man sits across from me, dressed in a fancy gray suit. He slides his badge across the table. A cop, or a detective, judging by the cut of his cloth.

"Do you know why you're here?" he asks.

I'm not stupid. I shake my head and glare at him. "I'm not speaking to you without a lawyer."

His thin lips lift into a semblance of a smile. "I thought you might say that," he says. "But this is a cut-and-dry case. The world knows you're guilty."

"Of what?" I say. "I can't remember anything before yesterday morning."

He frowns. "You don't remember what happened?"

I shake my head, and to my dismay, my eyes water over. "Please, sir. I don't understand. I've never broken a law in my life."

He sighs. "That won't hold up in court. Unless you plead insanity." He pushes his chair back and walks over to a small box television. "I'll show you," he says, popping a tape into the VCR. I didn't even know they still made those.

He hits a button, and the video starts to play. The camera is zoomed out, like the view you'd get when looking down at the ground from a plane. The loud sound of a chopper's blades can be heard in the background.

Then I see me...but not me. I'm enormous. I don't mean tall or fat--the girl in the video is 20 times my usual size. "How is that even possible?" I gasp, feeling like Alice in Wonderland.

"You tell me," says the detective. He gestures at the screen. "Keep watching."

The giantess in the video--me, I have to remind myself--lifts up a big foot, and stomps down onto a building. It's like squashing an ant. The building crumbles into dust beneath my freakishly large sneaker. And then I walk, crushing an entire city landscape.

The giantess turns, looking straight at the camera. Those are definitely my eyes. Only my father shares the unique, yellow-green color. But my stare is blank, without any obvious intelligence.

"I'm in a trance," I say, unable to say the word "be-spelled" aloud. I don't believe in magic. Or giants, for that matter. "There's no other explanation."

"It doesn't matter," says the detective. We both watch as my enormous paw of a hand streaks across the sky. The video shakes violently, and then the screen goes dead.

"Oh my God," I whisper. Guilt and horror surge in my gut, and I think I might throw up. "How many people were hurt?"

The detective gives me a long look. "Half the world is dead," he says finally. "You destroyed half the world in a single night."

How's that for a freaky nightmare? Tell us what nighttime terrors scared you most as a child in the comments below!