Fear
Julian knows the secret to fear. It’s legs. He’s secretly smug about figuring this out even though he’s only seven.
‘More people are scared of dogs than other people. More people are scared of bees and wasps than dogs and people are even more scared of spiders than insects. Each time legs are added creatures get scarier,’ he explains to his cousin, Mike.
That’s why his dog Tripod is so special. Tripod had to have a leg amputated as a puppy making the blonde whippet less scary than other dogs but still scarier than people. Julian feels safe at night when Tripod jumps onto his bed.
Julian’s awareness of this is why he isn’t bullied at school like his cousin Mike. ‘They’ve got two legs, the same as us,’ Julian shrugs.
Mike is scared of things in a strange order; he’s afraid of Tripod but collects spiders in jam jars even though they have all those legs. Mike says it’s because Tripod has bigger teeth. But Julian can’t see why that’s important since Tripod has never bitten anyone.
‘But you’re more scared of, like, a snake than a centipede and they’ve got a hundred legs,’ Mike says as the boys set up their uncle’s old train set.
‘It’s weirder to have no legs. Besides I didn’t make it up I just noticed it.’
‘Well, you’re scared of Grandpa and he’s only got one leg now because of that thing he has.’
‘Diabetes,’ Julian sighs. ‘I’m not scared of Grandpa. I just stay out the way because Grandma says he’s worried about other people now.’
‘So?’
‘Everyone else has twice the amount legs he does.’
Mike stops snapping pieces of the track together to consider this for a moment and Julian knows he has won him over.
Stacey Faulkner is a teacher and writer living in West Sussex, her short stories and flash fiction have been published in print and online, including ‘Greif Group’ in ‘Sunday Snaps: The Stories’.