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Fear<\/strong><\/p>\n Julian knows the secret to fear. It\u2019s legs. He\u2019s secretly smug about figuring this out even though he\u2019s only seven.<\/p>\n \u2018More 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,\u2019 he explains to his cousin, Mike.<\/p>\n That\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Julian\u2019s awareness of this is why he isn\u2019t bullied at school like his cousin Mike. \u2018They\u2019ve got two legs, the same as us,\u2019 Julian shrugs.<\/p>\n Mike is scared of things in a strange order; he\u2019s afraid of Tripod but collects spiders in jam jars even though they have all those legs. Mike says it\u2019s because Tripod has bigger teeth. But Julian can\u2019t see why that\u2019s important since Tripod has never bitten anyone.<\/p>\n \u2018But you\u2019re more scared of, like, a snake than a centipede and they\u2019ve got a hundred legs,\u2019 Mike says as the boys set up their uncle\u2019s old train set.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s weirder to have no legs. Besides I didn\u2019t make it up I just noticed it.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Well, you\u2019re scared of Grandpa and he\u2019s only got one leg now because of that thing he has.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Diabetes,\u2019 Julian sighs. \u2018I\u2019m not scared of Grandpa. I just stay out the way because Grandma says he\u2019s worried about other people now.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018So?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Everyone else has twice the amount legs he does.\u2019<\/p>\n Mike stops snapping pieces of the track together to consider this for a moment and Julian knows he has won him over.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stacey Faulkner<\/strong> 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’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fear Julian knows the secret to fear. It\u2019s legs. He\u2019s secretly smug about figuring this out even though he\u2019s only seven. \u2018More 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6503"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6505,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6503\/revisions\/6505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}