Fear: a Terrifying Love Story

by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

I live for that moment when my body reacts in an instinctual need to keep me alive.

One is like watching Nightmare on Elm Street drunk with some friends, with all its silly jump-scares, and the other is reading Edgar Allen Poe in the middle of the night by candlelight, making you consider darkness and terrible horrors.

Fear was a teacher in all the things we need to know to survive, and it was no different.

If I were going to hallucinate a monster sneaking into my apartment and doing…whatever the hell that was, couldn’t my fantasy have the common decency to finish me off before vanishing?

He’s an eldritch monster made out of human fear. You’re asking a toaster to feel affection for you, you fucking moron. What did you expect?

It seemed Fear was an attentive lover.

One of the primordial truths of man was fear. The other was lust. And in this moment, he was giving me both.

“Because the grief of his loss is temporary. The memory of his love will last forever.”

“Grief is fleeting.” He paused. A long claw crooked under my chin and turned my face up to him. “Love is eternal.”