One Fear at a Time

Coping: Consecutive Substack Story 1111

Photo by Janan Lagerwall on Unsplash

A Message:

I moderate/coordinate a creative writing session (Keyboard Catharsis) once a month at Passenger Recovery Community Center in Hamtramck, Michigan (a small, autonomous town that resides entirely within the Detroit city limits).

The sessions are prompt based. My prompts today were: Praying mantis, bedroom, jigsaw puzzle and Kinshasha, the densely populated capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

***************

They had done some mean tricks with a digital camera to make the cramped bedroom look spacious.The place felt like four shoe boxes taped together, with the cacophony of the city streets of Kinshasha like a megaphone on Josh’s balcony. What they called a balcony, more like three two-by-eights taped together with the tape left over from the shoe boxes.

Josh’s hosts weren’t malicious, just tended toward hyperbole when it came to his accommodations.

Malcolm and Savannah had left a jigsaw puzzle for him, which he thought was sweet.

It was sweeter that they had somehow found a jigsaw puzzle from his home state of Kentucky.

It was not so sweet that they had chosen a puzzle showing an assortment of bourbons.

His alcoholism had done a marvelous job of curing his agoraphobia, but nineteen days dry the agoraphobia was back and dancing on the grave of both his social and financial possibilities.

A tickling heat crawled up his neck. It was a feeling he was being watched but had there been another human in the room that human’s breath would have fogged his glasses like a jigsaw puzzle of the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn.

Claustrophobia did not pair well with agoraphobia, and as Josh’s eyes darted around the tiny room he rang the third bell on his phobias: Entomophobia.

He hated bugs.

And there, on the still shrink wrapped Big Book Veronica gave him at the airport, was a massive praying mantis.

Josh gave the green creature some credit. At least he was no longer bored. He had a mission.

Kill the praying mantis.

Do praying mantises fly?

Do they not fly but pray that they can?

Is there a real praying mantis god that would smite Josh for destroying one of his acolytes?

Josh pulled apart his drapes for the first time in a week and looked around the streets to see if the French colonizers had left behind a bistro.

He saw nothing that suggested he could find booze or wine in the neighborhood and he knew his agoraphobia wouldn’t allow him to go more than one block.

Who would win in a fight between Alcoholism and Agoraphobia? Stan Lee and Marvel had cheated him out of those particular superheroes.

His sudden motion to the drapes had disturbed the mantis, who had jumped, flown or walked to the still shrink-wrapped copy of Augusten Burroughs Dry that Ethan had given him for Secret Santa.

Josh grabbed the Big Book the Mantis had been perched on, and with a two handed downswing the Hulk would have been proud of, smushed the insect into a green paste like watered down wasabi.

Flopping onto his bed, Josh gave himself credit for conquering, albeit briefly, one phobia.

He pulled the gooey shrink-wrap off the Big Book and discarded it.

Looking at the back cover of the book, he came to a realization.

Though it would be far more challenging and time consuming, he could attempt to complete the jigsaw puzzle upside down, gray side up, so that the bourbon bottles didn’t stare back at him and mock him for being phobic, though right this second he thought maybe that was conquerable too.

***