Phobias II: This time it's personal.

So, I made fun awhile ago of random fears that seem completely ridiculous. Now that I think about it, though, don't we all have ridiculous fears? If I'm going to mock other people for being afraid of such things as beards, than it's only fair that I mock myself just as much, perhaps more!
Without further ado, here are some of my odder fears:

Disfigured letter F
I discovered quite recently that this seemingly harmless little symbol fills me with the same sick horror as extreme gore:

"What's that?" you may be wondering, and with good reason.
It's a partially-dismembered letter F.
"How can you dismember letters?"
I don't know, but apparently it's not only completely possible, but utterly disgusting. I get the picture in my head of the poor little letter having its face torn off...
And, before you ask: yes, 'F' is the only letter I anthropomorphize.


Open doors (at night)
Few things are quite so horrifying as an open door at night. It fills to the brim with shadows, which are somehow darker than the darkness of the rest of the room. Anything could be in there... anything.
Plus, if you leave your bedroom door open, it's way too easy for monsters to get in. And the more doors there are in a room, the less secure I feel. When I was staying with my sister there was a double closet door (the scariest of all), the main door (which was hidden behind a corner but was still frightening because I didn't know for sure that it was closed) and a door to the guest bathroom. Three doors is two too many. How are you supposed to barricade yourself in from nightmares with so many portals to guard?

Closed bathroom doors (at night)
Yes, I'm aware there's a bit of a paradox here. Thing is, a few weeks ago I watched an episode of Buffy called "Hush". It was an excellent episode, and I wasn't too scared at the time of watching... But then I let my imagination run away with me. See, the episode features these demons called "The Gentlemen", who steal the voices of a town, go in and cut out the hearts of seven victims.

Seriously, look at them.

They were attended by straightjacketed, demonic footmen, who held down their victims for them and moved in a heart-stopping, lurching sort of movement, flailing their arms in a puppetlike dance.
Soon after I had seen that episode, I was sitting in the living room of my sister's house. I was the last to bed and had been loitering there for quite some time, messing with my laptop and trying to convince myself I wasn't scared of the Gentlemen. Of course, thinking about how scared I was got me being even more scared than before, so that by the time I actually went upstairs and started taking my contacts out I was practically paralyzed with fear. I had started to sing to myself to try and divert my mind, but unfortunately this just made me think 'Oh no! I must be REALLY scared if I have to SING!'
This is when I started imagining that the Gentlemen were floating silently up the stairs... they were just beyond the door... they were going to come in.
The doorknob rattled, and I screamed bloody murder.
Of course, it turned out not to be mythical demons that somehow weren't killed by my singing. It was just my younger sister, DLL, who wanted to get ready for bed.
And that's why I leave the door open and pace when I'm brushing my teeth.

Any bed that isn't a bunk bed
I've spent most of my life  sleeping in an upper bunk, surrounded by sturdy rails. You'd be amazed by how secure you feel in one of those! Unfortunately, it has left me less than comfortable with certain aspects of a normal bed. After watching the movie Poltergeist, I was terrified for weeks of that clown doll. Even now, almost a full year later, I still cringe when I drop something and have to bend down to pick it up, because deep inside I'm positive that the clown will be waiting for me when I sit up again.

You go the whole movie thinking 'It couldn't be any creepier.' WRONG.

Normal beds are pretty cool the rest of the time, aside from the knowledge that it's way easier for any monsters or enemies to get at you and you could very easily fall off if you aren't careful and all the shadows seem so very, very much closer...

In conclusion
My imagination is a dark, twisted place sometimes. Of course, this should come as a surprise to no one, considering I drew a man-eating unicorn once and started a blog because of it. Really, the things that scare me about the monsters I mentioned isn't dying by their hands (I mean, the Gentlemen are killed by human voices and that clown was destroyed by a little kid), but simply the idea of coming face-to-face with them. I'm not frightened by them, exactly, but by the idea of them. Like with open doors - - it's not what's actually there, but what might be there. The possibility of terror is far more frightening to me than the actual terror.
Where does Disfigured F fit into this?
I haven't the foggiest. I think that one can just be chalked up to my being a strange little person.

And, now that I've written about and found pictures of the things that scare me most, I'm going to go to bed and lie awake half the night listening for monsters.