Fooling Myself

     ~~~

     My name is Hazel. I'm a Zafara, my blue fur Striped with pink, and I'm sixteen years old. I'd like to tell you of an... experience I had. It's about fear, but the point is that there's a happy ending. You see, a few years ago my family took in a stray manjeer. He was an adorable thing (and I don't mind saying so, though I'm not your animal-loving type) yet he had fleafs. Tiny insects that live in the fur of petpets and itch and bite. Normally a dose of petpetpet-b-gone will sort it, but this was an extreme case – that is, it became an extreme case. We had so many other animals that it was impossible to stymie the fleafs' growth.

     Now, I wasn't one to run screaming from bugs (spyders were the exception there). I positively adored butterflies and moths, and their larvae. Snails and frogs were lovely, too. There was something about fleafs, though... maybe because they were so miniscule, maybe because as soon as you saw one it jumped – vanished – and then you had no idea where it was. If nature were to come indoors, it must be contained. A fish tank, a jam jar, anything. So long as it wasn't free to roam at will. That was what I couldn't stand, I think. One simply could not keep track of fleafs.

     At first they were an irritation, something unhygienic to be swiped from one's trousers. Then they found their way into my bedroom – my little island whose door always stayed shut against animals. Fear began there, I think. If nature wasn't allowed in the house, it certainly wasn't allowed in my bedroom. I thought the worst had come when I started seeing them among my covers when sitting reading to myself in bed. My bed is high off the floor, room for a desk and chair beneath, and I had considered it my unconquerable sanctuary.

     Then came relief. We had beaten the infestation. Sprayed animals and rooms alike, left out contraptions of faerie-powered bulbs to attract them and sticky cardboard to capture them. Victory was ours.

     Some time later, I was unpacking clothes after a trip to relations when a fleaf jumped onto my T-shirt. I dropped the clothes (and I swear this is true), I ran out of the room, stood shaking in the hall until my mother came out of her own room, then burst into tears in her arms.

     Following incidents were never quite so dramatic, but every time I saw the odd fleaf (real or a bit of lint gusted by a draft, I was rarely sure) I had to fight down tears of fright. I would spend the rest of the day checking my trousers for jumping dots. I knew the more I looked and didn't see any, the more confident I would be that it was a false alarm, but still I shook for fear I would see them. Each new incident took several long days to leave my mind.

     But it got better eventually. I'm now expert at convincing myself that the disappearing dot is anything but a fleaf. Our animals are dosed with petpetpet-b-gone regularly. We often have tiny flies (flies, not fleafs) in the bathroom, so they're always a possibility. I certainly don't like them, but they're an annoyance only.

     I have just one thing to admit – I will not step foot inside the room we shut the stray into once we realised just how bad his fleafs were. Needless to say, we were too late by that time. It doesn't matter, though. The room is now used for storage and I have no need to venture inside. It does not impinge on my life. I am truly in control of my fear of fleafs.

     ~~~

     This last Hazel wrote with less confidence than she had imagined when first beginning her tale. Writing it, thinking of it every hour of the day... she began to notice certain habits – precautions – that the fleafs had left her with.

     The first was the 'bathroom thing'. The bathroom had been the most common site for incidents after the fact. The floor was pale lino tiling, and as such lint and dirt was considerably easier to see. And there were the flies, masquerading as their wingless cousins. This was fine. What wasn't fine was that Hazel avoided looking at the floor because of it. Avoidance was bad – if you didn't look and see nothing, there could be something there. At the same time, she didn't want to look and see something that just might be a fleaf. Surely having a constant but manageable worry was better than regular panic attacks? Either way, the fear was there. It was not gone.

     Hazel also avoided looking too closely whilst putting away clean clothes in her drawers. And, similarly, she could not escape actively thinking about fleafs when returning from a trip away. Shoes were another thing. Fleafs (and insects that might look like them) came from outside, so it was best to close one's eyes while untying shoelaces. The corner of her bedroom where her shoes lived was a danger zone and was also to be avoided. These, she reasoned, were minor inconveniences that were well worth the trouble.

     The horror of the store room had seeped its way into the dingy lobby and along the hall, preventing her from hoovering there. But that was all right, because there were many other cleaning chores she could choose from.

     And perhaps the biggest lie, or at least something she completely failed to mention in her account: other insects. Whether connected with the 'fleaf thing' or simply a factor of her changing as she grew older, she gained a lesser fear of such insects as flies, ants, and anything else small enough to crawl onto one's person without one noticing. On the other hand, her love of butterflies and moths could never be killed completely. Ants were particularly bad, though, perhaps because where there was one there was bound to be more, somewhere. Park benches and the ground beneath had to be inspected thoroughly, and more often than not she would sit with her feet off the ground as a precaution. Flies were perhaps more understandable: they tended to zoom around at head-height, threatening eyes, nose and mouth, which was of course terribly unhygienic.

     This story does not have an ending, happy or sad, but there is hope. It is in the difference between nature outside and nature inside. While Hazel may be over-cautious when doing such civilised things as sitting on a bench, she did discover an ability to desensitise to the horrors of outdoors. Once she was out there, nurturing her childish enjoyment of hideouts and games of pretence, she forgot that the plant life she scrambled through was teeming with insects. She could be a knight out there, or a rogue, escaping with her brother from such familiar things as houses, which only tied one's hands when imagination was needed. Vigorous brushing off of clothing was necessary afterwards, but that was all right. That was, most definitely, normal.

     ~~~

     Sherry was waiting for her, slouched artfully against the garden gate, when Hazel turned into the street. Sherry was her only friend (aside from her brother) and the tiniest Eyrie she had ever met, though her stature was offset by a tendency to wear every colour in Neopia Central at once. Hazel had asked why she was living in Meridell of all places – Sherry had waffled about fate, then later said it had been her mother's idea and that she, Sherry, intended to escape to the city as soon as possible. She said she was going to drag Hazel along, too.

     "Where's the ending?" said Sherry now, brandishing Hazel's manuscript at her.

     "Hello," said Hazel.

     "Hi," said Sherry, flatly.

     Hazel made a bemused face. "It's all there."

     "But it isn't. The fact that it's autobiography doesn't give you an excuse, you know. 'That was, most definitely, normal' is all well and good - I mean, it's fantastic to know you think you're sane – but."

     "But I've written right up to where I am," Hazel pointed out. "I don't know what happens next."

     "Then decide what's going to happen next," said Sherry forcefully, waving the sheaf of paper some more for emphasis. "Make a resolution. 'I will stop thinking about fleafs' or something. Then by the time you and I leave this mucky place for Neopia Central, you'll have forgotten about them completely. I'm not having pets in our apartment, anyway."

     "In our...? Oh, right." Hazel dug her hands into her pockets, brow creasing. "Well, I suppose I could try it."

     "Try it? You've got to do more than try it, Haze!" Sherry rolled her eyes, grinning. "You're hopeless, you know that?"

     "Oh yes."

     "Tell me what you're going to do, then."

     "What? I will stop thinking about fleafs?"

     "Yeah. Say it."

     "I just did."

     Sherry gave her a stern look.

     Hazel sighed, closed her eyes, straightened her back, and intoned, "I will stop thinking about fleafs." Then she opened one eye, looking quizzical. "Isn't it a bit backwards, though? If I go around saying I will stop thinking about them, then I am thinking about them."

     Sherry shook her head, exasperated. "You're too young to be a cynic." She held out the manuscript. "Come on, I want to show you something I've been working on in my room before we scarper for the day. You'll never guess what it is..."

The End