What are you afraid of?

hehe, yes. do it

I'm not afraid of anything that walks, crawls, swims, or flies with one single exception. I do, however, have great respect for a number of creatures. Not fear, just a healthy respect for their power.

I think for me it is the thought of anyone changing very quickly. One minute you are talking to what seems to be a reasonable person and the next they just snap. In fiction it could be anything from personality disorders to supernatural things but I think just getting caught in a huge change of personality is scary. It’s like being teleported to another world but with a person instead.

For various reasons I will not go into why I get people fear. But what most people fear is a 'something'. A scratching at a door, a ticking clock that is slowly ticking slower, a shadow within light to cast it and a light making no shadow. It is the lack of control when we are trapped in a room with no visible exits or when we are trapped in a ship in the void or when we are trapped in a repeating day with no way to break free(ps this is why asking for help is hard for many, it is confronting our personal weakness and mortality). We are afraid of that which we do not understand, the hallway that never ends yet your destination is always almost near, the moment when something strange corners you in an unfamiliar place, the darkness of the depths reaching up to you.

People fear clowns because it is close enough to what our brain understands yet completly off. (Read more about the uncanny valley).

Fear lives and breeds in the tension, but you need to give it room to grow. Give an oasis of safety and then force them back out of it. Give them light but make it fading. Give them time, but make it count down(as all our time is counting down).

There are other ways tou can manipulate fear, most of which are more brutal and possibly harmful and triggering, but I think that paints a bit of a picture.