Have you ever wondered where some of our modern day fears come from? Not those that are learned, but those that come from somewhere within us - a deep rooted fear springing up from the core of your being, inexplicable yet ancient.
Here's what got me thinking about this. For halloween last year, I was making some costume pieces for my zombie bride outfit from air drying clay. One of these was supposed to be two ribs that would be sticking out of the dress as if snapped outwards, made with a core of tinfoil to make them light enough to attach. It didn't end up working so they were never painted, but I kept the end result anyway. One night while watching TV, I idly picked it up and started messing around with it - there was a section of foil sticking out of the base that made a handy if somewhat bendy handle. With a certain sense of glee, I grabbed hold of the tinfoil and slid the sleeve of my hoodie over the base of the sculpture, before turning to my sister and clawing camply at the air (saying "ch-ellooooo!" in a weird voice, of course!).
Now, my sis is very easily creeped out so I just found it funny when she cringed back and said how creepy it was! It was only when she persuaded me to go look at myself in the mirror that the full horror of it struck me. My reflection stared back at me, reddish-orange hair cropped to my chin mussed up from a lazy Saturday, oversized Wolverine hoodie as unthreatening as possible. But there, where my hand should have been, flexed two almost flesh coloured claws. I can't explain to you the feeling this image invoked, unless you have felt it yourself. It's not a fear from the mind, it feels like a warning, searing out from the core of your body, unable to be explained away or controlled.
Needless to say, to this day whenever we come across the claws lying around (we've since moved out of our shared house and they're now somewhere around our parent's hallway) we slide them on underneath one of our sleeves and freak each other out! My favourite trick is to put the claw on when she's not looking and slowly try to stroke her face with it - both of us try to keep still and pretend it doesn't bother us, but have to flinch away before it touches XD
But why, I began to ask myself, would we have this deep ancestral fear of two oversized claws attached to an otherwise human body? They're about as long as a human hand, a fleshy orangish toned colour, and similar in shape to the claws of a sloth.
Have you ever come across an image or an item that provoked this fear response in you? Not a phobia, or a normal feeling of fear, but something deeper and more primal?
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