Terror, by Gillian

I don't understand terrorism or terrorists. I mean, intellectually of course I do. I understand what psychiatrists say about the factors causing people to become terrorists; but I can't get inside their heads. I simply cannot feel what it is they are feeling. With an estimated minimum of a thousand young people a month from different parts of the globe currently rushing off to join forces with ISIS, however, it's clear that creating terror holds an attraction for a significant number of people.

Not only am I completely mystified by that desire, or compulsion, to bring terror to others, but I am fortunate enough to be able to say that I have never felt true terror myself. That is not because I am remarkably brave and tough. Neither am I in denial of some unacknowledged terror. It is simply that I have lived my life in a place and time that has been terror-free. For me, that is. Not, alas, for everyone.

I can only imagine the utter terror I would feel, hiding in the bushes in Rwanda, waiting to be discovered and hacked to pieces by my erstwhile friends and neighbors. Or hiding in a room in Nazi Germany, waiting to be turned in to the Gestapo by my erstwhile friends and neighbors. Sadly, the list is endless. I would know what real terror was in Stalin's U.S.S.R and Mao's China: the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge and on and on to today's North Korea and most places in the Middle East.

I say I can only imagine, but in truth I'm sure I cannot. I have lived so far from the horror of so many people's lives that I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like. I have lived in my own little warm and cosy cocoon, safe and secure. Oh sure, I've been a bit afraid occasionally. For instance, long before the advent of cellphones, on business in Florida, I got lost in Miami in the dark and pouring rain and my rental car broke down in a part of town which looked seriously uninviting. Walking home in Denver one night after dark someone followed me step for step. When I slowed, the footsteps behind me slowed; they kept pace if I walked faster. Nothing bad resulted from these minor incidents, and the most they made me feel was a bit nervous: just a frisson of fear. I've had health issues that made me feel much the same, but that's nothing approaching terror. They call it a cancer scare, after all, not a cancer terror, though I'm equally sure that being diagnosed with some horrific Stage Four cancer would certainly invoke terror.

The most frightened I have ever been, I think, were two instances involving airplanes.

One was on a flight from New York's La Guardia to London Heathrow. It was at the height of the Falklands "war," so it must have been 1982. I was working God knows how many hours a week at the time and as soon as I settled to watch the movie, which was Tora Tora Tora, I fell into a deep sleep. Over the mid-Atlantic we hit some really rough air, and even that didn't wake me, but a combination of things suddenly did. We were bouncing around so badly that one of the overhead bins bust open - it must not have been securely latched - and a hard-sided case fell out onto the woman directly in front of me. It must have been heavy as blood started pouring from her head and she began to scream. At precisely the same moment, a voice from the cockpit announced with regret that the H.M.S. Sheffield had been sunk with heavy loss of life. Well, you know what it's like when you are rudely awakened from a very deep sleep. You lust can't get your bearings. I was awash in confusion. My last memories, from the movie, were of air battles; planes crashing into the ocean. The name Sheffield bothered me because that's where I went to College. Were we at war? What was happening? Why was that woman screaming and bleeding?

Why was the plane pitching and reeling? Were we going down in the ocean? I'm sure this complete lack of any grasp on reality was very short-lived, but it seemed like forever and I was truly scared. But I think I was too confused to be really terrified, and I realized well enough that I was confused. Had we really been going down, yes, then I'm sure I would have felt undeniable terror, for real. I think, now, of those doomed passengers on that flight that went down in Pennsylvania on 9/11, and more recently the one that wandered off course around the skies for several hours before, they think, ending up at the bottom of the Indian Ocean; some terror involved there, I would guess.

The other time was when my husband of the time was flying us back from California in our little four-seater plane. There were the two of us and my two youngest step-children. We had just cleared the Sierra Nevada summit, heading East back to Colorado at about 8,000 feet in a clear blue sky. Suddenly an invisible hole in the sky opened up and we fell through it like a rock. My stomach hit the roof. The clipboard securing the navigation charts, which I always held on my lap, shot up and the metal clip gouged a big gash under my chin. My step-daughter started screaming. The hillside was coming up to meet us at a really frightening speed. The plane stopped falling as suddenly as it had started, and we landed at the first available spot to make sure there was no damage. There was a crack in one wing and in the tail, but not enough to stop us flying on home. We later calculated that we had dropped about 6,000 feet in very few seconds.

And it was scary, but it was all over before I had time to work up to real terror. Maybe it's just that my reactions are too slow!

I had planned to end there, but you know how these stories go. Sometimes they seem to take on a life of their own and go off on a tangent you had not planned to take. So we'll just follow.

Some of you may remember that several months ago I wrote about my dad, who, lost in a daze of dementia, created havoc by trying to liven up their electric heater, which was made to look somewhat like a real fire, by jabbing at it with the old metal poker. 

I was writing this current story, last week, on a very cold day, around zero outside. Somehow when it's that cold, it seems to seep into the house regardless of how you have set the thermostat.

I was cold. I huddled closer to the cozily-glowing gas insert fireplace and noticed that there was a considerable gap between two of the "logs." No wonder it's cold in here, I thought, and unbidden the next thoughts leapt into my head. I need to get the poker and rearrange those logs a bit, that'll warm things up.

Now that truly terrifies me.

© 24 Nov 2014 

About the Author 

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.