Afraid of the Dark
When I was a kid, I was scared to death of the cellar. Of course, by Eritrean standards, the cellar was just a room where we kept a whole lotta junk, sorta like an above-ground basement or ground-floor attic. Due to my imagination being the way it was at the time (and still is sometimes), I would visualize all sorts of creepy crawlies that inhabited that part of the house, doing whatever it was they did when they weren't busy tormenting me with their antics. It had even gotten to a point where I would swear hearing actual conversations coming from there, until I realized it was just big brother messing with my head, as only he could. But, the experience had left me unsettled. It was only years later, after an admittedly minuscule amount of maturity had set in, I realized that at the time, I was just afraid of the dark. While this is something that we all outgrow and even learn how to embrace, the sad fact is, to this day, I can't honestly say that I'm entirely com...