He was a nice and completely normal kid, that is, before he started reading the book.
The boy he played with was interested in a book about phobias. He had found it on his grandfather’s bookshelf. It was catching! They read it together over a period of several months. When his friend’s family moved away his friend left him the book, as he seemed to have become obsessed with it. The book had a strange effect on him, although he didn’t know it at first.
He had arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, but there again, he’d always had that. No, it started with Butch, a dog in the neighbourhood he had been very friendly with. As the dog approached wagging his tail the hairs went up on the boy’s neck. This had to be cynophobia, the fear of dogs.
As the days passed he found he was eating less, finally he virtually stopped eating. He referred to the book. It was Cibophobia, the fear of food. He was becoming quite thin, while regularly checking himself in the mirror, that is until catoptrophobia set in; the fear of mirrors.
It was around this time that his parents became concerned. They tried to find out what was happening with their son. This didn’t work out too well since he had developed both Androphobia, the fear of men, and gynophobia, the fear of women. They had wanted him to see a doctor but he knew that wasn’t going to happen, the book explained that he was suffering from Iatrophobia, the fear of doctors.
Life for him became worse as nyctophobia, the fear of darkness, anthropophobia the fear of people and somniphobia the fear of sleep, all took him over. He found that he couldn’t even play games on his mobile as he had developed a morbid fear of technology, technophobia.
Eventually he saw it coming, creeping up on him slowly but surely.
It was panophobia – the fear of everything!