With ghosts? Oh no. They tell where the treasure is, or who is the murderer, or the terrible secret that everyone should know.

With monsters? Sometimes, but only sometimes. At the window at night, with wide and empty eyes. The seeing-them is scarier than the dealing-with-them, since the dealing-with-them boils down to “getting eaten”, nine times out of ten, since they are monsters and that is what monsters do. Also: monsters are highly unlikely.

With death? Oh yes, most definitely. I’d like to keep existing, forever if possible. Although the scariest scarededness of death involves the death that knows it’s dead, i.e. “I am now dead, but am somehow aware of it, and am trapped as a non-thing in foreverness and there is no being that can save me and no cure for the non-awareness that I am aware of.” That, I’m guessing, is what hell is really like: forever knowing you are nothing and can do nothing but contemplate your nothingness. Not flames and farm tools. Pshaw. High school was scarier than that. And of course, if I just stop when I die, I’ll be incapable of worry and fear so moot that point right now.

Speaking of: with hell? Unless it is as the stated-above, no, not really. God is love, remember? Even the Christians say that. Why would God let you hang out in the flamey hole forever and a bit? Because God doesn’t exist. But, barring that, assuming a munificent and benevolent creator-type of guy or gal or gender-transcendent sort of thingity-thing, if he/she/it loved us so goddamn much, he/she/it wouldn’t roast us to perfection like so many mixed nuts, now would he/she/it? God would cleave us to its bosom and lovey-dove-dove us till the stars in Its eyes burneded out. And then he’d give us kittens and puppies, or just make us kittens and puppies. With spaceships. And candy. HEAVEN.

With old age? Not quite. There’s a lot to like about old people. But…

With physical feebleness, paralysis, and frailty? Now we’re getting closer. Trapped in an invalid’s body, that has no joy in it, I don’t want to live the life of a thinking noodle. But even worsity-worse…

With senility? Oh kee-ripes, that’s a scarededy one, especially again (since the key apparently to the greatest heights of scariness is to know what you’ve lost forever) if some dim dim glimmer lodges in my dim dim brain and I realize as I drool and forget my loved ones that I used to not do either of those things and could do so many other much better things back before me brane she went all oatmealay agh agh aggity agh–

With loneliness? Oh yes, very much so. How many decades does it take for the sting to wear off of walking unescorted, abundances of leftovers, movies viewed alone for lack of a better option, no shared insidery jokes, no one to make the macaroni cards for, no dates to remember, no lover’s socks to darn, how many years before the crushity crush of a rented room sounding only one’s own breathy breathing stops being a soul compacter heartache? That fat little baby with the arrows says “There are never going to be enough years and you’ll be able to count every insufficient one, but why don’t you see what’s on cable?”

(You can kick that baby, y’know. He’s not really a baby. He’s not even real. He’s one of them imaginary Greeks that make the gyros.)

(Note to self: get a dog. Seriously. Get a goddamn dog.)

With failure? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yada yada yada. Ya done effed up, son. Effing deal with that effery. That scarededness fades if you practice failing like Beckett (and everybody else) says you should. But that’s the active sort of failing. Failing to do things, that’s a whole other matter and that keeps me afeared at night, and day, and night and day, and funny how the fearing to fail turns into fearing to do which is the worse sort of fearing to fail. Like a snake eating its tail in a time loop. Cue theremin theme song.

With bees? Nope. Not me. I just don’t want to be stung.

With being misunderstood? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA–

With the dark, or the heights, or the wide open spaces, or the water, or the riding-on of planes? No, no, no, no and no. Except maybe all at once.

These are all the fears in the whole wide-ity world. Unless you have your own. Which you do. As far as they go, though, you can scare yourself. I’m a busy guy, apparently.