Is it when you’re watching a horror film, the high pitched notes start to shiver and you realise something ghastly is about to leap from the shadows? Is it when you’re alone in the house and a storm howls outside? Is it when you awake from a nightmare in a cold sweat, palms clammy and breathing rushed? Or is it when you hear the devastating news that a loved one may not survive the night?

Over millions of years, Phobos had tasted many sorts of fear but this fear, the one based of love and worry was always the sweetest. Humans feared. To fear and worry was their instinct. It was rare that they could manage to do something without that niggling sense of regret or anxiety. That minor feeling of apprehension was not enough to feed Phobos though.

Phobos thrived of terror. It was the reason for existence as the Greek God of fear. Apollo had often commented that the amount of horror films currently being produced should have kept Phobos busy but what nobody else realised was that it was only an artificial sense of fear. The pathetic humans knew they were in no true life-threatening danger so their fear was only a minor rush of trepidation.

No, what Phobos craved was honest to goodness, bone-chilling terror. He wanted the panic that cut straight through to a human’s heart, the kind that twisted their stomach into countless knots. It most often occurred after the deadly news that a loved one was in danger.

Phobos was currently located inside a hospital ward, listening to a woman sob. Her daughter was in the room next door, hooked up to countless machines which were the only things keeping her alive. Phobos was relishing in the fear the was wafting from the woman in torrents.

Something was missing though. The woman had been informed her daughter had a fifty, fifty chance of survival. The odds were too good. He needed the woman to be hysterical from worry.

Ghosting to the room where the child was, Phobos scowled. How could he get some more of the drug he desperately needed. Scanning the room, he chose to ignore the doctors that were bustling about, trying to rescue the girl from Death’s clutches.

A sadistic grin flitted over his pale, narrow face as his gaze landed on a switch near the girl’s bedside. He reached out an invisible hand and flicked it upwards. The red light beside it flickered out of existence and Phobos sniggered.

There was a high-pitched squeal and then the doctors snapped into action. Frantic conversation erupted all around Phobos as he made his way back to the room where the mother was. She had just been told about her daughter’s new critical condition and had broken down into pathetic sobs. Phobos felt disgust rise as the woman drew her thighs up to her chest. But Phobos had found his fear, and that was all that mattered.

“Please no.” She choked out.

Phobos settled down for a feast of terror and worry. To him, this was what fear was all about.