THE FEAR OF E
by
Steven D. Bennett

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2010 by Steven D. Bennett

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The psychiatrist sensed he was being observed but determined to ignore the idea. His next appointment wasn’t for an hour, his secretary hadn’t warned him of unscheduled visitors and he was alone in the office. He had never suffered from Scopophobia, the fear of being stared at, or any other recognized fears (though Medomalacuphobia did pop up now and again). Still, that strange, extra-sensory phenomenon of being watched (which, as far as he knew was unnamed and so had dubbed it ‘Stare-a-noia’) was overwhelming enough to give him cause to look up from his paperwork and squint in the direction of the door. It was open a small sliver and there was an eyeball floating up and down in the space.
“Can I help you?” he asked the bouncing eye, and the door opened wider. A man with frazzled brown hair, brown t-shirt and stained jeans took a few tentative steps inside. The psychiatrist slid his hand closer to the phone as he had Security on speed dial.
“Dr. Clark sent me,” the intruder said, which made the psychiatrist frown and move his hand from the phone to scribble on his Notes to Id pad. Clark was a psychiatrist as well, on the coveted ninth floor, and one who was not in the habit of losing clients, i.e. money, and therefore referred only his hopeless and/or broke patients. That initiated the frown. Clark was also the man’s tennis partner, which was the catalyst for the note: Find new tennis partner.  “Are you Dr. Bristol?”
“That’s what the door and window tell me,” Bristol said.
The visitor turned to look over his shoulder before turning back with a puzzled expression.
 “I’m Doctor Tristan Bristol. But all patients must first speak to my secretary–“
”There was no one there,” the man said, “Outside.”
This caused a second frown and second note: Find new secretary.
“Well...come in and sit down,” Bristol said, settling back in his chair. He watched the man closely, mentally recording every move and paying special attention to the eyes. The windows to the soul, he remembered, which revealed all things. A third frown appeared as a picture of his first wife flashed into mind; her long, lean body, flaming red hair, youthful breasts and those sweet, innocent blue eyes. Innocent. Blue-eyed devil, more like it. He made a third note, mental this time, to keep an open mind. “And what is your name?”
“Paul Miller.”
“What seems to be the problem, Paul?”
“I’m not here for me. For...a friend.”
“I see,” Bristol said, smiling. The man spoke with a slow, easy twang, and Bristol suspected that even if he did presently live in L.A., he was not far removed from the swamp. “And does your friend wear blue jeans as well?”
Paul looked down at his pants, then back at Bristol with that same confused expression. “Sometimes, I guess. Though not Levi’s,” he added, and after a moment an almost imperceptible smile formed on the man’s lips as if amused by some private joke.
“I don’t understand,” Bristol said, annoyed, now, not only at the interruption of his schedule but at missing the humor of the remark.
“He has a problem. But it’s not with his pants.”
“Go on.”
“He has a fear,” the man said. “Do you deal with fear?”
“Of course. All kinds. What are you afraid of?”
“My friend,” Miller repeated with emphasis. “It’s my cousin. He’s afraid.”
“Right, your cousin. What is he afraid of?”
“E.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Bristol leaned closer.
“E.”
“E?”
“Yes.”
“Eee?” Bristol said phonetically, then hesitated. “How do you mean?”
“He has the fear of the letter E.”
The doctor sat back with a knowing smile. There was no fear of letters, as far as he knew. There was a fear of numbers, Arithmophobia or Numerophobia, and even the fear of individual numbers: Triskaidekaphobia, the fear of 13, and Octophobia, the fear of 8. Bibliophobia was the fear of books. But the fear of specific letters was unknown. However, none of that truly mattered, for now he was convinced that Dr. Clark was behind the whole charade and he purposed not to be taken in. “Well, the fear of E,” Bristol said. “That’s a new one. Have you tried drugs?”
The man looked surprised. “Well, sure, when I was younger,” he said. “But I found it dulls the mind.”
The doctor pursed his lips. “No, your cousin.”
“I don’t know if he’s tried drugs.”
“No, was he given drugs. For his condition. Prescription drugs. By a doctor.”
“Oh. No.”
“What about hypnosis?”
“Only once,” Paul said. “I ended up on stage at a carnival doing a striptease.”
Bristol glanced at the phone. Star Two, he thought, and all his troubles would be dragged away. “I mean the patient. Has he undergone hypnosis?”
“Oh. No. No hypnosis. No drugs. Do you think you could help him?”
Bristol drummed his fingers, wondering how he could get back at Clark. Perhaps if he videotaped the session with the “patient,” then have Clark disbarred. That seemed fair. “I suppose you could bring him in.”
Paul shook his head. “He would never come here.”
“Why not?”
“He won’t leave the house. You’ll have to go there.”
“A house call?” he asked, astonished, wondering if perhaps the problem were legitimate. Even Clark wouldn’t go to those lengths.
“He won’t leave his home.”
“Why not?”
“Road signs, man, road signs! They’re everywhere, not to mention businesses. McDonalds alone would do him in.”
“There are no e’s in McDonald’s,” the doctor said wryly.
“Ninety-nine billion serrrved,” Paul said, drawing out the last word and looking at Bristol as if he were uncertified. “Do you know how many e’s there are in the world?”
 “No,” he admitted.
“A lot. Now, when can you see him? The sooner the better. Tomorrow would be best.”
Bristol chortled.  “Tomorrow,” he said, “is Saturday. Besides, I don’t work pro bono.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a legal term. It means I don’t work for free. I’d need money,” he said, starting to rise, “and if you don’t mind me saying so, it doesn’t look like you...”
“He has a trust fund.”
The doctor stopped in mid-rise. “Trust fund?”
The man nodded. “He’s worth millions.”
Doctor Bristol swallowed. “What time tomorrow?”
Bristol took his time arriving at the address. Part of it was posturing–he didn’t want to seem too anxious or interested–and part of it was location. The address was in a part of town he’d seen only from the freeway and it was certainly not familiar to him. The homes were small, at least fifty years old, with the basic steel fence enclosing small yard around small house and one-car garage with the inevitable car on blocks in the drive and overflowing oil pan underneath. As he drove the neighborhood squinting at house numbers he was convinced the whole thing was a wild goose chase and he should simply continue on to the gym. But there was that pesky trust fund, giving the doctor an ethical dilemma.
Perhaps Cousin Paul wasn’t as dumb as he made out to be. Perhaps this was simply a clever way of getting his hands on the money, perhaps by having someone declared mentally incompetent and becoming beneficiary. Stopping such chicanery wasn’t Bristol’s dilemma, of course; it was how to become involved before the money was gone.
He didn’t find the house as much as he recognized the clothes the man had been wearing the day before. Paul was standing out by the curb with his arms folded, waiting. The doctor forced a smile and wave as he u-turned and parked his Porsche behind a Kia, the only time in his life he had done such a thing. He got out and walked over.
“I got lost,” he said, hoping the man caught the meaning. When he didn’t appear to, he added: “Terra incognito.”
“He’s inside,” Paul said as he turned.
The house was blinding. White lights lit white rooms. “What’s all this?” the doctor asked as he reached for his shades.
“Shadows,” was the only thing the man said, as if that explained everything. “Now, before we go in...no, you can’t wear those. You have to take them off.”
“Why?”
Paul pointed. “The name.”
Bristol took them off and looked at the shades. ‘Oakley’ was spelled on the left lens. He frowned, putting them back into his pocket. He liked to stay in touch with his cel, which he had left in the car, and the glasses would have provided a link and possible excuse if he needed an escape.
“Remember,” Paul said, his arm outstretched in the doorway barring entrance, “no e’s.”
“What do you mean?”
Paul took an exasperated breath. “I told you. No e’s. You can’t say any word that has the letter e in it.”
The doctor looked at the man. Trust fund, he thought. No e’s in that. “I’ll...try...to...comply,” the doctor said, mentally spelling the accidental rhyme.
“That’s a good start.”
The room was just as white and bright. A man wearing white clothes was standing with his back to the men, wiping the wall with a white towel.
“Stan. This is a psychiatrist. Tristan Bristol.”
The man kept washing.
“Hello, Stan,” he said, and the man cringed, clasping his hands to his ears as he turned to glare. Bristol looked at Paul who was extending three fingers horizontally with his right hand. He hoped for a fleeting moment that it was an offer for a drink but realized by his expression there would be no refreshment. He was making the sign of an E and shaking his head. Bristol gave him the okay sign back. “Hi, Stan. What...is...you doing?”
“Shadows.”
“Shadows?”
“Dirt and shadows,” Stan said, flicking away an unseen speck with his thumbnail. “Such things bring about odd configurations.”
“I see,” Bristol said, causing Stan to yell “Ahh!” and for Paul to hit him. The doctor mouthed the word ‘Ow’ while rubbing his arm, took a breath and tried again: “Do...you...know how this...initial...” he stopped, editing as he spoke. “How long?”
“How long what?”
“Your...fright...of...” he searched his brain, looking to Paul who was standing blank-faced, “of...of...odd shadows?”
“A long time.”
“How long?”
Stan stopped wiping, turned, and looked at Bristol like a man mildly annoyed at the interruption. When he spoke his demeanor was calm and even.
“My fourth scholastic annum. I was in an harmonious words organization, and I...” the words suddenly stopped and the man seemed to lose himself in some distant painful memory, “...and I was struck with anxious thoughts. I found it hard to talk. As I did, my mind got cloudy and I did mash my word with a citrus fruit, playing a fool. I cannot abolish the humiliation, and from that span of days to now I am bound.”
“Bound?”
“By that particular configuration. I cannot run from it.”
“The letter?”
Again, the man winced and covered as if he had touched his ears to a hot stove. “If you would stop using that individual symbol in your communication, I stand thankful.”
“Sorry.”
“It has brought much pain. Much pain.”
Bristol nodded, then paused, knowing it was his turn to speak. “Go on,” he said after a moment, glad some cliches had purpose.
 “As a psychiatrist you know doubt think this odd. But if not for that particular compulsion my world is as normal as yours.”
The doctor nodded. “Really.”
The man cringed again, moaning and looking to Paul as the cause of his current anguish. After recovering he said to Bristol: “You must subsist on a small grouping of words.”
Bristol was amazed at the fluidity of the man’s speech, but he also recognized the underlying challenge. He took a breath.  “Well, you...you...you talk good,” he said, expelling air in exhaustion.
The man looked at him with a condescension and said purposely: “You...do not.” And with that he turned away.
“Do you think you can help him?” Paul asked when they were outside.
“Very strange,” Bristol muttered in response. “His problem...it’s not what I thought. From what I gathered there was some trauma involving a spelling bee in the fourth grade.”
“Right,” Paul said. “It was a city-wide championship and he was a finalist. I remember Aunt Jean telling the story. His mother,” he added for Bristol’s benefit.
“I guessed as much. It’s interesting; apart from this peculiar obsession he seems quite normal.”
“Just like us,” Paul agreed, and Bristol gave him a disquieting look.
“That one event has triggered years of bondage. The humiliation he felt at misspelling the word has made him retreat from the world altogether. Of course, ‘e’ is the most prevalent letter in the English language. There is, as he said, no escaping it. It’s too bad it wasn’t the letter Q.”
“He’d never be able to use a Q-tip!” Paul said, shocked.
“It would be interesting to know which word became the impetus for such a term of alphabetical bondage,” the doctor said, taking a self-satisfied breath then exhaling regretfully at not having brought his digital voice recorder.
“Huh?” Paul said.
“It might be helpful to know what word he misspelled during the spelling bee that caused him so much trouble.”
“‘Eliminate’,” Paul said, which brought surprise to Bristol’s face and pride to Paul’s. “Aunt Jean told me that, too. It’s like lemonade. You know, they sound the same.”
“Taste different, though.”
“Huh? He mixed up the two words and spelled lemonade instead of eliminate. Everybody laughed at him. After that, he was eliminated from the competition. Kind of a double whammy.”
“Hmm,” Bristol murmured, lost in thought. “So that’s what he meant when he said he mashed his words with a citrus fruit. He doesn’t have a fear of lemons, does he? I didn’t think so. It’s interesting that in losing the spelling bee when he was young, which is a type of test in itself, that has become the catalyst for another test: going through his whole life without coming in contact with the most common letter in the English language.”
“Huh?”
“I’m not quite sure how to proceed from here. Typical therapy doesn’t seem like the right option.” Bristol imagined himself trying to counsel the man for an hour or two each week while trying to avoid using words without the letter e. He shuddered. No, his involvement wasn’t the answer. But he knew a man, an eccentric who was a top linguist and part-time pain-in-the-ass. “Let me confer with a colleague of mine. He might have some ideas.”
Paul smiled for the first time and put out his hand. “I knew when Dr. Clark recommended you it was a good choice.”
“My reputation proceeds me,” Bristol said, refraining a bow.
“Huh? No, it was your name.”
“My name?”
“Tristan Bristol. No e’s.”
Bristol pursed his lips and decided to throw out a cautious caveat to make the man sweat. “Now, I’m not guaranteeing anything. I don’t know if my friend will be able to help, or if he’ll be interested, or what his schedule is like, or if we’ll ever be able to–“
”Money’s no object,” Cousin Paul interrupted.
Bristol flipped on his shades and walked to his beeping car. “I’ll speak with him tomorrow.”
To Bristol, Bobbi Chang looked more like a guy who should be serving up the second helping of orange chicken at the local Glutamate-To-Go rather than one of the leading linguists in the country, but Bristol’s bitterness stemmed from more than professional jealousy. At the moment, however, he was in need of the man’s services and was composed and professional as he presented the situation while standing amidst the scattered electronic equipment which filled Chang’s studio apartment.
“That’s a strange one, all right,” Chang said. “But what does it have to do with me?”
“Trust fund,” he reminded him for the fifth time.
“You know I don’t care about money,” he said, a fact Bristol needed no reminder. It was one of the reasons his name had come to mind.
“Think of the notoriety,” Bristol said, and knew he had struck a chord. Short, skinny people, he thought, straightening, are always looking for ways to stand out. And up.
“Why call me? This seems like a mental problem.” Then, with a smirk: “Not one for SlimJim.”
Bristol winced. ‘SlimJim’ was the screen name Chang used during their online Scrabble tournament. It was also the cause for his consternation with Chang; ‘SlimJim’ was the overall points leader.
“Except for this one phobia, the man is perfectly normal.”
“To you, maybe.”
“It’s not a debilitating condition, except that he won’t leave the house.”
“I’d love to have that problem. I hate leaving the house.”
Bristol looked around. You hate cleaning the house, he thought. “Anyway, a fear of individual letters has no known precedent in psychiatric circles, and even though there was a childhood trauma which became its focus, I think the approach to this problem must come from a different source.”
“Why call me?” Chang asked again.
“Because you’re a great linguist,” Bristol said, ignoring the obvious joke, though the compliment left his tongue with the same bitter taste. “You know words inside and out. I thought you might have some ideas.”
Chang nodded his agreement. “You’re right. You had no where else to turn. So, he’s in need of a normal vowel movement.” Chang paused, then a giggle began to bubble up which grew in crescendo with time.
“Are you done?” Bristol asked a minute later.
Chang wiped the tears off his face. “Yes. Okay, I’ll help.”
“Great. Any ideas?”
“What if he learns a different language?”
“Do you know one that doesn’t incorporate the letter ‘e’?”
“Chinese, Japanese. Hieroglyphics.”
“He’s got to be able to function normally here. In this country.”
“Right.” He gazed down and seemed to lose himself in the mess on the carpet.
“Well?” Bristol said after a minute. “What are you going to do?”
“I,” said the great man, sliding a cannibalized computer across the carpet with his foot and sitting down in the space it had vacated, “am going to think.”
In the month before he heard from Bobbi Chang again, Bristol was busy doing his own thinking. It consisted mainly of planning the book he was preparing to outline, eventually write, and in preparing his lecture tour. ‘This heretofore unknown branch of psychiatric compulsion would need a specialist to lead the way in its exploration, to which position I humbly ascend,” had been the first and only sentence of his book, entitled “Alphabetaphobia.” He would become the father of a whole new fear. Who knew how many other people there were in the world with various grammatical fears which needed addressing? Parentheses-aphobia, or Semi-colonaphobia, or Uncommon Comma-tosis.
In any event, he thought, looking around his office while an overweight manic-depressive mother of six children conceived with three different men droned on in the opposite chair about why she felt she needed to seek acceptance in procreation, it would be the means of getting out of the hell-hole in which he was encased and moving up to the ninth floor where he could charge for a better, more attractive clientele.
Also within that month he had been pestered  by incessant phone calls from one Paul Miller threatening to take his business elsewhere. Between his apologies and assurances, Miller had agreed to support the status quo and wait until he heard from the psychiatrist. Therefore it was with great relief when he received a call with news that SlimJim had come up with a solution.
“What is it?”
“I’d rather not say over the phone,” the voice said in a barely audible tone. “You never know who’s listening. And I don’t want you telling anyone.”
“I don’t have anything to tell. Yet.”
“Exactly. Yet. Pick me up and we’ll go over to the house together. And make sure you’re not followed.”
Ping-ponging between wishing he had never involved Chang and thoughts of what his future groupies might look like, Bristol pulled up to Chang’s apartment and honked the horn. Chang’s face appeared behind the window shades and disappeared just as quickly. The front door opened, Chang looked out and around, then ran to the car holding a small box under his arm. He slid in next to Bristol.
“Are you trying to wake-up the whole neighborhood?”
“It’s almost noon.”
He put the box on the floor and held it with both hands.
“What’s in there? The Brain That Wouldn’t Die?”
“Never mind. Just go!”
So it was with paranoid secrecy that they came to Stan’s home to find Cousin Paul  awaiting their arrival.
“It’s about time.”
“Who’s he?” Chang asked, holding the box tightly to his chest.
“The patient’s cousin. He contacted me.”
“How do I know he didn’t contact you to get to me and steal my invention?” Chang said.
“Because you hadn’t invented it yet,” Bristol said, but Chang was already skulking inside.
Cousin Paul let them in the room after examining Chang’s clothing and explaining the vocal rules to Chang’s perturbed impatience. “I know,” Chang said. “Go.”
The man motioned for Stan, who was tossing a tennis ball against the wall, to come over to the men.
“Who is that?”
“A friend,” Bristol said, then cringed and moaned along with Stan.
“Do us all a favor,” Stan said. “Don’t talk.”
“I’ll do all talking,” Chang said, setting down the box. “This will assist you in your mission for normal viability,” he said fluidly, turning his head to give Bristol a superior side-glance. “I will humbly profit from many shortcomings of a...of a...” he hesitated, a look of panic crossing his face before he re-composed and finished: “...of a quack!” He wiped his forehead, bending down and pulling from the box what looked like big earphones with a small, rectangular box along the top curvature. “Put it on.”
The man did so, warily, as Chang nodded. When it was over the man’s ears Chang said to Bristol: “Say anything. Anything at all.”
Bristol thought. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Something with an ‘e’ would be good.”
“I had so much tea that I had to pee.”
They all watched Stan’s face for reaction. There was none.
“I went down to the sea to see what I could see,” Chang said.
Stan smiled.
“She sells sea shells by the seashore,” Paul chimed in.
Stan gave him the thumbs up.
“What does it do?” Paul asked. “Block out all sound?”
“No, it doesn’t block out all sound,” Chang mimicked. “It removes all words with the letter ‘e’ and replaces them with other words and other sounds.”
“Oh, like a portable thesaurus,” Paul said. “Simple.”
“Simple!” Chang exploded, his hands clutching his head. “If it were so simple, then why in all of man’s existence has nothing like this been done before? Simple!”
“Very impressive, Bobbi,” Bristol said, almost smelling the money. “You did great.”
“I’m already at work on the patent and licensing. Granted, this is probably a temporary solution,” Chang said, feigning modesty. “I’m sure the problem goes much deeper–“
”Right, right,” Bristol said, cutting him off. More advice along those lines and he’d never see any of that temporary trust fund. 
“This is incredible,” Stan said a little too loud as he still had the headphones on. “I’ll be able to go out of the house again. I can’t thank you enough.” The man took off the headphones and turned them over, examining.
“It truly is amazing, Bobbi,” Bristol said again, with more admiration for the man than he thought possible. “What do you call it?”
Chang smiled at all of them, pausing for effect, enjoying the moment. “The E-Liminator!”
Bristol and Paul looked at each other, then slowly at Stan. His look of relief turned slowly to horror at the thing in his hands. He dropped the device as if scalded and ran screaming from the room and down the hall.
Bristol glared at Chang before exiting with a twelve-letter expletive that, upon later reflection, Chang would find particularly inappropriate. What, after all, had his mother to do with any of this?
He then looked slowly over to Cousin Paul who had an expression of utter disbelief. He also said just one word before leaving. “Dumbass!”
Chang watched him go, then bent down to pick up the pieces of his scattered invention, considering the man’s last word. No e’s, he noticed.

STEVE BENNETT  was born in Boston and has remained literary ever since, even after moving to Southern California. He has written short stories, novels, humorous commentaries, light verse and songs. You can follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SBennettWriter
Or on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/StevenDBennettWriter.
Or contact by email:  deadllifebooks@gmail.com

Also by Steven D. Bennett

Throne
The Chuck-It List
Trace the Dead Eye
Humor of the Gospels
Thadeus Cochran Comes to Town