Author’s Note:

The characters of CSI were created by A. Zuiker, and are the property of CBS and its affiliates.  All other characters depicted in this story are fictional; they are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author.  Although the locales in this story are real, all events, incidents and characters are pure invention.  
© December 2003. LSI.

This story is in response to the Improv challenge at Unbound.  The first and last lines are provided, and the story cannot exceed 1,000 words.

Overcoming Fears

“Why is there Jell-O here?” Greg asked.

“Jell-O?”  Did somebody say Jell-O?  Sara swallowed convulsively, pushing down a sudden feeling of dread.  Reluctantly, as if pulled by some great magnetic force, she made her way across the yard to Greg, stopping a couple of feet short of the table. She boosted herself up on the tip of her toes, leaned forward, squinted, and peered hesitantly into the offending cooler. She quickly fell back on her heels and closed her eyes. It was Jell-O; a big, fat, tub of red, jiggling, Jell-O. “O! God,” she garbled as her stomach clenched revoltingly. “It’s Jell-O.”

When she opened her eyes again, Greg was looking at her curiously. He opened his mouth to say something just as the back door opened and their hostess for this year’s CSI barbecue stepped out carrying a stack of bowls.  “Jacqui. I see you went all out with dessert,” he said.

“That’s not dessert,” she replied crossly as she whisked past him. “It’s for a Jell-O eating contest. A race, actually.  Hands behind back, eating out of the bowl—like dogs.” She chuckled at that. “First to finish wins, and I’ll be snapping the pictures.”

“Cool,” Sara heard Greg say as he followed Jacqui to the long row of picnic tables in the middle of the yard. 

Sara closed her eyes and swallowed. I can’t do this.

It wasn’t enough that Jacqui, with her team of organizers, had planned competitions targeted at grade-schoolers—Sara still had gravel in her shoes from the three-legged race to prove it—but she had been a good sport and participated in everything. She wasn’t against having a little fun every once in a while.  But Jell-O was pushing it. She felt caught in some Fear Factor nightmare, and the worst part of it was that if the others found out about her Jell-O phobia, she’d never live it down.

Her eyes fell to the fold-out legs of the arborite table that was holding the tub of Jell-O. They didn’t look all that sturdy and the table would probably come tumbling down with little encouragement. It would make a hell of a mess on Jacqui’s patio, but at this point, Sara didn’t care. 

She cast a furtive glance behind her. Jacqui was briefing her other guests on the next events; some were playing horse-shoe at the back of the yard, while others stood in circles telling jokes and drinking beer.  No one was paying attention to her.

She started slowly, tentatively, kicking one of the legs with her right foot. The table shook with each kick, but she only managed to displace the leg by a quarter of an inch. She looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching again, and kicked a little harder. The right corner of the table fell a little forward, but still held up.

“Kicking gravel from your shoe?”

She turned swiftly.  “Where—where have you been?”

“I was hiding out,” Grissom said.

Sara had seen him earlier, at the beginning of the party, but he disappeared soon after that and she figured he’d gone home.  Had he been watching her from his hiding place all this time?  An uncomfortable flush crept up her face. Great. Just great.

“Something wrong?”

“Uh…no,” she started, then  took a breath and told the truth, “Yes. I hate Jell-O and Jacqui’s going to make us eat it.”  A shudder wracked her body just talking about it.

Grissom looked at her with curious amusement before putting a comforting hand on her back. He frowned and said, “You’re shaking.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She looked around to make sure no one could hear. “I don’t just hate it, it…it scares the hell out of me. I can barely look at the stuff without hyperventilating.”

“You have a Jell-O phobia?” His mouth twitched in amusement, and he bit his bottom lip to control it.

Sara frowned. “It’s no joke, Grissom. Some people are terrified of snakes, for others it’s spiders or frogs. For me, it’s Jell-O. It may be a strange phobia, but it’s just as real as the garden-variety ones.”  His lips were still twitching and she glared at him.  “Aren’t you afraid of anything?”

He looked at her, his eyes narrowed, a wicked gleam in them.  “There’s a young woman who terrifies me.”

Her mouth dropped open, and for a moment she feared if she spoke it would come out as a croak. She took a steadying breath and shook her head.  “That’s not the same.”

“Are you sure? Classic symptoms of phobia are shortness of breath, rapid or irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea…I think it qualifies.”

Sara pursed her lips.  He was probably trying to take her mind off her fear, but he could just as easily be sending her a message.  Whatever it was, it was working.  She was much less aware of the tub of Jell-O all of a sudden. 

“So how do you overcome it?”

“By understanding its origin and then gradually confronting it.”

Sara shifted her gaze to the tub of Jell-O, surprised that it didn’t immediately make her flinch. Pleased with herself, she swiftly glanced at Grissom and smiled.  He flinched and took a step back. 

Suddenly, Grissom looked as uncomfortable as she'd been feeling; sweat erupted on his forehead and he took another step back. Still, he managed to wink at her. “If that doesn’t work, just think of it this way:  Jell-O is nothing more than Kool-Aid with a hard on.”

Sara laughed as she watched him walk away. Then, she stretched forward to look at the Jell-O again, and jerked back. The key word was ‘gradually’. There wouldn’t be a cure today, for either of them. 

She kicked the gravel from her shoe.

The End