The Great Fear

A man reads a horror novel late at night. His imagination runs away with him; he thinks some dripping beverage is blood, is frightened by his own bear-skin rug, and faints when he sees a shadow of himself in a noose-like tangle of his phone cord. The ambulance arrives and finds the most threatening thing is a kitten in a sock and a shelf of horror novels. They cart off the novels and leave the man.