The Awful Thing is something intensely personal that will happen just to me: hurricanes, wars, famines and all the machineries of death and pain are, of course, awful things, but they bring on feelings of sorrow and sympathy not fear. The Awful Thing has its own strange intense fear that drifts in to the room like the sweet cloying scent of incense and decay. It is not the fear of spitting blood or the lump beneath the skin. Not that sort of thing at all. It is the fear of a message. A demand from which there is no possibility of refusal. Its very banality makes it terrifying and Awful.
I have just finished reading Sean Tan's Tales from Outer Suburbia - Perhaps I am reminded of this because of his Lost Thing -