FEEL

20. Lyssmania

Lyssmania ~ the irrational fear that someone you know is angry at you.

~ The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows ~

~°~

Mr Pierce in his fury was something I rarely had the opportunity to see, but one that I hoped never to see again.

It wasn't fear that I had felt.

He wouldn't hurt me, I know that for a fact. He also wouldn't hurt anyone, not unless, as I came to know now, he saw it very necessary.

But whatever it was about him when he was angry, it both froze and burnt the blood beneath my skin. It both made me want to cower away and provoke him, watch him snap, watch him lose the control he holds with such poise in his grasp.

In his resting form, he was as beautiful as art. Stroked gently upon the canvas as if the artist, while painting him, was gazing into a calm green field on a sunny afternoon. As if the artist had pursued and attained all of life's pleasures, obtained all of its successes and felt all of its finest sensations, therefore composed his image with a satisfied hand.

In his rage, he was fiercely alluring. A form of art, still, but not the kind that was motionless and quiet. Not the kind you can hang on your wall or watch on your screen. It was akin to a song. It didn't have to be loud like rock music or aggressive like thrash metal. It was the ominous kind that played to convey an inevitable foreboding. In that way, it was still chaotic, evocative, merciless — but ever so artistic. To the sight, to the ears, to the mind.

He brooded while he drove, the tension inside of him so intense that it escaped through his pores and dissolved in the space of the car. It suffocated us both. The fact that he was trying to contain it made it all the worst.

Intimidation. That's what it was. What I felt. Not fear. Intimidation mixed with a kind of respect that came when you realize that you don't want to upset someone, so you would do whatever they pleased, however and whenever they asked you to.

I should want to get away from him. To escape as fast as I could. But when the car stopped and he ran a stressed hand through his dark hair, I wanted nothing but to console him. To make it all go away and return him to who he was when his eyes smiled sweetly towards me. When he was a humble, gentle soul residing in a firm and aggressive body.

Regardless, I exited the car. I want to placate every aggravated cell in him, but the things he had said, had assumed about me were too hurtful to put aside for him at that moment.

Just as I'm about to close the door, Mr Pierce calls for me. I duck back down into the car, eyes finding his.

“I'm sorry if I hurt you. I wouldn't think that way of you, not in a million years.”

The words hit a part of my heart that's never been struck, so I lift and shut the door, leaving without another word.

What is he doing to me?

Is it what he says? The way he says it? The fact that he's the one saying it? What about him makes me want to surrender everything I hold dear for him to possess? It was then that I realized that I could search my brain for hours, looking for the answer, but I wouldn't find it. Some things waited for time to reveal them.

I enter into my building, feeling his scrutiny behind me until I'm out of his eye view and up the second flight of stairs leading to my floor. Once I'm there, I stand in the corner and zip my backpack open, pulling out my faded gray pants and removing the skirt.