The Scientist
Light is refracted in his retinas, the images inverted and the picture's form delivered along nerves to his brain.
The muscles of his eyelids pull the skin apart, revealing a wider view of his eyes while his high, arched eyebrows fold down and up to create two worried ridges at their ends.
The thin structures at the corners of his mouth and edges of his cheeks contract and flex rapidly.
A deep signal of panic explodes down his spine and takes away his insides on its descent, leaving room for a sick, quavering emptiness to swell in his stomach and advance to his throat unchecked.
Spasms chase the invading horror and metaphoric becomes tangible starting at his abdomen where the muscles clench in on themselves with a force that makes him nauseous, continuing to his heart which leaps once like a gunshot against ribs which don't hesitate to expand with un-breathed breath for un-pumped blood that no longer needs oxygen.
His palms are clammy with sweat that is noticed as the pale, fine boned flesh collapses all it's digits against its peculiar damp expanses, pressing hard enough that the appendages quiver, along with the forearms and biceps they're attached to through an accordingly stressed elbow and wrist.
His feet are elevated off the floor as the muscles of his legs shorten in a tense and his knees press together so they have something to vent the pressure against.
Now his shoulders are seized by the quaking and fold forward for a second as his throat begins to constrict and meets the burning terror that had oozed from his hollow stomach.
The tension reaches an apex as the shoulders reverse their push and the upper most columns of his spinal cord roll against each other to carry his skull back and leave an aperture for the stress to exit through.
Now his face reverses itself, eyes pressing closed and tight, twitching muscles passing to those of the outer jaw as his mouth stretches wide- his heart jumps into a thrashing from a stand still- the trembling with its bottled emotion flows from the top of the throat up and out of his gaping mouth- a final shaking commences at his vocal chords- and he screams.
He screams loud, long, hard.
Everything, he screams.
He screams the horror of a lost child, the desperation of a failed brother, the confusion of a foreign prisoner, the pain of a tardy protector, the anger of a futile assistant, the limits of a brilliant mind, the guilt of an errant human, the bruises of a victim of tactless words, the hunger of an untouched heart, the… silence.
Of a man.
Who's sitting in a chair.
Looking out the window at vacancy.
Not.
Screaming.
He never screamed.
He has never screamed (except I've seen him, as many times as I've seen his eyes bypass his reflection to focus on everything that's never there). He has every right in the world, every need- he turns his head and smiles with a mouth that's never opened wider than a lax jaw permits.
Don't smile, don't smile again- "Good to see a smile,"- that's sick, you freak, don't smile. Be a human for once in your God damned life.
He never screamed-
I saw you, I saw you.
He has never screamed-
I know I saw you do it, right now, I saw you.
He has every-
Don't smile, you liar, don't smile-
right in the world-
Don't give me another God damned smile-
every need-
I'm waiting, please, I'm waiting-
to-
I stare hard at the upturned mouth that doesn't even flinch before I leave like I always do and behind several doors, I-
scream. For him.
How many exorcists, I wonder, would be shocked to know that Komui Lee has a stronger nerve than any of them.
He doesn't have to be stoic, he doesn't have to be staunch, he does not have to play dead. He wants to because a smile is one of those lies people love to believe is true, something he can do to make things better.
Most people, seem better.
I can see plainly through him into the man that's trying to yell every time he deserves to, I will wait to see him come out, to hear a stronger man than any of them scream.
I can't see the after, but I know.
The hunger of an untouched heart.
His muscles go limp. His spine tilts his head the opposite way. His mouth nearly shuts and he doesn't bother to take his glasses off.
He cries.
And I'm going to be there to see him for the first time, to see nothing that's always there.