Those Eyes.

"I think that you should consider it is all," Marge shrugged, offering Taye one of her wide-eyed looks that enhanced the golden specs in her pool-of-honey eyes. He combed his calloused fingers through his tresses wearily and sighed, smoothed a crease from his checkered shirt.

"I just don't know, do people actually go for anxiety? I thought therapy was for those crazy people with matted hair who run around claiming to be the reincarnation of King Tut or something."

Marge seemed to pause, clearing the counter of peanut butter cookie crumbs and a greasy napkin before her mouth flew open wide and a laugh poured from her lips like a waterfall. She shook her head and exhaled, a stray rivulet of her blond coiffure was startled as it was held in midair by her breath before retreating back over her left brow.

"My niece has gone just to talk. It isn't necessarily the therapy you see in movies, Taye. Think of it as talking to someone outside of yourself and your circle, someone that has an objective view, open ears, and can offer advice if you want."

"It isn't that serious," he tried to brush the subject off like an unwanted insect that fluttered through the breeze and gracefully landed on his shoulder on a day full of sunshine and the aromas of spring and yawning flowers. Except his days weren't ever very much like spring and were relatively void of warm sunshine and petals and flowers and the touch of the breeze. They were, however, very full of insects landing on his shoulders, climbing up his neck, entering his ears, and hatching eggs and prancing around in his brain like they owned the place. Because they did.

"Taye, you had to take a twenty minute break earlier this week, and you told me it was because you felt anxious about random crap," she motioned quotation marks with her hands as she said this, nearly completely restating his reasoning behind quietly asking to go to the bathroom and sit in a stall with his heart palpitating out of his chest loudly and furiously enough to rip through bloodily and drill through the tiled floor that seemed to quake and spin when he glanced at it.

Cocking his head back, his Adam's apple bobbing as he sent saliva slowly down his dry throat, he said, "I guess it is getting out of hand. I just don't know, thinking about telling someone about my anxious thoughts and stuff just makes me more anxious." A voice in his head chuckled, reminding him that he wasn't only anxious. His sleep was riddled with nightmares and had been for years. "Reincarnation of King Tut who? You're the one who is really screwed up in the head, buddy. Still pouting about how daddy-" The voice held its tongue.

The coffee shop's scarlet red door creaked open, luring both Taye's and Marge's heads to turn to the noise.

"Welcome, Mr. Barry, what will it be today?" Marge questioned with a gap-toothed smile white enough to be suspicious.

"I think I will have my usual frappe," he nodded to Taye who was now leaning against the counter, his knuckles white and jaw clenched. Mr. Barry's eyes were a chilling cerulean hue, he had stray hairs clawing through the pores on his chin where he had yet to shave. Those eyes. Taye could feel his stomach swell with dread, his memories laughed as they stirred and stirred and stirred and-

"Taye, can you please get me a lid?" Marge asked, dousing his trance with reality, stirring him to remember he was at work.

As he left the shop, the sky above him was a canvas of purple and a rosy pink exploited by streaks of blue. He strolled along the sidewalk entranced in numbness and a rabbit hole of thoughtlessness. Various people passed him, some with eyes plastered to cellphone screens, others dragging along whining toddlers with sticky palms, but he noticed none of them. He simply sauntered and followed his home instinct until he reached his apartment building and slid up the concrete stairs, his grey converse echoing in the otherwise quiet space. Not that he noticed the sound of his shoes, or much of anything really-except for the way his heart was pounding its fleshy bloody veiny fists against his chest and how all his brain could muster up to play in his head was the image of those eyes and that stubble on Mr. Barry's chin. Upon entering his apartment, he collapsed onto his couch, the cushions surprised by how limp and helpless his weight felt. Afraid to sleep, yet desperately lacking it, Taye lay on the couch, his limbs sprawled out like branches from his core. Those eyes, he thought again and again until he could think only in incomprehensible slurs and his eyelids finally fluttered shut.

"Taye! You little bit..." He whirled around, terror filling every crevice corner and ounce of his body. His father's hands dragged him from his bed and flung him to the carpeted floor.

"Jerry! Jerry stop!" He heard his mother shrieking and imagined she had warm tears dancing on her cheeks, but he couldn't see in his dark room.

"I thought I told you not to do that you piece of..." Taye couldn't recall what he had done, he hadn't seen his dad in two days. He was most certainly drunk, and the alcohol was at the drivers seat now, veering into various lanes and hitting the curb.

"Oh god, Jerry!"

Taye felt his head smack the floor hard, he then felt his father's coarse hands pound him in the face and neck and stomach. Again again again until he couldn't see, not because of the dark, but because of the blood filling his eyes. Nearly unconscious, Taye was relieved when he felt his father's blows cease. He heard them resume on another body though, so he kept quiet and wished and wished for it to end until he fell into a deep slumber. When he awoke, he was still on the floor, but he could tell the room was alit. He attempted to clear the blood away from his face, and heard soft weeping. It was his father, crying drunk tears onto the bloodied corpse of his mother. He tried to get up onto his feet but stumbled first. He stood over her body, and glanced at his father in disgust. Her cerulean eyes, so piercing were still ajar, the life once in them had fled. Those eyes.

Taye awoke with sweat upon his brow, it clung both to the fabric of his shirt and his chest. His nightmares had been vivid before, but they didn't usually travel so far down memory lane, as if to spare him. They had yet to spare him tonight. He had never wanted to return to that night in his head and hadn't so vividly and fully in years. His nightmares had simply been blurry replays, never with his mother, not since he was a child.

But he wasn't a child anymore, and the demons in his head had grown weary of being stowed away and suppressed. They wanted to devour.