Shut doors and dark rooms

"I'm sorry for being so upset, will you please forgive me?"

"Why were you upset?"

She paused, knowing if she told him, played the finger-pointing blame-assessor, he would get angry all over again.

"I don't know." She said finally.

He didn't look at her. He just stared at the phone. "I forgive you."

She seethed. "No you don't."

He glanced up at her from the phone, the room was dark and the light from the device carved ugly shadows on his greasy face.

"And I'm not sorry." She finished firmly. And then she left. Walking as powerfully as she could. Hoping the stomps across the wood floor would somehow wound him and his lies. But all she did was hurt her already bruised heel.

Out of the room, she stopped, craving something darker than the hallway she was in.

His anger caused her to become upset. They had been talking causually about nothing. Then, he worked himself up into believing she was trying to fight against him. But she hadn't been. She didn't understand how he could get so upset over a simple conversation.

So she had apologized for becoming upset, hoping it might salve any wounds. Make things better before they got worse. But when he asked her why she had become upset, she claimed she didn't know.

But she did.

Telling would only ensue another argument.
........
He was naturally an angry man.

Everything was wrong in his world, because he let nothing please him. Whenever he became angry, he would not blow up. No, he would simply shut the door.

"Why don't you do this?" He had asked.

"But I'm already doing that." She said.

"You just said you were not."

"I'm not doing it your way. I'm doing it my way, but it achieves the same thing-"

"Whatever."

And he shut the door.
.......
Sometimes, whenever she wasn't so upset with him for being so irrational, she felt sorry for him. Once, She had tried to show him some truth she had found. But he didn't want it. He thought he didn't need it. So even when she told him, he couldn't see it.

The truth she had found was a light through the darkness. She wanted to share it, because she didn't want him to pull her back into his darkness. She didn't want to go back there after having grasped the light.

Anger is a bitter feeling. It doesn't satisfy. But once you grab hold of it, the dark seems too deep to escape. But it's not, if you only flip the light switch up.
........

But in the hallway, carressing her bruised foot, her shoulder brushed against the switch on the wall.

She set her foot down.

No, she knew her way around in the dark. She didn't need the light to see.

So she hid in her room.

And shut the door.