Enigma
Title: Enigma
Rating: T
Summary: A man's slow descent from innocent curiosity, to troubling obsession.
Author's Note: Just something I thought up one day. Leave a review if you want!
-
He doesn’t mean to stare.
In fact, he tells himself not to each time. But then something will happen. She’ll flip her hair, scratch her arm, or rub her eye and his eyes are locked on hers once again, all of his hard work and discipline long forgotten.
He doesn’t understand it. He is the moth to the flame when it comes to this girl, and it is something that confuses him so much that he stays awake late at night, wondering why he feels this way. They do not share any personal moments together, and there are no late night talks or after class sessions. She does not pay him any special attention or give him any indication that she is interested in him. He isn’t even sure she likes him very much as a teacher.
The times that he does allow himself to stare he sees her writing furiously in two different notebooks. He assumes one is for his class, while the other has a different purpose entirely. She writes whatever he has on the board and listens when he talks. But there are times when he sees her gaze wandering towards the door, or the clock and he becomes self-conscious.
Is this topic boring? Am I talking too much about it? Have I made the class dull? Is it the sound of my voice?
He can’t help but think that it is his fault she is unintrigued by what he is saying, which, does not make any sense at all. She is the one that needs to change her attitude, not him. He is the one who went through countless years of schooling, suffering through his own set of dull and boring classes. Why can’t she do the same?
He knows that it isn’t her fault, or his. It is just the way of the body. After focusing on, or listening to something for so long the body eventually has to move or switch to something else. It has no choice. It is a reflex that is taught to be bad in schools but inevitable in real life. He cannot fault her for it no more than she can fault him for having an hour and 10 minute class. It is out of their control.
Even so, he longs to know what she writes in that other notebook.
No subject has caught his interest so greatly since he has been in college. She is quiet, barely participating in class. She raises her hand on occasion and it is on those days that his heart leaps desperately with hope that she is getting something out of this class like he wishes her to. Every time she does say something it is relevant, and correct. He often wonders if that is why she only speaks at certain times. Maybe she wants to make sure that her answers are precise and true all the time. The funny part about her though, is that she is a talkative person outside of the classroom.
He has spent weeks watching her as she packs up the things from her desk while engaging in a conversation with the girl a few desks over. She is perfectly at ease talking to people, just apparently not him.
There have been a few times when she has talked to him after class, only briefly though, and always when there are other people around. He does not allow himself to go so far as to imagine her staying after class. That would be too much, especially because he still does not know her entirely.
This is why he wants the notebook.
She is so quiet and so reserved when he is around that his urge to steal her precious covert notebook is overpowering his logical sense. It is not a matter of wanting to see the notebook; it is a matter of needing to. He has not slept a full night in a week; his mind is too busy running around with ideas of what she could be writing down. It could be a planner, or she could be writing her friend a letter. It could be a homework assignment, or it could be her diary. Or it could be something altogether different and be a notebook filled with stories.
He likes to imagine that he is somewhere in one of those stories.
Alas, he will never know what is in the notebook. Even if they were to become close, and not even necessarily in the way that is inappropriate, he knows he would still not be able to get at that notebook. The reason is because although he does not know her full personality, he can see that she is a deeply private person. He sees her staring off into the distance during class, her face contorted in a tortured expression. He does not know what happened to make her this way, but he also wants to.
She is an enigma to him without even trying to be.
Most girls act this way purposely, to seem more mysterious and alluring. Others just throw themselves at people. This is a problem he is having with another in the class. She is someone that he has noticed before, but only for the sole reason that she is the one that talks to his paradox. She is the one that the girl talks to as she is gathering her things. Maybe she catches him staring and thinks the glower is for her, or perhaps it is the chase she is after. Either way, she stares at him like he is prey and she is the predator.
Several times she has stayed after class to discuss something with him, whether it be her grade on a certain assignment or the date of the next test. And every time he leaves the same way: with a sigh and frown on his way out. Because it is always the people you want that have no interest and the people you do not want that do. If she switched places with the girl he would not be complaining that she was staying after class every day. There would be no sighing or frowning; only grins and racing thoughts.
He knows he ought to mention that he is married, and has been married for around 5 years now. He chooses not to wear a ring to school because he thinks it is easier. It has never occurred to him that he would be so thankful not to wear it until this year.
There are two sides to the coin, just like there are two girls to his problem. On one side he wants to leave the ring off; he wants the girl to think he is available, and to open up. But on the other he wants to put the ring on; he wants to scare away the chances that the other girl thinks she has. It is wrong of him to be so choosy, just like it is wrong of him to want someone younger and completely different while he is still married.
But the heart wants what the heart wants, and his wants all of her.
The term is almost over now, and he is no closer to finding out who she really is than he was at the beginning. If anything, she knows more about him. He made the mistake of showing her some of his emotions when she went up to him after class one day. She told him that she would not be attending the next class and asked if he wanted her to still complete the assignment. He made a noise of disappointment, not in the way that showed he was angry, but in the way that showed he was sad. She did not say anything, only stared at him, so he told her not to do the assignment. She nodded and began to walk away, but before she got even a few steps away he couldn’t help himself, curiosity took over and he asked her why she wasn’t going to be there. She responded that she had a doctor’s appointment far away.
It was a simple answer, one that many students have given him before. There was nothing wrong with the excuse either, he believed her completely. But there was something about the way she said ‘doctor’ and ‘far away’ that made him think this appointment was not a pleasant one. He made a mental note to wonder for more nights about what kind of appointment she was going to, where it was, and what it was for. He was up for the whole night too, wondering where in the world she was and if she was okay.
And on the day that she wasn’t in class he didn’t feel as much passion to teach. The other girl was there, ogling at him and hanging on to every word he said, but his enthusiasm was gone. Wanting the entire thing over with, he decided to end class a few minutes early, something he has never done before. He spent the whole day in a haze, prompting questions from his wife.
He knows she is suspicious. She doesn’t know what is going on but he senses she figures something is. If she really knew what was happening she would be even more disappointed than to find out that he was cheating. Because this was much worse.
His mind was taken over by a girl he did not have any physical or mental relationship with. She had a magnetic pull all on her own, one that did not require talking or sex. It was different, and it was something more powerful and more thrilling than he had ever experienced. So it would probably be better if he was cheating or sneaking around behind his wife’s back because then it wouldn’t mean anything. It would just be about sex and not about anything she was doing.
But this, this means something to him. Obviously it means a whole lot because he is losing sleep over it. However, the guilt he feels is not as strong as the urge to become involved in her life. And it is this thought that also haunts him at night.
She is back the next class, and so is his energy.
This time he doesn’t even tell himself not stare at her, or to keep his eyes on everyone else. He allows himself this because he has been deprived of it for a short while. He wonders if she notices his gaze falls on hers a great deal. And if she does, what does she think of it? These are questions reserved for the night though, so he glosses over them as he speaks about ‘Buddha’ and ‘dharma’ and ‘nirvana’ while staring into her green orbs for more than half of the 70 minutes. He is so overcome by happiness that she is back in his classroom again that he actually does not want to let her go. It is the weekend, and the days separating his seeing her are too long. So he ends the class 5 minutes late, specifically so he can memorize what she is wearing, how her hair is, and her exact emotion of the day.
He knows he is becoming dangerously close to Humbert Humbert in Lolita but he is too far in now to fully care. She could be his Lolita for all he cares, just as long as he finds out what makes her tick. Because he does not long for her body, although he would not complain if she offered it, he desires her mind. He wants to unlock her emotions and thoughts and notebooks until he has all of her, soul and mind and spirit combined. It is this internal part of her that he aches for, in the same way that Edward Rochester yearned for Jane’s soul and not her body.
And because it is this part of her that he wants he knows he will forever be unhappy because there is no way to get it. The year is ending and he will never be able to open the box that she has wound so tight.
And so she will remain his delicate, silent, infuriating enigma while he continuously tries to quench the thirst that is in his soul. She may be the only one that can fill it; the other half of him that most people look for all their lives. But because of bonds made by blood and thoughts hidden by practice, it can never be.
And so he will always be searching, and she will always be unaware.
His delicate, silent, infuriating enigma.