The Curse of the Amygdala

by Mirah Allepot

I didn’t think he lived in the area anymore. For some reason, I thought that the man would leave my world when I left through the doors of that academy at twelve years old. But here he was, in my world. It had been like any other day. I had flipped the sign of the pastry shop to ‘open’ and lined up the fresh almond croissants in the window. I had made a batch of vanilla bean scones, and I was serving a customer her hot chocolate. Then he opened the door and when I saw him in the doorway, my blood ran cold. He had aged from what I remember. His movements were a little slower, his hair had thick streaks of grey dancing across its length, but his eyes held the same unbending frigidness that struck fear into my body whenever directed at me. 

“Hello, welcome to Nino’s Bakery,” I uttered rather nervously. My manager would have been disappointed in me. The man gave me nothing but a nod and walked over to one of the glossy black tables. After serving the customer her hot chocolate, I made my way over to the man I never thought I would see again. He was looking at the menu. 

“Can I have a danish and a caramel macchiato?” He didn’t even let me ask what he would like. He didn’t even say please. It was only when I walked back to the counter and tried to gather the ingredients for a caramel macchiato that I noticed my hands were shaking and my mouth was dry. I thought that if I had stayed away long enough, eventually they would go away. The tumultuous memories would hide in a secret, dark place inside my brain. But they say that the body keeps the score and evidently, my body was no different. This body that I made spin and leap until it was bruised and sore. 

-

“Again,” he repeated, his voice eerily calm. I lifted my body off the ground, my muscles tired. In my head, I went through the steps again. Releve developee, turn, brush the leg through to first position, face the back diagonally, attitude, whip around to the opposite diagonal, repeat. It should have been easy for me to do, every other eleven-year-old in the class had perfected it. As sadistic as he was, I should have known he would make me practice the move over and over again after class, regardless of the bruises forming on my legs. I rolled my ankles in my pink satiny pointe shoes, loosening the muscles and shaking off my nerves. In my peripheral, I could see him staring at me. He was waiting for me to start again. I took a deep breath, trying to calm the abnormal beating in my heart and looked up at myself in the mirror as I prepared for the move. Releve developee, turn, brush the leg through to first position, face the back diagonally, attitude, whip around to the oppo-. My hands smacked on the ground as I lost my balance and fell for the umpteenth time. I heard clapping. He was clapping for me. But I knew better. 

“That was glorious, Mirah. Simply breathtaking. I couldn’t take my eyes off you,” he supposedly praised, a bright smile on his face. The saccharine smile quickly fell away and something that I can only describe as loathing replaced it. Dread twisted in my gut as I waited for his onslaught of insults. “Do you know why I couldn’t take my eyes off you?” He asked me, so eerily quiet. I played dumb. 

“Huh?” 

“You heard me.” When I bowed my head in defeat, refusing to look at him, he sighed. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you because you dance like a buffoon and the size of your thighs are distracting. You should eat nothing but ice to thin those out, I swear.” I should have been used to it, but I still teared up. “Again,” he repeated. 

- 

“Here’s your danish and macchiato.” I placed both items in front of him and still, he gave me nothing but a silent nod, like he couldn’t possibly know of the well of emotions his presence brought me. I looked into his eyes for just a moment, looking for any hint of recollection, but he went back to typing on his phone, ignorant of my obvious discomfort. But then again, he always was. I walked back to the counter and tried to be as busy as possible, rearranging the perfectly arranged pastries in the window and rewriting the menu on the chalkboard that didn’t need to be rewritten. I did anything to make it seem as though I wasn’t spiraling. But when you encounter a person as sinister as the man sitting three feet away from me, not spiraling is hard. 

- 

Mr. Hikashi was unlike any dance teacher I’ve ever had. He was a quiet man, but his words cut you like a knife. He had been a successful ballet dancer in his hometown, but a car accident rendered his body useless, and he had to walk with a cane. He always wore black, as if he mourned the art form that he had to leave behind. Something in me always wondered if he hated watching us do the things that he once did so well. He was the type of man to try to ruin first loves and tarnish the dreams of children as innocent as butterflies. He was the type of man you would never want tattooed into your brain, but he was so unsettling, so haunting that he branded himself there before you could do anything about it. Memory is cruel. It lies dormant in some part of the body and rushes through to the forefront without so much as your consent. I recalled everything about him, like I would a childhood friend. He was here for twenty minutes. And in those twenty minutes, he never gave me a quirk of a brow, nor a flash in his eyes, nor an utterance of my name. And I stood there and coped with the fact that he didn’t even remember me.