When Nice Is Wrong

He couldn’t think. There was an awful lot of noise in his head as he sprawled on his back. That back-elbow blow was vicious. Finally it all slowed down a bit as felt to see if any part of his face was broken. “Why the hell did you hit me? I’m not your enemy!”
The man who punched his lights out had already turned his back and started walking away. It was only later when he found his assailant in a better mood, sweeping the storage area. “Is it safe, now?”
“Your sarcasm is duly noted. Safety is always relative, but I’m not likely to punch your lights out again.” He said all this without a hint of humor, a total lack of emotion.
“Why’d you do that? I was just trying to get you to calm down.”
“Who are you to decide when my emotions aren’t allowed to boil over? Someone did their very best to provoke me and it worked.” His utter lack of emotion at the moment was almost jarring.
“But you shouldn’t let them get to you that way.”
“In due time, they won’t. But my feelings are my business. I was doing quite well until you decided to horn in.” He didn’t even look up from sweeping.
“I just wanted…”
The broom froze in mid-air as he snapped his gaze toward the man whose right eye was just starting to swell. “You wanted! What about what I wanted? Did it not occur to you the one thing I needed most was time and solitude? That your attempt to control how I was feeling was an even worse attack, a bigger insult, than what those idiots did?”
He had no answer.