I try not to get violent. That sucks. I tell myself that it solves nothing. I can fantasize all I want but it goes nowhere, or I fantasize too long, I wait in ambush ...
Here's how it works. There's some slight, some insult. It hurts, sure, it pisses me off. Usually it means nothing to the guilty party, he's just mouthing off or venting or something, but I feel it, I bleed. Nothing to him. He just goes on. He, she ... it's not gender specific. Just goes on with their stuff, whatever it is, usually something pointless. So, some slight, some little insult, maybe even a big one said in jest, Oh surely you jest (asshole) ... No, I don't say that. Maybe he/she says it, all deconstructive and standing apart from themselves, you know how people will say something and then end it with a "he said meaningfully." Wising off, you know, thinking that by employing that post-modernist method, you might say, to defuse the bomb he's just tossed in your face. "Kerblooey!" he said meaningfully.
But it goes on from there. I can't sleep. I try to empty my mind of it, of the insult, but it just goes round and round, thumptey-thump, like shoes in a dryer, only you can't turn the power off, you can't turn the power of your mind off, it just keeps going, out of your control unless you count or something, sheep, condoms, I don't know what. So then you go about the business of delivering lines you should have used or will use next time, keeping yourself awake with it night after night. But in the morning all is forgiven.
Until the next time. And the next. You repeat the whole business. It mounts up. There's a backlog of insult, perhaps it's like borrowing with interest, the interest accrues, and then you're all the time adding to it and upping the interest; followed by this thing I don't understand called "compound interest." I should look that up, or ask somebody. But it's only for a simile I think you call it, in this case, I mean.
Things build up and up. You even embellish a little. Maybe that's compound interest, what you add on yourself to the accumulation of real insult, your head boiling over like, or at a rolling boil nobody's seeing yet because it hasn't risen to the top, mixed metaphors, so blow me. Any minute now, though, any minute. You know, kerblooey. Or whatever sound it makes, the boiling over of the mind. Well, finally it speaks, usually screams. Your voice sounds unrecognizable, impossibly choked off, croaking like some reptile sinking into the lava. A rush of words, not even the right words, just sort of shooting out of you with all these little lumps of meaning, but the person gets the point all right, it's accumulative, it sort of forms itself into a general explosive shape, maybe even a beautiful atomic cloud, all in all, one of those sublime mushrooms of meaningful expression, even if it isn't grammatically correct, it has the power to destroy all in its path ...That's how it usually happens, all in its path goes, cities, malls, whole lifestyles, fuck 'em, and it can be very beautiful but then you end up feeling like a shit and it's you who always says I'm sorry.
But then it's over. A great silence fills the world, or maybe just little sounds like scraps of packing drifting to the floor, maybe someone coughing. Smoke hangs in layers. There is this sense of waiting, of expectation, and when nothing more happens it is replaced by a gloom, a feeling of general shame, of awkwardness and shame. Something awful happened here. Somebody lost it and caused a big scene and it's embarrassing. Nobody expects this kind of thing. It's supposed to be boring and regular, the clock just ticking along, break time, lunch time, come on quittin' time, but here we have this unspeakable event where somebody has blown a hole in the world and you just don't know how to fill it. So, everybody sort of stands around for awhile, trying not to look at anything, meanwhile waiting for some Authority to make a grand entrance with a police escort, maybe, or just some suit who asks, "What's the difficulty here?" The contestants are separated, questioned in separate rooms, it seems to fill hours. Nothing comes of it. They go back to work. Apologize to each other. Or one of them apologizes. Me, usually. Accept the other asshole's version of things, or pretend to for awhile. That's not necessary, but after an explosion like that, what can you do? It looks like you're the guilty party. You lost it. You caused all the wreckage, didn't you? What an asshole. What an asshole you are. You mope for weeks. Keep your head low. When you pass by one of them makes little scared puppy noises, or clucks like a chicken, extremely funny, don't you think that's funny? Then his face starts to close in. You're not moving, he's not moving, yet he's closing in, you can see every pore and the early wrinkles, the hairs in his nose, the stupid nose rings, tattoos, all that shitty stuff he needs to do himself up cool, but really he's very uncool if that means unafraid and not prone to flapping or something, if it means anything at all instead of being just one of those words we toss around like meaningless ball bearings for the innocent to slip up on, hence exposing themselves as being among the Great Uncool. Not so good, very ungood in fact, it sucks the big wind or something, so stay cool, dude. You don't stay cool, they'll find you out for an asshole. They'll know how afraid you are. Of what, though? It is certainly true that he is afraid but what is it exactly? Me? Could it be that he is afraid of me? That it is I, after all, who am bringing about all this persecution upon myself due to the fear I instill in him? Look at his face. Look at it. All pasty from cheap food, from want of exercise, from any wholesome activity whatsoever. He doesn't even have sex. But he is cool. And intelligent. Oh, God, how intelligent! He is always reminding you, reminding everyone how intelligent he is ... But it seems to me that he said something very clever then and I told him to kiss me. I said, "Kiss me, you fool." Then he said something even more clever which brought laughter all around me and I was obliged to leave the room. I went out into the trash area and cried. I kicked at the refuse, the books without covers, the moldy ramen containers. Some animal looked at me curiously. What was it, what could it be? I had no idea at the time but probably it was a rat or even a small dog lost to it all, let go by an indifferent child who deserved worse than death. Worse than death? What would that be? And why? Why should life, any life, be thought better than what we don't know about? What could be worse than the life of this child man with all his phobias and talismans? And he could be free of it all with very little trouble. I should tell him that. Kill yourself. Go on. Swallow pills or something, that's painless, and they say drowning in painless, too. Or how about a bullet to the head, what could be bad? Do you hear anything before? Or if you do, it can only register just as you go out so you won't remember anyway so it may as well not have happened, right? Go on, do it. Eat your nice bullet, will you do that for me? That a boy.
When I went back in one of the others snuggled up against me and said, "Kick his ass."
I nodded as if I'd do just that. Kick his ass around the block. Kick him until he was a formless thing that left a long stain as they dragged it away.
He died quite by accident, however, as it turned out, although spectacularly, and it wasn't a pretty sight, even to the eyes that would see it all as bloody revenge, even to a heart full of murder that had ached for satisfaction.
When riots broke out in our city he had the misfortune of being quite the wrong persuasion, showing all the marks of the enemy these hoards would see taken down. His proud grin was ripped off his face, the lips and the teeth both, and they sewed up the wound so that he must breath though his nose and take food intravenously. This couldn't last long. Freaks are not supported by a resistance. Even so, he was not put to death like the rest but employed in servile tasks ... really not so very different from those he had been doing already, and for several years, although he no longer showed the distinguishing marks of a Management Trainee.
Finally, when he was aloft one day, trying to free a bird that had flown in through the parking entrance, he stepped on an electrical conduit with his stupid cleated shoes and burst into flames while we watched. At the last minute I thought to douse him with pumice but it was too late.
"Nice of you to think of that," Management praised me. I was given a beige T shirt with the Company logo on the back and told that it would be career inflating to wear it in public from time to time, and that if I didn't it would be taken away from me.
Brent says, "All Unlikely readers know me from a previous life."