Anger

I am angry. I feel the rage inside as a lump of lava in my gut, building, pulsing, looking for a chance to explode. I clamp down, squeezing like a sphincter to keep the excrement inside. Regardless of the thoughts of psychologists there is no healthy release for rage. When the rage bubbles over, everyone is covered in shit.

I think I have always been angry. It feels as if I am back in first grade sitting in class. The teacher is reading some interminable story, Dick and Jane are struggling up the hill while I sit and squirm in my chair, too scared to raise my hand. You have to tell her, in front of the class, number one or number two. So, I sit and squirm, scared and angry. I imagine the snickers and giggles if I raise my hand. I imagine the warmth of shit spreading through my pants, the reactions around me as the stench reaches out and slips greasily down the throats of the vacant eyed aliens that threaten my world.

The story drones on and on. The pressure builds. The big hand on the clock, placed cruelly above and behind the teacher, never moves. It hangs there. It speaks in a language I don't even understand, yet, but I know it is mocking me. I fidget. Fidgeting is not allowed, not in this world. Around me the aliens sit, both feet on the floor, hands clasped and resting on the desks, shining faces forward, mesmerised.

My right hand reaches upward, pleading. She never looks up, her glasses perched on the end of her nose, held by strings like the ones that hold my mittens to my coat in winter. Perhaps her mother is tired of her losing them and causing the family to suffer because they must be replaced. My hand flutters, so does my gut. Panic.

This is a world I don't understand. In my world of woods and fields I have never suffered. When the need arises find a bush, drop your pants and go. No different than the horses and cows and dogs, my friends.

I flee. Sliding from my desk I flee. Muscles clenched, ears burning, alien eyes tracking me as I flee. It is too late. Shit bursting forth, pouring out. Tears blinding me as shit stained corduroy pants chase me out of the room and down the hall.

My metaphor of life. I flee the smell of shit.