Explode

ONY WAS REALLY MAD NOW. IT WAS ONE OF THOSE things that really shouldn’t have bothered him, but for some reason had piqued his nerves now. Someone had called him horseface. It was childish thing to say, and he remembered people saying things like that to each other all the time, especially when he was younger, but this really bothered him this time, and he felt as if he were about to explode from rage. Why did people say such things to each other, he thought. It wouldn’t have mattered so much if it were a kid who had uttered this inanity, but it was an adult. And it wasn’t addressed to him personally, he just heard it in passing, and saw those people laughing at him. They didn’t think he heard, but he did. Now he stood in the mirror studying his reflection. Perhaps he did have a horse’s face. But what was wrong with looking like a horse. Tony liked horses.

He went over certain things in his life, and they began to make sense. Perhaps people only judged people, for the most part, by their appearance. And this would explain why he felt like an outsider for most of his life. He looked in the mirror and said this face had done it. He felt that throughout his life people were laughing at him. Now he knew why. He felt rage; he felt the blood racing through his body, the heart pounding like an orchestra in his ears. The solitude of his room made him hate himself. So he had to leave his room, he wanted to hate somebody else.

He began driving up and down the streets with anger imbibing his thoughts. The streets were sparse though. He drove more reckless than normal, tailgating cars, and cutting drivers off. He wanted some conflict, and to prove himself in a conflict. He was waiting at a red light, and car pulled up behind him with this guy’s music blaring loudly. Tony sneered at the guy, but he paid him no attention. Tony looked in the mirror and studied, noticing a real horse face. He studied the mirror for some time, and didn’t notice that the light had changed from red to green. The guy, behind him blew, and Tony was startled and angered from being awakened from his reverie. He flipped the guy off, and guy proceeded to swear badly at him, and honked his horn vigorously. Tony signaled for him to pull over at the next light, but the guy kept on driving.

One couldn’t avoid something that would anger them, it seemed. His heart was pumping adrenaline and hatred through his body strongly now. He had to calm down, so he stopped off at a liquor store to get some beer. He stopped at a local parking lot and proceeded to drink the beer until it soothed his nerves. He wanted to go somewhere. But where? He got a train somewhere he knew there would be a lot of people around, a local entertainment district. He walked around with a vague notion that he wanted to start some trouble with someone. He didn’t know with whom though. He sat on a bench and watched people walk up and down the street. He felt as if he could take most of the guys though. As he walked he gave the air of violence, so people avoided him as he passed. A feeling of violence compounded with a longing for sex, as he stared as the female bodies walking down the street, while he snarled at the men. He saw a few people give strange glances and he saw smile on their faces. Were they laughing at his horse’s face? He wanted to ask them were they laughing at him. But he figured he wouldn’t get an honest answer. Thus he went along vaguely angered; not knowing were to channel his rage.

He sat outside of a coffee shop, and brooded, watched people moving along the boulevard. It felt good to sit down and brood for a moment, and watch people do things. Where were they going? What plans did they have? He could lose himself in a crowd, and in a large crowd, of so many different types of people he didn’t feel so out of place. He watched people, even though, he pretended not to watch, especially when someone made eye contact with him. He hated being stared at himself, so he knew how others might feel if he stared at them for too long. A giant walked past, a man who stood about seven feet tall, Tony wondered how would it feel to be that big. When one was that large, one couldn’t just blend in with the crowd. He remembered one time in particular when he was little drunk, he walked up to guy who was about that size and asked him how tall he was, and the man seemed rather annoyed with him, and ashamed, even though Tony was filled with gleeful awe. He vowed he wouldn’t do that again, even though he wanted to. When one sits down and watches a parade of bodies’ walk by, one can loses themselves to that parade of bodies. The self and all one’s problems seem to go away. One is apart of the crowd, but one is at the distance.