SERIES
My Name is Mr. Anger
Fiction — part 2
About series: This is the story of violence, a story so old it is in our very blood. And while a few of our sisters feel its pull, for many of us born to the Y chromosome, a violent act lies just beneath the surface, ready to hand like sword and shield. Read part one first.
4. TED
“Many forms of violence may occur simultaneously, so they are not mutually exclusive. For example, intimate partner violence may involve psychological, physical, and sexual abuse, and collective violence often includes the use of rape as a weapon of war.” (Journal of Epidemiol Community Health, 2007)
Professor Barbara Tuesday looked down at the monitor at the edge of the stage. She had three minutes and twenty seconds left. Oh! Better skip to summing up, she thought.
Barbara had been surprised, flattered even, by the invite from TED to talk at one of their events. They were becoming unbelievably popular. How long had they been going now? And their format — a nineteen-minute talk — got millions of views on their site. So why had she hesitated? Even the Vice-Chancellor had called her office directly, cajoling her.
But she knew the reason she hesitated.
Her work would become soundbites. The efforts of her Ph.D. team would be forgotten, their painstaking work building the critical datasets, or even the months and months of studies they’d conducted. No, all anyone would hear would be that one conclusion that was already getting all the wrong attention.
She looked out across the studio TED was using.
“So in conclusion,” Barbara continued “levels of abuse towards women have remained the same in recent years. In the UK that’s 25% of all women aged 18 to 74 years. And here in the US, it’s one in three women.
“Secondly, feminist efforts to end male violence against women must be expanded into a movement to end all forms of violence for the sake of our communities. Men are at much higher risk of being victims of violent crime than women.
“Thirdly, recent advances in bio-markers using the MAO-A gene, known as the “warrior gene” in men and yes, the “happiness gene” in women, show evidence that a population can be monitored with a simple injection. While there are clear ethical issues surrounding the usage of bio-markers, small studies like the Hämeenlinna study in Finland, have enabled us to make leaps and bounds beyond the confines of animal studies.”
She paused, staring out into the lights and the crowd, waiting. No one shouted. But this wasn’t that kind of crowd now, was it?
“Fourth, Phenytoin — the well-known anti-epileptic drug used in clinical settings for 80 plus years — has since 1997 shown to be successful in combatting aggression. And, significantly reduced aggressive acts by 71% and the intensity of aggression by 60%.
“What does all this mean? Well,” pause, breathe, pause. “Our new drug, predicated on decades of successful clinical trials, will give us the means to curb violence in our societies — with just one injection.
“Now is the time for our governments, not just here in the US or Britain, but for all our nations to run trials and combat the epidemic of violence in our times. In our times.”
Several days later, Professor Tuesday landed back at Heathrow Airport in London.
Sat on the Tube train back into town, the feeling of jet lag already beginning to take control — she was a terrible traveler she told herself — a folded newspaper lying beside her caught her eye, showing a picture of herself.
Unfolding the paper, the article’s headline, all bold and capitals read, “Professor Tuesday demands forced sterilization of men.”
5. Grounds
“You shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has commanded you.” (Deuteronomy 20:10–18, Bible)
The day after the riot, when the CCTV footage from both inside and outside the football ground was reviewed, it showed two groups were the cause of the incident. Two groups of fans from the opposing teams. An analyst even narrowed it down to two individuals, one from each of the two hardlines ‘Firms’ as the groups called themselves. But one senior officer knew they didn’t have the evidence to tie the events to these two.
“No, no, no,” he said, his strong Welsh accent chewing out the words. “There’ll be too many factors their bloody lawyers will use to confuse the prosecution.”
It rained hard on the football ground that day. The sky lay flat like a dark slate sheet above the lights of the stadium, blocking out the world beyond. Henry was praying his team would pull their finger out in the second half. They were two nil down and if they lost this match, relegation from the league was guaranteed. And they really couldn’t go down.
That just couldn’t be possible, Henry thought. We’re not going back there, no fucking way!
“My Garden Shed! Is bigger than this!” Voices rang out behind him.
He turned to see his mates’ smiles, and added his own voice to the chant, watching as the rest of the ground at their end of the stadium took up the chant.
“It’s got a door, and a window…but my garden shed is bigger than this!”
The chant rang out across the stands, and Henry found himself bouncing and jumping, the bright colors of blue and white — his team’s colors — rippling across the ground. Wave after heady, euphoric wave.
Suddenly the song crumbled, its tide vanishing. All eyes returned to the field of battle, as their blue and white knights fell back, retreating from the onslaught of the black and reds.
No-no-no, Henry was repeating, aloud and in his mind. The enemy’s knights were in the box, a line of them. The ball, now a white bolt whizzed from one enemy to another, his own team seemingly in all the wrong places.
“Come on! Defend! No one’s fucking marking Johnson!”
Voices all around him shouted, fists waving, hoping to have some effect.
But there was nothing they could do. Henry watched helplessly as a knight from the other side kicked the ball and it arced, streaking into the net behind their goal. Henry’s world dropped out beneath him. The score was 3–0 and they were seventy minutes in. He couldn’t believe it. They were going down. Relegation. He wanted to leave the ground. Now.
Then he heard them. Heard their chanting. The other side, words attacking his goalie knight. Bastards!
His gaze swung towards them. He wasn’t alone. His mates, his Firm, shifted too, like an extension of himself. And then they were up, moving, shifting, anger fueling the creature they became: a many-legged, many-armed monster-knight, with just one thought. Punish them.
Monster-knight couldn’t change the score. Couldn’t change their team’s descent into relegation and shame. But monster-knight would go down fighting. Its wounds open, clear for all to see. You cut me and I’ll fucking cut you, it’s only thought.
The creature collided with the fence, a high metal mesh that kept fans from the two sides separated. It crashed at it. Shook it, but nothing. All the while another monster-knight, one just like it, glowered and slathered on the other side of the fence. It’s enemy — the Flock.
Both creatures smashed into the fence, winding the other up, forcing them to spin on themselves. A face appeared from the body of the other Firm. Head shaved, red-faced anger unchecked, glowering, hating. Ready for a fight.
It was him! Mall-guy! David from the Mall.
And David was staring straight at him, eyes burning.
What!, thought Henry. Him, here? Henry couldn’t believe it. He was stunned.
“You! I’ll…” Henry tried to shout, but his mouth was suddenly dry.
“Yeah,” David’s mouth moved amid a growing grin. “You and whose army?”
He couldn’t hear the words amid the shouting and screaming, but he knew exactly what David was telling him.
“Outside! Outside!” words spilled from Henry. Then looking at his mates, “Let’s take ’em outside! Come on!”
The Firm looked inward, looked at Henry, nodding, pulling apart.
Henry pointed a finger at David.
“Sergeant Arms car park. Fucking Sergeant Arms!”
Then David Mall-guy did something which would eat at him for days, weeks even. He held his arm out and flicked his hand as if shooing him away and mouthed, “Run along little cunt.”
Why you — ! Henry nearly screamed. He drove his Firm out, hot rage eating him up, not even waiting for the end of the match — the result would only get worse. But now he had a way of keeping the team’s honor. And settling this new score. How fucking dare David invade his world? He couldn’t believe it. Well, he’d fucking teach him a lesson.
Hours later, sat in his mate’s lounge, nursing a beer and enough cuts and bruises that he should be in A&E, he thought about David. He had stepped up. Of that, he couldn’t deny the man. He was different. Changed. Harder. More of a geezer.
Smiling, he drained the beer from his can and grabbed another.
6. Bot farm
“Rage is a currency in today’s GOP. Think of all the culture-war tropes that rely on it, many of which have resulted in legislation: Rage against critical race theory, masks, vaccine mandates, COVID testing, shutdowns, unions, voting, trans people, abortion, Muslims. And that’s before you even get to the made-up stuff, like the War on Christmas.” (Molly Jong-Fast, The Atlantic, 2023)
TRANSLATED TRANSCRIPT FROM SUSPECTED BOT FARM NEAR NARVA, ESTONIA (SI/NOFORN/GCHQ)
MALE: Come on, can we please listen to something else? Anything else?
HELENE: What are you saying?
MALE: I’m saying Helene, just change it up some. It’s 2016, not 1996.
HELENE: Actually this song was released in 1984 to rave success.
MALE: Not here. And that’s like over forty years ago! They’ll all be dead–
HELENE: What does that have to do with anything? So no Mozart, Beethoven? No Aavik?
MALE: That’s not what I mean…who’s Aavik?
HELENE: Haha. Look, just listen to these lyrics–
MALE: You’re not going to play it from the beginning–
MALE: Is it actually going to start?
HELENE: Just listen.
MALE: Ok. I get it, I get it. “When two tribes go to war” blah blah. It is a bit blunt?
HELENE: What about this–
HELENE: cowboy number one, a born-again poor man’s son. On Air America, I modeled shirts by Van Heusen. Working for the black ga—
MALE: Who is this Van Heusen?
HELENE: Da, that doesn’t matter. They’re singing about Reagan and the failure of war and–
MALE: Who’s Reagan?
HELENE: Come on–
MALE: I’m kidding.
HELENE: Two Tribes was a seminal piece of eighties pop and Frankie Goes to Hollywood was clearly way ahead of their time. You can’t fault them.
MALE: I can. Look from that period, I just like —
HELENE: Test results are back.
MALE: And?
HELENE: It ran, with no bugs this time.
MALE: None?
HELENE: It’s my bash script in the S-S-H.
MALE: I wasn’t questioning that. Throw it up on the main screen.
MALE: Yes, yes, F-B-Cs on the stack are all level.
HELENE: I know right? The 10-k sample cleared. So, we going to run it?
MALE: Is your mother called Mary like mine? Ha!
HELENE: Who first?
MALE: Who’s on the backlog? Oh, the top four items are Facebook injects anyway.
MALE: Hem, that second one will be a [pede].
HELENE: Agreed. But we can repurpose the ad content from the test. Have you got the filtered set of target accounts?
MALE: Hold on…yes but only for the British audience.
HELENE: OK, we get this [ülikena] puppy up and out, rinse and repeat, and then we can repeat on Twitter.
MALE: Agreed. But can we change up the music?
HELENE: Ok, Ok. Madonna?
7. Confession
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.” (Serenity Prayer, Alcoholics Anonymous)
Henry looked back towards the closed door, hoping the Bishop wouldn’t join them. A smell of bleach and wood polish seemed to pervade Father Dominic’s office. But he’d never minded. In fact, increasingly this office, this church, seemed to be the only place that made any sense. And a lot of that was down to the man sitting opposite him.
“How is Natasha? Well, I hope?”
Henry turned back at the voice. There were more lines about the old priest’s eyes these days. A little more stooped as he sat, and the hair on his head was now white like a dove. But his eyes remained the same to Henry — bright and forgiving. Henry knew without this man, he would have fallen far. But instead, he’d been off the booze now for two years, three months, and one day.
Henry tried to smile but faltered.
Father Dominic smiled for them both. He leaned forward and reached out a hand, placing it gently on Henry’s. It was warm and soft and said you are safe here like no words could have.
Henry stared back and the tears came. He couldn’t stop them. Didn’t want to. He looked down, staring at the leather shoes beneath the hem of Father Dominic’s cassock, gulping as more tears flowed. The priest placed another hand on Henry’s.
“Father, I can’t breathe sometimes,” Henry began, his voice catching, sobs shaking the words that tried to get out. “It’s so hard. And I get this pounding here!”
Henry rubbed a hand across his eyes.
“I understand my son,” nodded the elderly priest as he listened to Henry’s confession.
“But I can’t do it! I can’t” he confessed aloud. “Every time I walk past a pub or an off-license I, I feel so — ”
“But you haven’t though have you? You are strong Henry,” said Father Dominic.
He looked up at the priest, whose eyes shone like two pin holes behind which lay the light of all the Heavenly hosts thought David.
“But what if I…”
“Hush now,” replied Father Dominic gently. “Let us pray together.”
Henry stared back and then simply nodded.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”
Henry’s voice joined that of Father Dominic’s, and the two men spoke the ancient prayer together, their voices held from the world within a second-floor room at the back of an old church.
Sometime later, Henry was standing, smiling at the elderly priest, thanking him profusely. The door opened and a tall man wearing a black cassock like Father Dominic’s — but with a wide purple sash — walked into the room, without knocking.
Both men broke off their words to one another and watched the Bishop, a wide smile on his bearded face.
“Ahh Henry, so good to see you!”
His voice was too large for the room, too large by far, thought Henry. Henry looked briefly at Father Dominic, but the man gave away nothing of his thoughts.
Turning towards the Bishop and hiding his own wishes, he took a breath for a beat then smiled.
“Hello, your Excellency.”
“I wonder if we might have a word about this ungodly new drug program I’m hearing so much about. What’s it called?”
“It’s called STOP for short. The Stronger Together Outreach Plan” replied Henry.
Author’s note: read part 3 of 5 — a not-so-chance encounter between our two antagonists.
