The heat of my breath still smelt faintly of meatballs, a stark contrast to the daze of odorizors fizzing about the halls, an impurity. In any other case that would have daunted me, floundered around recurrently within my head until I took heeding and rushed off to brush my teeth, possibly even gargle a fair bit of mouthwash. A play of scenarios should surely be running through my head by now, perhaps on repeat.

Truth be told, I doubt any aspect of my body was properly prepared and cleared mentally for public viewing. Sirens should have been screaming in my ears, nonexistent to everyone else, persuading me that perhaps that particular idea would inspire another’s attention. Warning bells should be ringing, spreading ominous and sinking feelings in my stomach, pestering that I might be judged and smitten.

They weren’t, though. Instead the only urging I felt was my own vehemence, the ticking rage searing my veins; acrimony souring my blood. It never occurred to me just how strange an instance this was, this manifestation of my mind. I wonder now if I would have cherished it should I have realized, or else if recognizing the moment would cause me to feel the eyes of the walls.

My head was near dizzying point with its own mix of flustered frustration and the roots of my hair seemed to be stiffening into forms reminiscent of needle points as I walked forward, but never once did they prick me. Even that my hair was merely loosely pulled back, unwashed and falling at increasing intervals from its elastic to obscure my vision did not harry me to stop nor cut loose an onslaught of awaited fretting. No, I was weightless, breathless, worriless. Somewhere I was caught between irrepressible peace and a wavering sense of my daily stygian.

But I was free. Free of the worry and the fear. Free of anything but a choice. Free of my own restricted walls, yet forced to come here. Oh, I was free, free to my corruptible wrath. Free to my rage and fury. Let free to burn beyond wrath, beyond wroth and ill-tempered hindrances. I could feel anger, certainly, but it was of no perquisite to me by that point. My eyes seared with power.

Just entering a room caused my mind to roar in heady accomplishment, intoxicated with the military stomp of building ire and the saccharine sweet satisfaction of being late. Oh, was I drunk? A lush, a winebibber, a dipsomaniac in the night high of blurry control. Yes, I must have been, inebriated with my own hormones, flush with exhilaration spurred forth from within myself.

Power, so fuzzy a drink, so strong a shot for a first timer. Too strong, maybe, but so wonderful. The power of traipsing in late, of knowing my eyes were flashing. How marvelous a feeling, to need not to slam a door nor scream a word and still see him flinch with understanding. What a fool of me to not tread down this road before, not have known this magic. Is it this high, I wondered, that people murder for, destroy for? To no longer fear, to have no worries or nightmares over a possible outcome?

I savored the rich, tingling sensations that spread across my body; arcing from my fingertips to my toes, sending vibrations from the faint hairline where my face ceased and the dark locks began as he was visibly encumbered with hesitation. Yes, yes you should be hesitating. Yes, you should shudder in fear. What right have you to force me here? To use my friend as a pawn after all that you have done?

My thoughts were detached, emotionless, more so the voice of a militant commander barking out orders than any emotional tone of my own that I could place. I was lost to me. What reason could there be other than blind anger? Certainly not hurt, not any other blasted four-letter word. He was dead to me in those senses, how could he not be? No, there was no questioning his removal, his idiocy.

What did he hope to gain by my being here, anyways? What perfidious trap had he set about this time? Or was I truly to expect that this day was to go about with sincerity, honesty?

Blasphemy, tilly-vally! Who that knows would be foolish enough to believe he could do an honest days work? What dolt would give him any more chances than three, than then, than fifteen? What jobbernowl could possibly believe for the most infinitesimal of moments that I would be taken into one of his flambuginous lies again? I think he’d spun enough sob tales to last me a lifetime.

“Er, Joalie, is it? Please, sit down.” The voice came from a harried looking girl. She was young, evidently more so than myself despite the heavy bags forming under her eyes and weary expression of fatigue. She was far from the perkily naïve lady I remembered from my answering machine. Apparently, the weight of her newly chosen work had caught up with her.

“There’s room he—“

“I’m perfectly comfortable here,” the words seethed forth bitterly, unthinkingly, cutting him off harshly as I decidedly planted myself upon a folding chair by the door.

He didn’t respond to my backlash, only sat back tentatively and quietly harbored whatever resent or regrets I had successfully brought forth. My easy triumph was worth little, however, as I continued to brood and my temper ticked ever higher. Had he really given up so easily? Had he forced me here to be an easy destruction? No, it was not good enough. I wanted him to retaliate, needed him to spit back a retort. My stomach churned in craving for a more sufficient victory, more pleasing. My intestines growled greedily.

“Sit wherever you please, I don’t particularly care,” again the lady spoke; her voice bereft of its usual chipper caliber and replaced instead with a hint of defeat. I remember wondering, if only while in transit and exceedingly fleetingly, how this woman could possibly expect to help us when she couldn’t even help herself. It was obvious she wasn’t ready for this, that she was destroying whatever little was left of her sanity in an attempt to counsel all the people she’d scheduled. It was the sort of thing I had to fight to hold in my laughter about once upon a time. Noble. At least, that was what they thought, those foolish enough to think that destroying themselves would make any difference in the world.

I still don’t fully understand the train of thought. Then again, at least I’m not impelled to fall victim to peals of laughter anymore. Noble, though? What good could possibly come of it? To the person who allows himself to be killed, murdered simply because he believes something good will come of it, something will change—what could possibly change? Boneheaded move, really. Although, who was I to point out her apparent lack of cranial capacity? After all, it was her who was supposed to be doing the analyzing, not I.

“Alright now, before we get to why you’re actually here today, I would like for you both to focus on your past; your good times. I think it might be best for some common ground to be sought first, so that you might be calmer afterwards.”

I’d stopped registering the words as anything more than an infusion of letters and syllables after the first three. I hardly needed the meanings behind the rest to know that something was being requested of me and—lest that action be departing—I had long-since decided that I did not wish to partake in it. Besides that, the voice was much too rehearsed and nervous a pitch to bear, especially in what appeared to be the afterglow of my rage high.

Kara had always claimed of my holding an intransigent trait, though she could hardly be one to talk after she nearly dragged me to that meeting and threatened to swipe my guitar otherwise. If anything, she should have been dictating for me not to go; holding an even bigger grudge against the volpone than me, not chantaging me to join him in counseling. After all, she was the person he tried to convert, regardless if it was achieved by money stolen from me, knowing of her heart problem. If the guy wanted to go about sniffing dregs and powders of the lethal sort then fine, more power to him, just leave my friend alive and let me get my bloody divorce.

“…Must’ve been at least five years ago, that, but I’ll never forget it. Hell, I ran to my mom first second I could to make sure I’d done good; she still has that watch, too, I reckon,” he scratched at his blonde head upon finishing, almost as if in worry but I couldn’t properly place why having had tuned in only moments beforehand.

“Well, that’s alright, then,” the therapist, Christine Delwood, now that I came to remember her, comforted bleakly. It took no genius to see that she was seeking a means to egress just as much as I was. “Do you remember that, Joalie?”

I merely stared at the woman blankly upon being addressed. Did I remember that? Did I remember what? Something about a watch, I think, but that’s all I paid enough mind to remember. Did somebody lose his? Well, I certainly was not about to go traipsing around for it. They could buy themselves a new one, or certainly steal money from me to do so if the police records were anything to go by.

Unless, was it his cousin’s watch? The one he’d given to me after that grave act of idiocy? Well, I indubitably didn’t have that with me. Had I been expected to keep that, even after what he did? Surely not, that bothersome thing no longer held any grounds with me. Besides, a person could not be expected to do something, could they? What rights had other people to determine what I should or should not do? What I could do? Especially a being so vile, so filthy and decrepit in morals.

As opposed to responding, I stood from my perch on the less than comfortable metal contraption and turned swiftly so that I was facing and reaching for the door. I had done as Kara had hassled me to, I had arrived, and I even sat for some duration of minutes. But what good would it do me to stay here? My anger was no longer blinding, my sweet power had seeped from me somewhere between the hallway and here, but no one could change my mind.

James Toretes had no need for me, after all, other than a means of support for his ‘life exhilarators’. No miracle worker could change that, not with all the magic in the world. If he had needed me for anything else, cared about me at all, he would have listened when I spoke of Kara’s heart; he wouldn’t have tried to push those blasted drugs on Kara, or stolen from me for them in the first place. If he cared, he would have called after me when I left.

Instead, I left in silence. The silence I had known was coming but crashed into me like a tidal wave anyways, shattering the stability of my long-trusted bones and washing away my logic as if it had been no more than speckles of dust in the wind.

I couldn’t even slither to the elevator or dodge around the hall. My legs had crashed, hapless and weak. The walls had eyes again, the ceiling ears pealed, and the paintings were mouths standing at the ready to scream around to the world whatever mistake I should make next. And I couldn’t hide. My legs couldn’t function as anything other than weights, pulled by gravity to the ground and then cemented there against my futile efforts. Even as I tried desperately to shield my face as the first tears dripped down, I knew the walls could see me, the ceiling could hear my desperately muffled sobs and the painted characters were gallivanting off to spread the news.

It did not matter how horrible he had been nor the wretchedness he had done: James Toretes was not so easily removed from myself as I believed. Which left me, a twenty-five year old, sobbing pathetically for anyone to see.

A/N: I apologize for how quickly moving the ending is, espeically after she leaves the office. The whole thing is, in a way, but it has the development. Honestly though, after trying to start this for over a month and needing my teachers help when I found myself stuck yet again, I was just at a point where I was glad to be over and done with it.

Also, is it weird that I still talk to my last years English teacher and ask him for help with these?