280 Misplaced Anger

I'm a knee-jerk jerk whose effect lashes out due to cause. Or...for a cause. I'm angry. I break, belittle, shatter, and ruin before I feel better about myself. It takes little thought. Effect engenders affect. The perception is the message.

Love lost—inability to find it, fetch it back, or save it—that's me.

Such exsanguination leaves a vacuum: anger rushes in, cocked, trigger-happy.

When life's quest unobtains, a come-and-go—the two-way street—of essence, is paved in turbulence, both love and anger misplaced, frothing and boiling until the skin blisters; until there are tears in the heartseams no fabric mends; until there are holes in the mind no adventurous gray matter, neuroplastic, heals.

Someone misplaced is someone lost. Arrivals and departures are tumultuous; the passing in revue, offensive; the rejoinders, derisive.

Feel the draft through windows in my soul; squint against the light shards that laser-cut at the speed of light; cover your ears to deafen the harshness countering the euphony from those unafflicted: sounds discordant, dissonant, acerbic, and vexatious; bilious taste that goes down easier than it comes up.

My cloud's ready to burst darkness onto anyone too dry of expectation. My ill wind's ready to dessicate anyone too wet with love. I mount powerful electrical charges to incinerate anyone with a divining rod of life's purpose.

Hope and desire stand aside as I pass. Beauty decays as I do; the hopeful, despair; pleasantness twists upon itself into self-destruction. Self-esteem becomes self-loathing.

I'm anger misplaced, ready to leap when you're most vulnerable to my bloodlust.

Defenseless, you cannot fight back. You can only hibernate without dreaming. Sequestered away from my irresistible force.

Surprise me! I fear what I don't see coming. I tremble at unknowns.

Like love doomed to be misplaced, I'm blind to the unexpected. I'm startled into inertia by the unpredictable; what I deem undeserved. When I miss that camouflaged soul lifting itself up by its soulstraps and heartstrings and the most powerful antidote to being deprived: forgiveness.

I paint forgiveness with clashing colors, but the true hues emerge after the tears have washed my work away. I curse forgiveness and eschew absolution—they're for suckers. I'm no sucker. Which is why I'm successful.

And hopelessly unhappy.

_________

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Sunday, October 6, Day 280 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge

366 WORDS (without A/N)

Accompaniment photo AI generated, but the fog has lifted.

ABOUT THE STORY

(This is a pruned, truncated, abridged, skeletal version of my submission to the "Misplaced" Vocal challenge. Which stands proudly with the other losers!)

86 DAYS TO GO! THIS CHALLENGE BLOSSOMS DAILY, 366 Forget-me-nots A DAY AT A TIME.

There are currently three Vocal writers in this emotional, love-torn, eternal triangle of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

The Triangle...are...

• L.C. Schäfer (Side A-B)

• Rachel Deeming (Side B-C)

• Gerard DiLeo (Loose hypotenuse)

The square of the DiLeo is equal to the addition of the squares of the Shäfer + the Deeming