Winona Morris always knew she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. When it became apparent that she was never going to grow up she decided to become a writer anyway. After sharing her multi-genre fiction on various free blogs over the years she has finally decided to become a "real" writer and is currently working on her first short fiction collection.
She currently lives in coastal Georgia with her husband, 2 kids, and 8 pets. When not writing or working at the full time retail job she's kept for nearly 2 decades, she likes to read and live vicariously through other people on social media.
INTERNALIZED
by
Winona Morris
No one believed me, and then it happened again.
So, whatever happens next is not my fault. The proverbial blood is on their hands.
The literal blood is on my hands. And on my clothes. And in my hair.
Have you ever tried washing congealed blood out of your hair? I’ll just say I used to worry about going bald, but now I’m thinking about shaving it off just to save myself the hassle.
The first time it happened, I thought it was just a really horrific coincidence.
See, I have a temper problem, but I’m working on it. They kind of made me go to therapy after I flipped that table and threw that coffee mug at the Shoe Boat manager. Anger Management, they called it.
So, this shrink tells me I need to learn that it’s okay to be angry. I just have to learn how to hold it inside. So I say I thought you guys were all about de-compartmentalizing, not internalizing, and it felt pretty smug until she told me that grown-ups have to learn how to control big emotions and not act like toddlers. So I called her a know-it-all bitch and threw her pen holder across the room and we now have a standing appointment every other Thursday.
That’s why when the guy with the SpongeBob tie shoulder checked me, I didn’t throw something at him like I would have before the Shoe Boat incident. I internalized. I just thought, step in front of a bus, you prick.
Then he did it. He stepped right off the curb in front of this tour bus and it was all over the news. At the time, I thought he deserved it for not watching where he was going.
Second time was at a job. I don’t work on anyone’s clock but my own now, on account of nobody wants to hire someone who throws coffee at their boss’s boss and gets court mandated therapy sessions. So I rent myself out as a handyman and stay pretty busy.
While I was fixing her garbage disposal, this one old bird just wouldn’t stop talking about how old ladies are overcharged and how this wouldn’t happen if her husband were alive.
It was when she started in on how I did a half-assed job and it would stop working again in an hour that I lost my temper.
Now, part of me wanted to toss around her tchotchkes, but I remembered to internalize and I kept smiling while I was thinking she needed to quit squawking and turn the disposal on with her hand in it.
Then she did it! Even while she was telling me I was crap, she jammed her hand down in there and flipped that little switch. That was the first time I had to wash blood out of my hair because I was still right there in front of the sink, and blood gushed out of that thing like Old Faithful.
Proved my work was good, though. I don’t half-ass jobs. I whole-ass everything.
I guess I’m lucky I got out of there without being seen. With my history, you know, they never would have believed me if I told them she did it herself.
That’s when I told my therapist that all this internalizing had given me the power to kill people with my mind and really, if they just let me keep throwing things I wouldn’t be living out my super villain origin story.
She didn’t believe me.
I convinced myself that I had killed one man and really hurt one old broad and my therapist couldn’t tell me how to turn off my murder-by-brain-waves superpower and I figured just avoiding other humans was best for everyone. So I just quit going out.
Problem was, I ran out of beer, and the bar was right around the corner, plus they had pool tables. But the guy who took me up on a game cleaned me out and this time maybe I said out loud that he needed a pool cue shoved up his ass and out his face and half the bar heard me cause I was kind of loud.
When he followed me into the shitter with the cue in his hand, I thought, oh shit, this guy’s gonna pound me. I might have anger issues, but I’m shit in a fight. I thought I was gonna die, but instead of taking a swing at me, he dropped trou and jammed that cue up his own turd cutter.
At first, he was moaning like he was having a good time, but then he started screaming and I thought he might stop, but he was still pushing even though he was screaming. Then I realized he was doing like the other two and acting out what I had internalized. I hadn’t started the day out wanting to see a man shove a pool cue up his ass and out his face and I didn’t want to see it now, so I started screaming too.
He only had the leverage to push so far and it didn’t want to go any further and I thought good, maybe this one won’t die, but then the bastard sat down. Just dropped flat on his ass and that cue disappeared up inside him. It didn’t come out of his face but he made this noise like, urk, and puked blood all over me.
So, this is where I am now, covered in blood in the toilet of a dive bar with a dead man who has a stick up his ass. The cops are here and there’s no way I’m not gonna get it for this, because of my history, you know?
Might be for the best though, if I’m locked away. Since they won’t believe me when I tell them the truth, it’s bound to happen again.