Rage
Paul W. Ryan
Rage
Rage is the glue, the fabric of society. Tap into your hate addiction and let yourself live. Become the monster that society wants you to be. That deep down, you want to be.
Meet Peter Clayton: rage dealer. For a price, he organizes what he innocently calls 'Playdates', giving ordinary people with anger problems a chance to connect with others—by beating them within an inch of their lives. The ‘date’ goes home with a few bruises, and a wad of cash, if he or she goes home at all.
How long before one of them overdoses on rage? Can you really control someone who is addicted?
Peter soon learns that he has created more than just rage addicts; he has created monsters who are hell-bent on destroying everything.
Works by Paul W. Ryan
The Watchers Series
Moonstruck
Watchers in the Dark (forthcoming)
The Beast in the Sky (forthcoming)
Monster Hunter Extraordinaire
I F*cking Hate Monsters
We’re All Going to Die
The Rot and Death
Do you want Paul to email you when he publishes a new book or when one goes on sale? Go to Paulwryanauthor.com and sign up. Those are the only times he’ll contact you. No spam. Pinkie promise.
RAGE
By Paul W. Ryan
Copyright © 2014 Paul W. Ryan
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover design by Alerrandre who may be reached at https://www.fiverr.com/alerrandre
Third Edition 2016
ASIN: B00Q9L5GKI
Table of Contents
Works by Paul W. Ryan
Copyright Notices
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Prologue
“Rage is the glue, the fabric of society. Since the dawn of man, it has been the most reliable way of binding a society together—by channelling our hate addiction. We see a tragedy, maybe donate a couple of dollars to Red Cross, but when we see the Twin Towers, it sends us into a trillion-dollar rage that leaves the Middle East in flames. Tragedy doesn't bind us; anger does. We need our monsters, and as much as you hate to admit it, you need us. You need to hate us.”
It started at a shopping mall in what was once a normal town. The shopping mall was a brute leviathan of a building that shouldered its neighbours aside, planted its concrete feeders into the ground, and vomited forth a bunch of high-windowed shops. Such is the norm of aggressive takeovers of little towns by big companies that it's not even a surprise anymore when you see it. It's just something we accept, a kind of social growth as we are taught to call it. Almighty and omniscient, it sat in the middle of a block, embroidered at street level with a daisy chain of dozing winos and hopeless beggars.
Can you picture it now? Good. Why do I mention this shopping mall? Well, you could call it the catalyst.
The crowd was milling in and out of the stores like ants around spilled sugar. No one was paying attention to what was happening—they were all too absorbed by their own self-worth—practicing the steps and acts society had taught them: work, spend, eat, sleep, repeat. The social lens everyone wears, distorted and fine-tuned to suit everyone’s means; blind to what was growing . . . what was manifesting all around them.
“You are a biological machine built to hate. You are that way because your ancestors killed off everyone who wasn't. Rage makes you strong, and that strength lets you win. That is why so much of society is built around controlling and suppressing it.”
A small group had assembled and formed a ring around the man. The preacher, if you want to call him that.
His words seemed to rattle the ribs of the listening crowd, polluting their ears, causing their hearts to beat faster like wet war drums in their hollow chests. Nostrils flared. Fists clenched as the words took physical form. Some nodded in agreement. Others spat curses and walked away in disgust. It didn’t matter what they thought.
An invisible leash drew in the crowd, transparent, yet holding these savages in check.
“Fight back. Let the hate that has been suppressed by others flow free. He who angers you, conquers you. Controls you. Express it. Embrace it. Become it.”
With a mighty roar, the crowd raised their fists as one.
“Ladies and gentlemen: let the games begin!”
FROM THE DIARY OF PETER CLAYTON
If you are reading this, then stop. Right now, just put this down and walk away, for I fear you may not realise what this is. Maybe you misread the cover or decided to harmlessly skim through this out of curiosity. Maybe you thought this Peter Clayton fellow was some famous philosopher or inventor you may not have heard about. Maybe he’s some dashing young actor or musician who has been forgotten by time, but will one day rise again.
I am none of those things.
And if you are still thinking of reading this then heed my advice—don’t.
Inside is not some diary of ‘who said what’ or ‘my hopes and dreams.' Hell, even calling it a journal is a stretch.
No, inside this is reality.
The reality we all know exists, but choose not to see. The kind of reality where the wool is finally pulled away from our eyes and the world rears its ugly, spiteful head.
The kind of which is stripped down of all false notions and decorations—the reality where we stop lying to ourselves and for once truly open our eyes to that horrible eyesore we call life.
So just drop this journal and run away back to your fantasy world full of blissful ignorance. Drown yourself in mind-numbing toxins, practice yoga or spend your days watching cable television—anything that keeps you feeling important, feeling numb in your fake little empire. Go live your life in peace—away from all the bad things in this world.
Whatever keeps you sedated. Whatever keeps you feeling numb.
Work, spend, eat, sleep, repeat. Never forget the mantra of the modern-day man.
But for all your second-hand experiences and beliefs of this world there is one which exists on each plain; one thing that connects us all in the most simple and primitive fashion—
Rage.
CHAPTER 1
“So, what makes you angry, Peter?”
I looked around the room at the other people around me. Those who were meant to be just like me. Most of them were doubled over, puffing intemperately from the cigarettes clutched in their filthy, yellow stained claws. My cigarette dangled uselessly from
my bottom lip—an ornament at this stage more than anything. I took one last deep puff and extinguished it before it dropped hopelessly down to the floor. Jason smirked. I matched his look with an inward smile of my own.
“Smoking will kill you, Pete.”
“Not unless I kill you first.”
A personal joke. It would take too long to explain.
“Peter, you still haven’t answered my question . . .”
I leaned my head back and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. The padded chair creaked as I shuffled my weight into a more relaxed pose. The smoke danced and intertwined above my head into a soft, transparent halo before dissipating. The flicking, fluorescent light bulbs overhead left the room pallid and lifeless. These four walls, which were once white and freshly-coated, were now yellow and water-stained.
“Ms. Applegate, in all due respect it’s the exact same things as last week when you asked me the same question. It’s the exact same things that annoyed me last month. Hell, it’s the same things since the day I was born.”
An echo of laughs followed in the wake of my answer. Sarah's annoyance grew.
Marcus laughed sheepishly to himself in the corner, covering his mouth with his hands, the cigarette still clenched in his long, thin fingers.
“Silence, everybody, please,” she insisted, but this served only to encourage them.
Jason leaned over to whisper something into my ear about later that night, but I waved him away.
“Silence!” she snapped, her soft voice drowned by the laughing and chatter filling the room.
“Feeling annoyed, Sarah?” I asked.
“No, not at all,” she quickly responded with a faint cough. Her gaze returned to mine. The room fell quiet once more.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a perfectly normal expression.”
“Of course it is,” she replied with a nod of her head, asserting herself.
I caught a glance of Jason rising out of his chair from the corner of my eye.
“Excuse me, Mr. Casey, but we’re not finished yet.”
“Yeah? That's a shame, 'cause I am.”
He walked towards the door and past Sarah without a word. I craned my head upward and ran my fingers through my hair. It’s all part of the act really. I figured I might as well play my role. It would be rude not to.
“Jason, come back, man. It’s important. Trust me.”
Jason stopped at the threshold and threw a long, hard glare in my direction. I could sense his eyes trying to burn their way through me, but I refused to make eye contact. I kept my eyes firmly on the ceiling.
“Time’s a wasting,” I mocked. I stretched my arms upward and let out a fake yawn. Oscar performance quality if you ask me.
“Seriously, Jason, I can't be late getting back to the studio because of you again,” Jonathan said as he sat by the door, hardly stealing a single glance at the drama unfolding. Alice—to his left—painted her nails to pass the time, taking a silent moment or two to admire her handiwork. Marcus slipped his headphones back on, concealed under his long, matted hair.
“Please re-join us, Jason,” Sarah said.
A cold stare answered us, which he held for several long moments.
Reluctantly, he peeled away from the threshold and grunted as he took his seat to my right. I shot him a sidelong smirk. I could feel the rage boiling inside him.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath inward, allowing my senses to be overloaded.
“You mentioned last week that your manager has been causing you a great deal of stress lately?” Sarah scribbled notes down into her notepad.
“Well, this week the little fag came up to me demanding—”
“Language please, Mr. Casey.”
“Right, right . . . this little gentleman demanded that I up my sales in all the Peterman lettings. You see, we‘ve had a serious shortage of newly-purchased property over the past few months. Recession, people emigrating . . . Naturally he would assume it’s my fault, and is overlooking the goddamn obvious, trying to pass the blame onto anyone but himself . . .”
Sarah encouraged him to continue with a nod and continued scribbling onto her petite crammed notepad as it balanced uneasily on her lap.
I leaned forward on queue as Jason done the same. Perfectly synchronized. Timed down to the dot.
“So I told him, ‘look, Leo, I’m sick and tired of your bullshit. I’ve worked here for over six years busting my ass off and still you treat me like shit? You think it’s a big mystery why people are leaving this shithole city? And these Peterman lettings? They’re not only my responsibility; they’re also yours, and I’m not picking up your shit anymore . . . some properties just won’t budge in the market these days . . .”
I chose to direct my attention elsewhere, knowing Jason’s routine far too well. All the focus was on him now. Each week he’d present new symptoms to have Sarah running around in circles chasing after ghosts and his trail of lies. Then the next week he’d play his little game once again for another lap just to get her all rattled up for a cheap kick. Jason, in a nutshell, was a spontaneous liar at the best and not a very good one at that. You would think that after three years of coming here he would have improved, but no. He was too blunt and simple for those kinds of games.
Time for me to have some fun.
I watched Marcus in his corner slightly outside the circle. His eyes were fixated on the floor and his foot gently tapped to the beat playing in his ears. He always looked like a starved, wet dog—it was how I would describe him to others—just skin and bones, weighed down by a shaggy mane of dark, unkempt hair. He’d been coming to anger management sessions for longer than I have, and no one is too sure when or what first got him sent here.
I waved my hand in his direction and snapped my fingers. He cautiously raised his eyes just enough to catch me mouth “fuck you.”
Marcus’ eyes locked with mine as I kept mouthing profanities at him. He tossed his cigarette onto the floor, incisors gleaming from the corners of his sunken mouth. His eyes turned bloodshot and his arms pushed up against his legs like a starved caged beast ready to pounce.
“Peter, do you have something to say?” Sarah glared at me.
“No, Sarah. I’m good. Please, do continue.”
She shook her head before continuing her debate with Jason. Something about asserting yourself and bullying in the workplace from what I overheard.
Sarah was a good person and she tried hard but truthfully, she wasn’t very good at her job. She was young, inexperienced and at times a little over her head, but she hid it well—or at least hid behind her endless binders of notes when it didn’t go so well. It was her responsibility to meet our dysfunctional little group once a week to talk about our anger problems and try help us in any way that she could.
‘Group anger management sessions’ is what she called it: a chance to vent and connect with others. Where she saw a chance for recovery, I saw a chance for some fun. A place for recovery soon became a place for addictions. At the beginning, she would always bring in pages of studies and quotes to try relate to us. Every week some damn new quote from this phonebook-thick binder full of spilling pages and hastily highlighted passages. There was always some new study about anger or some new theory she wanted to try prove. Like angry little rats, we became her test subjects.
Now, she just listened. I liked that more. It helped me feel human for a little while. Even if she couldn’t see the real me that lurked just beneath the surface.
The combination of smoke, pine flooring, insulated padding and recycled air from the past half an hour had left me feeling worse. I took another deep breath.
Nothing.
Frustrated now, I took another deeper breath inward until my lungs burned. Then it hit me. That smell. The one that arouses my senses like a drug.
The smell of anger. The smell of hate.
The smell of rage.
FROM THE DIARY OF PETER CLAYTON
I know I’m not a good person. How
else does someone like me end up in a place like this?
It’s sad really. I keep to myself mostly. People are just simply too afraid to merge.
But I’m not the only one who imprisons himself where we feel most comfortable. All around the four corners of the world, people do exactly as I had done. I just saw past those four walls of reality which held me down and shared what I saw with those around me.
That’s why we done these things. I guess it’s safe to say it started out pretty innocent at first. I never expected anyone outside the group to understand, but that’s just the way it had to be. For a short time, we had a purpose: always us against them. We felt happy to live; we felt like we had an existence, and we got hooked on that feeling.
It was our drug.
I go to these group therapy sessions because I want to. Try to blend in and act human for a little while. Discuss our emotions, our feelings. Why we feel like the world has wronged us. Vent as we are always told to do. Purge that unhealthy anger and let the love flow back in—or some other bullshit to that effect. It's not guilt or confession that keeps me to keep coming back.
Truth is: I'm a rage dealer. I have my regular clients who come to me for a fix; to scratch that itch nothing else can. I might take a little bit of skin off, leave a little scar here or there, but I’ll always be there for a client.
People are simply too afraid to merge. With each other. With life. With themselves.
It’s sad really, but that’s just the way it is.
What I offer is much more than a drug. What I offer is a chance to feel alive and in control. What I offer is a way to tap into your most primal instincts and let them loose for a little while. Free the beast of man. Some people spend their whole lives meditating and trying to find their inner calm.
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