Me and my family were sitting down at a restaurant, enjoying our meals. I’d just turned six and finished my first week of school, my parents deciding to take me and my eleven year old sister Sophie out to celebrate my “growing up” as I’d thought of it. I remember that, as a kid, I was enthusiastically talking about all the interesting things I’d found out about my new best friend, Jared.
While waiting for our food, my mom had excused herself and said she needed to use the restroom, while I kept telling my story. After a few minutes, I remembered seeing my mom out of the corner of my eye near the bar, so I stopped talking for a second to look at her, confused. She was talking to a man I’d never seen before, the guy was swaying back and forth, probably drunk, blocking her way. What caught my eye was how my mother kept worriedly throwing glances at our table while saying something to the man, who wouldn't leave her alone.
Leven locked eyes with his mom, and hers widened slightly, looking to his sister instead. Sophie had just barely caught her moms eyes, and she reached out to grab me, but it was slightly too late.
“Why is momma talking to that man?” I said, with all the naivety of a child.
Immediately, I heard Sophie slap her hand over her own mouth instead of his as I suddenly saw his father whip into the direction of the restrooms and see what was going on.
That was the very first time I saw how quickly my father could change. The smile dropped off his face, and even though he did not scowl nor express even the slightest bit of anger, the absolute absence of emotion caught me off guard. Even as a kid, I realized almost instantly I had done something wrong.
“Dad!” Sophie had shouted, but it was drowned out over the din of noise around the restaurant. Our father ignored her and quickly stood up, his chair not even making a scraping noise as he silently weaved around tables and approached his mother and the man.
Every table his dad had passed by gave a startled jump and glanced in his direction, even those who never looked at him in the first place or heard him pass, it was like they could feel his presence.
I saw the man shiver suddenly, goosebumps rising along his arm. Turning around despite nobody warning him, I saw the man lock eyes with my dad, paling under his gaze.
Without a wave goodbye to his friends, Leven saw the man quickly move around his mother and book it out the door, avoiding touching her as though she were the deadliest thing in the world. The man knocked over multiple empty chairs in his rush, but was out the door faster than Leven had ever seen anyone move.
My father changed directions to go after him, but my mother quickly intercepted him and placed her hands on his shoulders as she stood in front of him. Leven couldn't see her anymore because her father was blocking the way, but to him she seemed so much larger, so much stronger than he had ever known her. He thought she had done something impossible at the time, stopping a mountain dead in its tracks. My father made slight movements to get around her, but was completely unwilling to shake her off completely. He moved with the strength of a swaying oak, trying to gently pull her from him without leveraging his strength enough to hurt her, but she clung to him like he was her last lifeline. A few people were watching this happen as they had been startled by the noise and my father passing by, but nobody intervened. After maybe a minute, maybe five, or maybe just a few seconds as Leven wasn't thinking clearly at the time, my father stopped struggling, gently placed his hand into his mothers hand, and allowed her to guide him back to their table.
Sophie let out a breath next to him, one that he hadn't realized she was holding, as she saw them both moving back.
He didn't know how to interpret the expression his father had, but with everything Leven knew now, it was probably regret.
They had sat down, and his mother asked me to continue telling them about his week, but Leven had resisted until she shot me a look, and I realized it wasn't really a request. Awkwardly, I continued where I left off, but after a few more seconds of talking, I quickly got back into the nature of things and, slowly but surely, the incident with my father was pushed to the back of my mind; I didn’t forget it, it simply faded from relevance to me and seemed unimportant.
For a time.
A little over two years went by, and while my perception of my parents changed a bit, nothing else really did. The memory stuck to me, but I rarely thought about it at the time. I only thought it was strange because it never faded in clarity, like all of my others did.
Third grade was the first time it came up again. Jared and I had grown to become best friends, a dynamic duo. I wasn’t very social, usually avoiding other students that Jared hadn’t introduced, while Jared loved to embellish stories to others in his grade and make as many friends as possible, but there was only one Leven to Jared, and I knew that Jared considered them best friends too.
Normally, I would have either played with Jared during recess or sat alone reading a book, but Jared had been out for three days, and I was feeling a bit lonely, so I decided to go play with one of the friends Jared had previously introduced me to. I had my favorite wooden car toy, and Taj had his marbles.
I needed to use the bathroom, so I told Taj I would be right back. I left my car on the mat, got the hall pass, left and came back, then moved back to play with Taj. The only issue was, Taj was playing with my wooden car. I wasn’t really mad, but I wanted his car back.
“Taj, give me my car. Please” Leven added, remembering my mothers lessons on politeness.
“No! You’ve been playing with it all recess. I want a turn, you can play with my marbles.”
My teacher glanced over after Taj shouted no, but I hadn't noticed. Instead, I scowled with more fury than a child had any right to do, but still, I remembered how I wasn't supposed to hit anyone.
“TAJ!” I shouted “Give! It! Back!” balling up my fists. I saw the teacher moving towards us in my peripheral vision but ignored her.
“NO!” Taj screamed and turned to start running away.
When I realized what Taj was doing, I instantly lunged for him with my fists raised, ready to bring them down. Instead, I was quickly scooped up out of the air by my teacher and pulled back as she held me in a hug from behind
“Shh shh, its okay, its okay” she started to quietly console me, but I didn't want to hear it. I had wanted to hit Taj, the thief who was still running away! My teacher picking me up had distracted me for a moment, but when I saw Taj again, I started struggling in her grip. She had held my arms down with her own, but as I pushed back against her, I could hear her grunt with exertion as she squeezed as hard as she could, but still, I felt her arms move open ever so slightly.
“Leven!” she said in a strained voice. My rage at being stolen from was drowning out all other sensibilities, but when I heard the pain in her voice, a second emotion joined the first. Guilt cut through the static in my mind, and I realized I was hurting her. Letting my muscles relax, I allowed her to quickly carry me towards the door. I suddenly felt incredibly tired, and whispered out “sorry” in a meek voice, before falling asleep.
I woke up some time later in my mothers arms, and as I looked around, I noticed that I was in the room right outside of the principal's office. From behind the door, I heard my teacher say “Geez, I know you warned me about it but still… I was barely able to get him under control. No, it would be better to say I didn’t get him under control, he let himself be taken away…”
When his mom realized what I was listening to, she hoisted me onto her hip and took me to the car. It was a quiet ride after my father got out of the meeting, and when we got home, my parents explained to me that anger issues ran in the family. They had warned my teacher to watch out for it just in case, but it had skipped over my sister so they had hoped it would do the same to me.
I was told that I needed to make sure to watch my actions and to not let myself become too angry. They explained that normally people would use medicine to help control the issue, but for some reason it never worked on anyone in our family.
The next day, my father stayed home from work while my mother went out shopping to let him talk to me in private.
“Leven” he said with a gravity that ensured I would take his words seriously “when I was your age, I let my anger get the better of me too many times. Nowadays I can mostly contain it, but there are always outbursts. I know that this is unfair to ask of you, but I need you to try to be better, so that you don’t have to look back over your childhood, regretting all the things you said and did in anger.
“Today, I’m going to teach you meditation and breathing techniques to calm yourself down, and we are going to start working out together. I’ve found that when I stop myself from acting out when I'm angry, it doesn't go away. You will need to work off your anger in a productive way, and exercise can become that. Lets start with meditation to keep your mind balanced, and breathing techniques to bring it back into balance when something spikes with your anger.”
Like that, my father started a routine where, after I got home from school and he got home from work, we would work together to undo any buildup of stress through the day. I was used to my emotions fading after a few minutes or hours, but in this case my father had been right, after suppressing the desire to break free from my teacher, I had a rage simmering below the surface that never fully went away.
On Friday the next day, Taj came up to me and apologized, giving me my car back. I remembered my fathers words about trying to be better, and felt like I needed to live up to the expectations. I stiffly accepted the apology, even when I really still wanted to hit him, and we never talked about it again.
Over the next two years, incident after incident happened that caused my anger to spike, but I always managed to wrangle it into submission until I got home to work out my stress with a punching bag or dumbbell, never quite freeing myself from it, but always getting enough out of my system to make it to the next incident.
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In the cafeteria, a student tripped and knocked a tray from my hand, but for some reason it didn't really bother me and no anger rose.
I saw one of Jared and I’s mutual friends talk about how good of a friend he was with Jared, and talked about how they were best friends. The anger spiked badly, but I managed to ask to go to the bathroom and calm myself down enough to return to class.
Taj, the source of his first incident, started glaring at Jared any chance he could. He never approached us, but always looked displeased when he saw us. It led to a continuous buildup of anger any time I caught a glance of him, because who was he to hate us? But I never let myself lose control
Over time, the simmering rage beneath the surface became something of a constant companion to me. It never went away, but I realized it was becoming easier to control, every spike not quite getting as close as the last from breaking the dam. The anger continued to grow, of course, but the walls that contained it seemed sturdier than ever.
I even started going out of my way to do kind things to people who wronged me, proving to myself that I would always refuse to let it direct who I was. After all, I had reasoned, if I avoid people that make my anger spike, that's just another way of letting the anger decide who I talk to.
By around the middle of fifth grade, I was notorious for being a gentle giant. I was naturally tall, and the workouts with my dad put some muscles on me that other kids just didn't have.
One day though, I arrived oddly early. Normally I’d only get to school five to ten minutes before school started, but my parents had been excited for a shared day off they both had, and we left early, followed by getting every single green light.
Arriving thirty minutes before school started, I remembered that the school served breakfast for people who got there early, and thought it would be cool to see if there was anything nice to eat, even if I already had mine.
Making my way to the cafeteria, something in my head started to bother me. I’d found that sometimes my anger would tell me to do things, a little devil on my shoulder so to speak, but this time it was something else. The wall I used to contain my anger was starting to say something too. Not words, the anger had never said words and neither did this barrier id built around it, it just sent a feeling of urgency
The nagging feeling that I needed to be somewhere deeper in the school.
I didn’t know where the feeling had come from, but it felt important, and it was coming from something I considered to be a source of pride in my head, the container of my anger.
Moving quickly, I followed where the voice wanted me to go, ending up around the edge of the school's boundary, between the fence and the agriculture building. I started hearing a familiar voice, Jared.
“What do you have today?” Jared said in a growl, a voice Leven had never heard him use. To him, it sounded malicious.
Someone else mumbled something I couldn't hear
“Speak up!” Jared snapped
“Just… just some french toast and orange juice” he heard another familiar voice say, Taj.
Quietly moving from around the corner, walking towards them, I saw what was happening
Taj had his eyes downcast, Jared was standing in front of him, with another one of their friends behind him. I didn't know this one well, Jared never wanted the two of us hanging out.
“Do you think im stupid?” Jared snarled “I know there was chicken with this too.” Raising his arm. Bracing himself, Taj did not put his hands up to defend.
Before I’d realized I was moving, I was upon Jared, holding his arm back
Jared turned around, mouth agape “er, Leven, why are you here so early?”
I said nothing. Internally, a screaming inferno raged, threatening to break the barrier I’d build around my anger. The four of them stood in silence, three sets of eyes on me as I carefully took meditative breaths, firmly holding Jared's arm in my grasp as I rebalanced himself.
After a few seconds, I opened my eyes, glaring at Jared as I let his arm go. Without another word, Jared and his lackey ran away, leaving Taj and I alone.
Taj looked horrified at the change of situation, so I held my hands up placatingly, saying “I’m not going to hurt you. Let's go to the cafeteria so I can get you another lunch.”
Taj looked like he wanted to find an excuse to leave, but ultimately relented.
They went to the cafeteria and I gave Taj my breakfast, french toast, orange juice, and chicken strips. Taj explained to me while on the verge of tears that Jared picked a few kids to terrorize, and he would use Leven as an excuse to make them shut up about it.
“Say anything, and Leven is going to find you before I do” was what he had said to Taj specifically. Leven was horrified, and told him that it was completely untrue, much to Taj’s relief. I wanted to know why Jared had done such a thing, but I never found out. Later in life, I would realize that there doesn’t always have to be a reason for someone to cause pain, but I still regretted letting someone like that get close to me.
Jared and I had a falling out after I pushed Taj to speak up about what had happened, and four other kids admitted to being bullied in much the same way. Jared was suspended for a month, and I ended up befriending Taj, much to Jareds dismay.
Not much changed over the next decade or so. Sometimes I would be hit with a desire to be somewhere near me, and I found that every single time, there was someone in need. If the feeling faded before I got there, it meant I was too late to help. I kept quiet about it, but was proud of my random acts of kindness.
The anger grew too, but I grew with it. Each passing month, it ballooned inside of me, and each passing month I grew strong enough to contain it and more. I never had an outburst, and the term ‘gentle giant’ followed me through my life. I always looked angry or serious, but proved to be kind at every turn. Around a year into college, I met one of the prettiest women I'd ever seen, and four months later we were dating. Taj stayed my best friend and never did anything terrible to anyone, luckily, and he said he was happy for me and Emily.
Two years after that, I proposed and she said yes. Taj was the best man at our wedding. After another three years, I was well into my first engineering job. It paid well, I had a wife that I loved, and we were happy in our little apartment, with plans to buy a house in the distant future.
The next three years were the best of my life. Me and Emily finally got our home together, and we decided to have children.
Emily was three months pregnant when I was making my way home as the two emotions in my head spoke out simultaneously
A feeling of needing to be home as soon as possible emerged from within me, the anger sending the directive with glee, while the calmness that contained it sent feelings of resignation.
Pressing down on his gas, I went over a hundred miles down the interstate and barely slowed down enough to stay grounded as I took my exit. Rushing through every redlight, a police officer started flashing their lights to get me to stop, but I ignored it. Pulling into the suburbs that Emily and I shared, I barely wove around someone crossing the road as I pulled into my driveway, or tried to. Where I would normally park, there was another car.
Taj’s car.
Fury built inside me but I told myself I didn't know everything. I parked in the yard and quickly stormed up the steps to my house as I heard the police officer shout “Freeze!” but I ignored that too. Not bothering with my keys, I crushed his house's door knob and broke the door off its hinges from pushing too hard.
I felt something electrocute me from behind but didnt even slow, and stormed into my bedroom,
In bed with my wife, naked, was my best friend Taj, with my handgun that I kept in the nightstand pointed at me.
I watched as they both went through a range of emotions as the pressure built inside me.
Pressure from my anger,
Pressure from my Wrath
Finally, cracks appeared in the box I always contained it with.
“SIR! GET DOWN!” the officer yelled behind him, but I ignored it
Letting out a beastial shout, I took a single step forward-
Six quick pops from behind me, and I was on the ground,
“Leven!” I heard Emily cry out as her voice broke, but it was too late.
Now, in the present, my entire life, right up to the moment the officer shot me in the back and through my heart, flashed before my eyes.
‘Its unfair.’ he thought as he felt his anger dying with him, giving way to both despair and shame. ‘I tried, didn’t I? To have people see me for more than what I might do?’
He could feel himself being turned over as Taj looked at him with a grim expression, and Emily had tears rolling down her face.
‘If I could kill you both, I would!’ he snarled in his head.
He tried to lift his arm and brush them away, but they wouldn't respond.
He was dying… the realization was both an expected outcome and a devastating revelation.
He tried with all he had to well up one last insult, one last defiance, but nothing came. He could only sit and watch as his whole world, first emotionally, then literally, faded into nothing.
His mind grew sluggish in the dark, held together only by years of meditative practice. He could only watch as all he was drifted past him and was swallowed by the vast expanse of nothingness.
At the edge of his consciousness, he could feel it coming for him as well. Featherlight touches both chilling and numberless, began probing his very sense of self. He could feel the ravenous glee from them as it seemed he was deemed a worthy meal. They began to carve out thick grooves in his mind, a shivering cold overtaking him as he realized death was upon him.
‘NO!’ he wanted to shout. Just once, once, he wanted to fight back and show what he could truly do.
A realization more shocking than his own death washed over him when he saw that he was still holding back, keeping his anger in check. Even now, he felt the caged fury inside him. The difference this time was that instead of railing against him… it waited.
For so long, his anger waited in the cage he’d built around it, starving for the time when it would be released. Hungering for a time when he would call upon it. The cage groaned under its own weight, and that beast sensed its time was nigh.
For others, thoughtless violence was so foreign to them. Nothing in their lives would truly make them lose their mind, giving up their sensibilities and falling into a mindless rage.
For him, it was as simple as letting go.
The final lock on that impossibly sealed door clicked open, and his anger was free, lunging at the creatures of the dark. He could not see, hear, or feel anything, but he sensed when the chilling touches upon his soul receded, shocked by the resistance.
In moments, their roles reversed. His anger guided him, stalking through the nothingness, hungry for more blood.
He was pulled through the void by some invisible force, but his fury never abated. Ripping, tearing, devouring the monsters in his path as the boiling rage consumed him completely.
For an impossibly long moment, he was the monster. They screamed in indignation and fear, crying for his blood, yet none could approach him as the crimson rain fell in the place between. Time did not exist, his battle taking both an eternity and nothing at all.
Despite his best efforts though, he began to tire, and for one awful moment, he thought they would soon find a gap in his defenses.
Yet just as quickly as it started, it ended. The terrors receded as though they were never there, gone without even the slightest bit of reluctance, fleeing as a larger predator appeared
[Hello, Leven] the God declared
