The City

**Minor language. I didn't really think I could portray the whole thing right with out it.

Ch 2

Aaden's POV

Rage; it was more than the slightly unsettling feeling that came with anger, more than what the dumb asses who think they know what it’s like to be furious will ever feel. It consumes your whole body; your whole being feels as if it’s on fire. When you feel rage it’s like you’re on a high. When you are feeling this, truly rare, emotion called rage you see in red, you can’t think straight, there’s so much adrenalin pulsing through your body, you feel like you could do anything and, for a while, you can’t even manage the common emotion of regret; when you’re on this exhilarating high, feeling anything else is, impossible.

Rage is something you have to become familiar to control, and trust me; I have plenty of experience with it. Eventually you can come to control rage, to put it in a cage, even if it’s only for a little while. You can hold rage in, even if it is restlessly thrashing in its cage, begging you to get out, to scream and yell at someone till your voice is horse and they’re in tears. I’ve felt rage, to the point where I’ve thrown things across the house. I felt rage when my mother died; I felt rage when my father locked himself in his bedroom for days at a time, grieving for his loss instead of helping me through mine. But that was before I learned to control it, or, keep it at bay, at least.

My rage mostly shows up in my music. I go to the woods behind my house with my keyboard, where my father couldn’t hear me, when I need release. After my mother’s untimely death, my father refused to listen to my music; he hated to even see my instruments. They had to stay in my room, untouched, because, when they were out of sight, they were out of mind, just like my mother. At least, that’s how it is for him. Music for me, however, was the only thing of her that I had left. Music belonged to me and my mother. She taught me to play every instrument that I play now.

I wasn’t feeling rage, at least not at first, on that day one month ago, but I was feeling anger. My father and I were fighting.

My father was a prize hunter; that’s what he did for a living. He had just come in from a hunt and he asked me to help him skin a deer and, for once, I was egger to help because deer is a rare and prized meet. Finding a deer meant we would eat well that night and I hadn’t wanted him to be able to try and claim all of it, as I knew he would, if I didn’t help. I may be his son but he didn’t spoil me by any means. That is one thing my father would never do and in some ways I’m grateful, because it’s toughened me up.

I walked down stairs to find a large, dead buck in the garage, ready to be skinned. I remember, feeling something close to happiness when I released we would really have a meal. We worked on the deer in silence for a while until my father glanced down at my work.

“You, damned, foolish boy you’ve gone and done it wrong! You’ve damned our meat!” shouted my father he sounded terribly bitter and angry, he’s sounded like that a lot though since mother died.

“Father,” I said, trying to keep a lid on my new found anger, “I haven’t done anything to the meat and you know that. My part looks exactly the same as yours. Stop trying to start a fight when you know I haven’t done anything wrong!” My voice rose ever so slightly at the end to warn him of my heightening temper.

“That’s the problem, you blasted boy! You have done everything wrong!” He stepped closer as he shouted, so that our noses were nearly touching, his hot, angry breath fanning across my face.

That’s when I smelled it, the alcohol. He always goes off into the woods with a gun and one of those damn stiff drinks. I have no idea how he managed to shoot a deer, in this state I’d think we’d be lucky to eat possum for dinner tonight. “You’re an abomination, everything you’ve ever done has been wrong, wrong, wrong!” he continued.

He hadn’t always been like this, when mother was alive, not everything I’d ever done was wrong. I had been my mother’s golden child when she was alive, I had been exactly what she’d wanted, and that had made me perfect in his eyes, but now that she was gone I was just a painful reminder. When she was alive he would take me hunting and show me how to shoot small game; he would give me tips and help me aim, he would tell me how I could be a hunter just like him when I grew up. Then, when we’d go home we’d walk in laughing and joking and he’d brag to my mother about me and what a wonderful hunter I was turning out to be and she would laugh with us and smile, she would praise me right alongside him. I guess, looking back on it, I had been spoiled; I’d had the affection of both of my parents and, compared to what I had now, that was most defiantly spoiled.