Shrink

"Just close your eyes and concentrate on your anger.  Feel it burning in every inch of your body.  Now imagine shrinking it down, bit by bit.  Away from your fingers and toes.  Up your arms and legs.  That's it.  Now compact it into a little ball and push it out from your chest.  Reach your hands up.  That's right.  Hold your ball of anger.  Now comes the easy part.  Just push it away.  Imagine it floating from you.  Watch as it dissipates.  And…open your eyes."

Chuck Wheaton cast his mind back to Art Nguyen's words and grimaced as he watched the thing throw his bathroom sink through the wall.  If only that New Age bastard were here now, he thought.  If only Art would see what he's caused.

##

It started about a year ago when Chuck saw a strange child run up to his five-year-old son and, without the slightest provocation, kick little Charlie in the groin and push him to the ground.  The kid then loomed over his son and laughed as if they'd been playing an innocent game of tag.

Charlie merely whimpered.

The kid reared back, ready to deliver another blow, and Chuck leapt off his bench and jumped into the playground.  The other children were quiet and watching, just like their parents, none of whom seemed concerned in the slightest.

Just as the kid's foot began its next sweep, Chuck grabbed his skinny arm and yanked the brat back.  Stooping down so he could look the kid in the eyes, he shook the boy and yelled, "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

On the woodchipped ground, Charlie finally had enough air to begin crying.  Part of Chuck wanted to drop the offender and comfort his son, but the stronger portion of him wanted answers.  As far as he knew, this kid had never even seen Charlie before.  There had been no altercation.  If there was a reason for this to happen, it was locked in this wretched child's mind.

"What's wrong with you?! Why did you attack my son?!"

The boy's eyes were blank.  He couldn't have been older than eight, and his chubby face was stationary.  He found himself wondering if this kid was a serial killer in training.

"What are you doing to my son?" The voice was sharp and authoritative.  It was a very familiar sound, as Chuck could hear it coming from his own mouth, too.  An angry father.

As soon as the kid saw his dad, he began to bawl his eyes out.  It was instantaneous, like flipping a switch.  Very creepy, but it wasn't enough to make him relinquish his grasp on the boy.

Chuck turned to see a skinny, balding man with the tiniest glasses he'd ever seen - almost like a pince nez - parched on his button of a nose.  Though he didn't look very tough, anger boiled in his dark brown eyes, and if push came to shove, Chuck wasn't sure if he could take him.

"Did you see what your son did to mine?"  Chuck asked, pulling the kid in front of him.

"He was only playing," the man said.

"Only playing?!  Are you out of your fuckin' mind?!  What game involves kicking people in the crotch and shoving them down?"

"They're just kids.  You're a grown man, and you're shaking my son and yelling in his face!  You should know better!  You ought to be ashamed of yourself!  Let go of him!"

Chuck knew this looked bad, but he also knew he was in the right.  "No.  Not until he apologizes to my son."

"You're being crazy!" the man said, stepping forward to grab his crying son's other arm.  "You let him go, or I'll call you police!"

In retrospect, he thought he should have let go of the boy, and he didn't know which deadly sin - pride or wrath - it was that made him resist this very rational idea, but he only released the man's child when the officer made him do it.

The cops believed him when he told them what had happened, but they didn't seem to care.  If his wife hadn't been quick to bail him out, he would have been sent to county to await his child endangerment trial.

As soon as he was out, he decided he wanted to level charges against the boy who had hit his son.  Rupert Schade, his lawyer, advised him against this.  "The DA would see this as a desperate sign, and he'd murder us in court.  You're going to have a difficult time as it is.  Don't make this any harder."

But Chuck was adamant.  If he was going to have his reputation unduly tarnished for doing the right thing, he wanted the kid - whose name he now knew was Nicky Lorman - to be punished, too.

Rupert had been right.  Not only did the DA's assistant use Chuck's plan against him, but the judge even dismissed the case he was trying to build against the Lormans.

As things started to look Grim, Rupert begged Chuck to let him make a back room deal and end this trial before he found himself in a state penitentiary.  Grudgingly, Chuck gave in.

Instead of going to prison, Chuck had to go to a shrink two times a week.  While it was not his idea of a fun time, it was far better than the alternative.

Dr. Henry Forsythe was not a breath of fresh air.  No, he was business-as-usual as far as the psychiatric field was concerned.  He even gave Chuck a pillow to punch whenever he felt mad.

"I'm not an angry guy, Doc," Chuck said.  "One questionable event does not make me a bad guy.  I just did what any father would have done."

"Everyone's angry," Forsythe said.  "It's just a matter of management.  You have a problem, and I'm trying to help you fix it."

"You're the only thing making me angry," Chuck said.

The shrink shrugged.  "See?"

But their time together did not blossom as well as the court had hoped.  Since the results were less-than-satisfactory, Forsythe decided a change of tactics was necessary.  He referred Chuck to Art Nguyen.

Art was a neo-hippie.  Long hair, dull eyes, easy to laugh, not a hateful bone in his slightly effeminate body.  He dressed in decorative robes and constantly wore sandals.  The only thing he didn't do was smoke weed.

Everyday, Art brought Chuck through the externalization exercise.  Chuck had never felt like a bigger idiot.  Still, Art was tenacious; he refused to let Chuck go after every session until he'd taken it seriously.  By the end of each appointment, Chuck was good and angry, but oddly enough, when he earnestly followed Art's instructions, he really did feel at peace with himself.

Of course, he'd never allow his New Age therapist to learn this.

After several months, he went back to court with a favorable psych evaluation, and he was allowed to stop going to Art.  The externalization exercise was so effective, though, he decided to keep it in his life.

Every once in a while, something go to him.  Bad.  He'd feel the anger rising like bile in his throat, scorching the back of his neck like a sunburn.  He would take a moment and feel the rage shrinking inside himself until he was able to push the ball-shaped wrath out of his chest.  Inner peace always ensued.

And then a drunk driver killed his wife and crippled his son.

The soused bastard, Alan Burton, had no idea what he'd done.  When he came back to himself, he refused to believe he'd done it.  It had to have been some other guy who'd crossed the dotted line to crash head-on into the Wheatons' station wagon.  When confronted with evidence, Burton refused to take the blame.  He tried to tell them that Sandra Wheaton had been the drunk one.  When this didn't work, he blamed Jack Daniel's.  He blamed the bartender who should have stopped serving him.  He blamed the cops who should have pulled him over.

And Chuck felt the anger boil under his skin.

Sandra was in the morgue.  Charlie was in the hospital (luckily, his child seat was safe enough to keep him alive, but he still had not regained consciousness).  And this mad drunkard was mouthing off, trying to pass the buck.

Chuck breathed in, feeling his rage seethe over every inch of his hot, sweat-slicked body.  He closed his eyes and imagined it as a red light twinkling with the occasional yellow sun.

Shrink, he thought, forcing the crimson glow inward until it became smaller and smaller.  When it was the size of a baseball, he reached up to his chest and imagined pushing it out into his hands.

This time, the sensation was so realistic, he could feel his palms burning.  Eager to be rid of it, if only to cool himself off, he pushed the ball away and tried to imagine it bursting apart into nothingness.

There was an explosion as soon as it was out of his hands.  He screamed as he fell to the floor.  Flames licked at his body, and he dared not open his eyes.  Crabwalking, he scuttered back so hard and fast that his head struck the wall, and he mercifully passed out.

##

When he came to, all was quiet.  There was no sign of fire.  Nothing was scorched, and there was no indication of an explosion.  The house was, however, trashed, as if the Tasmanian Devil himself had run amok there.  The TV screen was shattered, the stereo had been reduced to jagged electronics, the couch and chair cushions were open and bleeding foam and stuffing, the lamps were in pieces, their shades torn to shreds.  Even the carpet had been rended, and the curtains were rags.

Something popped and cracked upstairs, and Chuck knew that whoever had done this damage was still there.  The guy was breaking things in his bedroom.

Like a sleepwalker, he shambled towards the stairs.  It never occurred to him that he might need a weapon.  In fact, he wasn't even the slightest bit angry.  If anything, there was a twinge of fear, but for the most part, he felt empty.

Once at the top, he moved past broken flower pots, shattered end tables, and shredded paintings to his bedroom.  The door was cracked in two and off its hinges, and as he walked in, something threw his computer monitor into the closet where it exploded and sizzled like a piece of meat on a grill.

Standing over the bed, ripping into the mattress and pulling the springs out, was a man-shaped light.  Red with yellow sparkles.

Chuck stood there dumbly, wondering what to do.  Wondering if this was even happening.

"Hey," he said.  "Stop that."

The thing whirled on him and emitted a bowel-loosening roar.  Though it had no distinctive features, Chuck thought he'd seen jagged fangs sticking out of a slight indentation where a mouth should be.

He ran.  Out of the room and down the stairs.  He was about to go out the front door when he realized he had nowhere to go.

He turned and went to the kitchen, where he opened the fridge and retrieved a beer.  He took it to the table, sat down, and listened to the anger beast break things upstairs.

Was it possible that grief had driven him crazy?  Chuck supposed so, but he didn't think this was the case.  It felt too real.  Of course, insane people didn't usually know they were insane, but still…

He had to kill it.  There was no other way.

Chuck went back upstairs and into the bedroom, where the beast was still destroying his things.  That was all right; what he wanted was in the closet.  He pushed the broken electronics aside and found the safe, which was hidden beneath several boxes of family photos and his wife's shoes.  Four button-beeps later, and he was loading bullets into his .32 revolver.

When he emerged from the closet, the anger beast was not even acknowledging his presence.  It did not turn away from ripping his night table to pieces, not even when he aimed the gun at its back.

He fired, and a tiny hole grew in the creature, all the way through.  The bullet lodged itself in the plaster on the other side of the beast.

It roared, and this time Chuck knew it had teeth.  It yanked the .32 from his hands and popped the barrel into its seemingly-ephemeral mouth.  There was a crunching sound as it bit the short barrel off and crushed the rest in its bulbous fist.

But the hole remained.

I need to buy a bigger gun.

##

When the clerk told him there was a two-day waiting period, Chuck felt cold panic caress his insides.  "Is there any kind of gun I can buy that I don't have to wait for?"

"I got some good pellet guns," Mel (according to his name plate) said.

"No, I need something with kick, like a shotgun."

Mel shrugged.  "Two days."

He couldn’t trust a hand-to-hand weapon.  Nothing short of buckshot would do the trick.  Chuck filled out the form.

When he returned home, he went to check on his beast, and though he thought it was his imagination, he saw the bullet hole in its back was smaller.

The next day, it had closed up entirely.

Maybe I just have to make sure the hole is big enough, he thought.  Buckshot should do 'er.

Chuck rejoiced on the following day when the gun shop called to tell him the shotgun was in.  He drove over as quickly as he could, picked up his purchase, and zipped back home.  By this point, the house was trashed beyond all recognition.  Nothing was intact except the building itself.  Yet somehow the beast still found things to break.  Junk littered the floor, and it was starting to pile up higher than his ankles.

The creature was in the bathroom stomping the toilet to a watery powder, and as the broken pipes puked up enough water to fill the room, Chuck could see the soap and several cans of deodorant and shaving cream float out into the hallway like boats over a waterfall.

He loaded the shotgun - grateful that he lived in unincorporated farmland, where no one could hear him so no one would call the cops - and didn't hesitate to let loose everything in one go.  A cloud of shot filled the bathroom and tore into the beast, sending droplets of its essence in a spray, decorating the walls with wet splashes of red.

But some remained, and it oozed across the floor toward him.

So he reloaded and pulled the trigger again.

When there was no further movement from the beast's splattered form, he exited the room and slumped against the wall.  He sank to the soggy floor and propped the shotgun next to him.  His body was so tired he felt like a cornhusk in autumn, and his head fell into his hands.  If he'd had the energy, he would have cried.  For Charlie.  For Sandra.  For himself.

He didn't know how long he'd sat there, but the next thing he knew, something was moving next to him.  There was a scrape as the shotgun was lifted away, its sight moving across the plaster wall.

Chuck looked up, expecting to see the beast, but instead he saw himself.  His double's eyes glowed with the beast's colors, twin twinkling, crimson universes peering down at him, but the rest of it was him down to the scar on his chin from when he'd fallen off a skateboard when he was a kid.

It was holding the shotgun, but it was no longer breaking things.  All it did was stare down at Chuck.

And then it handed him the gun.

Chuck took it, but he had no intention of using it.  He didn't even think he could stand.  There seemed to be nothing left of him except his body.

The doppelganger grinned, and it then put its fist through the wall.  As soon as it made contact, it reverted to its fluid, gelatinous form, and it went back to its regularly scheduled destruction.

That fuckin' Art Nguyen, he thought, but it was with no animosity.  He felt nothing but resignation as he cursed the New Age therapist's name.  If only that New Age bastard were here now.  If only Art could see what he's caused.

Then it hit him: what if this wasn't the first time something like this had happened?  If anyone in the world knew a solution to the problem, it would be Art.

Chuck pushed himself up, sending debris in all directions, and he pulled out his cell phone.

##

He met Art out on the porch. During their brief phone conversation, Chuck had told him nothing about the situation, as he feared it might not convince Art to come by.  They sat on the steps as Chuck explained the problem, starting with his anger managements sessions and ending with his double handing him the shotgun.

"That it, Art," he said.  "You probably don't believe me.  Hell, I wouldn't believe me, but all you gotta do is go inside my house.  It's in there trying to tear out my water heater."

"I believe you," Art said calmly.  "It's a rare occurrence, but I sometimes hear about something like this happening.  Usually, it's caused by some kind of tragedy.  In your case -"

"Sandra."  Chuck closed his eyes and felt them burn under their lids.

"Yes.  I've never had this happen to one of my client before, but from my understanding, you're supposed to…well, sometimes we need to be angry.  It's a human emotion.  We should never be denied an emotion.  The key is controlling yourself.  Your anger was so powerful when Sandra died that it caused this thing to be born.  But in the condition you're in, anger is necessary to your well-being.  This is a time in which you need this emotion."

Chuck nodded.  It all seemed too crazy to him, but then again, so was an anger beast tearing his house apart.  "What do I do about it?"

"Let it back inside yourself," Art said.

Chuck nearly gagged on his own saliva.  "What?  Are you sure?  Because this thing is a nasty piece of work."

Art shrugged.  "It's you."

"Okay, well, how?"

"I'm not sure," Art said, "but I have an idea."

##

Chuck cautiously moved down the rickety steps to the basement.  His feet splashed through warm water, and he knew the beast had finally succeeded in destroying the water heater.  It was now hard at work bashing the washing machine in.

He turned around to see if Art was still there.  He was a few steps up, and he waved Chuck forward.  Chuck obeyed, but as he stepped closer to the beast, he watched Art's face, waiting to see what would happen when the therapist got an eyeful of the thing.  The thought had occurred to Chuck that this might all be in his head, and Art would be his reality barometer.

Art's face did not change expression, and Chuck wondered if maybe the beast really was a figment of his imagination.  Then the New Age hippie said, "You never told me how pretty it is."

Chuck, who was too familiar with the havoc this creature was capable of, thought it was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen.  Still, he approached the hulk of red and yellow, and though fear roiled in his guts, he started lifting his arms out to his sides as he drew nearer to the beast.  As with the last few times he'd done this, it did not acknowledge him.

Chuck was a foot away from it, and he wondered what it would feel like.  Probably hot Jell-o, he thoughts.  His arms would most likely sink into the semi-solid substance, and from there, as Art said, it would be easy.

Chuck closed his eyes and placed his arms around the beast, holding it as tightly as he could.  It boiled against his skin as he tried to fit it on his body like a glove.  He could feel it seeping about his frame, creeping into his ears and mouth and belly button.  The sensation was uncomfortable - what he imagined drowning would be like - but it did not obstruct his breathing.

He imagined it attaching itself to him like a second skin, and he could feel it passing through his flesh as if by osmosis.  Then he concentrated on the image of it coating his insides, and … he felt slightly slick, as if he'd been swimming in sewage, but there was nothing around him anymore.

"Congratulations," Art said.  "You did it.  The anger's back inside where it belongs."

Chuck spun and swung a fist at him as hard as he could.  Art was not expecting it, so he took it square on the nose.  There was no much force behind the blow that it rocked the therapist's head back hard enough to snap his spine.  Art dropped face-down into the water on the floor, where he would expire from drowning fifteen minutes later.

Not that Chuck cared.  By the time Art Nguyen was dead, Chuck had gone upstairs to pick up his shotgun, and then he was out to his car.  He knew where Alan Burton lived, and he was halfway to his destination by the time Art gave up the ghost.

##

The clock said it was four PM, not that Charlie could see it.  He was in a coma, and according to the doctors, there was nothing anyone could do about it.

He didn't see his father walk in and slump into a chair next to the bed.  He didn't feel it when his father gently took his tiny hand into two bigger ones.  He didn't smell the acrid odor of gunsmoke clinging to his father's clothes.  He didn't hear it when his father started to cry.

If Charlie had been awake, he would have seen the blood dotting his father's face like chicken pox.  It was all over the rest of him, too.  But as grim as Chuck Wheaton seemed, there was a hell of a shiny smile on his face, the finest he'd even worn.