John goes to Church
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I don't need anger management anymore. Group hasn't started yet but Dorian thinks getting places ten minutes early is good manners, so here I sit in the circle of folding chairs under the buzzing, yellow overhead lighting in the mildewed basement of this old downtown church. I snatch a stale cup of coffee from the robot hovering past, thinking briefly about the brilliant chaos I could cause by giving the floating disk a good kick. Hot coffee and little robot parts would spiral across the room...fuck, I'm bored.
Cathy, one of the women who seems like the nicest lady on earth but is in here for setting her husband's truck on fire with him in it, walks in the door with a big smile on her crazy face, carrying a sheet cake shaped like a bunny and covered in coconut frosting. She's got my attention. I don't want to go right for the cake so I stalk it, watch her walk it to the table, and wait for someone else to go up first. There goes Gary. I can always count on him to embarrass himself. He chops off a tiny part of the ear and flops it onto one of the paper plates. Poor bastard took the worst part of the cake. I have my heart set on getting one, or preferably both, of the jelly bean eyes.
Before I know what's happening, a line has formed. Dammit to hell. I'm up and in the line fast but I'm at the back. Fuck, they are taking so much. I see one of the real bastards of the group get one of the eyes and fantasize about stabbing him with a plastic fork. Inching slowly forward, I turn my annoyance to the people cutting big pieces. That's just rude. I kick myself for waiting and giving a shit about appearances. I would have had a huge piece if I hadn't hesitated.
We're moving...I'm trying to see around the person in front of me as they get their cake. By the time I step up to the table there is nothing left but crumbs and a few gooey globs of coconut shavings in white frosting. These assholes ate the whole damn cake. I look slowly across the room, thinking up elaborate deaths for all of them. I decide that is unfair and channel all my ill will on Cathy. How could she bring such a small cake? It would have been much bigger if she hadn't mutilated it to look like a stupid rabbit. Who cares about Easter anyhow?
I kick my chair around and plop down on it, straddling it backwards. Snapping my fingers at the coffee robot, I glower at all these cake-eaters. I hope they all choke.
I don't need this stupid anger management anymore!
