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“I’m madly in anger with you.
And I want my anger to be healthy
And I want my anger just for me
And I need my anger not to control
And I want my anger to be me
And I need to set my anger free.”
Metallica, St. Anger
Morgan slammed his door shut.
“Go away!” he shouted. He turned from the door, not
even getting two steps before the doorbell rang again. He spun around,
glaring at the portal. “You do not know when to quit, do you?” he barked,
stamping back to the door. He tore it open, glaring down at the young woman
who stared back.
“Hi,” Marilyn said warmly with a smile. “I needed…”
“I don’t care,” Morgan bit. “I don’t care what you
needed, what you thought, what you hoped, what you wished, or what you
otherwise fantasized or thought up. Just go away and leave me in peace,
okay?” Before she could answer, he slammed the door again.
The doorbell rang again.
Morgan growled a frustrated roar and opened his door,
staring down at the woman. But as she smiled back up at him, the heart of
his fight disappeared. He sighed, closing his eyes. “Come in,” he said
defeatedly, holding his door open.
Marilyn entered the house, seeing it in a new light
as the place rested spotlessly for once. She turned back to Morgan, holding
her hands nervously in front of herself. “I need to talk to you,” she said
with a half-whisper.
“I stand by my declaration at the front door.”
“Then why did you let me in?” she asked with a
puzzled smile.
“Because I can’t stand the idea of a lost cat mewing
at my front door in the cold,” Morgan snapped, turning around behind her
and heading into the side door hidden behind the normally opened front
door. Marilyn moved to follow him, surprised when she entered the recording
studio.
“What is this place?” she remarked.
Morgan looked around the long panel of controls and
the glass window that looked into the recording booth. He turned back to
her. “Is that a rhetorical question or was there more coming?”
Marilyn looked down at Morgan, glaring at him. But
when he focused on the controls before him, she finally just slumped down
into the chair next to him. “I, it’s just the World Alliance is falling
apart. Ruwani’s leaving. I think Kim and Alan are leaving. Oliver too.
Malcolm’s the only one who’s still with me. Even Victor’s…well, he’s
another story entirely.”
“Yes the hell he is,” Morgan grumbled, desperately
finding some switches to move around, trying to find some way to occupy his
mind.
“I just feel like so much of a failure,” she
remarked, slowly curling up inside. “I just feel so empty.”
“You’re not
empty, Marilyn. You’re too shallow to be empty,” Morgan retorted, still
working with more controls on the control panel.
She looked up at him, glaring at the former knight.
“You know, Morgan, you’re really mean sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” he retorted without looking at her. “My
endurance must be slacking. I’ll have to try harder.”
“I need your help,” she pled.
“So?”
The answer took her back. Marilyn turned away from
him, lost in hurt thought. “You, you’ve got what I’ve always wanted. And
you threw it away.”
“That’s one theory, sure.”
She spun back around to him, glaring hard. “You had,
you have, the opportunity to change the world, to help it become a better
place and you refuse to take it. Why? Why do you hate the world so much
that you lock yourself away in your own life?”
Morgan turned slowly to the woman, his hard eyes
almost hurting her with their intensity. “Because in order to change the
world, you have to sacrifice everything. Long ago, people prayed to gods to
change the world for them. What did they offer up to them? Human
sacrifices. Those gods, however, were never real; they’re constructs of the
human mind and as such, that means they’re still around today. And we still
offer sacrifices to them, but the sacrifices aren’t of helpless victims and
ordained virgins; they’re of ourselves, consciously and willingly
sacrificed for what we may or may not think is the greater good. Or maybe
just the immediate good for right now.”
Morgan stood up from the conversation and stormed out
of the recording studio. Marilyn scrambled to follow him, passing through
the living room and ending up in the kitchen. But the former knight tore
his refrigerator door open and opened a bottle of orange juice, gulping
down half the contents before she could say anything else.
Sighing, Morgan put the orange juice back. “It’s
better with a little vodka in it.”
“You really hate the knights, don’t you?”
“Is it that obvious?” Morgan retorted sarcastically.
He turned to Marilyn, staring her directly in the eyes. “Let’s make this
simple, Marilyn. What do you want from me?”
“I want your strength,” she said after only a moment
of thought.
“It’s yours,” he said, holding out his arms
demonstratively. “You’ve already got more strength than I ever had.”
“How can you say that?” she asked with a laugh.
“You care, I don’t. It’s that simple.”
“But that’s just conviction,” she argued.
“Yeah, and yours borders on delusional,” he said. “But
never the less, you’ve got a hell of a lot more than I do. I’m so unconvicted,
it’s not even funny.”
Marilyn fell back to lean on the kitchen counter,
sighing. She thought for a moment in silence, avoiding Morgan’s eyes.
Finally, she offered a half laugh. “Everything was going fine until I met Everett. He’s the one
that opened my eyes and showed me that there’s really a world like I always
hoped, and feared, there was.”
“Yeah, he has that effect on people.”
Marilyn looked at him, smiling thoughtfully. “Who was
it for you?”
Morgan thought about the question for a moment. “Me,”
he answered. “I had to learn most of this stuff the hard way. And believe
me, I’ve got the scars to show for it.”
“You make it sound so terrible,” she laughed lightly.
“It is.”
Her smile faded, unable to tell where Morgan’s
sarcasm ended and the truth began. She looked down, her hands on the
counter she leaned against. “I don’t know.” She turned away from Morgan.
“There are some days,” she said, looking off into nothing. “Sometimes when
I almost wish I could forget. Like they made some type of pill that would
take my pain away.” She smiled at the former knight. “I guess it would have
to be an anti-Everett pill.”
“If they made that pill, hell, I’d take it,” Morgan
added.
“But he’s your friend,” she asked.
“So?” he asked back. “Just because he’s my friend,
that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be better off without him.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” the former knight said. “But I do
know that I wish the knights weren’t a part of my life any more.” He shook
his head as he walked towards the dining table on the far side of the
kitchen from Marilyn. “I just can’t get away from them.”
“It seems like nobody can,” Marilyn smiled. “Once
you’re a part of their world, I guess you can’t escape.”
“That’s the way it is with knowledge in general,” Morgan
answered, staring out the window of his kitchen into the sunlit world
outside. “Once you know, you can’t unknow. That maybe one of the saddest
truths in life.”
“But would you want to unknow?” Marilyn asked.
“Yes,” Morgan answered in a heartbeat.
“Really?”
“No.”
“Then why’d you say yes?” she asked.
“Because I’m really bitter, woman,” he exclaimed,
glaring at her. “I’m bitter about the whole damn thing.”
“Why?”
“Figure it out,” he snapped, turning away from her.
“Because I like to feel like a victim, or because I’m jealous. Pick
whatever psychobabble reason you want and run with it. Odds are, it’s
probably not far from the truth anyway.”
Marilyn sat in silence for a moment while Morgan
paced before her. Finally, though, she stood up and tried to smile. “It’ll
be okay, Morgan,” she whispered sincerely.
Morgan looked at her and for a moment, she thought
she saw an emotion behind his anger. But in a flash, it was gone, replaced
with only more bitterness and fury. “Don’t say things like that, Marilyn,” he
spat cruelly. “They aren’t true and you should know that by now.”
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