What You Lookin At?

A Short Story by Bea Turvey
Published by Bea Turvey at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Bea Turvey

This is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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When I was younger my mother always said to me: be the bigger person, apologise and keep your self-respect.
My father on the other hand, out of my mother's keen hearing, would tell me: you can be the bigger person or you can be happy.
I chose to be, and am, happy.
You may think that I chose wrong (or incorrectly, as my mother would say).  That is your opinion.  But you cannot know whether this was the wrong choice for me to make.   You are not me. 
You are not me.  How simple that sounds.  You are not me.  Yet, when I make the decisions I make, I am no longer me either.  I am the choice I made.  We are all the results of our choices.  Huh, I never considered that before.  
I wonder where my choices will lead me.  I understand now what my teachers meant when they used to say, 'if you don't change direction you'll end up where you're headed'.  It was always far too convoluted for me to make any sense of but I understand now.  We are our choices.
My choice was easier to make than you would have thought possible.  Why?  It's simple really.  I have no conscience. 
You scoff, yet it's true.  I have no conscience. 
I used to have one once, a very small one.  I think it wasted away from lack of use.  I find that, as with emotions, the more you use it the stronger it becomes.  Take anger, for example.  As a nipper I used to get annoyed, hit something and that was it.  Irritation sorted out I'd be catapulted straight back into laughter. 
But as I grew I let the annoyances build, I let the negativity breed.  The annoyance swelled into anger and I gave in to it.  Over and over again.  The anger ballooned into stiff rage until, as a teenager, I was fighting every single night.  I was addicted to it.  I loved the adrenaline flooding my veins, the hard bunch of muscles as I clenched in hate, the powerful frenzied heat that bloomed over my stubbly, pimply skin.  When I was angry I was invincible.  I was more than a teenager.  I was a Ruler – no!  I was a God and no-one dared to stand in my way. 
Rage was good.  Rage was control. 
Odd, don't you think, that I should have equated my lack of control to the ultimate in control.
The rage peaked and then quietened as I grew older.  It became too easy you see, just a dark frown, the clenching of fists and a growl and people would back off.  As I lost the need to blow my top my ability to do it lessened.  Don't get me wrong, I still get angry, even enraged, but the instances of me smashing another person to a pulp have lessened considerably in the past few years.
I'm 40, but could easily pass as 32.  I've kept my looks.  Not like some of those slags you see slouching around in leggings and oversized T-shirts, sacks of fat dangling from their arms as they lean against a wall they used to be able to perch on, smoking fag after fag. 
When I was first banged up (I was stitched up by a wanker who will never do that to me again) it was seriously cool.  I mean, they were having a laugh the 'authorities'.  It was the middle of winter and for the first time in ages I was somewhere warm, with a comfy bed and a hot meal three times a day!  People had to care for me for a change.  Oh, and there was a tele that showed all the big games so I didn’t have to fork out for special coverage licences.  
I never wanted to leave.  That first day was magic.  One magical day.
But that's what it's like in prison if the others leave you alone.  But they don't, leave you alone that is, and it's a complete head fuck. 
The other inmates rule the prison completely and they love to play with the 'virgins'  - that’s what we call all the newbies that saunter in thinking they’re as hard as steel.  Hard as glass more like, shatter with one touch.  Uninitiated, unsullied, unaware and unfucked assholes.  Virgin through and through.
One magical day... and then I was shat on from the very heavens.   I won't go into the bloody details, and they were bloody, but let's just say my fists weren't any good and I was no longer a virgin.  In any sense of the word.
After that I became wary; prison was no longer the haven I'd fooled myself into thinking, and it was the inmates that made prison a place to hate, not the guards.  They were a load of soft shites too scared of being hauled up for tappin' us on the shoulder.  Not a one of them would give us what we deserved.  But then, maybe they'd never been taught how. 
Anyways, that was the first time.  Eyes down, mouth shut, stay alive.
Third time round I was a regular, no longer scared shitless, knew what I was doing.  I kept my head down, didn’t fight back and was rewarded.  Well, I didn’t think much of the reward at first, being allowed to attend a “cultural day”.  The cultural aspect could go hang as far as I was concerned but the upside was you didn't have to work, all duties were suspended, and you got to sit in a cosy room and drink tea.  
The “cultural day” I attended was held by a bloke, sorry, a man, who'd written a book about Churchill.  Once he started I was fascinated.  Not by the man, by Churchill.  When he gave us all a signed copy of the book he’d written – a biography – I read it, several times.  I still read it.  After that, when library day for our section came round I was there, front of the queue (well, third in queue after Greggs and Steiner who were only there because they liked the look of the kid who pushed the trolley) waiting for my turn.  I read some more about Churchill, then Eisenhower, Hoover, Gandhi (Mahatma and Indira), Hannibal, Mao, Lincoln, Naser, Lenin, Napoleon. 
Napoleon – it was he who led me to the military guys: Mountbatten, Rommel, Patton, Montgomery, Alexander...  When I'd finished with them I went on to religious leaders, gang leaders, people who could influence and manipulate; on and on, powerful men, women, countries...  
My reading improved, my language improved... my conversations improved. 
When I got out I joined the library. 
Suddenly people listened when I talked.  I got hold of audio tapes and improved my speech.  I was finally doing what my teachers had never been able to make me do.  I was being educated.  When I enter the library I still anticipate the shock on an ex-teacher's face were they to recognise me.  But the truth of the matter is that I wouldn't recognise them.
And so, here I am: 40, in good health, with a good business (see, even the banks listened) and membership to the golf club where not one of the fuckers knows I've been inside.  Hell, I'm captain of the ladies' team and I rule every single one of them with a dark frown, clenched fists and a heck of a lot of knowledge gleaned from the greatest dictators.