The Warmth Of Rage

(suggestions of violence to humans and animals)

It had been burning him up for many months, at first in a great blaze, then as a constant heat. It was with him when he woke, pleasant dreams melting into the reality of his agony; it was with him when he showered, had breakfast, dressed; it was with him as he travelled to work, scanning the faces of his fellow commuters for the man; it was with him at work when he should have been concentrating on the accounts; it was with him at lunch, which he now took alone; it was with him on the way home, observing faces again; it was with him in the evening when he prepared his dinner – attacking vegetables with a large knife – when he tried to relax in front of the television, when he picked up his book instead, when he got ready for bed and took the sleeping pill that would give him seven or eight hours of respite through blessed oblivion.

Arthur had always been a happy person – not ecstatically so but in a contented sort of way. He lived in a neat little bungalow with a well-kept garden, except when it was being dug up by the love of his life: a boisterous little cross-bred terrier called Buster. Arthur would invariably forgive the dog’s little misdemeanours almost instantly, though, and they lived a harmonious life together … until one summer afternoon.

The sun shone and a pleasant breeze wafted in from the south, inviting the two out into the front garden, where Arthur busied himself weeding the roses, while Buster kept bothering him to play. After a while, Arthur put down his fork and picked up the ball that Buster had dropped next to him.

“C’mon then fella,” Arthur chuckled.

He feigned a throw, Buster whipping round to follow the supposed trajectory of the ball, but the dog remembered the trick and immediately recovered his focus on Arthur’s hand. Arthur feigned again; Buster wasn’t fooled at all this time. Then an actual throw, Arthur making sure to keep the ball within the bounds of the lawn, bordered by a pavement, with the street beyond.

It should have been safe, but as the ball bounced and Buster leapt to catch it in his mouth, he knocked it with his nose. The ball bobbled onto the road.

Buster bounded gleefully after it; Arthur spotted the car and sprinted after Buster, shouting a warning that the dog didn’t understand; the car accelerated, swerved, seeming to aim for Buster rather than avoid him; then came the thud, the crunch, the squeals.

The car screeched to a halt. Arthur rushed to Buster, lying still now on the tarmac. The driver stuck his head out of the side window of the car.

“You wanna keep that dog on a lead, mate!” he said in a thick London accent, grinning from ear to ear.

Before Arthur could respond, the car had pulled away and sped down the street.

A neighbour called the police. When they arrived, Arthur was sitting in the middle of the road weeping, with Buster’s limp body cradled in his arms; cars were having to creep round him to get by. The police asked for a description of the driver, which Arthur gave them, but he couldn’t help with the model or registration number of the car; all he knew was that it was red.

Arthur buried Buster among the roses, his heart heavy with loss, his mind filled now with something else. He called the police every day for a month to see whether they’d caught the man, but they could do little with the scant information he’d provided.

And so he began to search for the man’s face wherever he found himself – on the train to and from work, in restaurants, in shops, on television when there were news reports about local issues from journalists in the street.

It became his life, every waking moment – when he wasn't working – dedicated to finding the man that had so callously removed love from his existence. And the obsession took its toll on other relationships he’d had – with work colleagues and friends. People began to steer clear of that look in his eyes, a look of desperate thirst.

He began to attribute imagined characteristics to the man and gave him a name: Killer. Killer was from London, was living with a partner, in a council house with dirty, cracked windows and a skip in the drive, rusty scrap scattered across the front garden.

Nearly three years passed. Far from dissipating over time, each day added to the intensity of his hatred for someone who had, in a single, cruel moment, inflicted such misery. The anger was augmented and refined by fantasies of how Arthur would deal with the man if he ever found him. For this, he let his imagination devise highly creative outcomes, surprising himself at times with the degree of violence he might be prepared to use.

But deep down, he also knew that he was unlikely ever to meet this person again in such a very big city. It was this sub-conscious realisation that made the search almost perfunctory, a reflex action, becoming, over the months, a part of his day-to-day.

Which was why he was so taken aback when he came across Killer one Saturday morning in the centre, the two physically bumping into each other at the door of a newsagent’s. Before the moment of recognition, Arthur’s automatic reaction was to apologise; Killer merely scowled. Arthur’s blood ran cold: he recognised Killer now but the man appeared not to have an inkling of who Arthur was; how could a person do what he’d done and not have the details imprinted on his mind? It was all Arthur could do to not attack him there and then. They were in public, though; Arthur succeeded in swallowing the burst of fury and let the man walk away.

Arthur gave it a few moments, then began to follow him from a safe distance, waiting outside the several shops Killer entered. There was no reason for him to suspect that he was being followed, but even so, Arthur took care not to be spotted.

Eventually he found himself at a bus-stop, a mere metre or so from the object of his ire. The man was certainly not observant or he would have recognised Arthur from the brief incident outside the shop. He didn’t, and when the bus arrived, they got on together.

Arthur sat a few seats back from Killer, his eyes boring into the back of the man’s head. Killer got off in the suburbs, Arthur close behind. He made to walk in the other direction initially, flashing looks over his shoulder in case the man entered a side-street. After a few moments he crossed the road and turned back, keeping his head down but his eyes fixed on the target.

Finally, they arrived at Killer’s home. It was indeed a council house, but Arthur was surprised, even perhaps disappointed, that the front garden was quite neat, well-tended. Instead of the skip of Arthur’s imaginings, in the short driveway there was a car under wraps.

Killer entered, closed the door and left Arthur in the street, peering at the house from behind a tree. He didn’t loiter for very long so as not to raise suspicion among the neighbours, but he made a mental note of the number of the house and the name of the street when he returned the way they’d come.

Travelling home, Arthur began to retrieve from his memory all the ideas he’d devised for his vengeance. At last, he’d found Killer; the long wait was over.

What he might also have realised, had he been able to identify it, was that the heat of hope in finding the man had faded, to be replaced by a kind of cold emptiness; the search had been such a big part of his life for so long.

Once at his bungalow, he went straight to the garage, rummaging in his tool box for what he wanted. It was getting quite late now, so he decided to put off going back to the house to the next day. He slept badly.

In the morning, the rain pelting down seemed like an augury; removing the man from the world would be like washing away the pain and rage he’d been suffering for three years.

On the bus back to the council estate, he gripped the wooden handle of the tool in his pocket, comforted by its roughness. But he felt again the incipient, aching void; once the deed was done, and if he managed to get away with it, what would be left in his life?

If anything, the rain had got heavier by the time Arthur approached the house. He could feel his feet squelching in his shoes. His shoulders were soaked through. Rain ran in rivulets down his head and under his collar. But he held on to the wooden handle, mouthing encouragement to himself.

The doorbell had a cheery, incongruous tone. Arthur had to press it twice before the door opened. And there in front of him was the man: Killer.

He didn’t speak, just stared at Arthur with dull eyes. He was wearing a T-shirt and pyjama bottoms. His hair was tousled. He had thick stubble on his chin.

Arthur gripped the wooden handle more tightly. The moment had come. Then a voice piped up from inside the house. A female voice.

“Хто це, Борисе?”

“Не знаю,” the man called back over his shoulder.

Something was terribly wrong. The man leaned forward and muttered.

“What you want, mister?”

“I…”

Arthur knew now that this was not the man. This was not Killer. By the language he was speaking with the woman and his accent, he was eastern European, possibly Russian or Ukrainian. The man who had run over Buster had been a native Londoner, of that Arthur was sure.

“Hey, I know you, yes?”

The man was frowning, trying to remember. Flustered, Arthur stepped back.

“I– … sorry. Wrong number. I was looking for…”

He backed down the path, turned and walked quickly away. Behind him, he could hear part of a conversation.

“Що відбувається?”

“Просто якийсь ідіот–”

The door slammed and that was all Arthur caught. He picked up his pace, wanting to put distance between him and the house that wasn’t Killer’s.

He was shaking when he sat down in a nearby pub, a large whisky before him on the table. It had just opened and he was the only customer in. He welcomed the calm, the quiet.

How could he have been so disastrously mistaken? Did he even remember now what Killer actually looked like?

He took a sip of his whisky and sat back. The liquid warmed him as it went down. At the same time he felt another thing.

He struggled to put his finger on it, then it hit him. It was the rage, and the restored ambition to find Killer.

The heat was back, like an old friend, to fill the void.

Arthur nodded and smiled at a couple who had just entered. He took another sip of his whisky, rolling it around his mouth, relishing the warmth.