A closed, clenched fist drove hard and fast into the steel of his van door. He did not feel it. There was no pain, no agony involved, as the transmitters of all such feeling had long stopped functioning. Only the popping sound of sheet metal denting and flexing could be heard, as the bones of his knuckles and fingers collided with it in force. His hand recoiled as fast and as hard as he had punched. It was well injured, but he would not discover that until the morning… if morning would come.
“Did it even matter at this point?” raced the thought through his head. He lifted his fist to the sky as the mixed frustrations named pain and terror echoed back to his ears through the forest where his silver Chevy was parked.
He had come here alone, yet towed a heavy set of feelings from the past days, weeks behind him. Telling nobody, he found himself driving into the backwoods scrap yard five miles past town to get away for a while. He had to think. He had to process. He was long overdue for this, as his head had become a battleground for opposing thoughts. His mind was an empty field where guilt quickly led to anguish, anguish turned into pain, pain taking up challenge fought against sorrow, and sorrow fiercely went to war with shock. On top of the whole pile of emotions he collected, stood the grand champion of them all. At least for the time being, and without the ability to withstand his own emotions, like a slave to a master, he had crowned anger as his king. Weston could control himself no longer. Planning this trip was more like a fight or flight response than anything else, as to escape what his mind couldn’t understand. It wasn’t calculated, nor was it thought through. All Weston knew was that he had to get outside of himself, he had to get away, at any cost, at any price.
Panic was not usually his choice way of doing things. Most would call him easygoing, well rounded, and likable. He was generally fond of the things most guys enjoyed doing, and as an avid outdoorsman, had honed his hiking and adventure skills well. Many trips had come and gone, as he would mark each one with fond memoirs in his journal, the one companion he had taken most everywhere in life. It had served as his best friend through the years, until he had met her.
But now, in this moment, the only acquaintance he had, looked as ugly as the bruised and bloody hand that bore the charged punch meant to drive it away. Anger raged through his veins. Fueled by a surge of adrenaline, the dented door was only the beginning. Fury overtook his mind. Rational thoughts all fled. There was nothing alive in this instant that wasn’t fair game for the rage that had to be freed from his soul. He grabbed the ball bat that anxiously waited in the passenger seat. His muscles tightened for the next round of crazed destruction as his fingers like a boa constrictor dug deeper into the grip tape of its handle. A surge of power exploded from inside as the bat drove into the abandoned cars left in the scrap yard to rust away. Like the crash of ocean spray against a crag of rocky shores, windshield glass shattered and fell as glitter across a hood, the cars beside him, and the forest floor. Tiny diamonds bounced, leaving testament to the anger and destructive forces that burned within him. Caged like wild creatures of the night, Weston could not control the blood flow of rage destiny called to release. A fury of curse words spewed from a well within him. A deep bottomless well of thoughts poisoned with the toxins of misguided grief, words flung like arrows directed to those who had hurt him the most, came flowing out like a raging stream. Above them all, God Almighty, who had allowed all this pain to choke the life and breath away from him. Yes, God, the One who had let this all befall him. The One who seemingly had left his side, in this moment, this pinnacle of emotional turmoil, He was to blame.
The aluminum ball bat swung with the purpose to destroy. Powerfully swinging as a wrecking ball of violence, it swung with energy and adrenaline, smashing everything violently. Over and over the metal clashed rusty car skeletons, evidences of death… the enemy he now faced eye to eye. His muscles burned as each purposeful strike collapsed him inside and out, and slowly the curse words failed to continue. The blazing furnace inside him was finally losing fuel and energy, though he wished to continue charging hard. Twitching arms, electric pulses, and the pounding of the blood in the temples of his head began to overtake. Stepping into the swing and delivering all the weight he had, the final strike of the bat met a taillight in a red burst of exploding debris. The swing had jostled him off balance, and the finishing blow was accompanied with a scream, furious with frustration. He fell to the ground, limp and dead. The forest floor caught his exhausted body. Blood-stricken knuckles, muscles throbbing heavily, and lungs burning with fire, he had only one thought left to think…
“Why?”
He had come here for one purpose and one purpose only. The clear objective was to grab God by the collar. Weston needed to tell his maker what was really on his mind. He was determined to meet the God who took her away from him, boldly demanding this providential appointment. So angry inside, he purposed to take God by the neck and pound on His chest. He needed to end this mental battle once and for all. He carried this burden like a twelve-ton weight. God was responsible for it all. Fed up with loss and life itself, he needed to give God a fistful, a mouthful, a shakedown. Now collapsed, had he achieved all this? Had he fought with courage to tell God exactly how wrong He was for allowing this all to transpire?
All Weston’s energy was depleted. Feeling dead himself, crawling across pieces and fragments of shattered plastic and glass, he sunk to the ground beside his van in shame. The rush of power that needed to be freed was all gone, and had vanished into the night. Now he was left broken, and slumped to the ground in deep despair. Tears now flowed. Starting as a trickle, it broke into a stream that ran its course down the curved contour of his cheek, flowing through the unshaved stubble like water through and around the reeds of the nearby stream in the distance. It mixed with the blood on his lip, dripping also to his hands. He could taste the salty odd blend of flavor, and knew he must be a bloody mess. It didn’t matter though, for nobody could see this. There wasn’t anybody around for miles. “What would it matter if I sat here all night?” he muttered under his breath, “No soul would notice. At least not my Brooklyn.”
