Sever - A Wattpad Featured Story

Blue - Chapter 26 - Then

The sun flares in my eyes so all I can see at the bottom of the steps is a steel doorway. Closed. Uninviting. I unfurl the paper in my hands. Studio M, 27b Dew Street. Day one of anger management counselling.

'Suck it up,' I mutter, repeating Detective Pike's words as I descend. It hurts to remember her, let alone quote her. I imagine apathetic women in large, thick glasses who will convince me of novel ways to channel my anger. I touch at the now-scabbed graze at the top of my forehead and resist the urge to spit onto the stone steps. After seeing my new home and my job, I can hardly shake the stench away. It doesn't smell so much better round here.

My head doesn't look so bad now from where I hit it in the holding cell a few days earlier although it was deeper than I thought. Hopefully I won't have to explain it to my new shrink.

Behind an undecorated door, the studio is deceptively large and nothing like I expected. The walls are littered with thin slither windows up high by the ceiling which shower a central boxing ring in a myriad of tiny daggers of light that all seem to face in to me.

'You have got to be kidding me,' I mutter as I hear, 'Ah you made it, kid,' from the side of the ring.

There he is.

Mikey.

The worst lawyer I've ever seen. I almost want to laugh at his shiny outfit and the strewn pads and gloves, until I start to realise that this is exactly the kind of anger management that Mikey and Detective Pike had in mind from the beginning. Chaperoned. He's swapped his pin-stripe suit for loose shorts and a white vest, though he still walks with the smug swagger of a professional.

My fingers coil into fists as the sight of his smirk. The same one he'd worn when he'd tried to flirt with the prosecution. And for a millisecond I see why this weird aggression-channelling community service is a good idea - I can floor this government-allocated lawyer legally.

'This is my anger management class?'

He spreads him arms out wide. 'The very best. Welcome to Mikey's fight club.'

'Mikey's? This is yours? Oh you think this is funny?' I say, suddenly moving towards him. I swing out in an attempt to sink a wide punch into his ribs (it is a boxing dive after all). He deflects it without even shaking the stupid grin from his smart-ass face. I go in to the left. Another deflection, this time from his leg. Third time lucky, my knuckles hit him square in the chest. I cry out in pain, clutching my hand.

'First rule of the art, kid,' he says, not even flinching, 'don't tuck your thumb into your fist. You'll break your thumb.'

I hop about, cursing under my breath, as fissures of pain run down my thumb. He's distracted by two older guys who have just entered the ring. He's already given me too much attention for one night. I turn to the door. If this plea bargain is not glaringly bent then I don't know what is.

'Come on kid, let me show you how to really fight,' he shouts. It attracts sniggers from the two men in the ring; a tall, lanky guy who doesn't look like he could swing a cat, and a beefy one by his side who makes Mikey's squat frame seem athletic.

'Whatever,' I mutter, climbing the steps towards the door.

'Hey, you're into this kid,' Mikey shouts. When I glance back he's staring at me from the ring. 'No turning back. You know where that path leads, and it's not lined with roses. Now come on up here, before I forget to register your first session.'

I push away the relentless waves of anger and interlink them with sheets of pain. I shouldn't even care about him. He wasn't the one who put me here. Actually, yes he was. But I have no choice. Walk out of here and breach my court order then I might as well walk back to jail, and that's if Mikey doesn't report me himself.