* (♛) Wrath▬▬▬

The season of winter was like that very wild animal. I had no one to listen to me anymore. The beautiful cherry blossom petals never fluttered down like tiny fairies and the inviting sweet smell was long gone. The many times I was prodded and poked, I could have turned into that one wild animal, but I didn’t.

I slowly made up my way up to town, happy with the amount of money I had found scattered on the roads the other day. This time, I walked straight past the street shop and walked straight into the huge supermarket with the automatic electric doors. The people stared at me in disgust of my rag-like clothing but I didn’t take any notice.

I was awed by the huge rows of neatly stacked food, the boxes of fruit lined up on the sides, and a whole row of people behind the counter. The tiles below were polished and the lights didn’t flicker. For a split section I forgot what I came there for, taking in the view of the inside market.

 I hurried along the neat aisles, searching for flour to make bread. After a while of confusion as everything was so neat, I found the flour section. I scanned through each and every brand and label, hoping to find the amount and price I needed. At the end of the section, I found a large paper bag of flour that was much cheaper than I expected. I couldn’t help but wear a smile across my face as I brought it back to the counter to pay for my first time.

I happily carried the flour back home in my arms, but it was too big so I had a bit of difficulty seeing. I didn’t want to carry it down with the handle because it could drag along the ground and split open. As I turned left, I bumped into someone or something, sending the flour flying somewhere; I fell back roughly on the ground, scraping my arms.

‘Look where you are going, freak!’ yelled a voice in front of me. I looked up, brushing hair out of my face to see a haughty looking young girl picking herself up from the ground. ‘Do you have eyes? Are they only for display? Look at what you’ve done to me!’ She pointed to a small cut on her knee, it wasn’t even bleeding, but it was slightly red.

‘Sorry,’ I said to her, standing up and wiping blood off my arms. ‘Let me see how bad it is.’ I slowly walked towards her, pain struck me with my every move but I had to keep walking. When I was close to her, she pushed me away. ‘I don’t want your filth on me! I want some kind of repayment! I have to walk around with this cut all day. What if I die?’

Slightly annoyed, I scratched my head, flashing my arm to her with the blood oozing down to my elbow and dripping onto the concrete below. But as I predicted, she pretended not to notice. I blinked back tears of pain before walking to my bag of flour I spotted a few metres away from me and picked it up.

‘Hey!’ the girl yelled. ‘Do you think flour is more important than my life?’ I shrugged and walked away, answering: ‘I just met you. Right now, my flour is more important than your attitude.’ Unfortunately, what I told her set off her inner ‘wild animal’. Without another word, she strode up to me and ripped my bag of flour, the one thing that would feed me for about a month.

The contents spilt onto the dirty ground into a huge pile. She wildly jumped onto the pile and did everything she could to make sure it was unusable. She stared at me with hungry eyes, like a lion locking onto its prey. ‘Don’t think I can just stand up after being pushed down,’ she snarled. ‘If someone pushes me down, I push down ten others before I’m satisfied. I don’t care what you think; I don’t care if you don’t have money. If you can’t pay me with money, you can pay with your own blood.’

Without hesitation, she lunged, pushing me down. As she painfully locked down on of my arms, she squeezed the other arm tightly, counting the drops of blood that dripped off my elbow. I held in my shouts and screams of pain, knowing that if I let them out, I would suffer worse than I already was. ‘Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three…’ she counted out loud. ‘Don’t make them drip too fast; I won’t be able to count them! My, my, I’ve got quite an eager one here.’

I couldn’t hold the pain in anymore. I thrashed from her grip screaming in pain; slapping her across the face as I stood up. My left arm had a red mark from where she held it down and my right arm was bright red, dried blood and fresh blood smeared everywhere.

The girl simply stood there staring at me, bewildered that I could stand up and look at her with such hatred. Though this was painful, I had felt pain much worse before. If she called a small cut ‘pain’ then I couldn’t imagine her face if she went through what I had.

‘Whatever,’ she said finally, rolling her eyes. ‘Let this serve you as a warning if you decide to hurt me.’ Without a second glance, she walked off, not even limping. The second she was out of sight, I picked up the ripped paper bag, wrapping my bleeding arm with it, my eyes streaming with tears in pain.

As I headed home, I walked past the cherry blossom tree as usual, hoping that there would be more than one cherry blossom bud. As I looked up, I saw a sight that give me such happiness that it immediately stopped my tears; thousands of tiny cherry blossom buds, waiting for the right time to bloom.