My Dark Passion by Carl

​I Don’t know where it comes from. It could have been a gift, but I doubt that. 
I hope it’s not a survival mechanism. 
I think it’s always been there. 
Both Mother and Child of the seven monsters. 
Wherever they go, it festers in their wake. 
An abuse of passion.
I keep mine in a bottle. I’m good at that, it’s my secret hobby, keeping dangerous things trapped in bottles.
This one is the most toxic. And somehow it always finds its way to my hand. 
I have tried burying it. I have thrown it in the ocean, dropped it in the volcano, flung it high into the air. But the elements reject it, and it appears, unexpected in the palm of my hand at my moment of weakness. 
It’s ugly face pressed against the smoky glass, mouthing the words, 
Rub the bottle . RUB THE BOTTLE.
The slightest friction, and it’s out.
Some hapless security guard with a hard on for kids with skateboards is, without warning, confronted with the thousand foot shadow of my unrelenting dark passion.
It’s a military grade weapon, and it belongs on a battlefield, not in a shopping mall.

I should not have access to that kind of power. 
Nobody should. 
And yet , we all do.
Mine appears as a self righteous demon of vengeance, an outward explosion scorching the earth for miles in every direction. Nobody ever sees it coming, but when it arrives, there is no denying that it’s there.
I see it in others manifesting in more subtle, insidious forms. An infestation of the soul, an un-contained internal bleeding that feeds the passive aggressive monsters. 
Driving them to strange worm eaten logic that slowly sucks the life from the ground beneath their feet.
And me, even while I sometimes manage to contain my beast inside a bottle, it contaminates my motives. 
And in the end, it’s the motive, not the action. I may be able to suppress the explosion, but the passion still lingers in my heart.