Control Freaks

Sunday. 11 a.m.

You were sitting cross-legged on your bed like some hungover academic banshee trying to stitch together a thesis with frayed nerves and caffeine withdrawal.

The title of the document looked pristine, like a well-dressed corpse:
"Aesthetics of Obedience and the Construction of Legitimacy: The Modern Extension of Tragic Power."
Margins flawless. Citations immaculate. Cambria, size 11, double-spaced, as always. Ready to launch.
Except—it contains exactly one sentence:
"Real power is often hidden within the kind of narrative that makes you want to obey."

You'd been staring at that single line for ten minutes straight.

You grabbed your pen, intending to scribble a neat little note: needs revision.
But your hand twitched halfway through, and the arrow mutated into some deranged ink-splat glyph.

You dropped the pen.

Your head still hurt.
Your stomach was emptier than the 20th century's worst budget deficit.
You ransacked the fridge and found: half a cup of watered-down Americano, a pack of croissants from the Ice Age, and two lonely cans of strawberry Monster.

You really should stop drinking.

"Fuck," you muttered, as if the word itself might undo last night.

This was not the kind of morning meant for fighting professors or writing about power structures.
This was a crawl-to-the-supermarket-and-don't-die-on-the-way kind of morning.

You threw on a jacket, grab a tote, slap on your sunglasses like armor, and drag your hangover and residual resentment out the door.

You knew you're a bit broken. Normal people write papers by outlining. Drafting. Revising.
You? You thrived on repression, provocation, psychological warfare.
You fed on doubt and convert it into verbal weapons. You cornered yourself until writing is the only survival move left.

You wrote with rage.

And that rage?
It always circles back to one man.

Erwin Smith.

The man who, after your fire-and-brimstone speech at the debate, calmly looked you in the eye and said, "That was dangerous."

The man who once stood in his office, looked you dead in the face and said, "Yes, I favor you,"
and somehow still managed to sound like Switzerland during wartime.

The man who, just yesterday, stood right in front of you—only to step back the moment Arthur showed up, leaving you exposed and seething.

You wanted to tear him apart. Dismantle his theories. Reverse-engineer his logic. Use his own eight-year-old academic framework to annihilate his current authority.

More than that, you wanted him to watch.
Watch you write circles around him. Watch your logic outmaneuver his. Watch your language draw blood.
You wanted him to lower his head in front of the panel—even just a little.

And for that?
You needed Monster.
A truckload of it.
——

Fifteen minutes later, you were standing in the supermarket, air conditioning slicing through the aisles like a refrigerated jet stream. One hand on your hip, the other barely dragging a box of strawberry Monster behind you like it was your last remaining limb. Your breath was uneven, your vision soft around the edges, and you looked—felt—like you were one poor choice away from kissing the floor.

You wore an oversized grey sweatshirt and sunglasses that swallowed half your face, your hair wrestled into a ponytail that screamed survival more than style. You looked like the ghost of finals week come back with a vengeance.