"What's that human doing with all those blades?"
"They're going to go and calm down."
"I .......see.... so... what are they going to do with them?"
The counselor points to a door marked "Rage space" and opened it to show a knife-throwing range.
"Like I said, going to go and calm down." -- Anon Guest
Companion Burd watched the procedure from the safe side of an observation window. Human Duke printed out some pages of cheap flimsy with images and words on them, and taped them to the targets at the other end of the range. Ze then lined up all hir knives so they were easy to grab in a hurry.
Then, pointing at each target in turn, ze recited a primitive choosing rhyme. Once a target was selected, ze began throwing knives. Screaming foul words that, thanks to the Offensensitivity Filters, were obfuscated by their meaning.
Child of a female dog, spawn of an unsanctified union, copulation, urine, feces, various reproductive organs, it was all there. When Duke ran out of knives, ze retrieved them and, panting, started over.
Three targets out of five so assaulted, Duke put hir knives away and exited the range.
"Powers, that felt good," ze sighed. "Okay. Back to work." The knives, in their roll of safety fabric, went back into their storage locker and Duke walked away with a spring in hir steps.
Companion Burd was left agog. "This is stress relief?" ze asked.
"For Duke, yeah," said Human Kaj. "There's an anger that builds up when ze gets frustrated at stuff. Better to destroy pictures than the real thing. It's a venting process. Some people just want to hit back, y'know."
"This is what gave Humans such a bad reputation," noted Burd.
"And yet we got a good grip on it," said Kaj.
[Photo by Yaroslav Кorshikov on Unsplash]
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