Play 8 - This Cage

"Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage." My teenage anthem and yet I secretly hoped I would not grow up to have conversations (in my head) that go:

They: I'm afraid there's nothing I can do.
Me: Well then I'm afraid you leave me no choice but to slaughter you. I'm going to see your insides splatter the walls. I'm going to lick your blood off my fingers after writing my name in it. I'm going to see to it personally that every single person you love suffers a horrible and slow death, I will inject their eyeballs with cancer given the chance and have squirrels claw out their eardrums. You will rue the day you met me and I will dance on your grave. I will slander your ancestors, I will poison the wells of your children, I will burn every retina in sight, imprinting a lasting image of your cruelty and the world will say I am just in doing so, because you, dear person who answers phones, will go down in history as the biggest arsehole this world ever pooped out. No one will mourn you, because you have no soul and I will be a hero for bringing about your demise. Now bow down to my will, bitch. 

But of course I don't say that to the council or the tax or anyone else who is hellbent on me spending the rest of my life in bitter poverty, seizing every single pound that quivers for a moment on my bank statement. Because despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage. And this cage isn't getting any bigger. The 'American Dream' or whatever its European equivalent is hasn't brought on anything but nightmares, a cacophony of voices telling you you have failed, the loudest one being your own. You are poor because you deserve to be, not because the system is rigged they say and bit by bit you sink into the depression that is the capitalist mindset because you have been told it is a law of nature, rather than a tool of oppression. They've got you good.

Wriggle little rat. Or get used to the cage.

Or kill that bitch that picks up the phone and fakes impotence whenever you need anything doing. Like me.

I like this cage better. At least I know I deserve this one. At least I know that this time, this time, the system can't wriggle out of taking care of me. I might be a rat in a cage but you're going to keep me alive.