WRATH — The Quiet Girl They Underestimated

She was quiet. That was the whole problem, as far as everyone else was concerned—quiet people were easy targets, easy to push around, easy to laugh at when she reacted to anything at all. They called her dramatic. Sensitive. Told her to lighten up when she flinched at another joke made at her expense. Nobody thought there was any real danger in her, because nobody ever thinks there's danger in someone who's spent years being told to shrink.

That was the mistake. Every slight got filed away. Every laugh, every joke, every moment she was made to feel small got stored somewhere she never let anyone see. Anger doesn't disappear just because it isn't allowed to show. It just waits.

It stopped being quiet all at once, one night, after years of building. Everyone who had ever laughed at her got exactly what they'd spent years insisting she was too harmless to deliver. She'd learned something they never had: the quiet ones don't forget.

Nobody laughs at her anymore. Nobody gets the chance to.