Key to the Loner

Really old story I wrote a /very/ long time ago.

I don't know why I do the things I do.

I just know that I do them, and that I do them in a cycle.

I know that this cycle is familiar to me, and despite this cycle's darkness, I am happy with it.

I had a best friend once. 

But like everything else, I ran away from her.

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            "It's just what I do.  I've always done it.   It's just…  I like being detached.  It's safe for me."  I spoke so softly, I was unsure if she could even hear me.  I was unsure if I could even hear myself.    It was a starless night, and the world was as silent as winter.  In a movie, I'm sure some soft, sorrowful piano piece would be heard in the background.

             "I do want you to know…" She started, though I interrupted.  I was sort of amazed she hadn't gotten mad at me yet, but we were doing it to each other.  We both needed to vent.  

              "People that are the link between me and the social reality scare the f**k out of me.  And really, there's only one, and that's Riina.  I guess that's what I've been trying to do all this time.. break the tie..?  I don't even f*****g know.'' I spoke no longer, allowing her to finish as she had waited so patiently.

              "That someday you may find someone like me, not self-praising, but someone who realizes that you are only yourself in the current moment; all past actions are meaningless.. simply something that happened. If at some point, you decide to break your ties with me, that is acceptable because we cannot, throughout our entire lives, be the same. Not even throughout an entire week will we have the same thoughts about things or the same vision of reality. People change and to think that we HAVE MADE a difference in the past, is what I truly believe, to be the scariest thing of them all." 

              She finished with such eloquence, that I was dulled to a silence for a little while.  I was not sure of what to say.  So many things were running through my head, and yet I could not grasp a single one, as they were behind a glass wall.  One that I could not reach through.  She looked at me then, breaking me from my vain attempts at finding something tangible within my fractured mind.

            "If you ever run away from me, that is acceptable."  She repeated.  "But know that I will come and I will find you, because not knowing if you are alive or dead…. It would kill me."  

             I tried to smile, and I did, but I wasn't sure if it hurt or not; if I was faking it or not.  "Just imagine that I'll always live, and then once you die, you won't have to worry any more."

             She was still unsatisfied.  "I'm a perpetual worrier.  I always assume the worst."  Another moment of silence passed.  "I could never forget a friend, and when some day I move to some place rainy and cold, on top of a mountain some where… with one f*****g creepy road leading to my house… I will send you a plane ticket and make you play drums for my Rock Band.  If only for a day."

             It was raining the day I left for Finland.  The snow had nearly melted, creating an icy slush everywhere.  Everyone at the airport had someone cuddling them, or a child that they were nearly suffocating with a blanket, trying to warm them up.  It made me sort of sad, as I rubbed my raw hands together and watched everyone, to know that this was what I was running away from.   But then again, I also knew I wasn't really running away from it, because I hadn't had it.  I graduated high school and everybody was great for a year.  They called me, we all hung out, even though they all had to drag me everywhere.  I always did hate public outings. 

            But then when I turned 19, my mom died of lung cancer.  It devastated me, and I couldn't handle it.  By then, most everyone had gone off to college or just plain moved away.  They left me alone, as I had tortured them with my cycle for too long.  It had been two years since then, and it was time for me to go.  To run away again.   As I carried my suit case, I went over the things that were in it.  There wasn't much.  A few pairs of clothes, a map of Finland, my music player, and a faded metal key that cost my friend a dollar at the movie theatre's once, though that was tied onto the outside.  I wouldn't have tied it on there, had I known how crowded it was going to be.  When I went to board the plane, they had taken my suitcase, and when they did, the chain snapped and the key fell into the snow.

            I hadn't found this out until I was across the ocean and in the biting cold air that Finland held.  I was terribly upset, but I knew there was nothing I could do.  It'd been a few years since I'd even talked to her, and she'd probably forgotten me anyway.  At least, that was what I was trying to tell myself.

             I knew that deep down I never wanted to be forgotten.

              A letter came in the mail today.  It was strange to me, I hadn't gotten personal mail in all the time I'd been in the land of a thousand lakes, and it was almost ten years now.   I opened it, confused, and almost certain they'd written the wrong address.  When I took out the contents, it was a simple set of three; a plane ticket, a small, rusted, metal key that had clearly seen its better days, and a little note.  

'Can't have a band without a drummer.'