A storm is coming
When her slim fingers flipped the envelope around Macas eyes where met with a neatly written For You.
She was baffled, in shock. What was this?
Nothing made sense to her.
So she sat down.
Outside the caravan the sun was already beginning to set and the world started to simmer.
Anounceing a storm.
Turning the letter over and over again in her hands she tried to make sense of it all while at the sane time building up enough courage to open it up.
It was thick. She suddenly realized.
There must be around 5 pages in there.
The thing that surprised her the most was that for a person so quiet it seemed like there were too many words hidden in that little compact envelope. To many she thought, for her to comprehend all at once.
After quite some minutes of contemplateing what to do which felt like hours passing by she finally gave in. Opened the envelope and regrettet it instantly.
Inside, the envelope indeed held a hand full of handwritten pages.
“Rubita.” Eyes scanning the first word. Repeatetly. “Rubita. Rubita. Rubita”
She wasn’t ready. Not now. Nor will she ever be.
She gave everything not to cry in order to make it possible for her to make out the words that where written so neatly in black ink on white paper. A mission in vain.
Outside the first raindrops meet the sand.
A soothing sound.
“Rubita,
we walked together and apart in a marriage of courtesy and convenience not to close nor too far away from each other. It was your rule. No pets. No feelings attached. And for a time that was fine. But...
Now, I trust you to understand me.
There is a thing called locus standi, which means the right to be heard. I ask you now to hear me out, without giveing reason. Just this once. Just listen.”
She didn’t understand.
What was this all about. Is this some dumb joke, to drag her. To make her feel even worse after she left her to die on her own in the middle of the desert? After she had betrayed her? This felt wrong. So wrong.
While she had been touched a second ago by her sentiment, anger started to build up inside of her now. Pushing her emotions aside. This might be easier that initialy thought. So she continued reading. No tears to be seen.
The rain gained strength. Hitting the sand audibly now.
“Believe me when I say that this wasn‘t a new experiance for me.
To be betrayed by someone you tried to confine in, to be left alone, to feel your surroundings grow big and wide filled with greater perhaps and maybes. Perhaps and maybes how I dispraise these two words. They‘re places of refuge for those out of touch with reality. Nothing but false dreams and illusions. The worst, I fell for them it seems.
Even through betrayal is one of the worst feelings, you did something worse. I deeply believe, though, that you didn’t meant to do it yet you did. You left.
Cause you’re an impulsive bitch and never really think things through. You never think about the consequences of your actions. It’s a little flaw of yours on a otherwise perfect being.
This time though. This time was different, Rubia.
It was you. It always has been you. And your betrayl... it doesn’t really matter now.
To be honest it’s hard to feel disappointed in someone when what you expected from them in the first place turns out to be nothing but the whole truth.”
You’re impecable. Blameing everything on me. When you’re no longer there to stand up for yourself.
With each sentence her anger found it’s way closer to the surface.
“But to me you weren‘t just someone whom randomly crossed my path. And thus your whistle-blow somehow, in some unrational way affected me afterall.
Because you were more to me.
A friend if you will. But you didn’t hear that from me! If you tell anyone I’ll personally make sure to return from hell and snap this beautiful fragile neck of yours myself! You hear me?!”
“A friend“
she repeated droopy, as if she had just learned that word without completely grasping it‘s meaning.
The weather outside had returned to a soothing drizzle.
A friend.
She let it slip over her lips in a whisper giving it room to fill in the deafening silence inside the caravan, swallowing down her sobs.
“But that’s not the point at all. The bottom line is that by the time you read this I’ll be long gone and you’ll finally be free.
As I have not come back home this time.”
But I have been free since the day I picked you up. Our paths had crossed again. That’s when I felt most alive. I was free.
“The day I’ll leave this place no one will come to know about it.” That’s what I answered when they asked what we’d do on our first day out. Against all odds, someone did find out.
On my release day you came. There you were a bit late but you were there nontheless. Picking me up from prison.
I could have forgiven you then if you had left me behind after your own release from prison. If you‘d forgotten me and started all over. But I can’t do that for you coming back.
Against all my hopes though, you returning to me hasn‘t improved my life for the better. If anything it made it bearable.
It made my life possible but yours impossible. You’re a fool for coming back. You should have stayed away.
The pain I faced during my time in prison gave me passion for life. It fullfilled me. Once outside that feeling vanished. We had a feud and went our sepperate ways. Poof. Suddenly the thing I desired most wasn’t what it seemed to be at all. It got tenacious and tireing. No more crazy outbrakes,no more kidnappings, no more fights for fun, no nothing despite the same boring loop of wakeing up, eating, working and sleeping. Just like that, I was back in prison. The only differance this time was that I was locked up inside my own personal hell.
Until, I started to believe in the possibility that you could bring me back into the world. I reached out to you one last time and surpriseingly enough you did accept my offer.
I was careful to never give away what that truely meant to me but that’s besides the point. You returning... doesn’t change anything in that matter. You’re still an imbecile for doing so.
For, at times it’s better too lose something than never having had it in the first place. And I wish that this one didn’t happen.
Before you returned to me you had a chance in life. What good did this path give to you?”
Brio.
“As a matter of fact, you didn’t like me.
You never did.
And your return wasn’t out of compassion or anything similiar anyway.
You know that. Deep down you know. You simply loved the way I made you feel. You loved the danger, the menace, the despair when something didn’t go as planned and it made the adrenalin run through your vains. Hate made the team work.”
Brio echoed through her mind. Mocking her.
You’re right. You made me feel alive. At the beginning it was just that. I hated you passionately too but then things changed.
“But me?
No, you could never really bring yourself to like me.
You had every right not to.“
I learned to like your Psychpath ass. You were all I had left. Partly forced but later unwantedly wanted.
„For me it was different.
Before you decided to join me there was a hole in the middle of my chest that everything happy got swollowed by. Fatimas loss had changed me.
When you returned though you brought me back into the world and managed to closed that hole. It was the best thing anyone could have ever done for me. In a way you returned my purpose.”
Maca didn’t understand. The more she read the less became clear to her. Everthing was contradicting. First she pushed her away than came back only to tell her she‘s a fool for agreeing to her offer now?
What the fuck does she want. It’s not her fault that she came back with another offer. Ok I agreed to her offering. But truth is if she hadn’t reached out in the first place they’d probably both be alive now. But we were like a blackhole swallowing everything and each other within our reach. Unable to push each other away.
“Everything was fine for a while.”
Nothing is fine. Nothing ever was fine. She thought.
Everything is confusing always has been. It seems there is no way out.
She didn‘t understand this kind of rejection it hurted her.
“We did everything and nothing. We lived in the moment. Then sickness came and I hid it from you because if I would have told you it wouldn’t have been mine anymore would it?”
You always had to be in charge. We could have beat it together and you knew it you fucking selfish bitch. You were scarred of losing control and showing your real you. Plain and without disguise!
“And with sickness there came amnesia. The one thing I could always rely on gave up on me. I started to forget little things at first. Names and hideing spots... inevitable you came behind it but never said anything. You knew something was off but still, you stayed silent. And for that I am greatful.”
I did. And I didn’t say anything because I was scared of the truth.
“That was the moment I started to write down what we did each day. No matter how little happened. I made notes. Wherever we went. I wrote something down.
Always on guard careful so you wouldn’t see. The game must had to go on. So I wrote down anything, really. No matter how ridiculous or boring it was and then at night when you were tight asleep I would read through the parts of my mind that had already vanquished throughout the day.”
I realized you became distant. Quiet and distant. I found your notes. Sometimes I woke up to you sitting there deep inside your own thoughts. Reading loose pages blankly staring ahead. I thought you were plotting another coup. when really you just wanted to remember as much as you could.
She was filled with regret.
Angry at herself for giving in to her fear. For keeping silent.
“ You know, I haven‘t always been silent, I used to talk and talk and talk and wouldn‘t shut up for once. People hated me for that. It threw them off guard, I however found joy in that.”
You found pleasure in the little things. I mean we lived in a fucking caravan, when we could afford the world.
I didn’t you know? I loved listening to your tales and all the bullshit that bubbled out of your mouth when you let down your walls. The teaseing, hell, even the fights. We never really fought though. We had our differances but our fights were just a game. We played pretend. You became quiet. We stopped playing.
In the end your silence overtook us just like your sickness. We could have had it all.
“ Yet in the last month my thoughts started to float away from my mind. I lost things I had carried around uñ there for years. Crazy Ideas for new heists... the days happenings, names and so much more, everything vanishing from my mind. Poco a poco. The annihiliateing thing was the inexorable, the unstoppable declineing. Leaving me powerless. There was nothing in my power I could have possibly done to change it. Nothing.
Inevitably, I started loseing control, over the one thing that never betrayed me. My mind. It had always been there. Steady, unmoveable the only constant in my life I could always rely on, entirely.
It seemed to me like you started forgetting me as well. We became distant, to maintain what we had. Whatever the hell that was.
With every passing morning, that I left the caravan to witness the sunrise for the last time. Because who knew for sure when that last day would have come, I became a little lighter because that meant with every new day I got a little closer to those I‘ve lost.
At the same time though, I got heavier as well because that meant I got farther away from you too.
Rubita, I hope that you‘ll never admire someone as much and in the way I admired you because all it does is hurt. It hurts so much.”
I know. It‘s unfair when injustice is repayed with more injustice. You didn’t deserve this.
Taken aback by that confession Maca leaned back in her seat. Thinking.
She needed a break before she could continue. Maca expected anger or asking for forgiveness maybe dragging her but not this. It was matter of factly a way to explain the plot holes. Always on point.
„I ran over my cowardice at full speed.
I was able to admit it.
To you.
To myself.
But I won’t do it again. And now it’s too late.
You gotta move on.
I told you the truth.
That’s all you get.
I’m not there anymore so I can’t really be emberrassed about all of this. Can I?”
We played pretend. I lov... liked you too you stupid asshole. I hated you. I hate you now Because you are right. You always have been. Even now.
Maybe it’s true that you don’t know what you‘ve lost until you did lose it.
I knew there was something more but neither one of us would have admitted that. It wasn’t common love, but only a few feet apart from that.
Is there anything worse than being like us? Anything more disfunctional? More contradicting?
She continued, even through her vision was still blurry. Almost enableing her to make out her words. Her eyes burning.
The rain falling.
“Some force of nature id connecting us. Probably too much and at times that hurts. Above all, when you realize that at some point in time you have to ultimately let go.
I tried.
Letting go.
I tried but with every stupid heist I came up with, I expanded the story.
To make it last as long as somehow possible, as I was afraid of its ending.
At last it’s clear to me, I lost this fight.
Anyways, turns out that even all the money in the world couldn’t buy me the love and happiness I’ve hunted for, for all my life.
The thing is certain people are born into this life to conquer it on their own. Unfurtonately, I was one of them.
In my lifetime I never depended on people. I was doing fine on my own.
Yet deep down I knew that I couldn’t let you leave that easily as that without fail signified that I would end up by myself. Seven days without liquid, 14 days without any kind of food isn‘t life threatening but absolute lonelieness is able to break any human being. That’s why I faltered to end this story.
That‘s the paradox. I was wasn‘t born alone. I lived my life alone sure but I was never completely alone.
Here I am though, standing on the edge of a cliff, by myself. And like this I will go. Leaving my companions behind.
At last, it made no differance. Did it? You had made up your mind.
You wanted to leave.
If anything, it was my fault. It was me who was naïv enough to let the possibility of us staying together cross my mind in the first place.
At the beginning you joined for the adventure I could offer you, the adrenalin. But doesn‘t that imply going all in? If your in it, in search for the kick, ought you not be ready to endure it till the end not relinquish it half way? I was disappointed but not surprised. Simply naïv.
What I‘m meaning to say is, the more I lost myself in you, the less I understood about myself. It probably would have been the right choice. Letting you go right there and then. Yet I choose to keep the story going.”
Believe me I didn’t understand our relationship either but it was something more profound.
“And then before I knew what was going on I found myself thinking about all the things I did and all those I didn’t, all those I could have changed but never actually tried to. The mistakes and hurt I inflicted, everything, but what good did thinking ever gave to me?
I (lost) spend so much time on thinking myself out of my misery that I forgot to think myself into happiness just once.
Instead, I spend my days walking through the streets observing the people that crossed my way and kept wondering if they lived a life that they chose or if it was kismet.
After my release I didn’t have to think about it anymore as solace found me.
I don’t regret a lot of things in my life, Rubia, but I do regret not being entirely honest with you. Not doing the things I wanted to out of pride.”
....