I'm running. I'm running and running, and I have no idea where I'm running to. All I know is that I have to get away. Away from life. I want to run until I reach Berlin, all the way across the Atlantic.
But I can't run that far. I'm hardly far from the flat at all, and I'm already running out of breath. I keep going, even after I start tripping. I don't stop until I have tripped completely, falling to the ground and gasping for breath. People are watching the crazy kid, sitting in the street. The grungy kid, with long red hair and a dirty shirt, and torn jeans. I know that they are watching me, but I don't make any effort to move. I don't care.
Even though I am away, in the middle of God-knows-where in the city, I'm still trapped. I'm stuck in the hold of Crawford, and stuck in the noose of Esset, and I'm stuck in the hole that is Las Vegas. All I want is to escape it all. To be alone with my own thoughts for once, and under my own command, not anybody else's. So where could I possibly go?
And so I start walking. I walk for hours. I'm outside Vegas at this point, far outside. Looking back I can still see the lights on the horizon, but I know that it doesn't make a difference, because it is fucking Las Vegas, the brightest fucking city in the world. And most of all, it is silent. I'm free in the Silence. I am able to sit down on the side of the road in the cool night, and listen. And what things I hear, that I feel like I've never heard before. The night isn't still, it is full of life, the wonderfully instinctual life of animals that doesn't intrude on me. I don't know of their problems, they don't know mine. They don't tell me what to do, I don't tell them what to do.
I fall asleep there. I don't care if he's worried about where I am. He'll find me, I know. In the end, I must always go back. But for a few blessed hours, I am alone and free with my Silence.
The next morning I wake up, and I am baking in the sun. I want to take off my denim jacket, but I know that I am already doomed to burn on my face, with my wretched fair skin. He still hasn't found me. So I'll keep walking. The cars will start pouring into the city, I know, and so I want to get as far away from the thoughts as possible, for as long as possible. If he still hasn't found me by sundown, I think maybe I'll hitchhike back to Las Vegas. Because I must always go back. Because I am hopelessly helpless on my own, I know. It won't always be that way, but it is right now. Right now, when I'm stuck in the body of a sixteen year old, with more experience than many grown-ups.
He catches up to me at noon. He's driving his black car, and he stops and opens the window, and gives me that look that tells me to get in.
"Why'd you leave?" he asks, turning the car around.
"I would tell you," I say. "but I don't know how I could possibly make you understand."
He nods. We'll never understand a lot about each other. I don't always like the fact, and I know that he doesn't always like it either. But it's a fact of our lives, and all we can do is go on the best that we can. Just as we are doing now.
Notes: I don't know what this is. More like what I'm feeling right now. I just want to run as far as I can. And I don't think the people in my life will ever understand. Oh well. The people at are about to learn how fast fanfiction spews out of head.