Suddenly free.

Keychain- 261 words
Stephen N. Dethrage

Her vice had been keychains for as long as she could clearly remember. Her room housed hundreds of them, some in drawers and others in boxes and a precious few actually on key rings.

Suddenly, the collection disgusted her.

Suddenly, it was a fiery prosecutor’s testimony to the failure her life had so far, a trophy labeled to the person she had pretended to be for years.

Suddenly, Diana realized that in shameless defiance of her innumerable trinkets and the 92,000 miles on her Mustang, she'd spent her entire life going nowhere. The odometer boasted enough miles past to have circled the earth at its equator nearly four times, and somehow she was still stuck in the same redneck city, collecting the same worthless baubles. It struck her that people weren't remembered for the number of gewgaws they bought before death finally stopped them. Hell, most people weren't remembered for anything at all. The only justifiable reason for existence was human interaction, and as Diana admitted that, her wanderlust was instantaneously replaced with an unfamiliar lust of the flesh, and she craved, for the first time, sex and drugs, true love and natural beauty.

And suddenly, she was resolute.

She fingered each keychain absent-mindedly one last time as it made its way into the bin, and eventually to the dump. Pieces from Taiwan and Germany and Orlando Studios alike found themselves ultimately unloved and trashed after so many years of worship and adoration.

Driving away, suddenly free, Diana watched her odometer count each mile closer to her new life with glee.

The Mall and Misery - Broken Bells