My Freaky Friends (and me)

Chapter 1 ~ Adreana-Oni-Kitty

Part 1

It had been months since the last time I'd seen her. I'd only seen her two times in the last six. The first was in August, and we called the police with our friend Natalie Robinette on some hicks who were being a public disturbance at Mountain View Park. The second time, I was mildly drunk at the local haunted corn maze. She recognized me, even in the dark, so she ran up to me and we embraced each other.

    "Look, look!" She said to me, holding up her hand and pointing to the elaborate piece of jewelry on her middle finger. It was a metallic ring in the shape of a dragon designed to crowd the finger nail. Originally, it had been mine, but I gifted it to her during my third trip on LSD in July on Friday the 13th. I gave it to her because it was dragon themed, and she loved dragons.

    As we broke away from each other, we promised to hang out soon.

    But that was the last time I ever saw Oni.

    I was out and about one evening in late January, and I had just picked up some dinner from Campus-U-Tote-Em, one of those local, cute, home-town diners that were ironically scarce in a town so tiny. I slammed my door shut as I climbed into my van, placing the bag of food on my passenger seat. For a couple of minutes, I just sat there, staring at the other customers grabbing their evening meal and laughing with their families inside of the restaurant. In my mind, I knew I didn't want to be alone. Yet, I felt like I was.

    I was currently in-between jobs, and Gods. And yeah, the latter half of that sounds pretty freaky, I know.

    For my entire life up until May of 2018, the last month of my senior year, I had been raised in the cult of Jehovah's Witnesses. Of course, they don't call it a cult; they probably wouldn't have nearly as many members if they did.

One day, my parents jolted awake. The day they told me we would never be returning to the organization, my life completely flipped around. Everything I had been taught, every idea about higher power I had been trained to think; it was all an enormous lie. When I saw the proof for myself, I was sickened. How did we live our entire lives thinking that what the Jehovah's Witnesses taught us was true, when it was clearly such bogus?

When I first exited, I could've gone on for days about how much I loathed Watchower and every opportunity they had taken away from me, every Christmas, Birthday and Halloween that I didn't get to celebrate, and every thought that they had poisoned me with. I guess it was very interesting to other people at first, but I could feel the growing looks of disinterest and annoyed sighs as I kept talking about it more and more.

Sorry everything I thought I knew my entire life was a lie, people! Not all of us are given an option to have independent thoughts, let alone independent choices our entire life. I felt like I had been freed from slavery, and no one even cared anymore.

    That was the first cult I left.

    Wendy's was the second.

    It was my first real job, and I had an unhealthy attachment to the place. I had worked  there for just over a year and a half. At first, it was a wonderful place to be, and to work. Nearly all of my friends worked alongside me, and my boss was a terrific, fearsome woman named Sonya, whom I aspired to imitate. Her fairness, sense of responsibility and work ethic kept our store in tip-top shape.

    But one day, that all changed.

    It was time for Sonya to move on to bigger and better things, and our next General Manager took an instant liking to me.

Fernando, a large man with a classic Guy Fieri vibe and a fucking pokemon lanyard: the new boss, constantly came over to chat with me while I worked, and would spoil me with compliments on my work ethic.