EPILOGUE

Kai stayed awake all night. He lay motionless agog with anticipation. Adrenaline was rushing through his veins, and he listened hard for the slightest sound that would give away the arrival of the thief. He was so tense that he jumped at every sound coming from the corridor. This is it: The final stand. Check mate. The end. Oh how I waited for this.

Unfortunately, the thief never showed up. So by dawn, Kai not only had dark circles around his eyes but also the raging desire to scream like a madman. He sat on his bed uncomprehending. From his sock drawer he retrieved the steel box and selected a cookie. For a while he just stared at it. “Why didn’t you come?” he questioned the biscuit. When it failed to provide an answer he bit off a large chunk and started to chew. Did I miscalculate? Has the miscreant become aware of my trap? With his arm behind his head he fell back onto the bed. His thoughts were going around in circles. This was so frustrating. His plan was bulletproof, except for the fact that it depended on the villain to show up. With puckered lips the drummer stared at the ceiling. I should have gone for torture… No matter how many minutes passed, Kai had to accept the fact that he hadn’t caught the damnable delinquent last night. And this would not change no matter how long he kept brooding over it. I'll give it another night. Maybe he'll come tomorrow. He can't resist… I know him. He will come. So, eventually he rose and went to have breakfast, i.e. more cookies. 

But the thief did not come the next night. Nor the night after that. Kai thought he might go insane due to the suspension. Or he might go insane in general. Had he only imagined the cookie-thief? No. The cookies had disappeared. The logical conclusion was that someone had taken them. He considered the possibility that he had started sleepwalking and eaten all the cookies himself. That would mean he had been chasing a ghost all this time and was lucky not to have fallen into his own trap by now. But he decided that this was too unlikely. Hence, there had to be an intruder. His sleep was light these days, he dreamt of cookies coming alive and accusing him of not having found the cookie abductor yet. His lack of sleep directly affected his judgement and patience during the day. And at night he started to become more and more aware of the on-goings in the flat. He heard with increasing frequency someone creeping along the corridor.

After another restless and uneventful night of waiting for his trap to spring, he had finally figured out what this meant. Someone was changing rooms at night. And what was all that about? So on the fourth night after he had set the trap Kai decided to put a stop to that. He sat down behind his door leaning his head against the cool wood and waited, ready to jump out at whoever was tiptoeing along. But either he was too slow or he really did imagine things, because when he heard the tell-tale sign of a creaking floorboard, he rose, pulled the door open and found the corridor empty. I could have sworn… He ground his teeth and went back to his room.

This was seriously affecting his mental stability. And the fact that he only slept a few hours every night gnawed away on his nerves too. At least he still had his cookies. His precious cookies. They were his anchor to reality.

Rest assure, Kai did not lose his mind. Because eventually, with only a few days left before Christmas, the trap was finally sprung.

Kai was torn from his dreams by a cry of pain that originated right beside his bed and echoed through the flat. Someone was on his knees beside the drummer’s bed. The cookie-jar was rolled across the floor, spilling its contents everywhere. The drummer blinked in the dark trying to identify the person on the floor and kick his drowsy brain into action. Hurried footstep approached the door and suddenly three people burst into his room. The worried faces of his friends reflected incomprehension as they tried to make sense of what they were seeing in Kai’s bedroom.

“What is it? Are you hurt?”

“What’s going on?”

THE NEXT DAY

The atmosphere in the studio was positively arctic. Only Kai was lying comfortably on the sofa, totally at ease with himself. An enraged Reita was pacing before him, shouting at the top of his voice.

“You could have maimed me for life! I could have lost a finger… nay the whole hand!” We waved his bandaged hand in front of the drummer’s face.  “What if I am not able to play again? My career will be ruined, my life void of meaning… Will you have that on your conscience?”

Kai rolled his eyes. “I’ll take my chances.”

Reita felt he wasn’t being taken seriously in his injured state so he started from scratch. “I am disabled! How do you expect me to play like this? You have terminally impaired my ability to express my creativity.” he shouted. This was actually an impressive piece of acting on Reita’s part. The others could have sworn there were even tears glittering in the bassist’s eyes.

“Look what you have done to me!” He took his bass from where it was standing in the corner, placed his bandaged hand on the strings and . The movement was inelegant, indelicate, clumsy, and the sound he produced was a hollow, disharmonious sort of twang. Everybody flinched except for Kai, who remained unperturbed. This made Reita even angrier.

“The doctor said this prank could have caused serious injury. I will have to wear a bandage for three weeks!”

“He also said: for someone with no serious injury you were whining a lot.”

Reita clutc