Before The War

In the heated moments between doomsday and love lost forever, there was a heart-shaped locket. It would have been easy enough to forget, to just let things go, but that locket meant everything to someone. This particular locket, the same locket that would be clutched in the hand of the Dictator of Eurasian America after the nuclear holocaust, costed Phoenix Smith more then he wanted to admit. It had taken 15 years to be able to save up the hundred thousand dollars that Dr. Smith spent on the locket, and he had intended to use it to visit his family in Brazil. 15 years away from family, without so much as a WhatsApp text, or phone call, and it would finally have all been worth it. He left to make it in NYC, to prove himself when all he had ever been was nominal. He had gotten a job as a Doctor, and between college loans, private everyday expenses, and his girlfriend Penny Jones, he was able to save up only twenty to thirty thousand a year. Penny had also been pining after a heart shaped locket in one of the most affluent jewelry stores in the borough of Manhattan, and it was expensive enough as is.

Dr. Smith was inclined to please people, as he had never truly gotten into the habit of self-affirming, and so was inclined to get his self-esteem from others. He did everything to save up a couple thousand a year for the locket, but luck sometimes hits hard, and in the case of Ms. Jones and Dr. Smith it delivered a number of finishing blows. Penny became overdue in rent, and was evicted. Phoenix, of course, took her in, but didn’t realize he had also taken on the responsibilities of feeding her two dogs and three cats, being that her eviction had been provoked by a prompt letting go from her job as a manager of a local privately owned coffeehouse. Poor Penny had been the best and only manager of the place for the last decade, but she was replaced by the higher-ups, by someone new, and was unable to find a new job in the current job market. Dr. Smith now had to save for Brazil, the Heart Shaped Locket, rent, separate internet and phone bills, and five animals' dietary needs. As times got harder, Dr. Smith found a particularly horrendous stroke of bad luck. His grandmother was found with cancer, and without insurance and proper medical care, she had less than 5 months to live.

Brazil became a constant concern for Dr. Smith, but because Ms. Jones had never learned that people sometimes need to say no, she generated an ultimatum, either the heart-shaped locket, which was going to be placed in bidding if not paid for and received by January (one month before Dr. Smith’s family passing), or Ms. Jones was going to go back to Arizona where she had family waiting for her. Dr. Smith had a choice, one which he was not mature enough to make correctly, and so he decided to spend the last thirty thousand that he would have spent on the trip on the locket instead. Of course, Ms. Jones started to grow cautious of her predicament, and promptly skipped town, taking the locket with her.

Years of being affirmed by Ms. Jones, completely ignoring himself, and even putting his immediate needs aside for her problematic, mentally unhealthy, behavior left Dr. Smith completely devastated. He knew many people in the community, and had a decent enough job to support himself, but he had grown fat, lethargic, and completely undesirable in the comfort he had attained with Ms. Jones. The idea that he had lost everything he could count on to feel better after a bad day at work made him want to end it all. He slept in for days, lost his job, and was promptly admitted to his own hospital as a mental patient for suicidal ideation. Watching him having gone from the successful, charismatic, mentally capable Dr. Smith to this shadow of a man, let alone a great man, they openly pitted him, which gave him the fervor he needed to keep going. They constantly fed him esteem, and built his resentment for Ms. Jones, despite his partial responsibility in not helping Ms. Jones to understand her situation and what was real earlier. They blamed her, and he started to as well.

Dr. Smith didn’t know at that time that he was embarking forward to the end of the world as he knew it, because all he saw was red. He didn’t care that his blind rage was going to be a longer and more arduous road then he wanted. He didn’t care that he would never be able to take back the war crimes, the hatred that would swell up over time, or the fear of being ruthlessly obliterated in the name of revolution. Eventually, he reached the point of no return, and he knew it. Ironically, he had spent years trying to get back at Ms. Jones for leaving him alone in the darkness of his own soul.

In having done all of this, he built up a rap sheet bigger than an axe-murderer, and (having thoroughly gotten his revenge on Ms. Jones) he decided to get involved with the mafia and the local gangs to obtain protection. They required him to fight for his protection, and after nearly dying every time (but still miraculously making it through the fight), he got more and more power from more and more illegal activity. He single-handedly built an empire on higher designs of weapons, advancement in trading of drugs and moonshine, and became one of the most dangerous men in the world, having every gang member in half the world shooting first to protect him. What was left to do with the amount of money and power he made then to attempt total world-domination?

Looking at his right hand, where he clutched the heart shaped locket he had pulled from Ms. Jones cold, dead, hands, he counted down the time before the nuclear blasts would hit his territories from the forces that had allied themselves in revolution against him, and thought to himself that it had been a life well spent.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

Six.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Complete and total devastation, without a single survivor, due to the retaliatory attack that launched at the same time as the opposition had launched their missiles.

The Human Race had ended, and all for unhealthy behavior, a heart shaped locket, and a madman who took the easy way out.