Apartment 46

His eyes scanned methodically across the line of forlorn buildings he was passing. Grey and torn, their structure and purpose were a distant memory. The best they ever contained had been taken, stolen and broken. To find remnants of any type of food in them was equal to finding gold. The land was lifeless, choked to its last breath. The air, the water and the soil had reached irremediable levels of noxiousness. Every inch of beauty was desecrated into what humans thought was better. This land served no one.

Only the very rich escaped this place to find themselves living the same unconcerned life in a different setting. Sometimes when the sunlight was bright and the smog allowed, he could see, only faintly, their pods hanging in mid-air and their flying machinery buzzing in the sky. There was no denying, it looked advanced, made by highly intelligent minds, they had a good thing going for them. But he did not envy them, because their trash still found its way down here. They were higher placed, but their thinking had stayed the same.

Others who had been left behind had fallen sick and succumbed to this perverted world. He was unfortunate enough to survive for this long, so he roamed on.

But roaming was too jovial a word, he was not roaming, he was on a mission. This time he had waited for the longest, the pit of his stomach burned, he felt sick and did not know how to get rid of the acidic taste in his mouth.

This is what his life had become now: his only drive was to survive; he knew nothing else. His existence was a mere shadow of what used to be. He searched on and on for food, and rarely took a break. The only thing he would stop for was a plant or a bush, anything that still had life in it. All else did not catch his attention; it was man-made, square, straight and boring.

The tall rigid columns of broken-into apartments lay in front of him. But he kept walking, these would not shine any luck on his chances. He had to find a heart-shaped locket; that is how he pictured them in his mind. The heart- shaped locket was a block of apartments so deep within the labyrinth of buildings, so far off from the centre, that no one would care to search them: it hosted nothing of value, to begin with. It still kept some of its character, and one might just, just maybe find food.

He went through the shabbiest streets, all the way perusing for food. Trash had taken over to the point where people lived in its heaps, they found shelter in others’ rejects. Oozing thick fluids from broken pipes, clogged foaming drains maintained a perpetual stench in the air.

The heart-shaped locket would not show itself, perhaps it did not exist. But his mind flashed on, the heart-shaped locket; the chime of its golden chain in his ears and the iciness of its metal feel on his fingers. So, he steadied his pace.

When the heart-shaped locket finally decided to show itself, he halted. His feet sunk to the very bottom of his shoes; the burn pulsating in his toes intensified. His eyes relaxed on the five-floor cuboid, with little windows and few operational doors with a stairwell cutting down the middle of the cluster dwellings. It was the most hopeless, the dirtiest of them all.

He started his hunt: going through the door, heading for the kitchen, checking the shelves, the fridge, opening the cupboard, going through the bin and repeat. First floor: nothing, second floor: nothing, third floor: nothing.

On the second floor he stopped looking as thoroughly, his patience was running low as was his vigour. On the third floor, he was throwing things around frantically, which made no difference to the general mess. As he left the stairwell and stepped on the fourth floor, he felt very close to losing himself but the flash of the heart-shaped locket sprung him back.

Apartment 46 stood in front of him. He grabbed the knob and before he turned it, he was stunted by the bottom hinge ceding to the weight of the door. With the loud noise came a cloud of dust to his face. He struggled between holding the pain in his stomach as he coughed violently and wavering the dust away.

Once inside, rather than going for the kitchen straight away, he walked further in. Something had caught his attention, but this time it was not alive. It was its shiny reflective surface that had drawn him in. As he got closer, the object revealed itself, it was the heart-shaped locket, the exact one that kept coming to him. He lowered to his knees and took it in his hands.

This time his mind hit him with a string of flashes. He was with his wife and his daughter curled up in one bed. He was narrating them a bedtime story: that of a faraway land, dreamy and comical, so they smiled and forgot where they were. They lived a miserable life but they did not forget laughter. He worked long hours, but would stay up just to spend more time with them, just to play with little Amy and cheer her mother up. They were sick and skinny to the bone, but they cooked, ate and enjoyed their food together. They did not have any entertainment but each other’s company. They were destitute but happy.

The memories had whisked him too far away: a life he was completely removed from. He no longer wanted attachment to what was lost: a family, a job, a sense of belonging, a hard, however normal life. Right now, he was nobody, and it was best to stay that way.

With a violent jerk, he threw the heart-shaped locket away. He stood up mechanically and walked to the kitchen, resuming his quest.