Ella's Heart

Ella awoke cold, hungry, and afraid like always. The eight-year-old pushed her dirty blonde hair away from her face. She sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes hoping for a better world than the one she fell asleep in. It was not. She stood up in her mud-soaked dress gripping her dilapidated teddy bear determined to soldier on. Ella knew that she must keep walking, as she had been, for what seemed like days on end. Searching, praying, wishing she could find them.

It had been four days since the outer city riots had escalated into thirty hours of continuous violence. Bodies still lined the broken asphalt that used to be the city’s streets in a time before Ella was born. People screaming, murdering each other, Hell on Earth, worse than anything else she can remember, and she remembered a lot. She remembered all the pain that had encircled her life like a vulture waiting for opportunity after opportunity. The vulture fed well and often but there were a few good times too. A laugh, an extra piece of bread, an occasional illusion of hope that caused a temporary pause in the horror. Small things. Small things but they added up.

As she walked, she fidgeted with her necklace. It was a silver heart shaped locket with the word family written in cursive on the outside and a picture of her mother, brother, and herself (as an infant) tucked away on the inside. While she played with it she thought of the two of them and how much she missed them, how much she needed them, and how without them she would be alone in this world forever. Ella rubbed it and rubbed it with her fingers as if it were a magic talisman that would lead her to her loved ones. If she held it long enough and believed hard enough, she would be reunited with them.

The sun had come up over the ruins of the city’s buildings in the East just as her brother had taught her it always would. Light pierced the remnants of the structures and the holes blown through them. Now they stood with their glass gone, vines and moss reclaiming these once mighty skyscrapers. They may have been beautiful from an objective point of view in their current state but to Ella they made her sad. A constant reminder that all things decay and fall away. She, even at this young age, was aware that humanity was in the throes of its death rattle.

Ella eagerly watched the sun rise in the sky. She was hungry but she knew that she shouldn’t eat the half apple in her dress pocket until high noon like her mom had taught her. She was hungry, yes, but years of conditioning had made her strong enough to resist, so she kept walking east towards the beach. Ella was outside the part of the city she knew by this time and her senses were hyper aware as she made her way to the shoreline. She knew going to the beach didn’t make much sense, but she couldn’t think of any other place to look. Her mother had loved it as a child and talked of it fondly. Before the bombs, before the water shortages, and before the ocean had become a toxic waste dump, Ella was told it was a wonderful place.

It was mid-day when Ella hunkered down against a building in the shade and ate the half apple she had left over from yesterday. She had remembered cutting it carefully into two equal halves being very careful not to favor one side or the other. But looking at her half today she couldn’t help but wonder if the half she ate yesterday was bigger. The knife she used to cut it was getting dull and she sharpened it on a stone as she ate. The knife, the only protection she had now, was given to her by her brother on her 6th birthday. He showed her how to sharpen it and stab things with it. Her mother, after discovering the gift, is the one who taught her to hide it on her inner thigh with a thin strip of cloth tied around the leg. Ella hadn't had to use the knife in self defense yet, but she knew the longer she was alone the more likely the possibility would become. She thought she better keep it sharp just in case.

Lunch was over and Ella had been walking again for a few minutes when she noticed an old brown leather shoe in the middle of the street. An unusual chill engulfed her back and her heart sunk low inside her little body. She could make out the part of the shoe where her mother had recently repaired the sole with heated pine tree resin. She knew instantly her mother must be dead. Ella’s mom would never leave anything of value behind and certainly not just one shoe. Even if she had found better shoes, she would have bartered the old ones for something, anything.

After a moment, Ella spotted her mother’s one bear foot sticking out from a pile of rubble on the North side of the street. She moved towards her mother’s body not walking but not running either. She felt nauseas inside and thought she might throw up, but she didn’t. She cleared the rubble from on top of her mother, laid down beside the lifeless body and cried for a long time. Hard, sobbing, primal cries. Her mother had taught her not to hold any emotions in. That crying was a coping mechanism and whenever she needed to, she should just sit down and have a good long cry.

When Ella had finished mourning her mother, she sat up and was not sure what to do next. She felt physically and emotionally drained, and truth be told, the thought of lying down right there next to her mother and dying herself flashed through her mind for a moment and did not seem all that unappealing to her. Instead, she forced herself to retrieve her mother’s missing shoe and placed it back on her foot. It seemed that it would be undignified to leave her foot naked and Ella did not want that to be the last image she had of her mother.

There didn’t seem to be much more Ella could do for her mother, so she turned her attention to finding her brother. She kissed her mother on the cheek and walked a few steps before stopping. Something wasn’t right. She turned around and looked at her mother. Her mother looked so lonely and Ella could only think of one thing to fix it. She unclasped the heart from around her neck, kneeled down next to her mother, and gave her the locket. Now that the picture hung around her mother's neck she wouldn’t be alone.

“Okay now,” trickled from Ella’s lips at an almost in audible volume.

Ella kissed her mom one more time, stood up, and started walking again. She had to keep walking. Forward momentum. She thought her brother might have had the same thought as her and headed for the beach himself. Ella did not know what the ocean really looked like but hoped it would still retain the beauty her mother had described to her at night when she was drifting off to sleep. But most of all, she hoped her brother was still alive and waiting for her there on the beach.

Ella walked and walked, her little legs growing tired. She did not want her brother to be all alone like she was. They could still take care of each other if she could only find him. She forced herself to imagine him sitting there on the beach, watching the waves, arms stretched out waiting for her. But deep down inside a feeling of dread grew. She realized that it was likely he was dead as well. But Ella walked on, in search of her brother, teddy bear in one hand and carrying what little hope she could still muster in her heart.

The End