Heart-Shaped Locket

The horizon glowed a sickly pale yellow as the dying sunlight touches a sea of spores congealing along a baleful skyline, obscuring the roads, decorated with bones of all who failed to escape. From the outskirts of a city, long dead and overtaken by the spores, a man enters, alone. Prepared for the unforeseen doomsday, the man had built a bunker in his basement, seal-proofed to prevent radioactive contaminants, supplied with oxygen tanks to ensure years of survival, and hazard suits that would allow him to venture outside, if he needed to. Living alone in a bunker out of reach of the spores, out of reach of the world. This was not what he had pictured it would be like. He could never have guessed the form of which the end of the world would take, but at one point, he thanked God for surviving. Now, he cursed him. In his mind, he had been left behind. He was alone.

He stayed in the bunker, before the spores came, and was set to isolate himself from the world. Resentment had found a comfortable place in his heart, and disdain for what, to him, was the imperfection of the human race. He felt no necessity to aid those less fortunate than himself and was vocal about his unsatisfactory view of his lot in life. He felt like he was owed what other men had. Financial security, respect of peers, women. The last one, he felt most strongly, unaware of his actions only continuing to exasperate the toxicity of his mindset. He worked fifty-hour weeks in a low-income job and spent half the check towards preparing his bunker for the apocalypse, and continues complaining about lack of personal funds, how he felt unappreciated at work, how women weren't attracted to him because of his job. Now, unhindered by worries of his life before, the man walks through the abandoned, overgrown streets leading into the city, two years since the spores came. Once more, he felt unappreciated, for preparing for the end of the world.

#

Suited up in one of his hazard suits, the man wanders the streets in search of supplies. Since emerging from his self-imposed exile, the man had made multiple trips into the neighboring houses that were around his suburban home, which he was glad to be rid of. Before the spores, the man’s anxiety extended beyond just his awkward, and abrasive, interactions with people. Maintaining a home by himself, on top of preparing a doomsday bunker, created a great deal of financial stress. He contemplated his exile into the bunker as a means of escapism, away from the stresses that he battled daily. When the final straw was drawn, his father, at least in his mind, ridiculed him for his financial irresponsibility and his inability to start a family. To him, this was the moment he decided that he would rather live, and die, alone; as long as the stress of expectations remained behind. After paying the last of his bills, the man secluded himself in his nearly furbished and stocked bunker. The safety precautions were already set, and he just recently installed a quarantine shower. bunker could withstand a nuclear attack, but the man did not seriously anticipate that happening. He didn’t even have the supplies to last. He estimated he had enough food for perhaps six months, and he wasn’t even sure he would hideaway for a fraction of that. It only took a month for him to begin missing his parents. Missing people. Missing women.

The only interaction with the outside he has had has been within a stack of his favorite books passed down from his father and grandfather, and an old-timey record player accompanied by a collection of his favorite vinyl. It only took a month to feel the stagnation begin to creep. It only took him a month to decide that he wanted to rejoin and participate with the human race. To listen to his father and make something of himself. After a month, it was too late.

#

Supply runs have now become a daily necessity -imperishables are considered a valued treasure. The six months’ supply dwindled quicker than the man anticipated until he learned the concept of rationing. At this moment, he estimated he had enough to last him two more days, that is if he managed to find anything today that has not been contaminated with spore dust. The stores around his bunker have already been picked clean; he guessed by people who rushed here when the spores began to spread outside of the city. Most now have been completely covered in spore dust, pollen-like material that clumps into congealed spores that adorn the cityscape, expelling daily, carried across the blowing winds in all directions. He had learned how dangerous these spores were the day he left the bunker. Emerging from his sealed basement door, all it took was a look outside of the windows for the man to see that something was wrong. He knew the sky should not be the sickly color of urine, and that the buildup of spores in the windowsills and on top of fence lines did not bode the idea for clean air. He opened the doors out of his ruined home after retreating for a hazard suit and nearly fell to his knees after walking to the road to see that not a living soul was in sight.

This was not his first time in the city since nature overtook it. He had never felt as alone as he did now. In the last two years, he has become intimate with loneliness, and the depraved thoughts that arise from isolation. Passing sidewalks now overtaken with deathly looking grass, absorbing any remains that were; every street began to look the same to the man. Walk a block, look left - see sun-bleached cars abandoned in chaotic bundles; grass and vines devouring the landscape. Look to the right - see the exact same damn thing. Memory was the only thing guiding him now, through a steel and concrete graveyard, in search of food. Before long, his memories of the city escorted him to a small market store, out of the way of the main trafficked streets and avenues - a place where the locals living in nearby apartments could shop for their necessities. He had been here once when he had forgotten something from the store and did not feel bothered turning around. He remembered it being quaint, family-owned. Perhaps if it had survived, it would have been a breath of fresh air - a mom-and-pop shop in the middle of hell. Perhaps they knew all the locals. Perhaps all the locals knew them. It didn't matter anymore. Forcing the door open, the man was pleased to see that the store appeared to be untouched - until he walked through the door and was greeted with the sight of three Spore-Bodies - victims of the spores left in-doors. Instead of decomposing normally, they become hosts to fungi that grow from the spores inside of them. He theorized that when infected, one would die a violent death involving convulsive coughing, spasms, catalepsy, and death. When rigor mortis begins to set in, the body would temporarily reanimate into an abnormal, upright pose and freeze, acting as a standing host for the fungi to grow. He theorized this but knew for a fact what would happen to a victim because he had seen it himself.

The first and only person he had seen alive since emerging from the bunker, and she ran away from him, screaming at the top of her lungs. She was also wearing a suit, but during an unfortunate supply run accident, it had ripped. The wind was especially rough, and the spores were already beginning to blow against her and creep into her exposed self. He wanted to save her. He wanted to be a hero, to finally talk to another person, to finally talk to another woman. Frantic, he chased after her, not knowing why she had been screaming. The man chased after her for what felt like miles until she finally slowed down enough for him to catch up to her, where she fell to the ground and begun coughing as if her body was attempting to expunge her insides. The man tried to help her, to drag her to shelter to help. That's when he noticed the rip in her suit. She began to convulse soon after, froze, and died. He stayed with her body awhile afterward; distraught, so close to interacting with another person, only for her to be taken away so cruelly. He took her mask off just to see what she had looked like. "She was pretty." he thought. "How cruel."

#

It doesn’t take long for the man to search the entirety of the small store, finding canned food, and beverages protected behind glass doors that would last him a while. There were too many for him to collect all at once. He decided he would leave and come back in the morning with a means to retrieve his trove. He didn’t worry about someone else finding the store, since total nighttime would be here before too long, hiding it long enough for the man to return. Deep down, a part of him hoped that someone would find the store overnight, so at least he knew there was somebody else. On his way out, he noticed that one of the Spore-Bodies wore something that reflected in the small remaining light peering from the opened door. Around its neck shone a heart-shaped locket, lightly coated with yellowish dust, and a small clasp on the side. Intrigued, and unopposed to robbing Spore-Bodies, the man pulled the locket and chain from the bodies’ neck, snapping like a tree limb, causing spores to violently flurry upwards. The man quickly left the store and made the trek back to his bunker.

#

Changed out of his hazard suit and out from a cold quarantine shower - the heat had always been tricky for him to get working - the man placed his gas lamp atop his bookshelf, positioned the stylus onto his recently played vinyl record, and sat in his easy chair, tufted and saggy over the years. The man pulled out the newly cleaned heart-shaped locket and began to run his fingers along the smooth surface. He found no blemish until his thumb slid over the top of the clasp, and without thinking, he opened the locket to see what was inside. Three smiling women greeted the man, huddled together in a group shot in some sort of amusement park, and they were triplets. Inside, opposite of the picture, a small inscription reads "A daughter's heart is never far from her mother." The pain of loneliness struck the man once more, and the thoughts of who these women must have been begun to flood his mind. They were someone's daughter. That Spore-Body was somebody's mother. He stole from their mother. The man sat in silence for a long time, staring down at the photo of the three women, staring while the low chorus of an R&B track began to play.

He closed his eyes for a moment, sinking further back into his chair. He thought about how he missed people, and how he wished he had died along with them. Once more glancing at the picture in the locket, he reached his free hand into his pants. After a moment of quiet pleasure, dissatisfaction, and self-loathing, the man began to cry.