Heart Shaped Locket

I squinted against the harsh ray of sunlight, streaming through the ragged tan cloth that I had hanging over the dirty glass windows. I rolled to my side and the old mattress that I was using for a brief night's sleep crinkled and groaned. The concrete floor beneath was cold and hard, it scraped against my knees as I pulled myself back to my feet. I was sore in a way that penetrated far beyond a normal ache. It penetrated even beyond the physical man, as an ache that affects and even disintegrates the soul like a corrosive acid. I panicked at first as I groped through my clothes for the only driving force that kept me going. I found it and breathed easily again. I pulled a heart shaped locket from my side pants pocket and turned it over in my hand. It was a faded gold locket with a barely functional clasp on its side. On the inside was an old photo, even more faded and curled slightly at its sides. It was of a beautiful woman, maybe mid-thirties, same as me, with dark hair and a flawless smile. I didn't know her, any more than I knew myself, nor did I know where to find her. Yet, I knew in some way that I had to find her. She had become, in ways that I was not quite able to fully comprehend, my reason for living.

I folded the locket, the precious locket that I had carried with me these last three weeks or so, and returned it to my pocket. I walked down the corridor of the building, presumably a former factory of some sort in the world that existed before, and descended concrete steps in a closed stairwell. I walked out through the heavy steel doors that marked the entrance, the same way that I had cautiously entered the night before, and made my way along a craggy sidewalk in need of repair that it would probably never see. I saw a street-side vendor selling provisions. I saw a mother and father rush their little child along on the opposite side of the street. I wondered what they were rushing her to, or away from, and I thought too about how hard it would be to raise up a child in the world as we knew it. I wondered if I had children, and also wondered about my own childhood. I had no memory beyond the past several months.

My story, as I knew it, began in a rotting world of former glory. I could see the signs advertising stores, entertainment venues, or restaurants. These were glimpses of a world of promise and of purpose. This world before me had none of that. People tried to reassemble the broken pieces of the life that they had known and the organized prosperity that had represented a civilized society but it almost always dissolved into anarchy and ruin. I didn't know what had gone wrong to bring a once great nation to it's knees. I had no memory of any of it. I also didn't know the woman in the picture inside the locket that I carried with me but on some level, a level of the subconscious, perhaps, I did know her. It was similar to the feeling of deja-vu. It was like when you tasted something delicious and knew that you recognized the flavor but couldn't place it. It was dancing along the outer edges of my mind that I knew this woman, but just naggingly out of reach. I showed the locket to passers by and begged if anyone knew her. I pleaded that, if anyone knew anything about her, they should tell me. After three weeks or so, my search turned up nothing. I trekked on, just the same.

I found myself standing on a bridge, over a murky river of coffee brown. A stranger had stopped to look at my locket. He may have been the hundredth or even the thousandth person that I had interrupted to ask. One doesn't count and it really didn't matter. The quest was life to me and if the quest had ended in defeat, I wasn't sure that there was anything left after that. He looked to be an ancient old man with wispy white hair and leathery skin. I wondered to myself how this man had so long survived in a world so callused and unrelenting. The stranger claimed that he knew this woman and that he could point me in the right direction for a morsel of food and fresh water. I didn't hesitate, didn't even bother to consider the credibility of the man's claim. He had been the very first to offer even the slightest hope that I might find her. To me, it was a chance that I'd have to take. I gave him what he had asked for, that and quite a bit more from the cloth pack that I carried on my back. He led me for a long way along a deserted blacktop highway and then into the grass, towards a treeline. There was a clearing between the trees and I followed my traveling companion as he slowly ambled along down the trodden path between the trees and into the woods. He pointed me to a clearing in the forest, shaded by a canopy of outstretched branches. He then made it evident, as he turned away, that his role in the transaction was complete, and I carried on alone, down the hill to the clearing.

Illuminated by the almost supernatural yellow glow of the sunlight, filtered through the overhead tree limbs, was a small wooden cross, banded together with brown twine. It was stuck in the ground with a foundation of smooth white stones around its base. I turned at once to see if the strange man that led me there was still around but knew that he wasn't. I couldn't ask him what the grave was or what it meant. I probably didn't even need to ask, though. Just as I knew that the picture in the heart shaped locket was of deep meaning and significance to me and to my life's journey, I knew too that this stone represented the end of that very life and of its meaning. It was another on a list of things that I knew for certain in my heart but that I couldn't frame into rational meaning or explanation. I fell to my knees and cried. My tears were a return to emotion, as the only thing I had felt to that point was loneliness and confusion, offset by a dogged determination to find her. To find the woman who was to be my quest.

My bitter weeping was interrupted by a rustling in the brush. I looked up, not startled but curious, not afraid, but tragically indifferent, to see. A child emerged from the bushes, plants, and thorns. She was a child of maybe nine or ten. Her dark hair was twisted and matted to her scalp, he clothes were tattered and torn. I rose slowly and motioned to her that I meant no harm. Likely, she could see that I was as much a mess and a refugee to circumstance as was she in many ways. I, in hopes that she had come to visit the apparent grave the same as I, showed her the locket that I had carried so long. Maybe, just maybe, she could connect scattered the dots in my fragmented mind. Sadly, she could not. She did not know the woman in the photo nor the person to whose grave I was knelt down upon. I nodded to her, unable to hide my disappointment. She turned from me then, intending to leave. I watched and I perceived, as she walked away, that she was alone. Her head was held low, her expression grim, as she turned to leave me there. I looked at the locket in my hands, at the makeshift grave at my feet, and I looked thoughtfully to the sky. I then felt something else, a decidedly unique stirring of emotions, within me. I gently draped the gold locket over the arms of the wooden cross, and rose to my feet.

The End