Family Bond

My mother gave me that heart-shaped locket. I kept it around my neck and squeezed it of its life. I laid on my back below the surface and listened to the sound of horns blasting in the distance. It was insane; I did not ever anticipate the darkness around me becoming a hell of nothing but solitude.

"I can't remember anything," I told myself.

Tears managed to escape my eyes and I felt the locket wanting to acquiesce to the strength of my grip. Jesus Christ, I couldn't break metal, but I thought I could. I thought I could do so much before all this, but I was wrong for wanting so much.

I woke up in the darkness with nothing but a flashlight, a gun, and the clothes on my body. That's how the day started, and that's how the days mostly end. There is one bullet in the magazine; is that supposed to be a foreshadowing of things to come? I remember when I woke up automatic response was to search for an escape route, but the only way out feels like the weight of the world itself is sitting on top.

"Any minute now, you'll cave in. Maybe I'll die of asphyxia, or maybe the entire infrastructure itself will cave in and crush me to death."

I don't know why I turn on the flashlight and stare at the wooden latch above me. I keep thinking to myself that this is punishment for that time I stole that magazine at the supermarket. My mother promptly scolded me and tore my ass up with a belt, making me sore for the entire night I slept. This is guilt, isn't it? I didn't think I deserved this for something as innocent as childhood theft.

The horns blared louder and the sound of a million megatons of force caused the dirt to fall onto my face. I could not see anything, and I would rather not turn on the light to watch something as pitiful as my own tears wash away the soot. The smell of damp air was almost as suffocating as the space itself, and my god, it was a rather tempting offer--that gun lying next to me as cold as ice. I reached down and caressed it like it was another human, but then I remembered that the sensation of feeling skin on skin was slim to none. I believed that I was going insane. Be it a case of a nervous breakdown rather than the reality of my situation. The dirt walls around me shook and I clenched that goddamn necklace yet again.

"What is this? Huh? Is this a game?"

I don't know why I'm talking. There is no one there to listen to my insignificant attempts at interrogative words, but...I'm starting to get lonely. The fear that I've managed to quell is making a home inside the warmth of my carapace. Any wise man that ever existed warned of fear infecting the spirit and damaging the soul.

"I'm going to open you one, last time."

She's beautiful--my mother, that is. The sight of her alone is enough to make the sound of solemnity silence into the darkness. I wonder where she is, if she's alive...I wonder. The locket itself carried a delicate intricacy of inlays that rounded with its heart-shaped softness. The smell of it was metallic and made the smell something fragrant, after inhaling the pollution of thin air.

"Mother, please, help me. I have to admit something to you--I'm scared."

"Put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. You can't handle it." her mother's picture said.

"Holy shit!"

What was that? God, I am going insane. I'm starting to lose touch after all. I can't do this anymore!

"Let me out! Let me the hell outta here, please! I can't do this anymore and I want out!"

Keep pounding on the door. That's going to get you out faster. Pull on the latch and see if it'll open. You know realistically no amount of force in the world is going to get that door open.

"Can anybody here me! I can't do this anymore and I just want out!"

You can get out, just put the gun in your mouth and squeeze that trigger liked you squeezed that locket. You know you have the strength to pull it with that tough grip of yours. Pick up the gun and set yourself free.

“Shutup, shutup, SHUT UP!”

I don’t know why I fell to my knees like I did, but the fabric covering my patella barely procured a soft landing for bone, and the sensation of sin shot through my legs as I fell. I can’t do it anymore. I feel like I’ve been here forever and I want out. Im ashamed to say it, but I don’t want to do this anymore. Scrambling like a pathetic peon searching for scraps, my hands grazed the cold steel of the gun. I picked it up and…I don’t even know how to use it…

“This is the only logical choice I have, don’t i?”

Don’t ask yourself that question; you know this is the only way. Like a Christian preaching the gospel, the gun is Christ and the bullet in your skull is the Way. Now, pull it. I closed my eyes and I began sobbing. A million thoughts rushed through my head like a torrent of bullets firing off. If I escape, what is the point? The world out there is nothing but chaos onslaught with societal anarchy. I wouldn’t survive any longer than I’ll survive here. I have to do this; I have to squeeze that trigger.

“Whoever finds me…I’m sorry. Please forgive me, mom.”

The sweat of her finger made the attempt difficult. Finally receiving a suitable grip, she pulled back. The veins in her head throbbed and pulsated like a drum, and her final moments crescendoed into a pivotal silence.

The latch flung open.

“What the hell are you doing down here?” A man asked.

He stared down at her as her dirty face gazed up. The blues of her eyes were riddled with capillaries hinting at bursting from tension. If it were not for her bloodshot appearance, tethers may have been a metaphor for the beauty that shined through muck.

Putting the gun down, she answered, “Please, help me.” She extended her hand up.

The man reached his arm down and pulled her out of the hole. The air was not toxic; the sky was as blue as the ocean and the sun beat down on her clammy flesh.

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ve been in that hole for days. We have been trying to search for you but to no avail.”

She looked up at the sun and raised her arm to the brightness of day. “There is no war? The world…it’s not ending?”

He laughed, “do your eyes deceive you?”

“My sanity deceives me.” She replied.

With a smile, she gripped onto the locket and remembered her mother smiling back at her. Opening the locket, the smile descended into disbelief. What was a picture of her mother looking back at her was now a tiny piece of paper with rows of numbers. The vague reminders of an innocent past slipped out of her skull, and the reality of her present entered.

“I remember.”

“You’re goddamn right,” a gun cocked behind her, “and you’re not going to make it out of here alive.”

She was the product of a family of nuclear physicists. Her mother was revered by the science community, but murdered and killed her colleagues for the warhead codes. She was a criminal, and an insane one at that.

“Please, I had nothing to do with this. She put me in that hole! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

He ripped the locket off her neck and pressed the gun against her skull.

“You’re not going to end us all.” He sneered.

A memory of her mother flooded in, “it’s fine, and you’re going to stay here until it’s all over. The world will be anew and man will be left to make fire from the ashes. If you cannot survive, squeeze, and you’ll be free.”

She stuck her daughter in that hole to prevent her from something, but she couldn’t temper what. She knew that time was running out, and there was no way of bartering or dealing with her assassin.

“Your mother was insane, and she killed us all just so she could kill the world. It doesn’t happen like that. Her biggest mistake was giving her own flesh and blood the codes to our weaponry.”

Her eyes looked down at the ground and she suddenly remembered why.

“It’s already done. We all are going to die. She’s already made the move, and she wanted to protect me.”

Diverting her eyes away from the ground, a flock of vultures picked at a corpse a few yards away; it was her mother. She had committed suicide with the knowledge of knowing that what she had done was an astronomical sun. There was no retribution for her crimes, and her daughter was the last vestige of hope that she could rely on.

“It’s over. Pull the trigger…end it.”

“You got it.” The bullet went into the back of her skull that caused her head to explode.

He lowered his weapon and knelt down, “now it’s over.”

Looking back at the mother, then placing his attention back at the daughter, he felt peace.

“I can’t believe it…we are safe.”

He opened the heart-shaped locket and busted it open against the ground to remove its contents. A tiny piece of paper with numbers was in fact what was there.

He opened up the neatly folded square and squinted his eyes, “Welcome…to…the…” he started breathing heavily and his words stuttered, “…new world.”

Swallowing his few minutes of relief, the sky suddenly illuminated with a light so bright that it stripped him of sight. Raising his arms in the air to shield the light, he screamed from his skin staring to blister from radioactive heat. It was over, indeed, for she detonated the warheads without anyone knowing. Giving the numbers to her daughter was merely a ploy to kill her, as her secret would finally die out with the last of kin. The world would be made anew, and the post-apocalyptic world would be left to fend for itself…just as her mother had conceived. The last sounds of his screaming faded into the catastrophic sound of nuclear fire that rushed across the land.