I Lost My Locket

I lost my locket today. Or perhaps it was yesterday, I can’t be certain. But losing that will only contribute to my loss of mind. Standing in the ruins of Clesher City, with the clouds darker than usual and the flakes of polluted ash raining down, I can’t help but lose faith. Faith that I’d get that far, hope that I’d survive until then and yet, here I stand with no God to help me now. Down the trail of the past, I return to where I had once seen it.

Sticky poisonous snow that clings to my boots, I shuffle through with not a breath of sound for miles from here. Not a breath but my own that channels itself through the glass screen upon my dull face. The desolate buildings that tilt or lay in molten ruin remain still in the quiet. Out of respect, from all those years ago, wanderers never speak unless the damned fools desire an end to the waking nightmare of today. I can’t blame them however, after the war eleven years ago, not much of all civilization was left. No one was ready, nor the planet, it’s land descended into a venomous winter to last a lifetime. What with little human life there is, they either lose their minds or they try to seek others for joint sanity.

I was the ladder. I step lightly among the rolled over vehicles and broken parts of a greater scheme that I care not for. My locket is all that I care for and nothing more than that. I eventually do indeed locate my footprints from hours ago. Or was it minutes ago? I can’t be certain and it fuels my desire for it back. How did this war even happen? A foolish discussion among leaders? A growing demand to expand? An accident taken as a threat to start something irreversible? I wouldn’t know. Clara asked these questions but we never did get answers. But why ask when everyone that has known why is gone?

Halt, a sound sweeps the city. I stop for moments and wait. Count, one, two, there the sound repeats. It’s close by. Much like thunder, distance matters but unlike it counting foretells how deranged it is. I pace myself as I check my shoulders, you can never pinpoint them. The echo of the city can be placed anywhere. Count, one, two, three, four, five, I don’t hear it anymore. Those screams of desperate cries of insanity never last long. With no shield for breath or filter, speaking is in no way safe. It must have given out finally as the trail remains silent for hours more.

Clara asked questions, she loved to ask questions but hated that I knew nothing. We met maybe two years ago, or was it months? I can’t be certain yet I knew at some point she got tired of me and left. Taking almost more than half of what I had to feed herself, she ran when I slept. We talked through pen and paper, stick and dirt, carvings on pavement. She disliked me because I have nothing I want to do. No goals because there are none to have, no dreams because they are all nightmares and no desires because there is no point. Not anymore. Clara wanted to find more people, more mouths to feed, or perhaps to make more. A family, to live in this world? Why bring new life to something that will kill them? Taunt them with memories of what life used to be like and riddle young minds with thoughts of change? I do believe this world may change, may change back to what it used to be. But not in our lifeline’s lifetime. No, we won’t make it that far I fear. Despite all this I miss her.

Talking in my mind, like I am now, I stepped on something. Under the ashen snow, I kneel and push aside the frost. A member of my kin, frozen in time having died from asphyxiation. Those vacant eyes of now ice speak of madness, though this body is old. Perhaps been gone for years but it gets harder to tell afterwards. I press on after apologizing in my head; I get the sense that I might have lost my locket in a building while looking for food or perhaps it was dropped when crossing the valley a little ways from here.

The locket was heart shaped, rose gold with cravings of doves, clouds, the sun and the moon. I had a photo of my girlfriend, Sanra and myself on one side and my older brother Zackery on the other. Two people, only two that I can remember the faces of. We weren’t together when it happened, I was camping on Mount Satyrn when it happened all those years ago. Come to think of it, I am not too far away from it now. If the fog and heavy clouds weren’t shrouding the air in eternal night, I would be able to see it from here. But the locket remains important, even if I don’t have my loved ones anymore. It remains as a memory of what life used to be, how the world looked like, what people looked like. My heart still aches when I think about it though. A throbbing pain that won’t leave me.

But look, there in the snow. My locket, dusty and cold to the touch I hold it now in my palm in the middle of all that remains destroyed. This single relic that I have stands as the only proof of what the past was. Of a better time of green, of life that is more than just roamers and bodies, of warmth and fresh air. The future however, I can long for the past all that I like but where can I go from here now that I have found my locket? The dim light of day begins to fade, true darkness will fall and it will only get colder. I enter a building from here, though it looks to turn to rubble soon, it will suffice as shelter as I settle into a corner and set my bags down.

Though the night closes in and exhaustion floods my senses, I hold my locket closely. I think of Clara as I rub the outer layer of the shell. Perhaps in some odd sense, or at least after today, I understand her now. What she wanted at the least, with how she wanted to share memories of what was. At times I do wish I could’ve talked about my old life, I wish I knew how to speak again so I could. Maybe, I should look for her. I have no other goals after all, so perhaps. I could.

Before the night truly falls as my shelter becomes more and more quiet with the corners of my eyes being shrouded with incoming shadows to swallow me once more, I open my locket.

I have one person left to remember.