THE HEART SHAPED LOCKET

“Hold on!! Hold on for dear life, Damnit! This isn’t gonna be good. We may not make it. We may not see each other again. The world as we know it is slipping into oblivion!!”

Explosion.

I blink my eyes. I see a glimmer, just a small glimmer in the distance. What is that? What could that be?

One hour prior…

I was sick of being probed. There was only so much you could take. THEY wouldn’t give up in THEIR search for life. How to sustain life. Eh. The age-old question.

“Hey Moira, THEY feed you today? THEY haven’t fed me that’s for sure.”

No answer.

Life had been rather normal up until the END ALL. The END ALL. I don’t remember where I heard that first, but I do remember the sickening feeling it represented upon first utterance. The disgusting summation of a planet’s destruction into two words.

Everything green has died. The water has dried up. The powers that be attempted to escape. THEY, also were destroyed. I tell you, there is certainly a leveling of the systems that occurs when the world ends. No one is the bourgeoisie in no man’s land.

Who am I fucking kidding? Someone always steps up. Another THEM. And that’s where I was now. Stuck with THEM as they attempted to determine my worth. Women were worth something in the last few months of the world’s existence. Haven’t they always been? Worthy of control?

THEY put little needles day in and day out, consuming whatever liquid is produced within the body of the female. NEWSCIENCE, the ruling scientific entity before the END ALL, had broken through the proverbial glass ceiling of the usefulness of women’s bodies. Not only could they sustain life within the womb, sustain life via sexually, albeit emotionally for men, but female bodily fluids were now found to be the cure to mankind’s suffering in the form of nutrition, stem cell regeneration, and most impactfully hydration. The liquid in women’s bodies can be drank by the powers that be in order to sustain THEM. The world’s waters have dried up, but females refuse to disappear, and THEY are counting on our obstinacy.

THEY think this brings THEM life. THEY think this brings THEM nourishment. And THEY are right, but it brings me pain. It is bringing my destruction nearer and nearer. My health is declining and so is the habitability of the planet with the ever-continuing desecration of the female body.

THEY feed us from time to time, but they haven’t fed me, and Moira wasn’t answering.

Swishhhh. Swissshhh. Swissshh. Oh my god. I hear the sliding door to my room. MY ROOM. A room of one’s own? What was that from again?

Much of what I remember from before the END ALL occurs in flashes of light and occasionally fuzzy shapes. Some shapes are dark and hard to define; one shape, in particular, comes to me frequently.

“Get up!! Sit up, now!! I won’t say it again.”

He has only said it once. Can these idiots even count? I sat up on the concrete slab that I was laying on. The man moved closer, they almost seemed to glide over. Was this floating a side effect of their newfound nutritious serums? You never know what you will get during these mishandlings; maybe one man, maybe two, three, four? There seemed to be no pattern…As he stumbled over my body, his meal, he hummed. He hummed a tune I could not place. A tune that felt childlike, felt far away. What was that song?

“Twinkle, Twinkle, little star…”

That song, that song…I have heard that song before.

I escape. When they are feeding, I escape. I see the shape that makes me feel invisible to everyone, but myself. A shape that shines. A shape that symbolizes something. A shape that once belonged to me: the heart. My heart. My heart shaped locket. I don’t remember who gave me this locket, but I do remember the warmth; an actual feeling of warmth in and around who I was back then. I escape. I see the shape. I feel the warmth. I wear my locket. My inner voice sings the tune.

How does he know that song inside my head? Has he heard it before too?

The man finishes his feeding session and he glides away. I hope it is my turn next. Oh, how hungry I am. How hungry must Moira be? She has not responded for some time now. I do not know how long. I reach out from my concrete slab, bunk #4035, in an attempt to reach her hand. I feel something. Is that Moira? I clasp a cold, clammy hand inside of mine. For a second, I feel connection.

At this very moment, the room begins to shudder, to quake. My bunk splits into two and my two skinny legs almost get caught in between. The ceiling is beginning to crumble. I jump on Moira’s bunk. I scream: “Hold on!! Hold on for dear life, Damnit! This isn’t gonna be good. We may not make it. We may not see each other again. The world as we know it is slipping into oblivion.”

Explosion.

I blink my eyes. I see a glimmer, just a small glimmer in the distance. What is that? What could that be? I squint. I keep squinting. I cannot move. I cannot feel my body. I feel like. I feel…what is that…a fuzzy shape…a bright light…a heart shaped locket.