Doomsday Diary Challenge

As Eona knelt on the cracked tile of the long decaying courthouse, with the morning sunlight leaking in through every opening it could find in the walls and roof acting like miniature spotlights, she could feel the jagged edges nearly piercing her skin. The barrel of a rusty, outdated .357, slowly inches toward her sweat-beaded forehead. She could barely catch her breath after being chased by a lone Rover for countless city blocks, which now mimic a dense forest invaded by the crumbling architecture of men long forgotten.

“Please, you don’t have to do this, I’ll - I’ll give you whatever you want” stuttered Eona. “I don’t want to hurt you, lady, just give me everything you have”. As Eona began to empty her pockets, “Hurry up!” demanded the Rover. Her stack of ration cards spilled onto the old tile floors, now just ceramic shards, followed by an old folded picture. The Rover lunges for the contents of her pockets like a coiled snake striking its prey. As he grabs for the items, he slices open the callused palm of his hand and winces in pain. The Rover shoved the bloody bounty into his tattered, olive drab jacket pocket. As he steps back, the shimmer of a hidden necklace gleams against Eona’s sweaty chest bouncing to the rhythm of her pounding heart.

The Rover slams his hand into her sternum to rip it off but is met with such resistance that it brings their bodies to collide. “Please, let go!” yelled Eona. She throws her body back with as much force as she can produce in her drained state, only pulling the Rover closer to her. “Please, you have to let go now!” screeched Eona, “Just give me the damn necklace!”, mocking Eona’s tone. As the Rover tries again to keep the necklace in his hand, he is stopped soundless as he notices a faint green glow through his fingers. He slowly opens his weathered hand to reveal a heart-shaped locket with a glowing fracture as if separating the two sides into a broken heart. As Eona peers up with a sinister yet almost entertained grin, “I told you to let go” she mutters. The Rover then makes every attempt to release the locket from his grasp with no success. The glow of the locket begins to intensify, lighting up the Rovers face. The blood in his palm begins to slowly pool around the locket as if it is healing his wound.

To the Rovers unfortunate surprise, he soon realizes that the blood is being absorbed by the locket. As panic sets in the Rover begins to thrash his hand around to get the locket off his skin. He begins to pull hard enough to bring Eona from her knees to now her hands against the shards. The Rover drops to one knee as if to pray to the god he fears he will be meeting sooner than he hoped. His vision begins to double as more of his blood is guzzled by the locket more rapidly than he realized. He drops to his side and begins to shiver and gasp as if instant hypothermia has set in until he takes his last breath. He will now lie there, on the dirty, and shattered floor of the courthouse where it would appear he had met Judge, Jury, and Executioner in a matter of terrifying moments.

As the Rover’s life ended, it seemed that so did the lockets. Eona slowly helps herself to her feet without a scratch on her sweaty, shaking body. She tucks her locket back under her ripped, sweaty t-shirt, and reluctantly reaches into the jacket pocket of the dead Rover to collect her things. After getting all her items back she takes a moment to stare at the picture that she removed from her pocket, somberly, she cracks a smile as the memories of the picture fills her now calming mind. After taking her time she folds the picture, arranges her ration cards in a neat stack, and places them back in her pocket where they rightfully belong. Eona inhales as if she hadn’t had a breath in minutes, exhales sharply, and prepares to exit the disheveled courthouse.

Eona doesn’t fear any repercussions from the death of the Rover, there is no law to the lands, no higher-order, just surviving. This is the only way of life everyone left on earth knows except for what they read in rarely found books. The last year of “the life before” Eona had ever read about was recorded in 2028, any history she learns now, in 2100, is from the memories of the elders but, even they are becoming as scarce as books that give insight into the last days.

As she enters back into the forest cityscape where she just spent the last hour running for her life, she slowly reaches under her shirt collar to grasp her locket as if to make sure it was still around her neck and not in the hand of the Rover, even though she knew it was still there. She hasn’t been able to take it off since she put it on nor has she had the desire, she knows it is now a part of her just as any of her limbs are. 484 is how many days she has counted since the first life it took, a day she’ll never forget, just as a serial killer wouldn’t forget their first kill. It has taken four lives counting the one it just took in the courthouse, Eona doesn’t know how or why the locket works the way it does but it’s never made her uncomfortable so she has no reason to question its existence.

After walking a few more hours, Eona realizes that she hasn’t slept since the last sunset so she decides to find a place to rest for a few hours before the ration lines open, she never likes to be first because like every other day there will inevitably be a scuffle about who was next in line. As Eona emerges from under a group of low-hanging branches she sees what looks like a makeshift bed, more than likely left behind by a Rover who passed through before, she isn’t worried because they never stay for more than one moon in the same spot. She approaches the pile of branches covered by a mound of leaves, gently, she lowers herself to the nest-like bed because she can still feel the pain from the ceramic shards digging into her knees. Laying down watching the clouds through the holey canopy above, she can feel her eyelids getting heavy as she falls into deeper thought of the days ahead of her.

After a few hours of sleep Eona is awoken by birds squabbling about the canopy, she cracks one eye open with a half-cocked smile on her face, she’s never been upset being woken up by the innocent sound of nature around her. Eona stretches her limbs as far she can to release all of the tightness in her muscles left from earlier in the day. Before she can fully relax from the stretch, she hears the snap of a twig just above her head on the ground as she tilts her head back to inspect what had just made the noise; she's surprised to see a girl younger than her, covered in ragged clothing, out of breath, and a backpack stuffed with a blood-covered, tattered, olive drab jacket hovering above. “Hello” says Eona with crippling caution, she waits for a reply but she can tell that the girl's eyes are not looking back at hers as if she isn’t even present. “That’s pretty” replies the young Rover.

It takes a moment but Eona knows the girl is talking about her locket, “My daddy would think that was really pretty, can I have it?” asks the little girl. Eonas eyes become empty as she thinks back to the early morning attack by the Rover in the courthouse. Eona tries to reply but the girl displays a small spear that was made just for her, carefully hand-crafted by someone with more experience than the little Rover could possess. Eona attempts to rise from the ground but with an unnaturally quick swing, the young girl's stone spearhead is sunk into Eonas chest. “My daddy always told me to hurt people before they can hurt me” says the young Rover with a pleased smile on her face as if she is proud of her quick attack.

Eona reaches up to the spear that is now inside of her chest, tightly gripping the shaft of the spear, with her last reserve of strength she is able to pull the spearhead out of her. She drops it to the ground and with surprise relief, she feels no pain from the wound. Eona continues to stare into the young girl’s eyes as if she is trying to read her mind, all she can find in the girl’s eyes is a faint green gleam slowly brightening. Eona only knows this to mean one thing, she is to suffer the same fate of the four lives before hers, she clenches her stomach muscles to lift her head just enough to validate what she already knows to be true, the glowing locket absorbing her deep red blood like a sponge.

The fate she is facing is acceptable to her because has never felt anything but comfort after putting on the locket for the first time, she expects to feel nothing else in her last moments. The young Rover watches Eona roll to her side while she begins to shiver and gasp as if instant hypothermia has set in. As Eona gasps for her last breaths and her eyes finally close and the glow dies, the locket slips from around her neck and falls to the forest-esque floor. The young girl kneels next to Eona’s lifeless body, trembling, she hesitates to reach for the locket after seeing its true power but can’t stop herself from picking it up.

She raises the locket and puts it on with reservations but as soon as it is clasped around her neck all of her previous fears of the locket are driven away like they are being wiped from her memory. The young Rover stands up with her spear in hand, she then pulls out the sleeve of the tattered olive drab jacket, wipes the blood from the spearhead, and then makes sure her daddy’s jacket is safely tucked into her backpack. Before she continues on her way she goes through the pockets of the dead body’s clothes and pulls out a folded picture of an elder and the lady that just died, smiling, embracing, with the locket between them, around the elder’s neck. The girl looks down at the lifeless body with her head tilted and a warm smile on her face saying everything she wanted to say with only a look, “Thank you”.