It's going to be ok...

“One last look..”Lucas said to himself as he tried to open the locket with fingers riddled with sores and burns. The nerves were dead so he didn’t feel the pain, but it made anything that required coordination that much harder.

He had been waiting here for two days, waiting for death to finally come for him and put him out of his misery. It had been just over a month since the bombs were dropped and destroyed everything. No one really knows who dropped them, at least no one that Lucas met knew. There were no radio transmission, tv, internet, nothing. All the electronics had stopped working too so some thought a nuke was detonated in the atmosphere to create an EMP. Overnight the world had become quiet, no more notifications on your phone, no tweets or likes, no youtube or movies, not even music unless you had an actual instrument and knew how to play it. Lucas once thought of all the creative things we had created as humans that would be lost forever. So many stories and songs that would be lost forever, even if survivors wrote down what they remembered it would have changed and eventually be completely different than what was intended.

“Such a waste” Lucas whispered to himself. He tried to push that thought out of his mind and forced himself to think about her. He finally managed to open the locket so he could see her face again, smiling at him like everything was going to be ok.

Her name was Iris, the girl that Lucas loved, he was just a coworker to her of course, the locket was a stupid prize he had won at a company christmas party. That night he had bumped into Iris and made a joke about the irony in winning a locket when he had no one to put inside. Iris asked to see his phone and she quickly took a selfie.

“There, now you have a picture to put in there.” Lucas knew she was just being nice and trying to cheer him up but it meant the world to him, so he did get a print of the picture and put it in the locket like she said. Now, this dumb prize he never would have wanted suddenly became his most valued possession. He spent hours looking at her picture and thinking what it would be like to spend every day with her. Even the sight of the locket just hanging on his bedpost made him happy and gave him something to live for. She never knew how he felt about her, every day he said soon I’ll tell her, or maybe once I get my life together I’ll tell her. He was so afraid of losing her friendship that he never summoned the courage to actually tell her. He would rather have her in his life as a friend than not at all, it just seemed too risky.

The day the bombs hit Lucas had been hit by an overwhelming sense of panic, like everything was suddenly swallowed in darkness, but it wasn’t out of fear for his own life, it was because he knew deep down he’d never see Iris again and he had never told her how he felt, or even how much happiness she had brought him when he was lonely. It’s amazing how someone can change your life so much and they have no idea. He was away from his apartment on that day and all he could think about was getting the locket.

It was a long and dangerous trek back to his apartment without a working car but he eventually made it. The people he ran into kept telling him to go back cause there was too much fallout in that direction but Lucas had to see if it was still there. The apartment was partially destroyed, mostly from looters, but the locket was right there in the middle of the floor. He smiled to himself when he realized the locket was so lame that even the looters didn’t want it. But her picture was still inside smiling at him, giving him hope that he might make it through all this, maybe even see her again someday.. He quickly put it on and tucked it safely under his shirt.

The survivors he met along the way were right, the locket was radiated and as he struggled to find clean food and water he felt his skin close to it slowly start to burn and peel way until there was a golfball sized sore on his chest that was turning necrotic and oozing black liquid. The smell was horrible and he could feel himself getting weaker everyday, the worse he got the more he held onto the locket to help him get through pain. Eventually it started eating away at his fingers too. He knew it was the locket that was killing him but it seemed hard to go on living without it, without a way to remember her.

He closed the locket again and closed his eyes, thinking of Iris and he wished he had told her everything, he wondered what would happen when he finally died, would She be there waiting for him? Lucas wasn’t very religious but hoped maybe his spirit would live on and maybe find her again someday.

Lucas rolled over to look at the sky and noticed everything was a lot darker than it should be and he realized this was it. Even though he was nearly dead he was struck with the same feeling of panic he felt when the bombs hit. What if there is no afterlife and this really is all there is. He rolled to his side again and fumbled with the locket to get it open again. His vision was fading fast and he felt like everything was slowing down and his movements felt sluggish and distant. He managed to get it open and looked at her smiling at him as he started to fade away.

“One last look..” he said and smiled.