My Master

2nd Street had always been 2nd Street. 1st Street had been renamed for one of the Kings, 3rd and 4th for some Lord General or other, and even 7th was no longer 7th, as it was renamed for Mayor Lyfmaker. 2nd Street was still only 2nd Street, but not for a lack of renaming options. Jewel Boulevard had been proposed and, I am told by my Master, names as variable as Diamond Street, Gem Avenue, and Gold Road had also been broached and dismissed in their turn. During the heyday of the City, 2nd Street had been the “Jewelry Quarter”. No government buildings gilded 2nd Street, no bankers or stockjobbers conducted their trade on its’ pavement, but anybody who was anyone visited the majestic gleaming shops that graced 2nd Street. The shop names: Rademacher, Francois, Fitzroy, Kit, Fall, and Gersh, to name only the most famous, resonate beauty, high fashion, wealth, and the heart of the social hierarchy, even in this dreary age where they are almost, but not quite, forgotten.

17 years after the Event, 2nd Street, and what was left of the City, was deserted. Vandals of a modern variety had ransacked everything, some even pulled up most of the paving stones on 2nd Street, no doubt in the vain hope that the stones really were gold. What good even gold would’ve done them, I have no idea. The smarter shop-smashers looked for food, while those of a more disturbed nature looked for any weapons they could find, I suppose so that they could take the food from the other vandals. With such goings on, it is no wonder that within 2 years of the Event, not a living being, animal or super-animal, was left in the City, as even the carrion fowl ran out of dead bodies by that point. Well, I should say, not a living being except 2.

In the shop of Rademacher on 2nd Street, my Master and I had weathered, quite literally, the Event, as well as the after-Event of human depravity.

How?

It was all thanks to my Master. She had warned me of, well, maybe not The Event, but of the possibility of something like an Event being able to take place, so I prepared in advance, under my Master’s orders of course. Before the Event, I, or I should say we, delved down beneath Rademacher’s shop, below the City sewers, making sure not to be caught or to damage the public utilities in any way. In that subterranean chamber we constructed a greenhouse, which fed a generator, which fed the greenhouse, which fed me (my Master doesn’t need to eat). Our chamber was never discovered, and we survived down there, together, without once going above the City sewers until 2 years ago.

I, against my Master’s wishes, chanced a reconnaissance trip up in to the shop proper. I discovered, 15 years after the Event, the devastation and horror that the world had become. Smashed windows, flooded dirt roads, moss, and rubble as far as the eye could see in the heart of high society.

I returned to our chamber, safely, but my Master did scold me, although she was ever so gentle. A year passed.

I chanced another visit to the shop proper. When I returned, my Master said nothing. I made further explorations and my Master stopped talking to me altogether.

Returning after one of these trips, yesterday, I slipped and gashed my leg so severely, and raw sewage may have touched it, that I am now afraid I will die from either blood loss or gangrene.

So, my Master instructed me to write out this note as a last testament and, when I am done, I am to place it inside of her, and then I am to leave her on the neck of the great mannequin in Rademacher’s shop, the one that is visible from the street.

But, before I finish, for I feel the death rattle even now approaching, I would like to describe my Master for whoever will serve her next: When she is opened, her fire blazes forth like the sun of old on a cloudless day, but when she is closed she glows blue and gives off little heat. Her chains are wrought of the finest silver, every link binding perfection to itself. Her skin is of molten diamond in the shape of a heart. She is wise and temperate, forceful and gentle, cunning and trustworthy. She demands fealty but reciprocates affection. If only I had served her more faithfully, I would live yet. But, alas, such is the heart of man. Fortunately, the heart of my Master will live on. I go now to place her in the shop. I wonder who will serve her, now that I go to die?

The End.