Of Necklets and Nooses

The city of Heartshape was on lockdown again. Through the howling wind, sirens signaling a chase could be heard in the distance. Bizzy knew that screaming sound would soon be followed by other, more hollow, howls. Howls that sunrise would see silenced with the slow, guttering, gurgles of another extinguished life. The penalty for being outside without permission during a lockdown was death by hanging. Somehow, to Bizzy, this seemed like a fair trade, a blessing even; she often wondered why more people didn’t take to the streets. Still, she hoped to avoid that fate as the floorboards beneath her feet creaked under her shifting weight. She paused between steps to let the noise fade even though she was fairly certain no one was around to hear her.

In the semi-darkness of the room, she could see grimy shoeprints crisscrossing the old hardwood floor. Were they just the result of the haphazard use of the building or were they a chaotic pattern of anxiety, fear, and desperation? Bizzy wondered if any of the muddy boot prints belonged to Jackmen. She hoped not. She hoped this place was really a safehouse, but she had no way of knowing if it was still in use by the resistance, if there even was a resistance, or if the house was a trap. Trap or not, she had come willingly and would willingly accept her fate whatever it might be. She hugged herself against the cold of the long-abandoned home.

Bizzy watched her breath hang frosty in the air before vanishing on the wind that was blowing through the aging building. She noticed the peeling, water stained, wallpaper, its pattern a testament to a pre-war aesthetic that was much happier, and the deteriorating drywall behind it that was dribbling crumbs of white dust onto the floor, softly covering the shoeprints like an early winter snow. She moved closer to the window. She knew this was dangerous, but she wanted to see the mountain and the city skyline in the moonlight. The mountain was a jagged, black dagger ripping through the night sky, its point a luminescent white limestone and snow cap competing with the moon for dominance among the stars. Heartshape was built around its base and the resulting shape of the city had bestowed its name. In the distance, where Bizzy trained her eyes, she could see the outline of the decrepit city, its former glory possible to imagine under the cover of darkness though she had never seen it, not even in pictures. She had heard stories, though, traded in whispers on the social fringes.

Through the window on the other side of the room she could see the orange blush of the forge kilns, hot and bellowing through the night, and she knew they would be casting a ghastly glow upon the bodies of yesterday’s lockdown violators. People who had lost track of time or tried to sneak across town to a lover’s home. Others who just loved the thrill of being chased by the Jackmen only to have lost the chase. Individuals had lots of reasons for violating the lockdowns which had become so common people were treating them like the norm. Bizzy detested their quiet acceptance and often wondered if, like her, others had wanted to shout, to take back the streets, to reclaim Heartshape and restore it to what it had been or reimagine it and make it grander. She had never done any of those things though. Fear ran hot in her blood when they were forced to watch a public flaying or when she passed gallows with their gruesome testament to the casual dominance of the Council and their henchmen, those who had sold out their neighbors, friends, and families to work as Jackmen.

Hunkered down in the living room of the abandoned house, peering out the window, Bizzy thought she could hear the heavy footfalls of the Jackmen passing by on the street below, but all she could see were shadows dancing to the movement of the clouds overhead. She pulled her ragged coat around her tighter and wished she had brought her afghan along, but the note had said to bring only what you could wear. Perhaps pulling the throw around her shoulders would have counted as wearing it, but she had chosen not to risk it, now she was regretting that choice. Her threadbare clothes were not enough to keep out the cold.

Bizzy moved away from the window attempting to warm up, leaving the living room and angling into the kitchen which had been stripped of everything useful and then vandalized like the rest of the house. Bizzy wondered who had lived here. Did they die in the war? Had they runaway like she was attempting to do? Were they among the lucky who were expelled when the Council took power? She tried to imagine the lives of the occupants in each scenario. But each only ended in tragedy. Bizzy had no relationship to anything other than tragedy, misery, and the suffocating weight of daily melancholy. She couldn’t imagine others happy beyond the boundaries of Heartshape. She found it hard to imagine what her life might be like if the house’s secret promise of escape were true.

Shoving her hands into her pockets she moved slowly, as noiselessly as possible, through the other rooms on the first floor. Each room a vacant mausoleum housing unknown memories and the unmarked passing of other lives. She lingered in each one trying to force her imagination to call forth a happy possibility, but her thoughts were overshadowed by the absence of anything reassuring, the immense vulnerability she had exposed herself to by coming here. Bizzy stopped at the bottom of a staircase, looking up, weighing her options—stay put or wander up the stairs. Her fingers found the silver locket on the thin silver chain she had taken from Suzanne’s attic. She fumbled it through her fingers, feeling its heart shape, gliding her fingers along the ridges of its intricate design. She pulled it free and let it swing in front of her, moonlight picking out the polished surface.

She marveled at the object and the opportunity it had brought her. When Suzanne had succumbed to pneumonia, she had volunteered to clear out her house for reappropriation, deciding Suzanne would appreciate her doing it rather than Jackmen pilfering her things. Most of Suzanne’s possessions were garbage, just like everyone else’s in Heartshape, salvaged, reclaimed, repurposed, worn-out heirlooms and knickknacks of unknown significance except to the owner. Suzanne had been her friend since their first work detail shoveling shit from burst pipes damaged in the war. They had shared much, their suffering most of all, but when Suzanne had died shivering, in sweaty incoherence, there had been no last words, no final requests. Bizzy figured clearing out her house was the best last act she could do for her friend.

Most of Suzanne’s possessions were indistinguishable from the trash they were heaped upon curbside. Bizzy knew scavengers would pick the pile over and she hoped they would find useful things. Bizzy had not planned to keep anything of Suzanne’s, except maybe some small trinket, to remember her friend. In the attic there had been only one beat up, mildewed box that Bizzy had almost tossed without investigating. A peek inside had revealed a disorderly pile of papers, meaningless without context, a small bundle of letters older than anything Bizzy had ever seen, written in a beautiful script but a language she did not know, and a smaller, red box with a silver heart emblazoned on the lid. Inside the box Bizzy had found the locket she now swung like a pendulum in front of her face. This was what she would keep to remember her friend, everything else was discarded per the instructions of the Jackmen assigned to watch her. Their presence to ensure nothing of value, no secreted treasure, left the house. Volunteers were always suspect.

When the house was empty Bizzy was ordered to leave. Her person was checked to ensure she was not trying to smuggle anything out. She had hidden the locket well, as she knew the Jackmen would be rough in their investigation, so it was not until she was safely home that she thought to open the locket. Bizzy had expected to find pictures, or nothing, but she did not expect to find the little note, tightly folded inside, that had given directions to the safe house, a password, and instructions for what to do to be smuggled out of Heartshape. Her own heart had leapt at the possibility of escape. But she didn’t know if the note was authentic, or how old it was, or where it had come from, nor how Suzanne had come to be in possession of it. Bizzy wondered if Suzanne even knew what she had in her possession or, if she did, if she had had all the answers to the questions bubbling in quick succession in Bizzy’s mind. Bizzy did not sleep at all that night.

The next morning, she thought of throwing the note away. Burning it, maybe, to ensure she wasn’t caught with it. She couldn’t even imagine the horrors that would await her if the Council discovered the note in her possession, but the prospect of escape was too great. For the first time in her life, Bizzy had hope. It was a strange and urgent feeling, warm and tingling like an orgasm, but it was a feeling tempered by the ever-present fear all residents of Heartshape had been taught to cultivate for survival. Bizzy decided she was done surviving and wanted a chance to start living. She decided to follow the instructions in the note, to arrive at the house when someone would be checking, she surmised the worst that could happen was that she would sneak across town and spend a long, tense night alone in an abandoned building. Finding, again, the feeling of hope that had brought her to the safehouse, Bizzy climbed the stairs.

The second floor was more claustrophobic. Too many rooms had been crammed into the space and there was nowhere to run or hide if the Jackmen should show up. Still, Bizzy roamed the area, stopping in each room to imagine what it might have been, who might have lived in it, how they would have arranged their furniture, their belongings. She imagined the family wealthy, but that imagining was soon followed by the realization that would have meant the worst for the family when the Council took power. She sat down on the dirty floor as a wave of emotions and exhaustion washed over her. She was uncertain. She felt foolish, risking her life over a little piece of paper, and for what? She didn’t even know what escape meant or for whom the arrangement for escape had been made. What if the smugglers wouldn’t take her if they came? She was losing her nerve.

Bizzy walked back downstairs and resumed her vigil in the living room, sitting cross-legged on the floor. She watched the moon rise to its zenith. She stroked the smooth metal surface of the heart-shaped locket tucked away safely in her pocket. She wondered what a noose around her neck would feel like, how long it would take her to die. She shivered violently as the thought intermingled with the piercing cold. She closed her eyes, removed the locket and fastened it around her neck, and waited. But for what Bizzy had no idea.