Take Your Heart And Lock It

08/10/2072

Dearest,

I never thought I'd live in a world where love would keep me alive.

That might be a slight lie.

Before the glass and the ghasts I knew it was love keeping me alive, but it it was a different kind of love. It was a hopeful love that built houses and families when things like an 'economy' still existed. When everything was good and excessive I found myself not really wanting to exist, except for the fact that not existing meant possibly existing without you.

Now I fight to exist without you just so your memory won't be desecrated. I need to find somewhere for your locket to rest so I can rest. Somewhere they can't use it in their profane ways to survive pitifully.

A memory of a conversation keeps creeping into my mind. I was laying on top of you pretending to be a weighted blanket and offering reassurance in place of your pain.

I told you:

'You can't fix something about everything. Not everything is in your control and that's okay. It isn't your fault when the things you can't control hurt you.'

I guess it's creeping in because my subconscious wants me to let go. But I won't. I was an engineer back then trying to tell you to relax, but you, you were the architect. You made our whole world work and I couldn't possibly understand the things you did that I could not see.

Now it's my last day here in the grotto. I have to leave these massive fungal trees I've learned to love so much. I have a theory their spores accelerate regrowth so I've collected samples to bring with me, but what a terrible loss it is to leave.

They attacked last night. Not the ghasts of course. That's impossible with you around my neck. No, something much worse: Other survivors.

I thought you might like to know how we survived. As usual, it was mostly thanks to you.

The profane villagers came for you and I took them instead.

Two fell when they triggered the trip wire I rigged to an improvised device. One more fell when the shrapnel caused a fungal tree to lash out with defensive spores, and then another when the red eyed monster the spores created tore into it's former comrade. The last four were harder to take out because they carried their own love, or at least love they had ripped from someone else.

Three of them were sent from this plane with my remaining slugs delivering them with large holes in their bodies, and the last one faced me down with an ornate sword.

They knew I was out of ammo and they laughed as they drove me back with wild swings I desperately blocked with my hollow shotgun. As they slashed at me they gloated how their love was stronger. They gloated about their love being a weapon.

The first time the blade penetrated my body I felt it's power and saw flashes of my attackers memory. A new painful sensation, not just because of the literal sword piercing into me, but also because of all the memory and emotion I received in as long as it took to be stabbed.

All of a sudden the profane maniac attacking me was just someone else who had survived the end of the world to suffer in this waking nightmare. Their love was once a dulled practice sword meticulously cared for by a martial artist who loved a beautiful woman named Miena. Miena's partner had sharpened it finely before gifting it to them in blood and now it's thirsty blade would drink ours.

I dodged a ravenous thrust and watched the blade shatter as it crashed into the altar I had been forced to make of all the love I had broken in protecting you. Trinkets scattered in the grass and turned it black and I swallowed the heart shaped locket containing you so I could comfortably watch my last aggressor get pulled into the earth and eviscerated by ethereal hands.

The ghasts will claim this place, so we must leave.

To the mountains this time I think. I will build a new alter there covered in spores and this broken sword will be the first piece glued to a possible throne.

I will never give you up. Even if it makes me the most hated person in the world.

I think I'll name our new home Miena.

P.S. I don't recall if I have told you yet in this book I intend to mail to the great beyond one day, but every once in awhile when I have a moment to breathe I open your locket and I think it helps. I look at myself in the side that holds a tiny heart-shaped mirror and I try to mimic the idiotic grin I'm wearing in the picture on the other side.

It might have a few less teeth and somehow be even uglier, but my smile is still there because of you.