Vinny's Locket

It was the creeping that roused Charlotte awake. The desperate creeping that was really a dragging, a low and pitiful struggle of something nearly slithering on the ground. She heard futile attempts of survival before— the scraping sound dragging limbs make as they scuff across concrete or slide through the leaves. Two and a half years since the shut-down, and already nature laid siege to suburbia. It was the end times according to some, and the broken people cried tears into their graves while the rest snapped into monsters.

Charlotte wished the apocalypse was zombies. She wished that humans needed to be rotting to be poisoned to evil—but it was really greed and the desire to survive. The monsters didn’t eat brains. The monsters looked like her.

It all started with the nuclear war and the radiation that devoured flesh from bones. Then it turned into a civil war. Finally, it was a complete revolt as citizens beheaded their leaders and hoisted the bloody trophies onto the flag poles. Was it the war? The distribution of wealth? The taxes? Charlotte didn’t know. She was busying herself with dreams to go to college to be an elementary school teacher, playing her video games online, and dreaming of the boy she was catfishing with her sister’s photos. He played games too and streamed them for viewers. Then, the first bomb nestled into the city square, and once the government was dismantled, it was everyone for themselves.

Her father had the family stay in the neighborhood as it became a commune, where people tried to figure out what farming was after the Internet went down. The people tried to become a tribe, but resources were scarce, and people started turning. Now it was gangs and those who knew how to make gun powder that were in charge. The commune tried to hire defenders, but they ran off. Half of the population were nomadic.

Now, Charlotte was in her bedroom, the one on the second floor with a tarp for a wall to keep the elements out. It was dark, and she could hear someone or something trying to crawl. Her skin prickled; she held her breath. She reminded herself of what her dead uncle did to make her ugly. The cut going across her face and the one cut off ear. The removed tip of her nose. He promised it was for protection. She wasn’t to go to a harem like her sister… her sister who never came back and had no justice in the land of anarchy. The sister her father died for. Only someone desperate would want her. The struggling, thrashing body below stopped.

Charlotte dared not to release her breath. She squeezed the tattered blanket tighter. Would Sidney come out to look? He slept down the hall in the room with no tarps for walls. He still used the silly, little greeting of “how are you?”. He pretended to care and had the best room. He came to power in the commune.

Nothing stirred.

Perhaps the thing below died. It was as good as dead. Sidney only pretended to care for those already part of what was left of the commune, those who survived the raid that took her sister and father. Sidney insisted that the Romans were right and displaying corpses was the best way to fend off attackers. He used to be a gym teacher for a high school; now, he was a leader that slept with her mother and the other pretty women.

Charlotte didn’t’ want to see another killing; she hoped whatever was trying below was finished. But something rustled the grass.

Would it gurgle? Would its bowels empty and light death’s incense? The creeping started again. It crept faster.

“Bethany,” said a cracking voice from the grass.

Charlotte’s breath escaped her. Bethany was her sister’s name.

The voice continued, “Bethany, I promised I’d find you.”

Bethany had many suitors before and after the chaos. She had warm, golden-brown hair and hazel eyes, a perfect smile, and a pretty figure. Charlotte had some beauty before, but never like Bethany’s. Charlotte’s hair frizzed, her skin blemished, and her mouth was little and scared, even before. She wished for curves, and now she had no chance at them. Beauty kissed Bethany every morning; Charlotte used to complain. “If you believed you were beautiful, you’d look prettier than me” is what Bethany would as she stroked Charlotte’s hair dark.

“I’m here,” the voice whispered. There was something familiar to it. Was it an ex-boyfriend of Bethany’s? Sidney would kill him for sure.

Charlotte lowered her blanket and slowly sat up. The wooden floor she slept on creaked.

“Is that you?” the voice said.

Or was this all a trap?

The voice tried to call a little louder but choked into a cough that it tried to smother.

If it was a trap, the assailant had to be weak.

Charlotte peeked through the tarp and saw something dark laying down below.

“Bethany?”

Charlotte felt fear wrap around her voice. “Shhh,” she said.

Silence.

She squinted, hoping to make out some identifying feature. It was human and likely male.

“Please, come” he said. He still had manners. He was wounded. He wasn’t Sidney.

Charlotte felt for the rope ladder. She knew she could hook it into the two hooks in her floor for a quick escape. Sidney made certain everyone had escape routes to flee the already compromised home. Sometimes they did drills in case there as another raid.

“Why should I?” Charlotte said.

Something small and metal clinked in the dark; “I have our locket.”

Charlotte twisted her hair into a bun and let it slowly unfurl. She felt her heart skip a beat. The boy she baited with Bethany’s likeness— he sent her a silver locket containing a picture of him and Bethany on each side. Bethany’s picture was lovingly glued to the door of the locket. Alvin was his name; Charlotte remembered writing his nickname, Vinny, in her diary a million times. They talked on the phone but mostly chatted over social media. He wanted to video chat and she made excuses every time. The nights she spent writing about the boy who wanted to be a veterinarian states away consumed her diary’s pages. She slept with ink-stained fingers and hope swelling in her dreams. But she sent the locket back with a confession, three days before the first bombing. She couldn’t stand to give her name, but she attached a real photo of herself, a sickly-looking girl with unruly hair. She knew war was stalking for blood. She wanted to come clean before the guilt swallowed her whole. But the Internet was cut, and she never knew if her letter and locket made it. She never got to hear if Vinny could forgive her.

Now, she longed for that sickly girl in the picture’s face.

Vinny promised he would find her if they were ever separated, if war came to feast, but he promised before he knew she lied. She remembered what he said, what his voice sounded like in her ear as she held the smooth cellphone against her cheek. “You understand me, Bee. I never thought anyone would watch my channel, and I never imagined I’d meet someone like you.” She felt lightheaded, dizzy. She felt joy fluttering in her chest. Her hands let the phone slip. “Are you okay?” he asked when he heard the phone crash.

She stumbled when she picked up the phone and clutched it. “Yeah,” Charlotte told him, catching her breath. “I— I can’t believe it either.” She could hear his smile on the other line.

The feeble voice called again in the dark. “Do you remember me? SlayerKnight95?” The locket’s chain brushed against the armored heart.

Tears welled in her eyes. If he had the necklace, he got the letter. If he came, he forgave her.

“What’s your real name, Bee?”

“Charlotte,” she said, attaching the rope ladder in place with shaking hands. She placed her foot in the rung; her hands gripped the splintered rope. Three steps down before she froze. She remembered her uncles knife re-shaping her face.

“What’s wrong?” Vinny whispered. “You have to come down. You know there’s still countries that are civilized, and I won the sanctuary lottery. I can take one person with me, and I picked you. They’re waiting for us just down the street. I insisted that they let me crawl down. I lost my wheelchair a year ago. Well, I traded it for a map and money to find you.”

Charlotte didn’t move. He accepted the sickly girl she was; could he accept her now? She held tighter to the rope. Did love care about her looks? Did love see beauty from the girl that listened to his troubles? Was the fact that Bethany was more beautiful matter?

She believed her value was her physical form once before and hated where that led. She went further down the ladder, feeling her weight on each step as the balmy summer night surrounded her skin. She felt her feet on the ground.

A small, battery operated flashlight shone in her face. Charlotte saw the heart shaped locket in his hands. His once perfect, auburn curls were now a matted mess. His handsome face was gaunt and dirty, but his shining blue eyes were filled with tears, and she loved him all the more. She felt a security in his gaze.

“Thank God,” Vinny said. “It’s actually you.”