Steve Mandell

The Broken Locket

53...54...55...56...57...58...59...60...61...Always exactly 61 steps to the top of the landing. Never more...never less. It makes it easy and seems to go so much quicker when I count each step. I also can’t make a mistake that way, and in this world making a mistake can be foolish and even dangerous. And so I count each step. And now I stand before my office door and turn the knob and open the door to my waiting room. I don’t need a key because the door is never locked. No doors are ever locked anymore. And why would they be. We all have everything we need to be happy and complete. At least that’s what they tell us on the Big Screen every morning. No need to steal someone else’s stuff. So no need for a key. No one is going to break in. And if someone broke the rules and were suddenly overcome with the need to break into my office uninvited and were discovered to have taken something, they would be deemed unnatural and unfit to live in our oh so perfect society and would quickly pay the ultimate price for their transgressions and be taken to the official Other World, the world referred to by them as simply the Darkness. And we live in the Light and should consider ourselves blessed to live in the Society of the Light. And so as I open the door to my office and walk in as I do everyday, I remind myself once again how important it is to live in the Light.