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.

I walk through the waiting room and into the quiet space of my inner office and sit down at my desk. I like saying my desk because unlike so many other pieces of prefabricated boring furniture that is given to us to use in this perfect world, this desk is my special act of rebellion against the world of the Light. You see, my great grandfather built this desk when he was a young man way before the Change and the advent of the Light. And that makes it special and having something special and personal and unique is seen as a selfish act of individual possession and therefore a product of the Darkness and an enemy of the Light. I have been able to get away with this because being a contracted therapist for the Society of the Light, I am afforded a small degree of privacy in which I can work with my patients without the ever present and watchful eye of the Society of the Light. My peers in the field have told me it is a unusual hold over from the past before the Light. But it is a delicate privilege and line that I walk carefully.

My thoughts are interrupted by the buzzer going off in the waiting room letting me know my first patient has arrived. I walk to the door and open it to see Amelia, my 15 year old female patient standing there in her usual plaid skirt and light blue blouse and black tie. She looks sad and appears as if she has been crying by her red eyes and handkerchief she holds tightly in her left hand.

“Come in and sit down Amelia” I say while pointing to my pillowed sofa. She enters and slowly sits down slumping onto the sofa like a comma.

“You look particularly sad today Amelia. What’s going on?”

Amelia remains silent but her fingers are twiddling her red ribbon she has dangling from her hair. I take that as a sign of her apparent nervousness and hesitancy to talk yet.

“Take your time...whenever you’re ready.” I reply to her silence.

After a few long moments of nothingness except the sound of my ticking clock, Amelia blurts out. “I wanted to kill myself today. In fact I almost did.”

“Well” I huff. “This sounds important to discuss. Tell me more.”

Amelia collapses sideways and lays her head down on a pillow. “There isn’t much more to really talk about that I haven’t said before. Teenage angst...no honest friends...loneliness...feeling lost...states of nihilistic emptiness...seeking meaning in a meaningless world of hopeless dreams. Fear that the Dark will overtake me and I will stop seeking the Light. Same ole crap.”

I turn my chair towards her and lean forward to give her extra attention. “Yes, I’ve heard you voice your feelings before...but today you almost took some very serious action on it. That concerns me a little bit more than your past comments. Does it concern you as well Amelia?”

Amelia is gazing up at the ceiling as if lost in thought. “Yes, it did concern me at first. It scared me and made me wonder about all the times I have thought about it before...but...uh...didn’t do anything. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do. Go on.”

Suddenly Amelia sits up straight and looks straight at me. “I have a secret and you have to promise not to laugh.”

“Ok, I won’t laugh, unless it’s really funny.” I say with a smirky grin.

Amelia whispers to me. “I have a magic locket.”

“Okay,” I say cautiously. “And where is it?”

Reaching into her blouse she pulls out a necklace dangling around her neck. There is a small heart shaped locket or at least half of one hanging from it. “See” she says proudly.

I study the locket for a moment and then ask the obvious question. “Tell me about it. What makes it magic?”

“My mother gave it to me years ago, before she died, and she told me she got it from her mother as well... and her mother told her that she got it from her mother...and so it’s very old and comes from the time that I guess my great grandmother was part of something called the Holocaust...back when they had many wars...long before the Change and the Light ever happened.”

“And why do you say it’s magic?”

Amelia smiled and said “this requires a little story to tell.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Well, apparently there was this old man in the Holacaust camp who was a prisoner like my great grandmother and he had been a jeweler before he was captured. During his time in the camps he was able to find scraps of metal and other pieces of material and he made many of these small heart shaped lockets to keep himself busy and give them as small gifts, because it’s what he knew how to do and other prisoners truly appreciated getting them.

I stopped her for a moment. “What made them so magical?”

“Well, it seems that whomever was lucky enough to get one mysteriously survived the horrible things that happened at the camp including the mass murders and executions of men, women and children...so my great grandmother was lucky to get one and she eventually survived and was freed when the war was over. And so this one has been passed down all these years until my mother passed it on to me with the story being that it is a good luck charm and would save my life some day...and today it did!”

“And that’s why you didn’t want to end your life today Amelia”

“Yes, It felt like a major betrayal of this gift from my great grandmother.”

Something still puzzled me. “Why is it broken in half?”

Amelia looked sad again. “My mother said that it was broken on purpose so that we would always remember the people in the camps that never made it home.”

I smiled, “Our time is up Amelia... I’m glad you have that locket.”

Amelia smiled, ”Me too.” And she tucked it back in close to her heart.

The End.