The story of the locket (Heather)

Write a 500-word story about 'letting go' with a factory worker as the main character and a locket as the key object. Set the story in a small apartment.

I’m sitting there at my computer, playing SpaceAge and getting pretty battered, knackered as I am from standing on the assembly line all day. I’ve got the sound turned down low so the witch upstairs doesn’t start banging on my ceiling with her broom handle. I hear the knock on the door, a good loud determined knock. Who the fuck could THAT be? I pause the game and make for the door.

Standing there on the doorstep is this little old grey haired lady, who says, “Hello; is this Matthew?” in a mincy accent. I say, “Yes, and who are you?” And then, if you can believe it, she asks to come in. She says she has something important she wants to discuss.

I head her off at the pass. “I’m not interested in talking about God or Yahweh or whoever.”

She just pushes on. “No, it’s not that at all. It’s something rather more personal and important and please, can we speak inside?”

What can I do? I back in, hooking a pair of underpants that had fallen out of the laundry basket with my left foot and kicking it into the closet. She heads straight for the sofa in the living room, so I race ahead and sweep up the overalls, hard hat and take-away cartons.

She plunks herself down on the edge of the sofa like we’re at the palace or something, clears her throat, and out of her mouth comes the story that changes my life forever.

&&&

I don’t think I have ever felt so frightened in my life. I am standing at his door, knuckle to my lips, hoping my heart won’t give out on me before I get this thing done.

I hear the latch click on the doorknob and there he is, filling the door frame, glowering. My breath stops. He’s the spitting image of his father and Belinda’s presence sweeps over me. I think I might faint. I talk my way past him into his little apartment. He is so caught up with a bit of frantic boy-tidying that he doesn’t notice my state. I head for the sofa in the hopes that I’ll make it there before my legs – and my will – collapse. I clear my throat and begin my story.

&&&

The locket lies on the coffee table between them, open to reveal the tiny photo of the smiling couple on the left and the little boy, leaning eagerly toward the camera, on the right.

“I’d like you to have it. It has been an echo of love through all the sorrow,” Alice says. “If you want never to see me again, I will understand. But I want you to know that I am deeply, abidingly sorry. We were wrong; your grandfather was a hard-headed man. It has cost us all an unimaginable amount.” She swallows. “But for me, that is over.”

The mask he has kept on his face is swept away by the hurricane of a thousand angry questions, which in an instant are washed to become just a thousand questions. And that turmoil is in turn swamped by an unfamiliar sense of a profound relief, of belonging. This old woman he has long forgotten is his family – she too has been caught in a tragedy of prejudice, death, loss and heartache.

In an electrical arc of insight, he sees what has brought her here.

He cannot yet look at her, but he reaches for the locket.