A Locket to Lock Your Heart

Yellow. Fucking yellow. It’s the fucking color of caution. It means to fucking slow down. You would think we would have heeded caution, we would have slowed down instead of rushing to get the yellow locket, the heart-shaped necklace given to us after they jabbed our arms with their fucking poison. We were told if you want to stay in this world, you need this locket. That was a fucking lie. Good chance you might survive. It was also not a lie. Because without a locket you got locked out of life. Might as well be a fucking ghost.

The first to receive the lockets were the rich. The rich, yeah, the rich. Those mother fuckers paid a premium to get the locket first. Theirs however were not yellow. Made mostly of gold, their lockets were engraved with a barcode etched by AI from inside the locket. It recorded the biorhythms of the recipient, and made a unique barcode for only that person. It became the social status piece of the elite. To have one meant you were “in,” and to not have one meant you were “out.” It started with gatherings. You wanted in, have a locket they could scan. When the walls went up, the forty-foot fucking walls around the richest parts of the cities, if you didn’t have a golden locket, you literally were no longer “in,” you were thrown “out.” It did not matter if through your whole life, your bum never knew anything less than fucking five-ply toilet paper. If you didn’t have a locket, you didn’t have enough, and in the middle of purge night, you got a black bag over your face, dragged outside those new iron gates, tossed behind the lines of tanks and armed guards, and if you made any advance back, you found yourself not quite alive anymore.

Every television screen that could glue an eyeball, every radio station that could whisper into an ear, every person they could get to preach the need to be safe, got seventy-million people to line up for their locket. A different kind of segregation began to happen. You want to go to the grocery store? Gotta have a locket. You want to go out for dinner? Locket. You want to go to the concert? Locket. To the baseball game? Locket. To the birth, the wedding, or the funeral? Locket. For heaven’s sake, you need to go to a public bathroom and take a fucking piss, then you better have a locket. That got the next twenty million people to line up. Isn't that what all this was really about? To get us in line and keep us in line?

Don't think for a moment that the lockets for the average smo were made of gold. I don’t know what material these yellow heart-shaped lockets were made from, but what I do know is that they poisoned the hearts of the bearers. Once that thing hung over a heart, seems that heart became incapable of recognizing any person who didn’t have one as a person. Family no longer saw a member of their family if they didn’t have a locket. Friends no longer recognized friends. Since this middle-group didn’t have the paper to erect forty-foot fucking walls, they erected laws. Laws that got sent to those in the high palaces behind the iron gates, and judgement that got handed down to those lower. Want to know what a poisoned heart looks like? Indifference. Fucking indifference. When the black bags came over the heads to take those who didn’t have a locket away, those with lockets didn’t ask where they were being taken or what would happen to them. Sure, they heard scattered whispers of phrases like “work duty,” and “camps” people never returned from. Sometimes a strong wind would carry a foul smell of burnt flesh to test if the hearts of the lockets were fully locked away.

There was a way to avoid the labor and the camps if you didn't have a locket. The barcodes on the yellow lockets were weak. They only matched your regular ID. If you could be the same gender, about the same age, and look similar enough in appearance, you could end someone and take their locket. Many did once rumor spread of the second coming of the black bags. Fucking poison these lockets. Without even wearing one they could poison your heart to do the unthinkable, and when you held that locket up and saw your own sad self reflected back at you, you answered your own soul the only way you could, with fucking indifference.

Who am I? Let me start by telling you who I was. I was a rich ass mother fucker whose ass cheeks were graced by five-ply toilet paper most of my life. I had more than enough, until I very simply did not have enough. When the golden lockets came, my husband and I pooled all our money to buy one golden locket for our daughter. We placed it around her neck and handed her off to friends who said they would raise her as her own and keep her safe. The next day my husband and I were startled in the middle of the night, just in time to see the black bags come over our heads and be dragged out beyond the iron gates. My stupid fucking husband, with his stupid big fucking mouth started to shout and protest to the guard in one moment, and in the next, chunks of his brain were blown all over my face. We scattered. I existed outside the gates for a year. I heard the rumors of the second purge of black bags. I punched another woman. I knocked her to the ground. She looked just like me. Same age. Same height. Same hair. I could be her. I could get her locket. I held it in my hand and when the locket reflected my own face I couldn't bear the sight of me. That was the only time I tried for a yellow locket. It almost poisoned me.

What saved me? In that moment as I leaned over for her locket and saw my face, my own heart-shaped sterling silver locket collided with hers. You see, I am a bearer of a locket. However, mine is medicine to me. I keep the medicine in the compartment inside. Every morning, afternoon, and evening, I take a dose. I take a 10 minute stare at a photo of my husband, daughter, and I huddled together and laughing. It's the only thing that has kept me going this year, and it will go with me to the end. The end. That's fucking near. It is raining ashes outside. Whom am I? Like I said, might as well be a fucking ghost.