LOCKET WITH A 'P'

LOCKET WITH A ‘P’

“OPEN UP! POLICE!”

Dayquan knew what was coming next and that the door wouldn’t hold, even with all three locks engaged. While his mind raced over options of what to say to them when they burst in, he couldn’t take his eyes off the now blood-soaked locket in his hand.. which had delivered anything but the good luck he thought it would.

His 11 year old nephew cried when he took it from him. “That’s Gran’ma’s!”, the youngster wailed. “My mama said I could have it!”.

Dayquan knew he was telling the truth. He’d seen the locket many times before on his mother’s neck, before she died. It’d been in the family for years, perhaps centuries. Sister Janice reluctantly kept it, when the family was going through their mother’s final affects. Nobody wanted it.

He remembered when his sister gave it to her son. He was at their apartment that day. Honestly, his mind was completely somewhere else. The funeral took all his attention away from the many struggles he himself was facing. Many months behind in rent. Electricity about to be cut off for non-payment, joining his loss of the internet and online privileges. Mama June understood all this. And while she couldn’t help Dayquan financially, she strongly supported him emotionally.. more than anyone else in the family. She was always like that with him.

So, it really wasn’t out of meanness that he took it. The loss of Mama June hit him harder than anybody in the family knew. Through her hard and tragic life, she was his rock.. despite her own considerable and constant misery. She always did her best to look out for him.. to try to keep him safe. That’s why it meant more to him than to anyone else in the family. It was what he didn’t know that had the police about to break down his front door.

He’d never been able to find out what the ‘P’ on it stood for. Someone’s name, he’d always assumed. But whose? Intense heat from something sealed the locket shut years ago and no one could open it. Neither did anyone from the family have any idea who ‘P’ was. It wasn’t even real gold. The appraiser made that crystal clear, calling it a ‘worthless piece of junk jewelry’. But it wasn’t worthless to him.

He didn’t know that the locket had been passed down for many years, finally coming into his mother’s possession. He didn’t know that everyone who’d held it previously suffered an inexplicable spate of extremely hard luck. He had no idea that its previous owners believed it to be cursed. Very cursed.

Looking down at the clothes he was wearing frightened him. Law enforcement in his city was seriously skewed against folks with his skin tone. They were mostly white. Deeply rooted in systemic racism, insidiously hidden.. almost as if they were proud of it. The courts always sided with them.. if they investigated the cases at all.

How could he explain that the blood on his hands and clothes was from the girl he tried to help escape the Supremacists who’d invaded their BLM protest with assault weapons? Why should they believe him.. when he ran away too? He was jobless. Practically homeless. Abandoned by everyone he ever cared about. Pretty much at the end of his rope.

BLAM!!!

He jumped at the sound of the battering ram, hitting the door. Two more would shatter it. I’m gonna cooperate, he thought to himself.. finally standing up, shaking badly. I’ll just explain. There’s all kind of forensics and scientific tools for them to use. Somebody had to be recording it on their cell phones, right? There are cameras all up and down, on every street. They would no doubt vindicate him of any wrong doing. He was four steps away from the door, when it came crashing in.

“HANDS UP! HANDS UP, MOTHERFUCKER! DON’T MOVE! DON'T FUCKING MOVE!”

**POP.. POP**

As he fell to the floor in slow motion, the locket slipped from his hand, hitting the floor first and bursting open. “He had something in his hand! I saw it shining!” Dayquan only heard these voices from the distance, as his consciousness slipped away. “Oh shit! Oh shit! I didn’t mean to shoot……”

Just before his eyes closed forever, he saw the cop pick up the open locket and read the inscription inside: “To my loving daughter, Pandora”.

©2021 by Leroy Jackson Burgess.