Lockets for Sale or Trade

Lockets For Sale or Trade

“Lockets! Get your heart lockets here!”, the man called out. “I got red ones, I got yellow ones, I got green ones too”, he put emphasis on ‘green’, smiling slyly as the voices in the large hall went from a deafening roar to a stunned silence. Now that he had their attention he continued with his pitch.

“Don’t be fooled by imitations from other vendors”, he said scoffingly. The other vendors in the Great Hall shouted obscenities, their objections ricocheting throughout the complex like stray bullets.

“Come see for yourself”, he said coaxingly. “Come on”, he urged “What have you got to lose anyway”.

This seemed to do the trick as the ghostly figures began to quickly shuffle towards him. With much moaning and creaking, a large group began to assemble in front of him. They pushed closer and closer, gasping and coughing.

“How do we know the green ones are real?”, a haggard voice cried out. “I’ve been fooled before”, he continued. “I ended up in the bottom of a crater full of hungry cockroaches with no way out. I had to call on old Saint Peter himself to get me out!”

“Saint Peter’s an asshole”, someone cried out vehemently. “This is all his fault anyway”. This caused an uproar across the Great Hall, once known as Purgatory.

“Shush!”, the man holding the lockets warned. They all looked around in nervous anticipation of Saint Peter swooping down, and scooping up all the lockets in anger. After a tense minute, they began to relax, exhaling slowly, fear lingering in the air like a bad smell.

“Now”, the man continued, albeit in a quieter tone, “I got these directly from Saint Peter just a century ago!” That was considered relatively recent in the now defunct purgatory, a.k.a. the Great Hall.

When the world came to an end, purgatory was over crowded , over rated, and over inflated. There were riots, protests, sit ins, sit outs, and just utter chaos. The proprietors of purgatory did not get a heads up about the world ending, so they were completely caught off guard, and totally unprepared for the influx of the walking dead. You think people are angry when they’re alive? Try cramming billions of pissed off corpses into one hall! It took about three centuries to get it all straightened out, and that was just to organize things somewhat. Children were sent to another area of the Great Hall, sequestered away until they were ready to wait in the Great Line. Women occupied a small corner of heaven in the meantime in a deal hammered out with Saint Peter. Since they were not allotted the chance to get lockets, they demanded bathrooms with couches, and an attendant from above to supply them with heavenly gossip. And the men remained in the Great Hall, stinky and sulky.

The men did not want to wait in the Great Line…ever. They wanted a straight shot to either heaven or hell, hence the lockets. Yellow lockets got you to the very front of the line, red lockets got you straight to hell, (surprisingly, there was a bit of a demand for the red lockets rather than having to wait in the Great Hall for literally ever and ever), and the green lockets got you a free pass straight to heaven, no waiting in line, no judgement, no problem. But…there were a very limited number of lockets to be had. Saint Peter hid them once every one hundred years on what was left of Earth.

Earth was just a waste land now, radioactive, and glowing. They were right about the cockroaches though, they survived. To get chosen to go back to Earth to search for lockets, the men had to be on their best behavior. Meaning no fighting, no trying to sneak into the women’s quarters, and no partying. Yes, even in purgatory the men figured out a way to make hooch. So every one hundred years, one thousand desperate dead men got to return to Earth. Not all one thousand ever returned though, some chose to stay behind, not having any luck looking for lockets. Some returned with several lockets, but normally all that returned had at least one.

This is where the vendors came in. You could trade them in for “easy time” to the highest bidders. A lot of men liked living in the Great Hall, they were in no hurry either way to go to heaven or hell. Easy time got you into the best areas of the Great Hall, perhaps, it was rumored, even a visit to the women’s quarters. If you wanted a locket bad enough, you became the vendors servant until it was time to use your locket. You had to make sure they were comfortable, you had to square deals with Saint Peter, and you had to always be on call. But it was worth it to them, a chance to skip the line altogether, or get the hell out of the Great Hall once and for all.

But before the vendor could make any deals, Saint Peter strode into the Great Hall, and demanded all transactions cease immediately! He unrolled a large scroll, and began reading: “From this time forward, there will no longer be lockets for sale or trade.” The uproar was deafening! The dead men began fighting amongst themselves, clawing at one another in protest. The vendors threw their useless lockets into the crowd, swearing vengeance on Saint Peter. He stood out of reach, high above the crowd below, and continued with his declaration: “The Great Line is manageable now. All residents of the Great Hall will report immediately to the Great Line, whether you like it or not.” And in the blink of an eye, the Great Hall was empty, except for a few bottles of hooch and several heart shaped lockets.