The Locket

“It’s Story Time” and Jolene has given us
four prompts to work with (see below).
Here’s where the prompts took me.

Brooke looked on anxiously as “One-Eyed” Kelvin carefully examined the locket through his jeweler’s loupe. It was her mother’s and her grandmother’s before that. Inside, each half of the locket held a photo of a baby.

“Hundred bucks,” Kelvin announced.

“It’s worth ten times that, Kel!”

“Not to me.” He slid it back across the counter. Reluctantly, she picked up the necklace and left. She sensed trouble was coming; money from the locket would have been helpful.

Outside, Brooke checked her phone. Still nothing from her brother Beckham, eight days since the explosion at the laboratory where he worked had killed two researchers. Eight days since he disappeared.

She’d been called to identify a body. She was shown Beckham’s twisted glasses, his school ring that had melted into burned flesh. But when the morgue’s long metal tray had been pulled out and she’d looked at the face, she knew something was wrong. The jaw was too wide, the head too large, the shoulders too broad.

“That’s not my brother,” she’d told the ME.

He’d pushed her to take a closer look; feelings of uneasiness knotted her stomach and she’d fled.

Now Brooke stood on the seedy south side of town, the only place Beckham might hide if he’d done something horrible. The irony wasn’t lost on her. She, the spoiled, doted-on beauty queen and her ignored twin brother. She’d always been the golden child …. hadn’t she? …. while Beckham graduated with honors yet went unnoticed, unacknowledged. Now he worked eighty-hour weeks at the lab …. brilliant, invisible and resentful.

Her phone buzzed. Finally.

I know you won’t stop looking. Go to the back door. Be careful.

She walked to the back of the pawn shop; Beckham stood huddled under a fire escape …. alive but barely recognizable. Even the hoodie covering his face couldn’t conceal how pale he was, gaunt …. and terrified.

“Beckham!” she whispered, shocked. “What’s happened to you?! Did you kill that guy at the lab?”

“No! I didn’t kill anyone. He was already dead when I found him in the fire. Listen to me, Brooke. What happened at the lab …. someone committed murder and arson to cover up what’s really going on and now they’re hunting me. With you in the picture, they’ll come for both of us. That’s why you have to turn around, leave and forget about tonight. Forget about me.”

She looked at the locket in her hand, then at her brother. “I can’t do that, Beckham. If you’re going to run away, I’ll be running with you.”

For once, she thought, they’d be invisible together.

The prompts: 1. Person about to pawn an heirloom; 2. Neglected sibling; 3. Beauty contest; 4. Mishap at a laboratory

This is “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads

It’s story time!

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