Gilda's Locket

asleep in the little bedroom over his shop, an old man lay, silently slumbering, his eyes twitching rapidly beneath his lids, a cracked locket, clutched tightly in his gnarled, worn hands. If he felt an ounce of guilt over his perfidity, it didn’t show. It was wretched to trick an old lady the way he had, though he hadn’t done it out of a sense of malice, but rather desperation, When he had stumbled upon the secret of the locket the night before, accidentally falling asleep while he had been trying to repair it (and he had only slipped the picture of his lovely Lydia inside in order to see her beautiful face framed in that ornate silver locket) he had been hard pressed to give it up. It had been a simple matter, finding a locket through all his trunks filled with old jewels and gems, family heirlooms from families long since dead. He had managed to find one that matched relatively closely, though if the old lady hadn’t been so ill and so drugged up she might have caught on to the swap. His guilt had forced him to under-charge her for the cost of the “repair,” a repair he had in essence done for himself. And not long after sending her on her way, he had locked up the shop and headed off to bed, to some of the pleasantest dreams he’d ever experienced.