Prompted Shorties

Lucky Day

Prompt: You're making your way down a cobbled street when a stocky, red-bearded man beckons you into an alley. He reaches into his coat, produces a locket on a long gold chain, and hands it to you. Upon opening the locket, you find a four-leaf clover pressed beneath a small glass pane. When you look up, the red-bearded man is gone. What happens next?

Story:

Wallace struggled to walk on the cobblestone pathway to his home, passing by nameless faces and dimly lit street lamps. As the smell of garbage and beer drifted away from his senses, a stranger, all dressed in green, suddenly approached him.

"Leprechaun" Wallace was amused, started giggling even. He couldn't bear to stand straight as he noticed the red-bearded greenly dressed leprechaun looking stranger handing something in his hand.

"What's this for?" Wallace garbled, still intoxicated from the 6 bottles of beer caused by the recent break-up between him and his girlfriend. Held in his hand a golden locket on a long gold chain, "All gold" he murmured. He tried to thank the red-bearded tiny man for giving Wallace his new found fortune but the mystery donor had already disappeared.

"Woah, where'd he go?" too drunk to even think of the logic of it all, Wallace continued to wobble his way towards his home as he inspected the ever so shiny locket. He tried shaking it, screaming at it, banging it against a street lamp, whispering "open sesame" to it, he tried it all! But he still couldn't get the locket to open.

Wallace woke up the next morning back on his bed with a hard hitting headache, groaning as he got up he immediately notices the shining golden chain peeking out from the pocket of his pants that was neatly hanging on the back of the chair where he used to work on his music. Now it's just an area full of garbage and old things from his now ex-girlfriend.

Reality had finally struck his senses; he doesn't have a girlfriend, not anymore.

He got up, thinking of something to do other than sulk in the darkness thinking 'what could've I done wrong?' over and over again. Wallace walked straight to his pants and picked up the golden chain, revealing the very item that would change his life, or at least, that's what he thought.

'Where did I get this?' He thought to himself as he picked up the mystery locket. "All gold" he murmured once more like he did last night. He shook the locket near his ear, trying to know whether there's something inside. Sure enough, Wallace heard a little noise, like a pebble caught in a tiny box.

He opened the locket by twisting the lock that's preventing it from opening. "A four leaf clover?" Wallace asked the air, hoping someone or something would answer him. The four leaf clover was pressed beneath the small glass pane of the locket.

It finally hit him. This was the locket that his mother gave him for his seventh birthday for good luck, it was Wallace's good luck charm after the kids at school started calling him "bad luck Wallace", it did work to his surprise.

He started crying as he packed some things to take with him back to his parents' home, holding the locket very tightly in his hand.

Wallace gave it to his mother eight months ago when he learned that his mom had leukemia and was told that she had only three months to live, hoping the luck would rub off on her. But when the locket was returned to Wallace's hand, he knew.

Sometimes, luck just isn't enough.