The first round submissions in the New York City Midnight Madness Short Story Contest were last weekend. This year, my genre was SUSPENSE and the subject was private property. Allow me to share with you my entry.
AND THE WINNER IS…
Mary Ann picked up the newspaper from the front porch and brought it into the house. She had a mind to check the paper to see what numbers had won the lottery the night before. When the state lottery was first introduced nearly 30 years ago, the random selection of numbered balls—what were they, ping pong balls?—was broadcast on television. She was just a young kid then, but she could remember every Wednesday at 6:18 p.m. her mother would pull out the single lottery ticket she allowed herself to purchase, the one dollar investment in their future, and they would watch with anticipation as each number popped out of the hopper, into the chute and out the tube’s end where the representative placed it in the transparent holder with the number facing the camera for everyone to see. At the end of each broadcast there was always an announcement that the results weren’t final until verified by some official accounting firm. Wednesdays were days of hope and possibility; Mary Ann and her stepsister, Angie, watched the TV with Mom talking about what they’d buy if they won. Of course, they never won-won, you know, big, like the million or two million dollar jackpots. That’s about as big as they got in those days, but now, heck now, they were in the tens of millions, even hundreds of millions if you played that powerball game which covered several states. Occasionally, her mom would win $50 or $100 bucks and they’d splurge on a dinner out or a new outfit. Hank, her stepfather, worked nights, so he wasn’t in on the deal. He might have bought lottery tickets, too, or bet on the horses, Mary Ann didn’t know, but he wasn’t part of the Wednesday night lottery.
Mary Ann still lived in the house she and Angie, had grown up in, but there wasn’t a TV broadcast of winning lottery numbers anymore. It had all become so blasé that even though she bought tickets now, sometimes she’d forget to check which numbers had won. You could find out in the newspaper or on line, but even that wasn’t necessary because wherever lottery tickets were sold they also had barcode machines to read the tickets to see if yours was a winner. The hope and possibility as well as the ritual of Wednesday lottery nights were gone.
Her mom and Hank were gone, too. Killed in a car accident on a rainy weekend night seven years ago. Mary Ann and Angie inherited the little bungalow, but it still had a mortgage. Hank’s scant life insurance barely buried them and gave Angie some bucks to boot. Mary Ann had used her mother Joyce’s small savings to buy out Angie’s interest in the house. Then she’d refinanced her mortgage reducing the payments and interest. Still, it would be 25 or more years before she ever owned this place she’d called home her whole life.
Gary, her boyfriend, lived with her. She wasn’t sure where their relationship was headed. A talented guitar songwriter, Gary ran hot and cold. Sometimes he made her feel like they were meant for each other for ever and always, but other times it seemed like he could walk out the door without a “So long” or “Fare ye well”. He had this sexy way about him, maybe his voice or the way his looked in a pair of jeans, but if she noticed so did every other woman. Mary Ann wasn’t the jealous type, but at 32 she was thinking that settling down; having a kid of her own wouldn’t be a bad thing. But Gary, well, she didn’t know exactly how hard or how long he intended to pursue a music career. He might pack up tomorrow, though he never said such a thing. It was just a feeling Mary Ann got. This morning Gary was working. His part time job as a Harley mechanic earned him enough so he could spend the rest of his time writing songs, playing music and trying to pedal his creations.
The coffee was already made (one kindness Gary did on the mornings he left home early) and Mary Ann placed the newspaper on the kitchen table while she went into the bedroom to get her lottery ticket. She always kept hers in a porcelain music box that her mom had kept—for luck. “Hey, Mom, send me the winner, “ Mary Ann would voiced aloud religiously as she looked up at the ceiling as if heaven were in the attic. Lifting the lid to retrieve the ticket, strains of “Dance of the Hours” tinkled away. Glancing over on Gary’s nightstand she saw what looked like another lottery ticket. She walked around the bed to see, and sure enough, he’d bought one, so she grabbed his being careful to distinguish his from hers.
Sitting down at the table, Mary Ann placed her ticket on the right side and Gary’s on the left. Then she opened the paper to the section where the winning lottery numbers were located. Planning to take one ticket at a time to compare against the winning numbers, she began with Gary’s first. Six numbers, just six numbers were needed to win and each ticket provided two chances. The first set of six on his ticket were 24-27-33-38-44 and 49. She thought there was little chance this was a jackpot winner with the first number 24. Sure enough, those numbers didn’t even win a lowly $2.00. On to the second number of Gary’s ticket: 12, yes, 12 matched; 18, yes 18 matched; 26, yes, 26 matched. “Three matching. Well, at least Gary’ll get something,” she said out loud. Then 34, and yes, 34 was a match. Looking better all the time. Next 42—“Are you kidding me?” she said.“42’s a match.” Finally, 46. She screamed and stood up. She sat back down, then stood up again. “Oh my God. I’ve got the winning ticket in my hand!! Gary bought the winning ticket.”
Her heart seemed to stop. She couldn’t breathe. What was the jackpot worth this time? At least a million, that was the very least it could be, but sometimes it was more. Where could she find out? The computer, she could look on the computer. Of course there might be more than one winner. Then she looked at her ticket. Yes, there could be…maybe she… But, when she compared her ticket’s two sets of numbers against the winning numbers, she had a pair, good enough for $2.00 and nothing more.
Before turning the computer on, Mary Ann thought she really should call Gary and tell him they were winners, so she went in search of her cell phone, but stopped after a few steps turning her head slightly upward as she thought, or tried to think about the consequences. Before retrieving the phone she went back to her seat at the kitchen table.
“Ok, ok. Let me think this through. This is a really big deal.” She spoke aloud to herself for the reassurance of hearing a voice. “What if Gary says the ticket belongs to him alone, like it’s his private property or something? What then? We aren’t married. He could take it and move to LA or Nashville or New York City to further his music career.” Chewing on her lip she tried to think of her options.
“I suppose I should find out how much money we’re talking here. If it’s really a lot of money then he probably would give me some regardless of what he decided to do. I mean, I’d share it with him if I had the winning ticket.”
A second time she pushed away from the table and went to the computer. Turning it on, the screen lit up quickly and she navigated rapidly to the state’s lottery page. Besides the winning numbers, the jackpot amount was listed and how many winning tickets had been sold. $2,500,000!!! But, there had been two winning tickets, so the jackpot would be split down the middle to begin with. “Christ, where’s my calculator?” She found it beneath some papers on the desk and began figuring what they might expect after taxes. Around $750,000. Wow. She’d divided the total by 2 and multiplied by .60 figuring that 40% would be taxes and she got $750,000!
Continuing to talk to herself as if to a friend or her mother or Angie, she voiced her thoughts. “Funny how $750,000 doesn’t seem like so much these days. Well, what am I going to do?” Mary Ann found her phone and slipped it in her pocket so she’d have it with her. She sat back down at the kitchen table. “I’ll write my options down, just so I’d have them to look at. No, no, that might become incriminating evidence.” She didn’t say anything more for awhile.
“Ok, I could act like Gary’s ticket was my original ticket and that I’d won the money. If I put my ticket back right where I found Gary’s how would he ever know? And I’d give him half the money. That’d be $375,000 for him if he should decide to take off and I could pay off my mortgage and go back to school. I would give some money to charity, too, maybe $15 or $20 thousand because that would be the right thing to do.” She thought some more.
“The right thing to do would be to call Gary and tell him he won the lottery.” Shaking her head side to side, Mary Ann continued, “I just don’t trust him, though. How long have we been together? Like almost 2 years. Two years isn’t much when you’re talking this kind of money. Maybe he knows some sweet younger thing who’s prettier than me who’s turned his eye and he’ll give me the brush off in a heartbeat.”
She got up from the table and began to pace around the kitchen. “Who can I talk to? There’s something wrong with our relationship if I don’t feel like I can talk this over with Gary. I can’t really trust anybody. Maybe a priest, but even a priest would want me to turn over 10% to the church and I don’t know if I believe that God stuff anyway. “
“Maybe I’ll do some kind of karma-like thing. I’ll put both tickets in a baseball cap and stir ‘em around so I can’t see what I’m doing and then I’ll pick one out for me and one for Gary. If I get the winning ticket, then I’ll keep it and if I don’t get the winning ticket, I’ll do the right thing and put it back on Gary’s nightstand.” She got a baseball cap out of the hall closet and put both tickets inside. Then she raised the cap above her line of vision, stuck her hand in and stirred the tickets around. Closing her eyes she pulled one of the tickets out. “This one is Gary’s” she said without looking at it and placed it on the table. “And this one’s mine.” She put the cap down and looked at the ticket in her hand. “Shit. I got my own damn ticket again. Well, maybe I’ll do the best two out of three. What about that?”
She repeated the same procedure again, with the same results. “Ok, two out of three has been decided, so I’d have to go best three out of five and I just don’t feel like doing that. I need to figure something else out.”
Mary Ann put both tickets under the tray in the silverware drawer and went to change out of her pajamas. “I’ll take a walk and things will seem clearer. That’s what I’ll do.” After she dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, she brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair all the while thinking about Gary. If she only knew what he would do. The lottery ticket did belong to him. He bought it. What if their positions were reversed?
Aloud she said, “I’d realize that the ticket belonged to us, not just to me.” She walked to the kitchen, ready to go out the back door. Before she left she hastily opened the silverware drawer and checked to see that both tickets were there. Then she closed the drawer and opened the back door. Instead of walking out the door, though, she went back to the drawer, took both tickets out and put them in her right front pocket. Then she closed the drawer yet again and walked out the door.
The sun was beginning to warm the earth. Spring was late in arriving this year, but today was beautiful with shrubs showing new sweet green growth. The neighbor’s weeping willow tree, planted long before she and her mom had moved into the house, was already forming the green tent she had enjoyed hiding in as a child. She thought about the lottery tickets secure in her pocket.
I might return to college and finally get my teaching certificate. Since I have a bachelor’s I think all I’d have to do is take education courses. Is that what I’d like to do? Maybe travel, well, I know I’d like to travel, and there are so many places I’ve always wanted to go. Being a phlebotomist has been ok, but it’s not very challenging. I suppose it’s better than some jobs. But now I really have opportunities. As she turned over the possibilities in her mind she realized her dreams depended on her being in control of the ticket and the only way to do that was to swap it with Gary’s, act like she didn’t know it was a winner, and when he came home, together they would discover this fact.
“That’s how it has to be. I need the ticket.” She said this aloud. “It’s mine. Gary never bought lotto tickets until he met me. I have been his inspiration, taking care of him, cooking his meals, doing his laundry. It’s time for me to think about myself.”
By this time Mary Ann had walked a few blocks rather absentmindedly. Without looking she stepped into the street as if to cross, a route she had taken every school day for years when she attended the neighborhood elementary school. A car screeched its brakes just in time to avoid hitting her. Mary Ann looked up. The driver got out of the car, flustered, and apologetic. Mary Ann said, “No, it’s my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going. Don’t think a thing about it.”
She turned around and began to walk home. I feel like Frodo, she thought, with that damnable ring around his neck. It was gaining possession of his soul. This lottery ticket’s doing the same thing to me.
“I’m in control,” Mary Ann said forcefully. When she got back to her house, she picked up the phone and dialed Gary’s cell phone number.
