The man who didn't win the lottery

A short story about going for a walk in the park

Once upon a time there was a man who was doing just fine. It was neither the best nor the worst of times. The times were average. He lived a stable average lifestyle for a man his age. Then, one day, when he was out for a walk in the park, he happened upon a lottery ticket, lying on the ground. He looked around him – there was no one else around. He picked up the ticket.

The potential price pool for the lottery was exactly 3,5 million USD after taxes. Winner takes all, no dividing it up with smaller prices. A single price of 3,5 million dollars. He didn't know if you pay taxes off gambling in the US, but for the sake of argument, it was after taxes, if any. He remembered reading somewhere that was the exact number you would need to live, perhaps meagrely, at limited means, but live nonetheless, without having to work again for the rest of your life.

He looked around again. Everything was quiet, he couldn't spot a single person. Further inspecting the ticket, he saw that the results of the lottery was only just being revealed in less than a minute.

He had never been much of a gambler, never really felt the pull of it. Perhaps he had simply never risked anything big enough to understand the excitement, but he just generally didn't find the idea appealing. He’d never really felt that “oooh, but what if” feeling of excitement in his guts. He was autistic.

Even now, he said to himself: “It’s almost certainly probably nothing”. He would never in a million years have spent the money to buy a ticket himself. But, being autistic, he also figured, that since he had the ticket in his hand, it would be stupid not to check the results.

He picked up his phone and checked out the website. The results were on the front page. One by one, he checked the numbers, moving his eyes back and forth for every one, overly cautiously, like when he very cautiously had to put in his bank information for something.

One by one he checked them. A tension began to grow in his body. He found himself fighting against something unknown, an unknown sensation. He was fighting down a kind of excitement. “Look I’m not a fucking idiot okay, I realize how this shit works. There’s no such thing as “almost” winning, it’s all a fucking spook that dumb people junk on. It’s pathetic.”, he said to himself. “I refuse to feel excitement. This is retarded.”

All the numbers kept matching. “This is fucking retarded”. The tension grew and his irritation grew stronger. “I just want to get this over with now, so I can return to the real fucking world, and not live in this pathetic fantasy that’s trying to enforce itself over me. Finding this ticket was a curse, and once I’m finished checking it, and conclude it was – of course – not a winning ticket – why would it be – then I’ll feel much better, and be free of this stupid fucking tension”.

All the numbers matched – except the very last.

“I am going to kill myself”, he said, loudly. “It’s fucking over. It’s so over. We are never coming back from this. I am never going to recover from this. It’s all downhill from here. It’s over. My life is worthless, I’m never going to amount to anything. It’s never going to get better. I’m never going to get a girlfriend. I’m never going to own property. All the future has for me is pornography and junk food and super hero movies. I will never feel happy again. Never feel content. I will only ever feel an ambivalent vague discomfort, and pay a monthly subscription to things that momentarily soothes this universal dull ache. Like grinding your teeth, forever. There’s no purpose, no love, nothing worthwhile. Or there is, but I will never access it. I will never achieve it. It’s just going to be this, this grey, dull vapidness, an absence more than a thing. My life is ruined. I am ruined. As a being in the world I will never be able to provide anything positive to it, only slowly, pathetically, take from it, feed of it, like a parasite. No one will ever love me. I will never be happy again. It’s over. I give up.”