The Winning Numbers

1,500 words

The Winning Numbers

A Short Story

33, 17, 45.

I’ll always remember playing my numbers for the first time on my nineteenth birthday; waiting fifteen minutes in line with anticipation coursing through my veins; the rush of sliding my freshly engraved lottery card across the kiosk counter; feeling special when the clerk wished me a happy birthday before scanning my digits. 

“Please play again.”

Those words at that moment had stung like a slap to the face. The machine had delivered them in an animatronic tone devoid of any sympathy for crushing my dreams. Eight years later, however, those three words had lost their power—on me, at least. The woman ahead of me at the kiosk counter wasn’t taking them well. After unsuccessfully begging the clerk to scan her card again, she stormed out in a huff of expletives vowing she never would. 

Someone chuckled behind me. “She’ll be back next month.”

“Maybe… Some people can’t stand losing.”

Last month, some lunatic upstate had decided to open fire after losing for the umpteenth straight draw. A stray bullet from his rifle had cracked a window and let The Fog creep in, killing three people who weren’t wearing their ventilators. They were supposed to be worn at all times—I tightened the straps on mine just in case. 

“You got kids?” the man asked me. 

I shook my head, then turned around to look at him. The first thing I noticed about him were his shoes: his bare feet poked through holes in their toe-boxes, and the laces holding them together bulged like a strained corset. His oversized pant legs scraped the floor, completing a dusty appearance that made me a little less embarrassed about my own.

“Shame, they’re a treat. Anyway, I think you’re up.” 

The kiosk clerk confirmed my turn by calling me forward. Advertisements for next month’s draw were already being displayed underneath the transparent glass countertop, reminiscent of how convenience stores used to sell candy bars before The Fog. The shotgun propped in the corner behind the clerk reminded me why the lottery still operated in person—thieves couldn’t be shot through computer screens, after all. 

The clerk, born with the face and body to blend into a crowd, turned his nose up at my card when I handed it over. It was scratched and bent because I’d accidentally run it through the washing machine after last month’s draw. He scanned it anyway. 

No beep. 

 “Your card’s busted, man.”

“Damn it… Can you try it one more time?”

“Eh, this thing is toast, buddy. You need to get it replaced. But, since you’re not screaming at me like the last lady, I’ll enter your numbers manually.”

The clerk really must have been feeling nice considering how frowned upon it was for them to do anything manually. They got hired for their lack of options rather than their focus, accuracy, or attention to detail. Still, that familiar anticipation built in my gut while his fingertips navigated the keyboard in painful slow motion. 

33, 17, 45… 

33, 17, 45…

33, 17, 45… 

The kiosk didn’t beep—it blared. 

Startled, I glanced up at the message on the display screen: 

WINNER! WINNER!

IMMEDIATE PAYOUT: 100 MILLION DOLLARS

PLEASE CONTACT SUPERVISOR

My hands shook. 

It couldn’t be real. Losing was part of the game; playing the lottery was a trivial exercise in expectations versus reality. The government didn’t actually give out hundreds of millions of dollars to poor people so they could move to Bubbled Cities, right? They didn’t want our kind dirtying up New Chicago or New Los Angeles. 

But it says I won… 

I sought confirmation from the clerk. He was staring at the screen in bewilderment, his eyes wider than dinner plates. All color had drained from his forehead. He sure didn’t seem like someone about to pull the rug out on a horribly unfunny prank. 

Goodbye Fog… Hello, clean air. 

That’s when Mr. Holey Shoes grabbed my shoulder and dug his dirty fingers into the crook of my collarbone. “Please… My daughter’s sick.”

What was I supposed to say? Everyone was struggling. We were all bound by our suffering, breathing through ventilators in the lottery line together. The Fog had ruined all our lives; nobody would think twice about taxidermizing me for my lottery card—which the clerk still had in his possession. I turned toward the counter to retrieve it from him only to find myself staring down a shotgun barrel.

“Your numbers are my numbers now,” he snarled, holding the gun steady. “I’m a single dad with two hungry kids to feed.”

Spit caught in my throat. One shell would turn my brain into a smattering of bloody ground beef.

I tried to think—

What if I suggest we share? I cou—OH MY GOD PLEASE DON’T PUT A BULLET IN MY HEAD YOU PSYCHOPATH!!!

—until someone else cocked a gun. 

A woman emerged from the line holding a pistol, the top of her head hidden underneath a black hood. Her bulging stomach contrasted with an otherwise thin frame. She stepped forward with terrifying self-assurance. “Who gave you the right?”

The clerk scowled. “Have you seen the price of rent in New Boston? Too rich for any of us, and that’s before groceries and living expenses.”

“We’ve all got our numbers… my child deserves better than this,” she said, rubbing her pregnant stomach. “I won’t let him be born into playing the lottery.”

“And your kid is more important than mine?” The clerk cocked his shotgun. “I’ve got more to worry about and I’m holding the bigger gun.”

“But are you the better shot?” 

Silence. 

Chaos. 

I hit the floor to a chorus of screams. A shotgun blast punctured the staccato peppering of pistol shots. I ducked my head and crawled toward the safety of the lottery kiosk. I heard a pained grunt as I rounded the corner, then recoiled as the clerk’s body hit the floor with a lifeless thump. Beside his corpse, my lottery card floated numbers up in a crimson pool with a bullet hole where the ‘17’ used to be. 

It’s ruined… 

Someone tugged on my shirt before I could reach it. The pregnant woman stood over me with her gun pointed between my eyebrows, blood seeping from her left shoulder into the matted fabric of her sweater. “Give me your card, or I’ll kill you.”

“It’s right there… broken.”

She fished it out while keeping her pistol on me. Closer inspection confirmed that the bullet had torn through the card’s warped laminate. She threw it away like a regular piece of garbage, knowing 33, bullet hole, 45 wasn’t worth a damn.

We locked eyes.

Right as the woman’s finger curled around the trigger, someone wrapped their hand around her ankle and pulled her down to the ground. Her temple bounced off the tile and her gun helicoptered across the floor. Mr. Holey Shoes rose to his feet from behind where she’d stood, stepped over her body, and offered me his hand.

 “Thank you… I’d offer you the money but—”

“We’re past that, the cops are coming,” he said. He dropped to one knee and pressed two fingers to the woman’s neck. “She’s alive. Are you okay?”

“I think so.”

The lottery station had seen better days. Bloody streaks ran from the kiosk to the door where promotional banners had been toppled in the mass exodus. Bullets had punctured the walls and windows in several places, meaning we only had a few minutes before we were standing in a gas chamber just as dangerous as the outdoors. 

I looked down at the pregnant woman; her ventilator’s mouthpiece hung from her jaw at a broken angle. The baby didn’t deserve to die from The Fog. I stepped over the clerk’s body to search the kiosk for a replacement. Giving his ventilator to her unfortunately wasn’t an option; the bullet that killed him had completely destroyed it. Blood sloshed under my boots while I tried drawer after drawer until I finally found one. 

The woman’s words—

“I won’t let him be born into playing the lottery.”

—echoed in my mind as I fastened it to her face. 

My eyes sought my castaway lottery card, then the kiosk computer. 

What if it still works? I had to know. 

Curious and anxious, I pressed the keys on the keyboard until the computer revived itself on the lottery profile screen. I finally got to see what the monitor showed: all kinds of personal information, as well as the numbers associated with my lottery card—or, in my case, the numbers the clerk had entered manually. 

They were 33, 17, 54. 

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