The Lottery

Aoife is chosen to be a human sacrifice.

Harry

Harry sprints down an empty street. He passes a mural of President John F. Kennedy and stumbles, almost dropping his briefcase. He cannot be late, he cannot be late. Every house he passes has their windows shut, tonight they need privacy. Today was usually a national holiday but the bastard boss pulled a fast one. Eleanor was pissed, and she will be doubly pissed now that he is running late. Every pair of eyes in America is glued to a television screen and Harry is feeling as though his lunch will make a surprise reappearance. 66522701. 66522701. He recites the numbers in his head. It was superstitious but today was a day where superstition ruled.

Several front doors he passes are smeared with the fake blood. Statues of Mary, Jesus and saints Harry did not recognise littered gardens like exquisite gnomes or over-the-top Christmas decorations. The Waltons next door have a simple but eye-catching display. Five sets of eight-digit numbers are painted in black upon the white walls of the house. Harry thinks them fools as his lucky socks and underwear are wet with sweat. Harry thinks back to this year’s morning ritual. This morning he and Eleanor awoke at precisely five in the morning and had sex twice. They then lay in each other’s arms for exactly thirty minutes without a word spoken. This year the ritual had been forced to change. This year it wasn’t just Harry and Eleanor in the house. There was the baby. She had to be incorporated into the ritual. The baby had forced them to muffle groans during the morning sex and she had cried during the thirty-minute silence. While they then dined on raw meat for breakfast, the baby fed from her mother’s breast. The ritual had been broken and Harry had itched all day for it.

No mad shit covers the front of his house, he just has the ritual – now Harry wishes he had invested in some little Jesus statues. The curtains are closed but he can see the muffled light of the television. His watch reads one to seven, seconds left! Harry fumbles the keys and drops them with a clatter onto the ground. He snatches them up and unlocks the door with shaking hands. As his hand closes over the door handle he feels a sharp pain. He turns the handle and enters but upon releasing his grip he sees blood dribble to the floor from his palm. Stupid, ignorant bitch! Harry had specifically told Eleanor not to do this damned trick! Not only has the baby fucked the ritual by existing now Eleanor has altered it too! When Eleanor suggested covering the front door handle with tiny blades coated in salt Harry had laughed. The salt is in the wound and Harry feels tears stream from his eyes. There is no time to get angry or be in pain – it’s time for the Lottery. He can hear the familiar voice from within the living room. It is the Lottery-Man. He is everyone’s kindly great-uncle. Dazzling white teeth and youthful green eyes are inserted into a wrinkled face. His constant smile stretches the wrinkles eternally. Soft, wispy blonde hair is combed over the top of his head. His dapper suit of black and red tie complete the image of the Lottery-Man. When people recited their own numbers in their heads they did so in his soft, soft but firm voice. High-pitched, uncompromising and always completely audible. Every rasped breath would be heard, every smacking of his thin lips, every creak in the poor old man’s bones. The main thing Harry considered about the Lottery-Man was how … unappetizing he looked.

‘We are moments away from the draw ladies and gentlemen. Our prayers are with you.’

Harry enters the living room in time to see the Lottery-Man’s good luck grin and then the screen fades to black. Eleanor is there sitting before the television cradling a sleeping baby in her arms. His whole world is there in a package of flesh and blood – he can kiss and touch everything he loves. The countless white numbers begin flying across the screen so fast that he cannot make them out. He sees a two and a five there a six, but his eyes cannot possible keep up. Harry tosses his briefcase aside and sits beside his wife and child. He puts his arm around them and forgets the salt and the blood. Eleanor doesn’t speak to chastise him for being late, Harry doesn’t apologise. All there is to hear is the baby's slow breathing which accompanies the silent whirling numbers. Then the numbers stop and the screen is black once more. Top-left, top-left of the screen is where the first eight-digit number appears. 08426619 and the Lottery-Man’s voice from the television repeats the numbers. Cannot breathe, cannot breathe – to breathe is to jinx, do not jinx. The next comes and it is not Harry’s set of numbers, nor the next or the next or the next. Thirty-three sets of numbers have filled the screen and 66522701 is not among them … Shit, shit FUCK FUCK FUCK NO! Harry feels his heart contract and twist. He broke one of his own rules! Never think your own set of numbers when they are being read! Never never never! He is doomed! DOOMED! It will appear, it will appear and it will all be over. Eleanor and the baby and the house and the job and the car and the friends and everything will be lost. In painful rage he sits there and then it is over. The fiftieth number appears in the bottom-right of the screen: 34198643. Another year and Harry’s number has not appeared. Thirty-one years.

Harry notices how tightly he is holding Eleanor’s arm with his hand and as he lets go he feels his blood sticking to her flesh, salt crystals amongst the red residue. He is smiling wide. He looks away from the screen and its fifty numbers to look at his wife who is his whole world. Eleanor is not smiling. Her numbers! Her numbers … 24109542 … he looks back to the screen but her numbers are not there. Tears are rolling down her face and her mouth is hanging open. Why … the baby… 32185101 … it is not there either when Harry looks. It cannot possibly be there, and it is not, he checks again and the numbers are not there.

‘We made it,’ Harry says, breaking the thick silence. He looks down at his daughter in Eleanor’s arms and kisses her forehead. He notices some of Eleanor’s tears have dropped onto her little squishy face. He smiles and reaches to rub the wetness away. On pushing the tears aside Harry leaves behind a smudge of blood of his child’s face. She opens her round eyes and looks into his. One eye is his blue and the other her mother’s green.

The Lottery-Man reappears on the screen in the homely studio set that resembled a living-room. There was a still a smile but a softer one across the Lottery-Man’s face.

‘Our condolences to the chosen fifty and their family and friends. Know your sacrifice is upholding this great nation and through you there will be fifty new citizens born today. Do not panic and please stay indoors. Help is coming, share your time now.’

Then the Lottery-Man was gone and the numbers were back on screen.

‘Damn shame for those who are drawn, damn shame. Noble sacrifice though, very noble,’ Harry says, still looking at his small daughter, his little bundle.

‘The numbers again …’ the Lottery-Man speaks in the darkness, ‘08426619, 32185101 …’

Harry looks into the baby's eyes and she appears confused. She must smell the blood on her face. Harry looks back at the television screen and sees the second set of numbers. They are his daughter’s.

‘It was 85 in the middle not 58,’ Harry says matter-of-factly, ‘It was, it was and I saw it. Didn’t you, Eleanor?’

His wife is unmoving with her eyes, going red from lack of blinking, fixed to the screen. Harry shakes his head and sees the baby's face start to wrinkle up.

‘I’ll go check her certificate,’ he says and gets to his feet. Harry is smiling at the ridiculous mix-up as his baby daughter starts crying.

Eleanor

He finishes, Eleanor can’t. Every other year she could but this year was different. While she and Harry make love Eleanor’s thoughts lie on her baby. Harry had been her whole world but now it was Aoife. As they lie naked together for the designated thirty minutes Aoife starts crying. Eleanor tries to move but Harry holds her tight. His obsession with the ritual didn’t confuse Eleanor but her baby needed her. He holds her left breast in his warm hand while the other sifts through her sandy hair.

Harry starts slicing the raw meat into thin slivers, using a ruler for precise measurement. Eleanor squeezes the skin of her hands while he does so. Dining on raw meat was for church not home.

Aoife watches her father slurp down the flesh with clear amusement. She is unknowing and perfect. Eleanor takes her three slices and crunches into one. The meat is soft and wet. Aoife starts battering a tuneless tune on the table which causes her to laugh at herself. Everything was new to Aoife in her world of ignorance. Eleanor touches her stomach where the cut was made for Aoife. She will be hungry. Eleanor leaves her last slice and starts breastfeeding Aoife. Harry looks at his daughter feeding with … disdain … jealousy … Eleanor cannot read him, she never could this day each year.

‘I was thinking Harry …’

‘I knew you had it in you.’ Sarcasm, he sounds almost like himself.

‘About the salt. My parents did it and well they have never been drawn.’ She knocks the table with her knuckles three times

‘We talked about this.’ Harry tears his last sliver in half with his teeth

‘I know but I feel like with Aoife things are different.’

‘Enough. We talked about this. No more changing the ritual.’

‘The ritual!? You’re the one fucking off to work today!’

‘I don’t want to go in! I have to!’

‘This might be our last day together’ They both knocked the table thrice with their knuckles. ‘Fuck work!’

‘Fuck work? Jesus Eleanor!' he does the sign of the cross. ‘When I get fired who will provide for the baby? You?’

‘Prick!’

‘Cunt!’

He slams his fists on the table then gets to his feet. Before she can do anything he is holding her head in both hands, her hair in his grasp. He presses her lips violently against his. This wasn’t Harry. Eleanor wasn’t Eleanor. Today nobody is anybody. We are all just walking, talking lumps of flesh and bone.

‘I need to go. I will be home before the draw.’

‘What am I supposed to do? You’re leaving me alone.’

‘Go see the girls. Make calls. I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

Then he fucking leaves. What kind of farewell was that. At least he apologised.

Sludge. The air is thick like sludge. Eleanor pushes Aoife’s pram along the quiet lane. The tension is a physical thing today. It pushes against you with every step and pokes at every pain. Eleanor catches herself not breathing for the third time during the walk. The unobscured sun hangs over her making her shadow a gangly monster with the pram protruding from it like a hideous growth. No clouds hang in the sky and it is bitterly cold despite it being the springtime. Eleanor feels exposed. Aoife is facing her mother in the pram. She is swatting at a hanging soft toy. Eleanor’s baby hits the toy away and it swings back and gently knocks her on the nose. Aoife keeps at the process, unlearning. Eleanor has dressed herself purposefully. A wide brimmed black hat shades her green eyes from the sun. Her long black jacket is trimmed with synthetic fur. To not wear black today is a sin. Eleanor looks quite the widow pushing her pram.

The coffee shop is quiet. The girls are there. Julie, June and Janet. The girls are outfitted in uniform black, June has black ribbons in her golden blonde hair. Julie and Janet are holding their infant children; Theodore and Maximillian respectively. Both are adorable but horribly loud little boys. Eleanor thinks that baby girls are naturally better behaved than baby boys. Many say the roles reverse in later years. Eleanor does not fear those years today. She just hopes that she will live them with her daughter. Young Richard is June’s son. He is a toddler now and is stamping about the small café.

‘Eleanor!’ the girls speak as one. Pleasantries ensue of kisses on the cheek and they all fuss over Aoife in her adorable black overalls.

‘We will all meet tomorrow for a coffee. All of us’ June says with a smile; the four mothers knock the table thrice.

‘Here you are Mrs. Wright’ It is Alfonzo, the shop owner. He places a decaffeinated Americano with two brown sugars and a jug of milk on the table. Alfonzo is working today. Eleanor regrets shouting at her husband for a moment.

‘We were talking about Julie’s mad husband’ Janet says, her nasally voice scratching Eleanor’s brain.

‘Aren’t all husbands mad!’ Julie says.

The girls laugh, Eleanor feels compelled to join in. Harry could be mad sometimes. Today especially. Everyone was mad today. It was in their eyes. The three women all looked at Eleanor and Aoife and she knew their minds. Without hesitation they would doom her and her baby to save their own skin. She couldn’t hate them for it. Eleanor would do the same. She would damn the world to save Aoife.

The cackling causes the fat baby Theodore to start wailing. Julie sighs and opens her blouse to reveal one of her large breasts. Eleanor feels a twinge of jealousy. Theodore begins to suckle. Eleanor pours the milk into her coffee. Maximillian starts to cry and Aoife joins in seemingly for the sake of it. Then the three women with infants are breastfeeding while drinking their decaffeinated coffees. June starts playing with the black ribbons in her hair.

‘I bet you don’t miss this’ Julie speaks to June.

‘Oh, but I do. With all my heart.’

The young woman’s raw sentiment is slightly nauseating and most unsuited to the day. The sound of suckling and Richard’s little feet clomping about consume the café. June gets up from her seat and quite suddenly snatches up her child in a crushing embrace. Richard is three years old, he has had longer than Aoife. If Eleanor was forced to choose between the children, she would damn Richard.

Eleanor finishes applying the small spikes to the front door handle. Her father had shown her how to make them and hide them round the back of the handle, so that they were initially unseen. The salt was applied to the spikes with glue.

‘If they come it catches them. They won’t come for that.’

Mad words she knew but today madness ruled.

Eleanor plays with baby Aoife. Together on the plush living room carpet she tickles her, sing to her, tells her stories – of how she and daddy met, of how everyone cried when Aoife was born, of life and of death. She told Aoife all her fears and dreams. It was a lot to unload on a baby but Aoife smiled through it all.

Harry isn’t home when the programme starts. She forgets about Harry and holds Aoife tightly in her arms. She wants to argue with a teenage Aoife about boys and sex, she wants to cry because Aoife has called her a bitch, she wants to feel a pain in her gut because Aoife has been injured, she wants all the hurt in the world.