The Lottery

Oh god. OH GOD.

I’m staring at these numbers and they match. All of them. Every single one. The ticket is shaking in my hands because my hands won’t stop shaking and I keep checking the numbers again and again like maybe I’m hallucinating but no—6, 23, 41, 47, 52, and the Powerball 18.

One billion dollars.

I can’t breathe properly. My heart is doing this weird hammering thing and I keep looking around my apartment like someone’s watching me through the windows even though I’m on the third floor.

First thing—I can’t tell anyone. Not yet. Maybe not ever. This ticket is basically a nuclear weapon made of paper and ink. People have been killed for less. Way less.

I need to hide this thing but where? Safety deposit box but that means leaving the house with it. Under the mattress like some cliché? What if there’s a fire? What if someone breaks in? I’m probably going to carry it on my body from now on. Maybe laminate it first.

Wait—I need to sign it. Right now. If I lose this unsigned ticket, whoever finds it owns a billion dollars. But what if I mess up the signature? What if the pen skips?

My hands are still shaking.

I need a lawyer. Not just any lawyer—someone who specializes in lottery winners. Do those exist? They have to exist. Rich people lawyers. The kind who deal with sudden wealth, privacy protection, trusts, all that stuff I know nothing about.

And security. I’m going to need security, aren’t I? Once this gets out—and it will get out somehow, they always do—I’ll need people whose job is keeping other people away from me.

But who do you trust when you’re worth a billion dollars? How do you know your lawyer isn’t scheming to steal from you? Your accountant? Your security team? Everyone becomes a potential threat when you’re carrying this kind of target on your back.

Maybe I should just move. Disappear. New name, new state, new life. But they make you do the press conference, don’t they? Your face on TV, in newspapers. “Local Resident Wins Record Jackpot.” And then every scammer, every desperate relative, every person with a sob story and a sense of entitlement shows up at your door.

The paranoia is already starting. I caught myself wondering if my neighbor’s music was a little too loud tonight, if maybe he was trying to listen through the walls. That’s insane, right? He doesn’t even know I bought a ticket.

Is this what wealth does to people? Turns them into suspicious, isolated creatures?

Maybe the smart play is to just… not claim it. Let it expire. Keep my regular life, my regular problems, my regular salary that suddenly seems impossibly small but at least doesn’t come with death threats.

But a billion dollars. I could fix things. Help people. Change everything.

Or mess me up.

I’m going to put this ticket in a book—something boring that no one would ever open. Tax Code Regulations 2019. Perfect.

Then I’m going to sit here in the dark and try to figure out if winning the lottery is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Or a curse.