"The Lottery?" Edmund squinted at the paper in front of him. It was a poster stuck to a pole outside of his house. Posters didn't belong on Marble Lane, everyone knew that. After the local committees referendum two years ago they put in a new notion to reduce all graffiti in the area; posters included. Edmund tickled his beard. He was sure he'd passed this pole at least a million times and never seen a single poster on it. "The Lottery?" he murmured again. Amused, he reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out a pair of reading glasses. After adjusting them firmly down on his crooked nose the blurriness abstained. '
Where sinners are gathered in a one-time chance to go back upstairs, bringing the bad back to life, they shall ease out the balance of good before it tips over the edge to utopia. Hell is on its way back. We welcome you to the lottery'
He tickled his beard once more.
'Tickets are to be given at random.'
"Hey, Cal, have you seen this? It says there's a lottery on."
Cal, the local mailman, pulled up his bike next to Ed. "Sorry Eddie, no time to talk, I overslept this morning."
"Did you now?"
"If I don't hurry Mary-Louise will be angry her post is late again. Damn those old grannies. If only they had something better to do than harass people."
"Oh...quite so." Ed put his glasses down and Cal gave him the mail before taking off again. "Time for breakfast then" Ed murmured and walked back to his own driveway. He was still thinking about posters and dogs when karma decided to take a morning stroll down Marble Lane. The inevitable, the cruel, the infamous Karma, this time in the form of a massive lorry carrying groceries to piss-off more children than necessary. Ed's peaceful day was brutally ended as It was in this very moment that a stone decided it was a smart idea to enter Cal's front wheel. With an overwhelming jolt the bike twisted sideways, causing the lorry driver passing them to take an unusual turn.
Groceries, Ed always said as a child, would be the death of him.
The lorry battered into Ed, and his head hit the pavement like a rock. Paralyzed and in shock his stomach started bleeding out, and for a good 20 minutes it was brutally clear as to where all his intestines went off to. Next to him laid his specs, crushed on the ground, with one piece of shattered glass missing. Ed took a wild guess and told himself it was the reason behind the excruciating pain in his left eye. He couldn't move. Next to him sat Cal, surrounded by all the blood, the gore, the hollow flesh, terrified to witness his friend's slow death. Hiccuping up blood he tried speaking, with little luck. Through each breath, more blood spat out from Ed's neck, but darkness wouldn't take him away from Cal's terrified face.
Each time, he told himself, it was a little different. But the ending was always the same.
***
At a small house at the end of the road, Ed opened his eyes. The yellow paint on his ceiling stared back at him. He had chosen it maybe a lifetime ago, when he thought himself more exciting than he really was. Maybe he would get back to that mindset one day, but probably not. It was a Saturday morning in Marble Lane, and a rainy morning as far as the window suggested. Drops of green and grey slid down the glass as Edmund put his morning robe on.
He went about his usual rituals; took eggs from the fridge, teacup from the pantry, and was just about to fill it as his toast popped up and hit the floor. "Every...bloody time." Ed picked up the toast, put on some jam and took a big bite of it when he heard a noise. "Not that dog again," he thought to himself. "What is it this time?"
There was a voice coming from the outside, and sure enough, if it wasn't the source of the barking as well. "No, I'm telling you- it wasn't there yesterday!" His neighbor, a very old, very irritating woman in her 60's, made some heavy gestures toward her husband. Ed walked up to the window. He took another bite of the toast. A tiny little Pomeranian, on a short leash in the woman's hand, was going off like it was Cerberus in the flesh. "If you would just listen!" She went on, and as she yelled, the dog barked louder. Her husband, not pleased with potentially waking up the entire neighborhood, dragged his wife back inside.
