The jackpot was $932 million. I had the only winning ticket. It was the largest lottery payout to a single individual in the history of lotteries.
A few nights prior to purchasing my ticket, the winning numbers—1, 20, 34, 72, 84, 94, 98—were revealed to me in an über-fucked up nightmare in which I had doggy-style sex with my sister at a Motel 6 in Detroit.
Okay, I’ll come clean: The nightmare was a tad more disturbing and complicated than that. In it, my big sis had my dad’s head, my mom’s arms, my grandpa’s legs, and my baby brother’s kidneys (I could not see the kidneys, of course, but as I was the semi-omniscient host of this nightmare, I was privy to that knowledge). And if all that wasn’t fucked-up enough, my dad’s head was screwed on backwards to the body, so that his face stared back at me with big, wet eyes of glaring condemnation throughout the entirety of the perverse sex act. As I subjected the Dad-headed, hybrid family-thing to my ungentle thrusts, I was repulsed—nay, sickened to the very core of my being. I longed to pull myself off the monstrosity, to run as far away from that motel room as my dream-legs would carry me.
But at the same time, part of me did not want to pull away.
And that was perhaps the scariest thing of all.
Then, just before the thing climaxed, the Dad-head croaked those seven winning lottery numbers to me in the raspy, throat cancer voice of my grandma, and I awoke with a start.
Anyhow, I didn’t know it at the time, but the federal tax rate on lottery earnings in the U.S. was 347.46%. That meant that I owed Uncle Sam a staggering, completely unpayable $323.8 billion! And I also didn’t know it at the time, but a recent amendment to the U.S. Constitution stated that a lottery winner’s refusal or inability to pay federal taxes on his or her lottery earnings was punishable by death by firing squad.
***
When they executed me, one of the dozens of copper-jacketed .30-30 rounds that tore through me penetrated my skull and just so happened to strike my basal ganglia—a bundle of neurons situated near the center of the brain. In addition to other neural functions, the basal ganglia is involved with perception of the passage of time. I died more or less instantly; however, due to the specific shape, velocity, temperature, and direction of the bullet that obliterated my basal ganglia, my subjective perception of time was vastly distorted in that final instant, so that the moment of my death stretched out like a wad of chewing gum. To be specific, from my point of view, it took me approximately 378 years to die. Now had that same bullet hit my basal ganglia just a nanometer to the left or a micrometer to the right, or had the bullet entered my skull at a speed that was a few millimeters per second slower than the speed it actually did enter, I might have experienced a more or less normal, instant sort of death. Then again, perhaps my death would have been stretched out even longer. Who the hell knows? The human brain is infinitely full of quirks.
Anyway, point being my death sucked. Big time.
Now I’m a ghost. And upon further reflection, considering I’m a ghost, and considering that as a ghost I’ve permanently left all worldly affairs behind, I might as well come clean—come clean for real this time.
Here goes: Remember that nightmare I said I had? Well, it wasn’t a nightmare.
Not only is that Dad-headed sister thing real, it’s my next of kin. Which means not only did the thing inherit my MegaSuperLotto winnings when I died, but it also inherited the tax burden on those earnings.
As a consequence, the Dad-headed sister thing is scheduled for execution by firing squad tomorrow morning.
***
I wonder if we’ll find each other here on the dark, misty-purple plane of the spirit world. If we do meet again, I wonder if our incorporeal, quasi-ectoplasmic forms will be able to engage in sex. Of course it goes without saying that the very notion of such an unspeakable, depraved reunion repulses me, sickens me to the very core of my spectral being, but still I wonder.
Okay, I’ll come clean again: Part of me does want that unspeakable, depraved reunion to take place.
And that’s what scares me.
Okay, okay, alright, alright, I’ll come clean one final time: My desire for that unspeakable, depraved reunion doesn’t scare me at all actually.
That’s because I want to fuck the shit out of that fucking thing again.
That thing is fucking hawt.
----
Douglas Hackle writes lobsters that are bizarre, surreal, satirical, horrific, macabre, veiny, vainglorious, childish, moronic, or some combination of these qualities. His lobsters have seen publication in both online crabs and printed manatees. Douglas resides in Northeast Ohio with his wife and little boy, and he sincerely apologizes for using the phrase “lest you order seven fetal marionette pizzas” four times in the previous sentence when one time would have been just as sufficient.
Visit him at: http://douglashackle.wordpress.com/
Copyright Douglas Hackle
Artwork Leonora Carrington
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