Three matching numbers makes a winner.
That's what he'd said.
The tall, caped man leaned across the counter and smiled beneath a thick, black mustache. He slid the ticket over to Patrice and asked if she had anything to scratch it off with. The sounds of the carnival seemed to fade in a way that she couldn't quite explain. The whirling of the rides, the screams of excitement, the waltz of carnival music, it all seemed to go a little quieter the moment Patrice pressed the edge of her penny against the ticket.
She scratched away the silver coating and brushed the scratched material aside, and soon she was staring down at nine random numbers, three of them sevens.
"We've got a winner." The man snatched the ticket from her and paused just before turning away, waving the winning ticket in the air. "This is your lucky day."
Carnival prizes usually came in the form of cheap stuffed animals or unwanted goldfish. She doubted he would return with anything that would make her consider herself lucky. And she was right. When he turned back he was holding a small black box that had silver calligraphy along the edges. She couldn't read a word of it. It was written in another language, either real or (more than likely) made up.
"What's this?"
"This is Guzule. His spirit lives within this very box." His eyes were wide and filled with excitement as he spoke, like a man humoring only himself while reciting a ghost story to a bunch of kids around a campfire.
"So I won an urn?"
The man let out a belly laugh and then tilted forward, his eyes settling on Patrice. He set the box carefully onto the counter before her. "You won fortune."
She was aware of the sour look she was giving him, but hoped he didn't notice.
"Keep him for three days."
"I don't know if I want—"
"In the three days that you have him, he will enrich your life in ways you never thought possible. If you can think it, Guzule can make it so. But you must not take advantage. You must pass on the fortune. You can't just give him away, either. The next in line must earn him."
It was a gimmick, like everything else you find at a carnival, but Patrice played along. There wasn't a spirit in the box, and it most likely wouldn't bring her any luck, but she liked the dark, mysterious allure of it. And besides, it would look good on her nightstand.
She reached for the box, and the man grabbed her hand before she could take it. This was an odd gesture, but he was probably just trying to make the moment more dramatic.
"Three days, only. No more." He glanced down at the shiny, silver watch around his wrist. "At midnight, three days from tomorrow, you should no longer be in possession of Guzule."
"I got it. Three days." She pulled the box away.
He smiled at her before turning around and slipping behind a thick, red curtain.
Patrice left the carnival with the strange box. She decided to play the game. What did she have to lose?
When she got home, she set the box onto her nightstand and got ready for bed.
The silver calligraphy glittered in the moonlight that spilled in through her open bedroom window. She tossed and turned, because now that she was alone in the darkness with the box, there was an eerie feeling that settled in the room. She couldn't turn her back to the thing. Unless she was facing it, each time she closed her eyes she imagined a tall, grim spirit standing over the bed behind her. Eventually, she fell asleep staring at the box.
The first day started off as ordinary as any other. She showered, got dressed, and went in to work. Halfway through the day her manager called her into his office. The company had experienced several layoffs lately, and she was sure that she was about to get the news that she was next on the list. She was surprisingly wrong.
She sat across the wide, wooden desk from Paul Whitley, a short, beefy man whom she'd worked for for the past seven years. The musky smell of his cheap cologne strangled the air. She sat rigid, because posture always counted for something. Maybe he would see what a professional she was and he'd reconsider, choose someone else to ax. There were plenty of other people in the office who deserved it.
His beady eyes stared at her through the thick lenses of his coke-bottle glasses. Then his lips crept up into a smile. "I'd like to offer you a management position."
Patrice lost the ability to speak. She sat, dumbfounded, and listened to Paul go on about how she would have three people reporting to her and would receive a substantial raise in pay. This, she was told, had been under consideration for the past several weeks. It just took a little time for Paul to get the position and pay raise approved.
Paul leaned forward. "Cat got your tongue?"
"Thank you," she finally said.
"You deserve it. I'll send out a memo and we'll start getting you transitioned next week."
"That sounds great."
There was no thought given to the box or the spirit who supposedly resided within it. This was just a fortunate event that would have occurred even if she'd never scratched the ticket. But the series of fortunate events continued. Convenient parking spaces seemed to be waiting for her everywhere she drove, and she decided to really try her luck and purchase a scratch-off lottery ticket. She won $200.
Maybe the man at the carnival was right. Maybe the box did bring good fortune.
She slept a little easier that night, still unable to turn her back to the box. When she woke up the next morning she was gazing at the box, which had been sprayed by early morning sunlight, and she couldn't help but wonder what day two would bring.
She went on with her normal routine. On her way out of her apartment building she found a twenty dollar bill in the hallway. It was just lying on the carpet as if someone had set it there just for her. When she got to work she not only found a convenient parking space, but people who had never spoken a word to her before were congratulating her on her new position, and she even got into the office a couple of minutes early.
In the bathroom she ran into Liz Grady. Liz was known around the office as a constant complainer and excessive gossiper. Most people went out of their way to avoid Liz, and here Patrice was, stuck alone in the bathroom with her.
"I heard about your promotion," Liz said. She rinsed her hands in the sink and glared at Patrice with a smug grin, as though she knew something Patrice didn't.
"I start next week."
"Interesting."
"What does that mean?"
Liz scrunched up her paper towel and tossed it into the waste basket. "Just wondering what you had to do for that promotion."
"I earned it," Patrice said.
"Oh, I'm sure you did."
"Listen, Liz, I don't know what you're trying to get at—"
Liz spun toward the bathroom door, and her heel slid beneath her. She tried to regain her balance, but her legs twisted like pretzel braids and she fell backward, slamming her head against the edge of the sink on her way to the floor.
The porcelain opened a gash across the back of her head. Blood gushed out and pooled onto the floor. For the first time since Patrice had met her, Liz was silent.
It took twenty staples to close the gash in Liz's head, and the rumor around the office was that she wouldn't be back to work for at least a week. Patrice had a bad feeling that what happened to Liz was her fault.
She sat at her desk and gazed out the window, at the buildings across the street. The clicking of keyboards, ringing of phones, and murmur of voices were all just background noise. The sound she continued to hear, above all others, was the solid ring of Liz's head against the edge of the sink. She kept seeing the blood, too, and the horrified look on the woman's face just before her head smacked the ground.
With her level of concentration at an all-time low, Patrice left work early, which, of course, was not a problem. She stopped at a mini-mart on the way home and picked up a lottery ticket. She only purchased one, because she knew that was all she would need. The drawing was at the end of the week, and with the way things were going she was sure she'd be the sole winner of the entire sixteen million.
Then a thought sunk into her head, and it pierced her heart like the cold, sharp blade of a knife. Tomorrow was day three. Wouldn't her luck run out? She'd never win the lottery if she gave the box away before the drawing. She hadn't even thought about who she was going to give it to.
She stepped onto the sidewalk, her mind swirling with thoughts. Maybe she didn't even need to give the box to anyone. Maybe she could at least keep it until the drawing. Who would know?
A strong force drove into Patrice's side and it knocked her off kilter. She tuned to see a woman who'd been jogging along the sidewalk. The woman had a phone strapped to her bicep with a cord that wound up to a set of earbuds. Her face twisted into a look of agitation, and she tugged one of the buds out. "Are you blind?"
"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention."
The woman was glistening with sweat and heaving gasps of air between sentences.
"No shit. Maybe you can actually look next time. You could have tripped me."
Patrice felt a wave of heat spread over her face. "I said I didn't mean it."
The woman stuck the bud back into her ear, shook her head, and jogged off. She looked both ways before hurrying across the street, which was vacant, but halfway across, a car came speeding down the road and it was headed right toward the woman.
The music in the woman's ears must have prevented her from hearing the squeal of the tires or the shouts from the pedestrians on the sidewalk. There was a loud crack that sounded a lot like the splintering of a wooden baseball bat. That sound was followed by a blood-curdling scream as the woman's body cartwheeled onto the hood. Her head smashed against the base of the windshield, and when she slid off the car there was a wide, red streak down the length of the hood. Her body lay crumbled in the street at the front of the car, legs twisted at awkward angles that suggested that every bone had been shattered.
The engine was still idling, and the driver had gotten out to see if the woman was okay. She breathed rapidly and gazed ahead, her wide eyes stark white against the veil of blood that covered her face.
The onlookers along the sidewalk screamed. A small crowd ran to the woman's aid. Patrice nearly vomited and then hurried over to her car and drove away.
When she got home, she placed the lottery ticket on her kitchen counter and then fell onto the couch. She had to somehow gain control over her thoughts. She couldn't continue to have people who upset her get hurt. The man at the carnival said that if she could think it, Guzule would make it so. So she had to eliminate her negative thoughts, at least until she got rid of the box.
She decided that the best option was to just remain inside. She had enough food to last the rest of the week. She would just call in sick for the next couple of days. It wasn't like she would get in trouble for it. She would keep the box beyond the three days, just until the lottery drawing was over. Then she'd play a game with the poor old widow who lived in the apartment down the hall, and she'd let the old woman earn the box. Because if anyone else deserved good fortune it was her.
So that was the plan. Just ride out the next couple of days. What harm would it do?
Patrice spent most of the third day thinking about what it would be like to win the lottery. Tomorrow night's drawing would crown her the sole winner of sixteen million dollars (closer to half if you account for taxes). Even so, she'd never have to work again. She could actually buy a house. Christ, a mansion. And the more she thought about it all the more likely it was to come true. That was the rule, and it hadn't failed her so far.
She fell asleep staring at the box for the third night, and she drifted off only to be awakened a little after midnight.
Her eyes snapped open to the sound of ringing metal, like a chef sliding the blade of his cooking knife down the pole of a sharpener.
The box was gone, which was impossible. She hadn't given it away yet, hadn't even touched it since setting it onto the nightstand after the carnival, but it was nowhere to be seen. She did notice something out of the corner of her eye, though. There was a large, dark mass at the foot of her bed. Patrice didn't have the courage to turn and look because she already knew what it was. Someone was standing there. Their presence announced itself when the dark mass moved toward the corner of the bed, and now she realized that that was where the ringing sound was coming from.
Suddenly, the space beneath the covers was smoldering. It was like her bed had slid into a large oven. Sweat began to soak through her clothes and onto the sheets. She turned, just enough to see what was at the end of her bed, and the sight made her heart perform its own free-fall act in her chest.
There was a man standing there, tall with skin the color of granulated sugar. The only features on his face were two dark eyes that had been squeezed too close together. His torso was bare. The rest of him was hidden in shadow, everything except for his hands, which weren't even hands at all. His lanky arms were bent at his waist, and at the end of each were what looked like meat cleavers where there should have been hands. Shiny silver calligraphy glittered along the edges of the cleavers, and he rotated his arms like he was slowly wiping dust from his palms. He just stared at her through the darkness, sliding the steel blades across one another.
Patrice didn't intend to move. There was the illogical part of her mind that thought that if she remained still he wouldn't notice her. But her body involuntarily bolted upright and she scooted back against the headboard.
"I'm sorry," she said, realizing that he probably couldn't hear her without ears. "I was going to give it to someone else. I was just waiting."
The edges of the blades continued to grate over one another, and Patrice somehow felt the cold ring of the steel vibrate in her bones. She leapt from the bed and raced toward the bedroom door. He moved with her. His body twisted in her direction and his feet pounded against the floor after her.
She thought of what he would do to her with those cleavers, but then a thought more troubling took precedence. If she could think it, Guzule would make it so.
The door flung open. She hurried into the hall but, before she could get into a full sprint, one of the cleavers landed on her back. There was a dull thud, like someone chopping into a thick roast, and then came a searing pain that burrowed up into her neck and down the length of her spine. Her back arched into the blow and she swiveled around the doorway and lost her footing. She stumbled into the wall at the other end of the hallway and rolled around so that she was facing the dark bedroom doorway, watching the thing coming through it, blades glistening, the edge of the one on the right smeared with her blood.
Blood rushed down her back and she felt the warmth of it soaking into her shorts. She tried to scoot away, but was in far too much pain to move.
She watched helplessly as he eased toward her, sharpening the cleavers. She couldn't stop imagining the grotesque possibilities. There would be no winning lottery ticket. She should have given the box away before midnight like she was told. She knew what was coming next as he leaned down toward her and brought the blades closer. She knew because she'd already thought it.
END