This is going to sound crazy, but I know how to win a raffle every time!
I discovered this about ten years ago, when I was trying to win a pair of roller blades from Skate City. We were there for a class party, and stupid Jeanie May would not stop going on and on about her new blades. I just had to have some of my own. I was doing everything I could to get more tickets into the raffle bucket, so when the guy dropped a small roll of tickets, I totally walked by and snatched them up. It was only three, but that was three more chances to put Jeanie May in her place.
But I had no pen! And I couldn’t ask for one, because then the adults would know that I had more tickets that the other students. So I did what any logical eleven-year-old would do – I stabbed the very tip of my finger on my earring, and I wrote my name in “red ink”.
That was the first raffle I’d ever won in my life!
And Jeanie May had no more to say to me for the rest of the school year. It was beautiful.
There were a few more contest things through middle school, but I didn’t really care. High school too had all the normal, boring stuff that I didn’t really care about. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I entered, but I didn’t care when I lost. They were stupid prizes, like a free slice of pizza at lunch, or a book, or a new ruler – yippee, not.
But then there was the prom package my junior year. You got a limo, you got dinner paid for, you got moolah to spend on a dress – I mean, it was major! The only thing I’d had to worry about was a date, and with all that prize, I’d had no problem getting one.
I remembered the roller blades, and I thought what could it hurt? I bought one more raffle ticket just before they stopped selling, and when no one was watching, I signed it in “red ink”.
And I won.
I won it again my senior year, too – though that time I’d put my date’s name instead of mine, so it wouldn’t look suspicious. But I saw the ticket they pulled. I saw the “red ink”. I knew it was mine.
One time was a fluke. Two times was a coincidence. But three times was a pattern, and I knew what I’d discovered. I used that trick on another dozen or more raffles, and I won every time. I got a new iPod, I got some Louboutin shoes, I got a short speaking role in a TV series – I mean come on! I had found the greatest cheat code the world had ever known!
Except, now this guy keeps following me. He looks familiar, like I’ve seen him places before, but I don’t know him. He’s all shady and weird looking, and his eyes are so dark they’re basically black. At first, I’d see him here and there, and he’d just stare at me. But then he started to follow me, walking behind me as I’d go for my morning coffee. And then he’d just be where ever I was going – dinner, the movies, the bookstore. He was always there!
So today, I finally turn on him. “What the hell do you want?”
His smile is that of a piranha; all teeth and malice and hunger for flesh. “The average time on a contract signed in blood is ten years.”
I just stare at him. I’d never signed any contract…
“You’ve signed eighteen times, but the first was nine years, three-hundred and sixty days ago.”
I don’t understand.
“In five days, I come to collect.”
