FML…From A Creative Writing Prompt

I found a site called Creative Writing Prompts. I have been in a blogging bind lately so I was looking for ideas to spark a post. I found a prompt that suggested writing about a lost lottery ticket. I thought that would be fun. It’s not titled because the only thing I can think to call it is Fuck My Life. So, here ya go…

“Fuck my life.” she said quietly, staring at the embers of the unevenly lit cigarette dangling precariously between her fingers.

She had been in a daze for days after turning her trailer inside out looking for that ticket. But it was to no avail. He threw it out. Her lazy, good for nothing husband who never does anything. For once in their entire pathetic marriage, he cleaned the place while she was at her night job at the local bowling alley.

He never. Ever had done that. In their entire 10 miserable years of marriage. And he laughed at her as she cried at the loss, just like he had done 5 years earlier when she reluctantly handed her baby to the caseworker who would find a family to raise it. He didn’t want it. He let her go through her entire pregnancy thinking it would be ok. When the time came and she delivered, he made her give it away. And she let him.

She was weak. He knew that. He played on that. And again, she let him.

All she had now was her lost child’s birth date to use as a lottery pick.

When the numbers that she played faithfully, once a week, came in. Those same numbers she had played for the last five years. Ever since she was 23, she had used her birthday and the birthday of the baby she gave away as her hopes and dreams on winning the state lottery.

They finally came in. Her numbers. And the ticket was gone. Probably somewhere in the back of a garbage truck on the way to a landfill.

Her one chance to get her out of this life that she so vehemently detested.

He was snoring loudly from the bedroom. Farting in his sleep, the sick pig that he is. God, how she hates him. Everything about him. He ruined her.

Her life was never supposed to be like this. This wasn’t how she was brought up. This wasn’t what she had ever imagined. Her beginnings were lavish and loving. Her gaze swept the sinkhole of a trailer they rented and she sighed.

Her parents were right. They told her this was what she would amount to. What he would bring her down to be. Living in a tin can. With a loser husband whom she worked her finger to the bone to support. He refused to work. It took time away from drinking. He couldn’t do both. He chose the latter. It was up to her to pay the rent and keep the whiskey aplenty.

“Fuck my life!” she said again, a little louder.

She crushed her cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray and stood up. She felt so misplaced. So discontent and disconnected. At 28 years old, she was a pathetically lost soul. 25 million dollars was an unthinkable, unfathomable amount of money. The life she could have had. The distance she could have put herself between this life and her new one.

Crumpled. Torn into little bitty pieces. Like her life.

Because, for a moment, he was sober enough to notice the squalor they lived in. The dust and dirt everywhere.

He was the most expensive one-time cleaning help, ever. He didn’t even do a complete or thorough job. He did the counter in the kitchen, where the lottery ticket and his bottle of booze sat.

Both were thrown out. Bottle empty, ticket full.

She heard him moving in the bed. Still asleep as proven by the snort and the louder snoring.

She wondered how much money there was in the bank. She smiled miserably to herself in the cold, dark living area of the mobile home. Not 25 million minus taxes, that’s for sure.

She felt hopeless. She had nothing. This…was no life. There was no way to get out. She was stuck.

She grabbed another cigarette out of the package on the kitchen counter, not caring that it was her husbands. Menthol. She hated menthol. Then again, there really wasn’t much she did like.

With each drag she took, it filled her with a greater despair. She exhaled a stream of gray smoke and blew it toward the bedroom where he still slept. She wondered, for a split second, what time he passed out. But it didn’t really matter. He wouldn’t wake up until midnight when he’d stumble his way to the local bar to hang with his filthy friends. It was the circle of his life. And she was trapped in the middle of that vicious circle.

Her heart kept welling up into her throat filling her mouth with panic and bile. She couldn’t stop thinking about the lost ticket and the life she’ll never have. She would never get over it. She would never get past it. This just wasn’t worth it anymore, she thought.

She carefully walked into the bedroom, taking caution not to wake him. She silently crept to the dresser and opened his sock drawer. She reached in and felt around for the cool, hard metal of his precious gun.

Fuck my life, she screamed as she pointed the gun and shot multiple rounds into her husbands sleeping body.

She smiled, the first true smile in a long time.

She place the gun gently into her mouth.

Thinking of the only baby she ever had. The child he made her give away. The life he never provided for her. The lost lottery ticket.

She pulled the trigger.

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