The Lottery

Prepare your eyes for the worst of my writing 

(Previous paragraphs)

Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. "Come on," she said. "Hurry up."

Mr. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said. gasping for breath. "I can't run at all. You'll have to go ahead and I'll catch up with you."

The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles.

Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old Man Warner was saying, "Come on, come on, everyone." Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.

"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

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She was shrieking now. “You crazy fools! It isn’t fair!”. Her fellow townspeople were mercilessly lobbing stones at her. Her former friends, people she used to consider family, children. People, who she thought wouldn’t show indifference to her death. She didn’t know what to think. But she didn’t feel hate for the other villagers, as she knew how they truly felt during the Lottery.

Stone in hand, Little Davy Hutchinson ran towards his mother. Davy saw the other kids, and what they were doing to his mother. He felt a strange feeling when his mother stared directly at him as his stone flew through the air, hitting Tessie directly on the head.

As her life faded, she looked at her son, one last time.

Her skull fell to the cobblestone pathway. She was dead. The kids giggled, they ran to their parents as everyone began to walk back to the black box, where Mr. Graves sat next to it.

“Hmph”, Mr. Graves said looking at the dead body lying in the street. “O.K the Lottery has been finished for this year, and you may now go home”. Most of the crowd blindly listened, except Little Davy Hutchinson. He couldn't get rid of the feeling he had while his Mother was “winning” the lottery.

He felt disgusted at his father, who simply let his wife die without protest, or any good byes. He ran over to Old Man Warner, who was busy hobbling back to his home.

“Old Man Warner! Old Man Warner! Wait up!” Davy said, and Warner waited. “What do you want?” said Warner, coldly.

“What’s the point of the Lottery? All they do is kill people for no reason!” said Davy, enraged. Old Man Warner slowly formed a reply, “I don’t have any power over the Lottery, unlike Mr. Graves, but I know why it first started”.

“You see Davy, there's a long history to this town. The lottery has existed in one form in this town for more than 100 years.”, said, Warner.

“What’s the point?” asked Davy, impatiently.

“Now hold on, I’ll tell you”, said Warner.

“About 102 years ago, way before even I was born, there had been lots of famine. People stealing food, or even worse, killing others just to avoid starving to death was common. They had no choice but to steal, and this went unpunished for 5 long, arduous years.”

Old Man Warner paused, he motioned for Davy to follow him so they could sit down.

Warner continued, “During the 5th year of the famine, one villager drunkenly suggested that the town should execute anyone they find trying to kill or steal from others. Surprisingly enough, the villagers desperately decided to try this plan.”

Warner’s story seemed to both interest Davy and scare him, Warner could tell because the look on Davy’s face resembled his own.

“The Villagers voted on people to be stoned, most of these people were thought to be criminals, but not proven. It was absolute that the person with the most votes would be hung. They chose this style of execution because it made it easy to display the body, as a sign of intimidation to any less than friendly townspeople.”

Davy continued to listen, even though he was young, he seemed to understand Warner.

“For 7 years, crime rates steadily decreased, it seemed as if the executions had worked. However, the number of executions began to exceed the number of crime suspects. People began to vote for innocents that they didn’t like. No one protested the executions, for they had saved their town from collapsing.”

Warner took a long breath. There was still much of the story to tell. Davy had shifted the way he sat multiple times, he looked uneasy as he saw children in the background prodding his mother’s body with a stick.

“Hey, snap out of it.”, Warner said. “Oh. Sorry. Continue, Old man Warner.” said Davy.

“Eventually, the villagers did, in fact, abolish the executions, exceptions were made only for extreme cases. I was born around this time.”

“But soon, tragedy struck. People were found dead in their homes. Almost everyone who had a high placement in terms of power in the town had been killed. Everyone, except the mayor, Charles Raymond. The people on their own accord pulled the Mayor out of his office and beat him until he admitted to committing the crime. The people threw rocks at him until he died. One man walked up to his corpse, he said ‘We never should’ve gotten rid of the executions.’. A week a new mayor would be picked. He was the only one that ran”, said Warner.

“What happened then? Who killed all those people?” said Davy.

“Who knows,” said Warner. No one knew whether Raymond had admitted to the killings so he would stop being beat. He’s dead anyway.”, Warner said.

“Continuing on what I said earlier, the new Mayor had pushed for more executions. The town had changed its execution method to Stoning, to represent what they did to their former Mayor. So the town agreed on having the old system back. However, there was a similar problem as to what happened before. There weren’t enough criminals to execute. People again voted on others, every two weeks, to stone. Many times I had been put in the raffle to be killed, and many times I had survived by the skin of my teeth. Somehow I was never the final one to be killed.”

“How?” said Davy. “Luck, hopefully,” said Warner.

“30 years after his election, the mayor had been found hanging in his office room. He had killed himself, who knows why. We elected a new Mayor. This time, he had been against the executions being so rampant. He lowered the executions down to 1 time a year. People would also be randomly picked, in order to avoid corruption. The town agreed on this, and they used the new system. Over several years, it gained the affectionate name of the ‘Lottery’ and the fate of the winners was never protested. This system is still in place today, not much has changed in this town, even in 30 years.” Warner had finished his story.

The two were still sitting on the cold, grey rock, it had gotten a little darker since when they started.

Warner felt no more emotion towards the Lottery. He had been numbed by all the feelings he had before. Davy’s facial expression seemed oddly understanding. He knew that he had participated in a few lotteries before, and how he felt during them. Davy felt a rush in his veins whenever he participated in one. He too felt neutral. But for a different reason. He didn’t feel hate for anything.

The two sat, silently for about half an hour. On the same rock. “Hey bud, let's get you home to your family now,” said Warner. He walked Davy home, the door had closed before he got to see how Davy would react to his family, and how they just let Tessie die without any goodbyes.

Warner walked back to his own humble cabin, even though it was still early, he went to bed. He did this after every Lottery to let him forget about it and move on.