Johnny America

 

Lot­tery Tick­ets Re­viewed: Croc­o­dile Cash

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The croc­o­dile on the tick­et looks ami­able, gen­er­ous even. It was rain­ing cats when I stepped through Quik­Trip’s doors and spot­ted the pleas­ant­ly-de­signed car­toon marsh­land por­trayed on the tick­et. I imag­ined my world of burnt cof­fee and rained-soaked shoes merged with one of day-glo swamp-bug­gies and pok­er-play­ing aquat­ic rep­tiles. I bought in ex­pect­ing the croc to be fair — wish­ing me luck, even. If my tick­ets’ num­bers weren’t fat­ed, I reck­oned he looked like the kind of beast that’d at least in­clude a high prize to show me what I might have won. Scratch, scratch, scratch: noth­ing — no free chance, no pot over fifty.

The fuck­ing croc is a cheat and I’d stab him in the head with a car­toon Bowie knife if I woke one day to dis­cov­er my­self meta­mor­phed in­to a car­toon, with a Bowie knife. Sim­i­lar­ly, if I woke one day to find the croc sit­ting at the foot of my bed, trans­formed from cell-shad­ed buf­foon in­to to scale-en­crust­ed kill-beast, if on such an un­usu­al and fright­en­ing day I turned to­ward my bed­side ta­ble, which nor­mal­ly sup­ports on­ly one lamp, a wind-up alarm clock, and my old cell-phone charg­er, if by chance a re­al-life Bowie knife lay mys­te­ri­ous­ly on my bed­side ta­ble on that day, I would not ques­tion where it came from, not even for a sec­ond, in­stead I would slide the Bowie knife from its sup­ple leather sheath, ac­ro­bat­i­cal­ly leap to­ward the miser­ly croc­o­dile, and shat­ter its swin­dling, greedy, no-good­nick skull with a stain­less-steel blade and my im­mea­sur­able hate.

Filed under Lottery Tickets, Reviewed on October 9th, 2005

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