The harsh light from my phone lit up my bedroom, illuminating the piles of clothes and cigarette butts strewn across the floor. I squinted at the phone’s display, methodically opening my banking app to check its contents, despite already knowing that I currently had three hundred fifty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents to my name. It had become a habit of mine to look at my bank statements, perhaps as a sort of penance.
I frowned and shut off the phone, tossing it amongst the garbage at the side of my bed. I rolled on to my back and stared at the ceiling. When I had first seen the room, open and beautiful, I had imagined that it would be a testament to luxury, but now it is filled to the brim with my anxiety and malaise. I cursed the room and rolled on to my side, looking out the window. Though the curtains were drawn tight, a sliver of moonlight spilled on to the cold, hardwood floor. I found myself thinking back to that day; I can remember the overflow of emotions and the excited grins and affirmations from my family. I remember my resolve and my foolish optimism. I remember the betrayal and the grief. I think far too much these days.
I was walking to the state lottery headquarters with one hand shoved in my pocket, tightly gripping my ticket and another hand clutching my phone. My mother, on the other end, was initially overjoyed, but now assumed a cautious tone.
“Do you still have it? Be absolutely sure that you have the ticket.”
“Yes, I still have it,” I responded, my voice wavering slightly. My mother continued to advise me as I hurried down the street. Though my mind was thinking an unbearable amount of thoughts, I was still thankful for her concern. Her almost overbearing need to advise me, even though I was in my late thirties, was part of the reason that I was going to give her everything she ever wanted. She deserved luxury after all the work she had put in to supporting me.
I had heard many stories of lottery winners squandering their money. Each was the same. In a euphoric, uninhibited flurry of spending, a previously ordinary family moved in to a giant house, bought too many cars and installed the pool they always wanted. The cheesy grins on all of their faces made the decline all the more pitiable. Not one of them budgeted wisely, and in their selfish spree, threw away millions of dollars and spent the rest of their lives wallowing in debt.
That absolutely wouldn’t happen to me. I marched through the front doors of the headquarters with a goal in mind. I would budget wisely, giving a sizeable amount of the money to my lonely, divorced mother. My father and brother would of course get some of the money and I would give to charity generously. At the end of it all, I planned to still have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life. As I saw the numbers in my bank account tick up, even though I could hardly quantify that amount of money in my head, I knew exactly how I was going to use it.
There are some things you can’t plan for. When I bought my mom her own home and handed her the deed, she wrapped me in a tight hug, her tears of joy wetting my shoulder. I reached in my pocket and gave her a tissue. I had planned for that. The grateful smiles and handshakes that I received from the charities to whom I had given money - I had planned for that too. What I couldn’t plan for was my brother; I had no way to predict how his blood would look on my floors or what someone’s eyes look like when the life slowly drains from them.
I thought that I had done everything right. I made the best of the money that was given and I could live comfortably for a long time - maybe even my kids could do the same. My brother ruined all of that though. Or maybe I had ruined it. I was the one who killed him, after all.
My brother and I were both children of divorce. We grew up in a partisan household. I was incredibly close to my mother and he was incredibly close to my father. Though we both had a fairly normal childhood, it was clear by the time we had both graduated college that nothing was keeping our parents together anymore. My mom would tell me in confidence how unhappy she was living with my father. As sad as it was for the both of us to see, the happy couple that raised us was drifting apart.
In a passionate fling, my mother had an affair with another man. This was a scandal that she of course tried to keep under wraps, but was eventually discovered by my father. From then on, he was incredibly abusive and tyrannical, putting on a noble face for my brother and beating her when he was unaware. My mother and I planned for his arrest and he was locked away for domestic abuse. While I was by my mother’s side, helping her to recover, my brother held a grudge against the both of us for sending the most important man in his life to prison. He had no empathy for my mother or I, so, as it always was, my brother occupied an opposing side to she and I. When I won the lottery, I gave him money - more money than he could have ever dreamed of earning, but it was apparently not enough.
It was incredibly late when I had gotten home the evening of the incident. I was visiting my mother’s new home earlier that evening and making sure that she had settled in comfortably. As I returned home, the moonlight cascaded on to the front walkway, guiding me to the front door. Exhausted, I retrieved my house key from my back pocket and entered my pin. The door whirred open. I had a lot of money then and I knew that I was more at risk in this house than I was in my small uptown apartment where the water sometimes didn’t work and there was a single step that I had to avoid or else it would collapse.
I hadn’t even turned on the lights inside when I heard the floorboards creak from behind me. I reflexively turned just in time to see the faint glint of a knife in the moonlight. I managed to avoid the blow, prompting a curse from the masked assailant.
“Fuck, just make this easy!” he hissed under his breath, almost pleadingly. He lunged for me again. I stumbled backwards, but managed again to avoid his attack. I scrambled to my kitchen counter, always narrowly avoiding the attacker and his knife. I was breathing heavily and the room seemed to spin. The intruder, however, was unrelenting. He was quicker to action than I was. It felt to me as though he wanted to end this encounter as soon as possible.
He swung again. This time I raised my hands out of fear and he slashed my palms. Before I could even recognize the pain, I howled in anguish.
“Please just shut the fuck up!” the man demanded, louder this time. It was then that I could hear the fear in his voice. I could see how his hand trembled as he gripped the knife, now dripping with my blood. I had never thought of death much until this night. I immediately thought of my mother and how her resolve would be crushed if her own son were to die before her. The thought of her weeping at my funeral drove me to action. I rose to my feet and tackled the intruder, wrestling the knife from the man’s sweaty palms. I plunged the knife in to his heart with surprising ease. I watched as blood dripped from the bottom of his mask. I locked eyes with him as he choked out his words.
“You never deserved that money…you never deserved any of it and neither did she,” he gasped. Still reeling from my actions, I slowly removed the man’s mask. I recognized those eyes just as the final hints of life ebbed away. My eyes widened in horror. Immediately, I threw up on the ground next to where the body of my brother lay. I was such good person. I had done everything right and now my brother was dead on my floor. What had I done to deserve any of this? How was it that the universe had aligned to grant me such fortune only to wrench it away from me in such a morbid reversal?
These are the questions I ask myself now. As I lay in bed, with nothing but a house that is too empty to shelter me from the outside, I think about that day. My brother’s death was ruled as self-defense. I had taken the life of my own brother and I was able to walk free. My mother was devastated of course. I still vomit when I think of how I had caused her more grief than she could possibly have deserved. I could never bear to look at her again. I used what money I had left to purchase a big house in the mountains and layer it with security. I didn’t want even the moon to penetrate the confines of my home. So now, as I clench my sheets and wrap them around my head and stare at the puddle of moonlight on my floor, I think back to that night and how you really can’t plan for anything.
