Money's Overrated.

         Maybelle shook her head as she rang up a 36 pack of Trojan condoms and a Mountain Dew.  When she was a teenager, nice girls didn’t run around having sex all the time.  Who needs thirty six condoms, anyway?  She looked up, disgruntled by the two children in front of her.  The girl looked to be about twelve, with dark eyeliner smudged so badly it looked like she’d been punched in both eyes.  Actually.  That boy didn’t look so nice.  Maybelle wouldn’t have put it past him.

         Behind the two ready-to-fornicate babies was a tall man.  There was a mole on his right upper lip and no ring on his finger.  He placed a few nondescript items on the conveyor belt and asked Maybelle for a pack of Marlboros and a scratch ticket.  She handed him both and he smiled wanly and gave her back the ticket.  Maybelle smiled uncertainly, the ticket an unwanted offering in her fingers.  “It’s for you.”

         Later that night, when Maybelle was tucked in bed at ten o’ clock sharp, her thoughts returned to the scratch ticket.  She wasn’t really supposed to accept tips or gifts from customers.  She hadn’t even meant to, he’d just rushed off so fast.  Hopefully Al wouldn’t get mad at her.  Al got mad so easily these days.  Probably it was his prostate acting up again.  It usually was.

         Maybelle lay awake for some time.  She couldn’t afford to be fired from her job, and she liked it so much at the drugstore.  There were good benefits and she got to keep tabs on at least half the town.  Still.  It couldn’t hurt to see if she’d won, she reasoned.  At last she gave in to her curiosity and rummaged in her purse for the ticket.  If she didn’t win, Al couldn’t be mad, because then she wasn’t profiting from it.  That made sense, right?  She scratched off each box with an old penny, finally scowling as she examined the outcome.  Maybelle had won $500,000.

         She threw the ticket out the window.