The Lottery Winner

by Patrick Hogan

Gerald is trapped in an unhappy marriage. But he would have given anything for it not to end; indeed, he already had done. His pride, self respect, reputation, time money, and much more. Eileen was no longer the shy unforthcoming librarian he had first met and married. She was independent, wanton, unfaithful; and also physically cold and sexually demanding towards sometimes at the same time. To his detriment he had been putting up with her wild ways for quite a while. He hardly went out, shunning friends and family to avoid the public ridicule he felt he engendered in the eyes of the people of the town who knew him, and many who didn’t. He sought distraction in long hours of work at the factory operating a lathe. Till the note. It seemed final. She has left him for someone else and states that she isn’t coming back. He goes out on a long Sunday morning walk to examine the meaning of that and his whole life with her. He rakes over the memories of their first meetings; the courtship, the revelations of the wedding, and the subsequent deterioration in their relationship mainly, he feels, through her insistence on going out without him. Oh, and living a promiscuous life that he isn’t allowed to ask about, or else she will leave him. He reflects on how he has felt trapped in the misery but hooked to her alluring ways and wantonness nevertheless. Of course he doesn’t know her side. She has never told him. He wonders that if he had substantial riches, could he hold and satisfy her. Even after the revelation of the note. Gerald’s life is about to change. One way or another.

40 pages, Paperback

Published December 8, 2017