Throughout my life, I've made the mistake of spending all of my time trying to win prizes in online and mail-in sweepstakes, a goal which I've never once failed to achieve. I've won houses, cars, anything else I've ever wanted, solely by sweepstaking.

Despite all of these victories, there's an emptiness that I haven't been able to shake. It's gotten stronger with time, as I get older. Maybe I'm getting wiser, or maybe... just maybe, there is a deeper, more fundamental force at play here. I've been involved in conspiracies in my past, but never on a scale like this.

There is an organization out there -  of course, one that someone like you would have never even heard of - dedicated to making the lives of sweepstakes winners as miserable as possible in order to keep them out of the game.

See, there's an entire world hidden from the unknowing eye. One of unimaginable wealth and gut-wrenching betrayal. The world of Sweepstakes Winners. See, we're a different cut from the rest. We use ancient methods which are too sacred to describe with words to improve our luck. The strongest Sweepstakers can even win the lottery multiple times in a row when they put their minds to it.

Of course, such a blatant display of power would be offensive to the craft. Rather, those in the business often participate in competitions such as sporting events or board games - competitions made to give the appearance of being a contest of skill, but which are actually entirely based in raw luck.

For example, in the Curling World Cup of 2005, the outcome was not determined by precise coordination or expert timing, but rather, the victor was decided by whoever was better at conscious manipulation of the quantum wave function collapse in order to lead to just the right outcome. Truly, it was an intense battle - the sweep stakes had never been higher.

Back to my plight though, I've never been more restless. See, I just recently won the DisneyTV-Visit-The-Stars Sweepstakes. The most competitive sweepstakes on the planet. Every year, all of the world's greatest sweepstakers compete, but only one can win.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Winning that sweepstake is pretty much the same as being ordained as the pope of the sweepstaking community. That said, the aforementioned criminal organization - the Sweet Cakes - made my victory nothing but a hollow strut across the world stage. My conquest of this absolutely brutal gauntlet was for naught except outward appearances.

Although I had all of the sweethearts of the world at my doorstep and my stash of methamphetamines had never been more imposing, a dreadful pattern began to emerge: each day, my morphine pills seemed more and more diluted. It began slowly, with the effects simply seeming less prevalent. I initially assumed this to simply be the buildup of tolerance, and that I needed to hold back - which should have been a red flag already, as I NEVER hold back on morphine - and, one fateful night, I broke open one such pill capsule only to find, after a taste test, that the morphine had been in part substituted with sugar.

Realizing my supply had been poisoned, I, of course, took matters into my own hands. I visited all of the drug dealers in the city I was residing in at the time - Tokyo - and attempted to buy my morphine. I was shocked to find that they had all quit selling drugs and had almost universally opened bakeries, many of which had already won prestigious awards. It took some digging, but I eventually found my way to the biggest bakery in the city. Aptly named "Big Baker's Caker," it took up several city blocks and stretched high into the heavens and was built in the image of a cake. Upon getting close to the building, I found that there was a pike holding the severed heads of many prominent sweepstakers right in front of the entrance. It was clear that they weren't just trying to send a message to Sweepstakers, but to the police force and the world at large.

I of course didn't want to convey that I could be intimidated so easily, and so I entered the building. Immediately upon my arrival, I was greeted by the prying lenses of several thousand security cameras, all densely packed on the ceiling at varying heights, angled like an upside-down staircase. They must have had some manner of facial recognition technology built in because in just mere seconds after I came in, a group of several dozen armed men in heavy body armor had me surrounded.

That brings me to my current situation. They've locked me in a prison cell several miles underground. As I write this I am slowly bleeding out from my injuries sustained after being repeatedly beaten in failed escape attempts. My luck has never failed me before, so why now, when I need it more than ever before?

A comfortable warmth overtakes my body. It doesn’t feel like a ‘nothingness’, it feels like an anti-something. I’m going to die, but I just can’t see a void, only a negation.