I still had the ticket in the morning, so I hoped in vain that I’d just dreamed it.

I had to find Randy or he’d think I’d pocketed his winnings. We made a deal, I’m not a thief.

“Magic Hell” was closed. Randy wasn’t absent at the motorbike rental either, and no one had seen him. He was probably busy with other things, I thought. But even in the late afternoon the bearded man didn’t show up. Instead, I was met at the club by an administrator named Bulldog –we called him that because of his always wild face and slightly forward lower jaw.

He demanded my mediator and tapped meaningfully on the red scale. It was almost at zero, which meant I would soon have to leave this place forever. To be honest, the thought of that worried me – just as it had on the eve of my death, when I’d thought about leaving the newsroom. But what did I have to lose? My work was becoming more and more like a merry-go-round –night after night, the same wild music and frenzied faces that for me had long since merged into one – mad and insatiable.

At first I envied the regulars of the club, their carefree attitude, then I sympathized, but a little later I began to condemn their way of life. There was a moment when I felt sorry for them. But the more I watched and listened to them, the more I was tended to think that Randy was right – it was their choice. Whether it was conscious or not was another question, but they usually came to the club of their own free will.

Take Dimon from the St. Petersburg, for example. He looked like a convict – skinny, tattooed. He could not string two words together in Russian without cursing, but he spoke perfect English and had traveled the world. He imported meat, signed contracts on the Internet, supervised deliveries during the day, and hung out in our club at night. The girls liked him, but since Dimon was always high, I think he saw no difference between them, preferring professional whores, which he said were easier and cheaper.

After a week of drinking, he began to feel bad and often complained to me:

“Man, what a rotten place! No life! I have to get out of here!”

And he really did disappear somewhere all the time, but he always came back.

“I can’t help it!” he would to moan in the bar. “I’m drawn here like a magnet.”

He’d go back to drinking gallons of alcohol and shaking on the dance floor.

Often, at the end of the night, he would run down to the beach with the most desperate partygoers, where he would set off firecrackers in the sky and yell: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!”

Each time, Dimon looked worse and worse.

The old French kept to themselves, stomping awkwardly around the bar and chatting non-stop. They seemed to be cackling geese, trying to speak human language, but in strange way, stretching the words, saying them backwards, or changing the places of letters.

An old woman in an indecently short outfit stood out among them. Very active, with a pink ponytail at the back of her head, she hung out with the young Germans, and all night long her guttural laugh could be heard here and there: “Ja-ja!”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The Frenchwoman shamelessly exposed her flabby thighs, kissed boys with hickies, and once I even saw her unbutton the pants of her dance partner and give him a blowjob right in front of everyone. I’ve seen all kinds of things in the club, but it’s one thing to see young people making out in the corners, and another to see a lecherous old hussy who you wouldn’t think was capable of such a thing.

I mean, looks can be deceiving, and people aren’t always who they say they are.

“What if that couple I met yesterday really are millionaires?” I mentally replayed last night’s incident in my head. Not all rich people like to flaunt their wealth; there are those who dress modestly, eat plain food, use public transportation, and rent rooms in hotels that look nice but are not expensive; in short, they do not stand out from the crowd. What if the wily Randy hit the jackpot and flew to the Bahamas, or wherever he was going? He might not even be alone. I imagined Irene was with him, and I wanted to make sure she wasn’t. But I remembered the last time we’d talked and gave up on that idea – it was up to her.

The next day I showed my trophy to Austin.

“What is that?” he wondered.

“The Golden Ticket.”

I told him about Randy’s mysterious disappearance.

“Are you sure this isn’t a joke?” The artist took off his glasses and held the ticket up to his eyes. “What guarantee is there that this isn’t a fake? It looks like a wrapper. I could draw a hundred of these. Wait, there’s something written on it.”

He checked the ticket up to the light for something, trying to find the watermark, and handed it back to me:

“You know, I don’t read Thai very well, but I think it says this thing is for two people. You said there were two lucky ones?”

“Yes. The guy pulled it out of the bag while his girl stood next to him.”

“So, if the ticket isn’t fake, then Randy robbed this guy, took something that didn’t belong to him, right?”

“Right,” I nodded. “You think ‘they’ punished him for that?”

“Possibly. ‘They’ could have turned him into a Shadow for such antic.”

“But he’s already serving the Dark Ones, and ‘they’re in on it.”

“That’s true, but there are rules. If Randy had gotten the ticket by cheating, that would be fine, but he just stole it. The Dark Ones don’t forgive things like that, even for “their’ own, or ‘their’ whole business goes down.”

“What about the couple? Are they going to die, too?”

“Why do you think so?” Austin didn’t understand me.

“You said yourself that you could take something valuable from the Golden Ticket holder.”

“Yes, that’s right, but don’t forget that Randy only wanted money, and as I understand it, he didn’t ask the supposed Rockefeller to make a wish, and therefore didn’t fulfill it.”

“No way! He didn’t even let him open his mouth.”

“Here, you see.”

The artist furrowed his brow:

“Something about this story still puzzles me. What if Randy was wrong and the secret of the ticket is something else? Do you think it’s possible?”

“How should I know,” I shrugged. “It was not I who pulled it out.”

“According to legend, the Golden Ticket is supposed to find its owner on its own,” Austin continued. “Maybe it didn’t come to you by chance. Think back to that night.”

“What should I remember? Randy disappeared and those two ran away when I picked up the ticket.”

“There!” Austin exclaimed. “You didn’t pick up the ticket, the ticket chose you.”

“Wow!” I was more discouraged than happy.

Why was I chosen, what and who do I owe for this? And am I even eligible for the mysterious super prize that I didn’t even expect?

To be continued