I find myself in near-total darkness. As my eyes adjust, I see a door in front of me. I rush to it, reaching for the handle. I find there isn’t one. I run my fingers all over, trying to find some way to open the door, but it’s sealed shut.

Stepping away, I feel my breath start to increase. “Don’t panic,” I try to tell myself. I turn around and see a large floor-to-ceiling window stretching across the back wall, showing a pitch-black night sky outside.

Glancing around, finding myself in a small ten-by-ten-foot room. An expensive desk sits in front of the window, along with an executive chair.

Where am I? How did I get here?

I feel my body starting to shake. Just when I feel like I’m about to pass out, the chair in front of me swivels around, revealing a man sitting in it. I let out a squeak of fear and jump back. His hands are folded in front of him, watching me.

“I see you found the safe, how unfortunate for you.” The man says.

I stare at him dumbfounded.

“Where am I?” I hear my voice quiver. My eyes dart around the bare room, and then I remember the door. “I want to leave. Open the door.”

“Robin, there is no door.”

I turn around, and the door has disappeared. When I look back, the man is still sitting calmly in his chair, staring at me. I take a few steps closer to him.

“You only get to leave when the next person finds and opens the safe.” He tells me.

“I don’t understand, what are you saying?”

“You. Opened. The. Safe,” He enunciates every word clearly. “Which brought you here,” he gestures around the room.

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“And where is here?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “I like to call it the dark room, but call it whatever you want.”

“How do I leave?”

The man abruptly stands up and says, “I already told you, when the next person opens the safe.”

Dumbfounded, I ask, “And when will that be?”

He shrugs again, “Who knows.” He stands, placing his hands behind his back, walks over to the window, and gazes out into the night. “Where did you find it?”

My mind is still swimming, “Find what?”

“The safe, where did you find the safe?” He asks again, irritated.

“It was in an old abandoned house.”

The corner of his lip twitches, “How appropriate,” and adds absentmindedly, “An easy find.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t understand what’s happening to me, let alone this conversation.”

He snaps his attention back to me, and his lips curl into a cruel smile. “But you already figured everything out, and you’re so clever,” he says sarcastically.

He then walks around the desk to stand directly in front of me. I notice he looks slightly different than he did a moment ago, but I can’t put my finger on why.

“You concluded that the safe was full of winning lottery tickets. Yes, they were all duplicates of winning tickets, but you still questioned why someone would fill a safe full of useless lottery tickets.”

“You’re still not making any sense to me!”

He lets out a sigh and says, “Those were the winning numbers I chose. Greed makes people do terrible things. It infects the human mind and breaks it down faster than any cancer ever could.”

He looks away as if thinking. “Maybe I’ve been here longer than I realize. What year is it?”

“2024,” I respond.

He looks down at his hands, smiling. “Time is running out.” He looks back at me. “And you’re going to take my place and decide who wins the lotteries, just as I have been doing.”

“You’re telling me I’m here simply because I opened a safe? Why didn’t I come here the first time I opened it?”

His lips twitch into a smile, “Well, we can’t have witnesses now, can we?”

Now I have the urge to scream.

“What if I refuse to play along?”

“Oh, you have no choice. You will stay, and you will decide the lottery winners. Boredom will set in and force you to. You’re the one who opened the safe, so this burden passes on to you. The safe will move to another location, unknown to you, and you will serve in this position until the next person finds it and opens it.”

“And how long will that be?” I ask.

He shrugs and adds, “The real kicker is…,” as he moves back to the other side of the desk, “you will stop aging until the safe is found again.”

“Then I can go home?” I ask, sensing myself teetering on the edge of hysteria.

“Yes, however, your lost time will not be returned to you when your service is completed.”

When he turns around, I realize the change in his face — wrinkles that weren’t there before. He sits down awkwardly in the chair, I can hear his old bones creaking as he moves.

“You just better hope someone finds it sooner rather than later, or you won’t have much time left to live out the remainder of your life.”

He chuckles in a raspy voice, and suddenly, I see his skin begin to turn gray, his cheeks start sinking in, and his hair turns white and begins falling out.

“Enjoy playing God,” and with that, his body begins to deteriorate into a pile of skeletal bones, turning into a pile of dust, and disappears.

Then I let out the shrill scream I had been holding in and crumbled to the ground.