Ticket to Paradise

By Joe Banks

From the author of the novellas The Restroom and Gone, comes a new novella about a man who hit it big. Bryan was forced to buy a lottery ticket and hit the jackpot.

Win the lottery, everybody wants your money.

 

Bryan's kind of sick of the calls. Sick of people stopping him in the street, all these people from his past asking him for money. A handout.

Bryan develops a plan, you know, something to do to help these people. Not give them money, but take them on a vacation. You see, these are the people who bullied Bryan as a kid, and stepped on him as he grew up. A crazy ex-girlfriend. Complete strangers who think they're entitled to Bryan's money. So he's taking them on a vacation. Bryan's lottery ticket is a Ticket to Paradise.

Joe Banks is the author of the eBook novellas Hit Send, The Restroom, and Gone. And has also written Interstate Killing Spree, an original screenplay. Joe's latest is the novel The Dead Men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joe Banks Books
• Release date: Mar 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393743934

Joe Banks

Joe Banks likes to write books, stories, comics and movies that make your heart race a little bit. Crime thrillers, mysteries, psychological thrillers. Modern stories and sci-fi.

Book preview

1.

Motherfuckers, all they want is money.

2.

Back up a little bit here.

Bryan Paulson was a plumber. Well, at this point, he’s still a plumber. Has a truck with fancy graphics on it and everything. Pretty cool. Inherited the business from his old man’s friend. Did the apprentice thing, blah blah blah, whatever.

Works for himself, makes enough to get by. Does some other handyman crap on the side. Bryan likes to work, loves to work alone. The name on the side of the truck is still Mickey’s Plumbing.

Just about every morning he stops for a coffee at the local place, Rosey’s. They sell coffee to the locals, a convenience store, you can get gas there for a little more money than the Wawa. The sandwiches in the back are the best.

Bryan gets the roast beef with all the trimmings a couple times a week.

But he’s there this day for his jumbo coffee, some bullshit with Rosey and his scratch-off’s. They’re good for a few bucks here and there. Bryan’s not a gambler, only plays for fun.

Rosey’s voice then, as it probably is now, is a cheese grater from smoking a hundred packs of cigarettes a day for the past thousand years.

Them scratchers’ll get you nowhere, she says.

Bryan’s thinking the same thing but asks her to give him five of the two-dollar scratchers.

I’m going to win something, he says, I’d rather know now.

Play the big one, she says. You win on these, I don’t get shit.

The guys in line, they’re laughing. Bryan looks back, laughing himself and knows that if these fellas hadn’t planned on buying a lottery ticket they will now.

OK, Bryan says. You’re just going to pressure me and give me hell if I don’t.

She’s going to give you hell either way, Bry.

Stan’s behind him. Big, always sweaty guy. Dude’s a fisherman in a dying market. Stan knew Bryan’s dad but he’s dead in a week from a heart attack. It was a nice funeral.

Stan’s right, Rosey says. And you’re holding up my line.

OK, OK. Give me the Powerball. Just one, with that extra stuff.

Only one?

Come on, Rosey, Bryan says. I only want to lose once.

The guys, they laugh. Rosey almost laughs. Hurts her throat to laugh too much and too hard.

Bryan gets to his fancy van and scratches off a few losers. Tucks the lottery ticket into his glove box and damn near forgets it.

The coffee, as usual, was fantastic.

3.

Bryan’s numbers hit. All of them, even the Power play or whatever the hell it’s called.

He found out the next day.

$765,000,000.

Bryan took home about four hundred million dollars.

Rosey’s payout was enough that she retired, sold her shop to a chain and went off to smoke cigarettes for the rest of her life. She didn't need much, just an excuse.

4.

When Mickey found out about Bryan winning, he damn near laughed his ass off.

Oh, Bryan, Mickey said. This is a pisser.

I know it, Bryan said.

They were sitting in the library, their spot. People know to keep it open for them.

Mickey just laughed and laughed.

Bryan wanted to laugh, too, but the money was weighing him down.

Your old man, you know what he would have done with that ticket?

Bryan runs his hands through his hair and shakes his head. He can’t imagine his dad with anything more than he absolutely needed.

No, I have no idea.

Mickey laughs, actually slaps his knee. Recovers a little bit and looks at Bryan and smiles big.

"Your old man, he would’a saw he won all those millions of bucks, then