The Story of Casper Proudbottom
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by Tyson Sadleir

The story of Casper Proudbottom is one of remarkable fortune and enviable luck. It also enjoys the benefit of being relatively short.
 
Like most men, Casper was mired in the drudgery of everyday life. Compromise, indecision, and a lack of passion left him middle aged and stuck in a detestable job. He did not believe himself to be an inherently incompetent man, but relentless henpecking by his superiors left him feeling completely without value. Everyday he resolved to quit his employment, to chuck it all and do something new. But morning after morning, debt and anxiety carried his protesting body to the suffocating office in which he worked.

Sitting at his desk as the hours before six o’clock hobbled by, Casper often indulged in explicit fantasies of leaving behind this trifling hellhole. In one reoccurring scenario, he burst out the door at a full sprint as his incensed boss, temporarily blinded from scalding coffee, chased futilely behind him. Another favorite saw Casper calmly gather his belongings and disappear without a word. “Where’s Casper?” “Eh, he’s probably on the toilet.” 
 
One Wednesday, while returning home after another tedious day of work, Casper was inspired to stop into the corner market to buy a lottery ticket. Casper had never purchased a lottery ticket before. He had never even considered it. He had no moral aversion to gambling, of course, but he knew no gamblers in his life, and was, therefore, never exposed to the activity. Nevertheless, the idea burrowed into Casper’s brain like a tick, and out of utter desperation for a change in his personal circumstances, he entered the filthy market with its urine-stained facade, and removed several bills from his wallet.
 
A gangly cashier with sagging jowls and a raven ponytail folded his arms and rested them heavily on the sales counter as Casper approached. “Which numbers?” he coldly asked, his unwelcoming demeanor and wobbly neck creating the impression of a volatile rooster. Casper's face flushed and he shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “How many do I choose?” he sheepishly asked, embarrassed by his ignorance of lottery procedure.  The cashier stared blankly into Casper’s timid eyes, and tapped his large turquoise ring intermittently on the glass countertop. At long last, he pushed his gawky torso up off the counter, pursed his meaty lips, and wiggled six spindly fingers.
 
For the better part of Casper’s adult life he had suffered from debilitative anxiety around strangers, particularly when required to perform some action in their presence. No fewer than a dozen times had he ordered a meal that he had no interest in eating simply because a busy waitress stood ready over him with pen and pad in hand. Faced now with this familiar angst, Casper hastily scribbled the first six numbers that came to mind and handed them clumsily to the cashier.
 
That night Casper scrutinized his lottery numbers, displeased at their inauspicious appearance. “Seven and seventeen do not go well together,” he concluded. “Nor do twenty-four and fifty-four!” He tossed the ticket on the end table and reclined in his worn leather chair. “Why am I so timid in front others?” he groused, pulling a knitted brown and green blanket over his slender body. “If I had been calm and collected, I certainly would have chosen better suited numbers.”  He shut his eyes and wondered when and how it happened that he developed such a nervous disposition. In his youth, Casper was charming and congenial, and he thrived in the company of others. But as he grew upward, he grew also inward. He began spending more and more time alone, so much so that on the rare occasion that he did spend time with others, his behavior was painfully stilted.
 
As the noises of city life subsided in the growing darkness, Casper’s thoughts turned from his overwrought character to the lottery and what he would do with forty million dollars. First and foremost, he would pay off the entirety of his debt with a single check. Then he would call his boss to say that he would be approximately four hundred, possibly five hundred hours late to work, and that his boss could interpret that information however he pleased. After hanging up the phone with a satisfied chuckle, Casper would buy a one-way, first-class ticket to someplace exotic. Perhaps Iceland. Maybe Bavaria. There he would frequent the neighborhood bars, learn the local dialect, and possibly even become a decent photographer. Casper readjusted himself on the couch and simmered blissfully in this decadent stew of reverie until sleep gradually overtook him. 
 
The next morning Casper was awakened suddenly by the horrendous cry of a leaf blower. “Should I live to be two hundred years old, I shall never understand why leaves must be blown during the nascent hours of morning!” he huffed. “What in their organic composition resists compressed air past breakfast?” After begrudgingly accepting that he would not be returning to sleep, he kicked the knitted blanket off his legs and toddled to the bathroom. Casper maintained that the only thing more unsightly than the naked male body was the naked male body wearing two black socks, but he was exactly two black socks away from showering when he remembered his lottery ticket lying innocently on the end table. And so, in this most unflattering outfit, he ran back to the living room to check his numbers against the winning six digits.
 
He switched on the television and pounded the top of the box until a picture came into focus. Flipping from channel to channel, he stumbled upon an infomercial for catheters and paused out of curiosity. The enthusiastic recipients of the advertised product raised Casper’s eyebrows, and he gasped in horror as a petite, elderly woman in an enormous wheelchair feebly described her experience in rather explicit detail. “Good Lord!” he shuddered. “They’re holding these poor geriatrics hostage, depriving them of their meals until they agree to endorse these medical grade, silicone death tubes!” He sympathized with the frail prisoners for another moment and then continued flipping through channels until landing on the Florida Lotto channel. Plopping his naked, white flesh onto the leather chair, Casper wiggled into a comfortable position and prepared to compare figures.
 
When the man with the spray-on suntan and bleached smile read the first two numbers into the microphone, Casper was tickled pink. “Yippee!” he cried gaily. “Only four more to go and I’m a millionaire!” The machine churned the plastic balls madly and then spit the next number out. The orange man snatched up the ball, adjusted it upright in his hand, and read the number aloud: “Six! The next number is six!” Casper quickly scanned his ticket for the number six. Seeing no such number, he rubbed his eyes and checked again. Alas, no number six appeared on his ticket and Casper Proudbottom was not to become a millionaire.
 
I think I remember saying that this story was one of remarkable fortune and enviable luck. What I meant to say was that it is not one of remarkable fortune and enviable luck. But I also remember saying the story was relatively short, so I got that part right. 
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