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What this Town Needs is a Shirley Jackson Style Lottery

Won’t you think of the children’s future?

Sarah Lofgren
Jane Austen’s Wastebasket
3 min readSep 5, 2024

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Man presents stones to curious residents to throw at the lottery “winner” in order to save their town from degeneration and bad harvests, much like the towns people did in Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery.
Image created in Canva

What a lovely town you have here. Lovely-ish. While I’m merely a humble book salesman passing through, I couldn’t help but note a few opportunities for improvement, and would be remiss if I didn’t share my thoughts.

For example, I noticed the anklebiters in your town all have their heads buried in comic books. There’s not a single copy of Brothers Karamozov or Moby Dick to be seen gripped in their grubby little hands. The rate at which your children’s mental faculties are rotting cannot be underestimated, for each time Batman kicks Superman in the nuts—“POW”—there goes another brain cell.

Also, the fruit displayed at the local fruit stand leaves something to be desired. The apples are far too crispy and the blackberries filled with disgusting seeds. The color on the pears is decidedly unpear-like. Your crops are off and, as humans who subsist on food, everyone in this town should be concerned.

And… surely you’ve noticed this one yourselves, but there are way too many crows perched above the hardware store… and they’re always watching, watching, watching. Doesn’t that make you uneasy? Doesn’t it seem as if something horrifying could be approaching? Something… deadly?

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Sarah Lofgren
Sarah Lofgren

Written by Sarah Lofgren

Engaged in inadvisable wordsmitheries and other creative acts. http://sarahlofgren.com

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