Title: The Burn of Greed
Chapter 1: The Flame and the Fortune
The dining room was silent, save for the rhythmic, metallic click-clack of my vintage Zippo lighter.
Click. A burst of flame. Whoosh. A flicker of blue heat. Clack. Darkness.
A lottery ticket.
The winning numbers for the Grand Prize: $400,000. Ten billion dong. Enough money to pay off their suffocating gambling debts, buy a new house in a gated community, and fuel their vanity for another decade. It was salvation printed on cheap thermal paper.
“Drop it?” I repeated softly, staring into the heart of the flame. “Or burn it?”
“Don’t play games with us, old woman,” Brenda hissed. She was gripping her fork so hard her knuckles were white, looking ready to snap the metal in two. “Everyone in the neighborhood knows you won. The station owner confirmed it on Facebook. Hand it over. Now. It’s family money.”
I looked at my grandson, Benny. Seven years old, sitting quietly at the end of the long mahogany table. He was small for his age, with big, fearful eyes that scanned the room for danger. He hated these dinners. He hated the way his parents yelled at me. He was eating his rice quietly, head down, trying to make himself invisible.
“We take care of you!” Brenda shouted, slamming her hand on the table, making the silverware jump. “We let you live in this house! We feed you! We clothe you! You owe us!”
I moved the ticket closer to the flame. The edge of the paper curled slightly, turning brown from the heat.
“NO!” Mark jumped up, knocking his chair over with a crash. “Mom, stop! That’s half a million dollars! Are you insane?”
“It’s evil,” I whispered, watching the smoke rise. “It’s turned you into monsters. Maybe if I burn it, you’ll become human again. Maybe you’ll remember how to work for a living.”
“Give it to me!” Brenda screamed, her voice cracking.
She didn’t wait for permission. She didn’t wait for Mark. She lunged across the table, scattering plates of half-eaten food and crystal glasses. She didn’t go for the ticket; she went for me.
Her fingers, adorned with sharp, rhinestone-encrusted fake nails, grabbed a handful of my gray hair. She yanked my head back violently.
“Aaah!” I cried out as my chair tipped backward.
I fell onto the hard wooden floor, the breath knocked out of me. Brenda was on top of me instantly, her knee pressing into my chest, crushing my ribs. Her hand twisted my hair, pulling my scalp until I thought the skin would tear.
“You senile old hag!” she shrieked, saliva flying from her mouth onto my face. “Drop it! Give me the ticket or I’ll break your fingers one by one!”
“Brenda, stop!” Mark yelled, but he didn’t pull her off. He didn’t defend his mother. He was on his hands and knees, scrambling around the floor like a dog, looking for the ticket I had dropped in the fall. He was looking for the money, not helping the woman who gave him life.
“Let go of my Grandma!”
The voice was high-pitched but fierce.
Suddenly, a wave of heat and liquid crashed down on Brenda’s back.
Chapter 2: The Scalding Truth
“AAAAHHH!” Brenda screamed, a sound that tore through the house and probably reached the neighbors.
She let go of my hair instantly and rolled off me, clawing at her back, writhed on the floor like a snake cut in half. “It burns! It burns!”
Benny stood there, holding the empty ceramic tureen that had held the boiling hot vegetable soup. Steam was still rising from the pot. His face was red, tears streaming down his cheeks, mixing with snot, but he stood his ground. His little chest was heaving.
“Get away from her!” Benny yelled, raising the heavy pot like a weapon. “Don’t you touch her! I hate you!”
“My back! Mark, help me! The brat burned me!” Brenda wailed, curling into a ball.
Mark was torn. He looked at his wife screaming in pain, her skin turning red. Then he looked at the lottery ticket that had fluttered under the antique sideboard.
Greed won. It always does with him.
He lunged for the ticket.
“Got it!” Mark shouted, holding the paper up triumphantly, ignoring his wife’s agony. “I got it! Oh thank God, it’s safe!”
I sat up, groaning, and straightened my blouse. My scalp throbbed where she had pulled my hair, but my mind was clearer than it had been in years. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the Zippo lighter again.
“Mark,” I said.
He looked at me, grinning like a maniac, clutching the ticket to his chest. “It’s over, Mom. We have it. We’re rich. You can’t stop us now.”
“Look at your son, Mark,” I said, pointing to Benny, who was trembling, terrified of what he had just done. “Look at your wife writhing on the floor.”
“She’s fine, just a little burn,” Mark dismissed, smoothing out the crumpled ticket. “We’ll put some ice on it. With this money, we can buy her a whole new back if we want.”
“You chose the paper over them,” I said, shaking my head. “You chose a fantasy over your reality.”
I crawled over to the fireplace—the decorative gas fireplace that was currently lit to “set the mood” for their ambush.
“What are you doing?” Mark asked, watching me warily.
“You have the ticket,” I smiled, a sad, knowing smile. “But do you have the right one?”
Mark frowned. He looked at the ticket in his hand. He checked the numbers. He checked the date. He checked the serial code.
“It’s real,” he sneered. “I know the numbers. Stop trying to bluff.”
“Is it?” I reached into my bra and pulled out another ticket. Identical to the one Mark held. Same numbers. Same date.
Mark’s eyes widened. He looked back and forth between the two papers.
“I went to the library this morning,” I said calmly. “I made five high-resolution color photocopies. You’re holding copy number three.”
“No…” Mark whispered, the color draining from his face. “No, that’s impossible. It feels real.”
“Does it?” I asked. “Then keep it. But if you want to be sure…”
“Give me that one!” Mark shouted, realizing the gamble. “Give me the other one!”
He started to move toward me, but I was closer to the fire.
“This one?” I held it over the gas flames. “The one that made my son watch his wife beat his elderly mother? The one that made a seven-year-old boy have to become violent to save his grandmother?”
“NO! MOM! DON’T!”
I dropped it.
The paper fluttered down. It caught fire instantly. The blue and yellow flame licked the edges, curling the numbers into black ash in seconds.
“NOOOO!” Brenda screamed, forgetting her burns, scrambling to her knees. She crawled toward the fireplace, clawing at the hot metal grate, but it was too late. The ticket was gone. $400,000 turned to smoke and memory.
Brenda collapsed on the rug, sobbing hysterically, pounding the floor with her fists. “My money! My money! You witch! You burned our future! I’ll kill you!”
Mark fell to his knees, staring at the pile of ash. He looked broken. “Why?” he whispered. “Why would you do that? We could have been happy.”
I stood up slowly, using the mantle for support. I walked over to Benny. I took the heavy pot from his hands and set it down. I hugged him tightly. He buried his face in my stomach and cried, his small body shaking.
“I didn’t burn your future,” I told Mark coldly. “I burned a piece of paper.”
“It was ten billion dong!” Mark shouted, tears of rage in his eyes. “You burned ten billion dong!”
“It was a photocopy too,” I said.
Chapter 3: The Real Fortune
The room went silent. Dead silent. Brenda stopped screaming mid-sob. Mark looked up, confused hope warring with disbelief in his eyes.
“What?” Mark choked out.
“I signed the real ticket over to a trust fund at 9:00 AM this morning,” I said, stroking Benny’s hair. “The lawyer came to the coffee shop. The ticket is currently in a bank vault downtown. The sole beneficiary is Benjamin.”
I pointed to my grandson.
“He gets access to the money when he turns 25,” I continued. “Until then, the trust pays for his education, his living expenses, and his therapy. You can’t touch a dime of it.”
I looked down at Brenda, who was staring at me with her mouth hanging open, looking like a fish out of water.
“And there is a clause,” I added, savoring the look on their faces. “A ‘Bad Faith’ clause. If Benny is removed from my custody, or if I die under suspicious circumstances… or if I happen to ‘fall’ down the stairs… the money goes to charity. Every single cent. The Red Cross gets it all.”
“You…” Brenda whispered, her voice trembling. “You gave it to the kid?”
“I gave it to the only person in this room who threw soup on a monster to save a human being,” I said. “I gave it to the only person who loves me.”
I looked at Mark. “Pack your bags. Both of you. The trust also pays for my home security and 24-hour nursing care. I don’t need you anymore. And I certainly don’t want you in my house.”
“Mom, please,” Mark stammered, standing up, trying to put on his charming smile, but it looked twisted and grotesque. “We… we were just excited. The stress… the debts… it made us crazy. We can work this out. We’re family.”
“Get out,” Benny said.
His voice was small, but it was the loudest sound in the room. He turned to look at his father, his eyes dry now. “Get out of Grandma’s house.”
Mark and Brenda looked at each other. They looked at the ash in the fireplace. They looked at the angry red burns on Brenda’s back. And finally, they looked at the wall where a family photo used to hang, realizing that spot was now empty.
They realized, finally, that they had lost everything before the dinner even started.
Mark grabbed Brenda’s arm. “Come on. Let’s go.”
As they walked out the door, defeated and broken, I didn’t feel sad. I felt light.
I looked at Benny. “You hungry?”
“A little,” he sniffed.
“Let’s order pizza,” I smiled, pulling out my phone. “Pepperoni. And we’re going to use the credit card.”
Benny smiled. It was the first real smile I’d seen on him in years. “Can we get extra cheese?”
“Baby,” I kissed his forehead. “We can get all the cheese in the world.”
After watching that dinner explode into violence—Brenda attacking, Mark choosing a lottery ticket over his own child, and Benny defending his grandma with boiling soup—what moment do you think truly shifted the power: the instant the fake “winning” ticket turned to ash in the fireplace, or the moment the real fortune was revealed to belong to Benny alone?
