Andy woke up feeling hung over again. Looking around he noticed he was on his couch. Lethargicly , he moved to the fridge for a beer. Once done he began to feel better until he noticed the time. 7:54am. He was gonna be late to work if he did not hurry. Quickly he changed shirts, put on some shoes, and grabbed another beer for the road.
Arriving late to his job at Burger King his boss chastised him for his tardiness before getting in line. Slapping breakfast biscuits together with indifference Andy pitied himself. Working a shit job he hated for pathetic wages it was all he could do to muster the motivation to return on a daily basis. Drinking seemed to help and given the menial nature of the job he never felt guilty being drunkish at work. As his 11 oclock break came around he felt relief that his day was half over. Time for a visit to the local bar.
3 beers later he was feeling pretty good. He gained the strength to wrap the lunch time burgers with peppy zest. 2 oclock finally came around and it was time to go home.
With a small stop to by liquor store for some rum.
At home he felt relaxed. He had made it through another meaningless day. It was his time to pop his top and down some happy juice. Surfing the boob tube he noticed a weather advisory indicating sever thunderstorms headed his way,reruns of the simpsons, a new episode of intervention, and he thought better of it all deciding instead to take his rum onto the porch.
Outside he was surrounded by nature. No nosy neighbors to bother him, no kids annoying him, just the sounds of the forest around him. He watched the chipmunks play and the deer that drank from the puddles as he sipped on his own drink. As the clouds started to come in Andy decided to take his drink inside.
Upon refilling his glass he noticed something on the inside of the cap. Looking closer the message read Grand prize winner. Andy did not even know their was a contest. He inspected the label and noticed that this rum maker was indeed running a contest promo of some kind with the grand prize being One Million Dollars.
Instantly he sobered up. He looked at the cap again ,reading it over and over as if some kind of misprint had happened. He read the label for the details of the contest. Then it sank in. He had won. Won big. Shouting and dancing he was on top of the world! No more stupid job. No more living life by other peoples clocks. He would do what he wanted whenever he wanted to do it. He was a KING! No not yet. First he had to redeem his prize. The Label said he should mail his cap to the address specified... but he could not trust this windfall to the mail. He decided instead that he would take the cap to the address on the label and present it himself in person. In his exitement everything faded to nothing. The only thing that was important was getting this bottle cap to the rum company so he could claim his prize.
As Andy ran to his car he barely noticed the amount of rain coming down except to wonder momentarily if it was possible to buy the weather. Keys in, pedal to the medal, he peeled out of his dirt drive way on a mission. 45 miles per hour down the back country roads he whipped around the sharp turns and barreled down the strait aways wondering how much a few laps on a nascar track would cost. Finally he came upon his last turn before paved roads. He momentarily wondered about getting all the dirt roads in his area paved just to make things easier on himself. This thought quickly went out the window as soon as he applied the brakes.
He had not been paying attention to how fast he was going. His car hydroplaned at 50 miles an hour. Furiously, he pumped the brakes trying to get the car to obey. In a last ditch attempt to regain control Andy attempted to turn onto asphalt. His car spin as it skid across the main road and into a tree knocking him unconscious. When he came to and realized what had happened he cursed his luck. Then his blood ran cold. Where was his bottle cap? As he begun his search through the shattered glass and twisted metal A pain in his hip let him know that he was not going very far. Looking down his left side he noticed a tree limb imbeded into his waist. His left leg would not move. Andy cried. Why did God hate him so much? The pain of losing his prize hurt him even more than the tree limb lodged into his ball joint.
Then he saw it. Among the shattered glass in pooling water on the floor board of the passenger side his bottle cap was floating. Just out of his reach.
He bent over as far as he could but he could not reach it. He cursed God as he screamed in anguish. Determined , he wrenched himself around pulling his wound open further getting ever closer to his prize. If he could just get that bottle cap he would buy himself a new leg. Woozy, he knew he was losing blood. As the rain poured into his car he stared at the cap,taunting him just out of his reach. Off in the distance he heard sirens before passing out for his last time.
The paramedics pronounced him dead on the scene.