1,000,000

Winning the lottery is supposed to make life easy, but for John Hinklock, it had brought nothing but misery and difficulty. He had been down on his luck for a long time, and had purchased a ticket as a frantic, last-ditch effort to eliminate his financial concerns. He figured that in the best case he would win, and in the worst he would only be out a few dollars, which was nothing when compared to the money he was already short.

He took his ticket home, folded up in his front pocket, with a looming sense of dread. John could already tell that this ticket was not going to be a winner, but continued holding it just in case it proved him wrong, no matter how much he thought it would not. He had walked to the convenience store down the block from his home in a spur-of -the-moment decision, so walked back the same way, both hands in his pockets, with his right gripping the ticket firmly.

After he had been walking a few minutes, he reached his home. He stopped on the side of the road to open his old, beat-up metal mailbox and was greeted by a single large envelope stamped with the words "PAST DUE" written in large, red block letters. John sighed silently and returned the package to his mailbox, closing it and then walking up his dirt driveway to his small, equally battered-looking home. He opened the ripped screen door to access the rusted doorknob on his door covered in peeling white paint, which he turned to open the door without issue, since he never locked it since he had nothing worth breaking in to steal.

Inside, John looked around at the squalor of his surroundings, breathed in deeply, then did the same thing he did every night. He sat down in his chair, which had long passed being able to be repaired and was now only one step above sitting directly on the floor. He no longer owned a refrigerator, so he grabbed a warm beer off the floor next to him, cracking it open with a hiss as some of the head spilled over onto the dirty carpet. With his left hand, he fished his cell phone out of his pants pocket, and began absent-mindedly scrolling through social media.

After several minutes of being reminded that everyone he knew was better off and happier than him, John was ready to end his nightly ritual, due also to the fact that his beer was now empty. Just as he readied himself to close the application, an advertisement caught his eye. The automatically playing video was filled with bright colors and words that appealed to John in the situation he found himself.

"WANT TO MAKE SURE YOUR NEXT LOTTERY TICKET IS A WINNER?"

John did, so he clicked on the video, almost absent-mindedly, and let it play. After all, he figured, it couldn't hurt to hear it out. When he opened it, the video began to play audio, which consisted of loud, obnoxious dance music and a low, gravelly voice speaking the same words as the text which appeared on the screen.

"IF YOU FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS, ALL YOUR WORRIES WILL BE OVER."

John was intrigued by what these instructions might be. The advertisement now had his full attention. He hunched over his phone, taking in every detail of the video playing out in front of him.

"WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?"

After this sentence had finished, the colors, music, and voice all immediately cut short. The only thing on John's screen was now the back arrow of his phone and a square, green button with the word "Yes" written in the center in white text. Without hesitation, John clicked the button, opening his phone's browser. A long terms and conditions page appeared, which he impatiently clicked through without reading in order to get to the instructions which he had been promised. Once he had gotten past the terms and conditions, and acknowledged his agreement to them, he was brought to a blank white page. After a few seconds where he thought his phone was experiencing some sort of error, black block letters began to appear on the screen, accompanied by the same deep voice from the advertisement.

"CONGRATULATIONS, JOHN HINKLOCK. YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED. WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A WINNER?"

Again, the green button appeared, but this time, the back arrow of John's phone had disappeared. That, however, did not matter to him. He did want to be a winner. That was why he was here, after all. He clicked the button rapidly, moving to the next screen almost as quickly as the button had appeared in the first place.

"EXCELLENT. WHAT YOU MUST DO IS:"

Another green button, this one proclaiming "Continue?" appeared. John clicked it again as soon as it flashed onto his screen.

"1: REMOVE YOUR LOTTERY TICKET FROM YOUR POCKET."

John did as he was instructed. Once he had unfolded the ticket and was holding it in his right hand, the continue button appeared, then pressed itself automatically.

"2: REPEAT THIS PHRASE: 'ANIMAM MEAM OFFERO DAEMONIO MAGNO NALKUL, ET ORO PRO EIUS POTENTIA AD ADIUVANDUM ME.'"

John repeated the Latin phrase the best he was able. On the utterance of the final syllable, the continue button appeared once again, and, once again, automatically pressed itself.

"3: TURN OFF EVERY LIGHT IN YOUR HOME, AND COVER ALL OF YOUR WINDOWS."

The lights were already off, John had no power, and had not for some time. All that was left then was for him to go to all of his windows and draw the tattered blinds on them. So, he did just that; it was a fairly quick process since his home was so small, though he noticed that even after closing the blinds, light was still able to creep in due to their states of disrepair. For this reason, he elected to cover each of them with a black t-shirt, making his house completely dark. He was unable to see even his hand a mere inch in front of his face. He removed his phone from his pocket and unlocked it. As he did, the continue button appeared and disappeared once more.

"4: POWER DOWN YOUR PHONE AND GO TO SLEEP."

It was still fairly early in the afternoon, but John listened to the instruction. he went to his bed, in an equally bad state to the chair he had started in, and laid down. He held down the power button on his phone until the screen went black, then covered himself with a thin blanket. He did not think himself to be particularly tired, but regardless fell immediately to sleep.

When John was awoken by his phone playing a loud fanfare, he had no way of telling the time, since his windows were covered completely to seal out any light.

"CLOSE YOUR EYES AND KEEP THEM CLOSED."

John did as he was instructed, the same as he had been. Suddenly, he could tell it was morning as the sunlight from the outside turned the inside of his eyelids from black to dark red. Something had removed the coverings from his windows, and it had not been him. His heart beat fast in his chest, and he knew that whatever was in his home with him could hear it. The voice spoke again, though this time it lacked the tinny quality it had possessed through his phone speakers.

"WHEN YOU OPEN YOUR EYES, YOUR TROUBLES WILL BE OVER. ONE WAY OR ANOTHER."

A series of thumps sounded as the source of the voice left John alone in his bedroom. After several minutes of him laying in his bed in a cold sweat with his eyes closed, the tinny version of the voice came again from his phone.

"CHECK THE RESULTS ON THE LOTTERY WEBSITE."

John again did what the voice told him, typing the address into his phone's browser, which had not been open, to be greeted by the winning numbers drawn while he was sleeping. As promised, the million-dollar prize matched his ticket. Ecstatic, John clutched the ticket and frantically searched his home for a pen to sign the winner before he headed to the lottery office to cash it in. After finding one, he signed his name on the back, then, still holding the ticket firmly, ran outside to his old and beaten truck. He shoved the keys into the ignition, turning the engine over and backing out of his driveway, then barreling down the road to the nearest lottery office - an hour's drive away.

He arrived in forty-five minutes, then headed inside to collect his winnings. After filling out the paperwork and collecting a check for his lump sum, he turned to leave the building.

"TURN AROUND, JOHN."

John had left his phone on the passenger seat in his truck. The source of the voice was inside the office with him. Though he was frozen in terror, he also was powerless to resist its command. Slowly, John turned to face the source of the instruction. A monstrous form looked back at him, unnatural and jagged points and edges jutting out in various directions from a shape that somehow was in silhouette in spite of the bright lights of the lottery office. A mouth of bright white teeth in an unnervingly incorrect position formed into a grin.

"I AM NALKUL, AND EVERYTHING YOU HAVE NOW IS MINE. AND I WILL TAKE WHAT IS MINE."