Losers Read online

  Losers

  By Isaac Byrne

  Copyright © 2020 by Isaac Byrne

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Edition, 2020

  “I wonder if I’ll have to do, like... butt stuff,” mumbled Brandy.

  Mya rolled her eyes. “Of course you will. We all will.”

  “Some guys aren’t into that, though… right?” Kelsey squirmed, as if trying to protect her own tight little keister in the confines of her sleeping bag.

  “I’ll do all the butt stuff they want so long as they don’t make me…” She couldn’t say it, but she didn’t need to. They all knew by now what Brandy was afraid of.

  It was going on midnight, and this discussion already had dragged on for hours. In one form or another it had dragged on in cloistered gatherings of young women like these for years, ever since the Lottery program had been implemented. Chanda had had about enough of it. “I guess we’ll all know about butt stuff soon enough. Come on, ladies, let’s try and get a good night’s sleep. Heaven only knows when we’ll get another opportunity. And definitely not together.”

  “Unless our winners, you know… share us.” Brandy grimaced at the prospect. The thought, coupled with Chanda’s admonition, had been enough to at last impose a silence as everyone nestled in and closed their eyes. Privately, Chanda thought it wouldn’t be the worst thing for her friend. The girl had a bit of a homophobic streak in her, and maybe it would help open her up. Maybe at least a little good could come from all this. Chanda herself had decidedly bisexual tendencies – at least when she could forget what boys represented for her future – but she was alone in that appetite in this company. But that wouldn’t matter soon, either.

  It wasn’t ninety seconds before someone violated the silence. “I can’t sleep.” Kelsey, Chanda was pretty sure. It was dark, but nobody moped like Kelsey.

  “Me either,” echoed Tiffany. “This fucking sucks. It’s so unfair.”

  Chanda sat up in her own sleeping bag, glaring in the direction of their sullen hostess’s bed. “It is what it is, Tiffany. Yeah, it’s not our fault that previous generations overpopulated the planet, or that greedy corporations primed it for the extinction of a million plus species. But so what? Should we just shrug our shoulders, keep on breeding out of control and destroy the earth?”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad right now, to be honest,” snapped Tiffany. “It’s pure win for the boys! Why don’t we get any say in the Lottery?”

  Chanda’s glower intensified. Everyone knew the why of it; they’d been taught it since they were old enough to understand. Tiffany was simply pouting, and in a room full of people whose recent ascent to adulthood was a common bond, Chanda found it childish and unbecoming of their dignity, for these final hours in which they still had any.

  She flopped back down on her back and snapped, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because one boy can impregnate multiple women every single day? It’s the bullshit of god’s plan.” She continued over Brandy’s offended gasp. “They’re the ones who need to be pacified. They’re the problem. Which puts it on us women to solve it. It’s not like they take our whole lives. Thirty years, then you get to retire early on the public dole. You bet your bottom dollar that there’s going to be tons of survivors tomorrow night crying themselves to sleep because now they’ll never be able to have kids of their own. Women who’d kill for the opportunity.”

  “So let ‘em,” grumbled Tiffany. “I never signed on to be some loser’s sex slave.”

  “Me neither,” murmured Mya. Kelsey and Brandy agreed soon after. All of them were looking at Chanda sullenly, like the whole thing was her fault simply because she had the maturity to acknowledge the whole of the issue.

  “You want me to list all the people who are dealing with bullshit they didn’t sign into? People starving because of the droughts. Refugees begging for aid. Victims of war, people born with genetic defects, people–”

  “All right, all right, we get it,” said Tiffany. “Jesus fuck, Chanda, I don’t know who appointed you the high priestess of the Lottery, but you defend it harder than any boy I know.”

  “I’m not defending it. But it’s a fact of life, and I can’t handle having to comfort you while I’m trying not to freak out thinking about who’s going to win me.”

  Mya whined pitifully. “My sister Jessica’s winner? He was this mega-millionaire guy who already owned four other girls. He let her visit last summer and she said she has to eat out of a bowl on the floor without using her hands, and–”

  Brandy swatted her with a pillow. “We said no horror stories! We’re never gonna get to sleep if you keep telling everybody – again – about Jessie’s stupid harem gig!”

  “Yeah, your sister was a fucking slut before she got won anyways. Good thing we’re all sterile before our Drawing Day or she’d have already been nursing a litter,” chided Tiffany, sticking her tongue out. The girl really was still a child. At least until her winner was announced tomorrow. She’d grow up really fast then.

  Mya flipped her off, but didn’t retort. With everyone still wide awake, Chanda didn’t bother trying to put her friends back to bed and decided to try to be comforting instead. “You know, maybe it won’t be so bad, ladies. Not everybody’s experience is awful. We could wind up getting won by some really hot guy. Or a rich guy who spoils us rotten.” She didn’t bother to posit the existence of a really sweet guy. Really sweet guys didn’t participate in the Lottery. They were also incredibly rare, for obvious reasons. Popular rumors held that they were mostly abstaining for religious reasons, though it wasn’t hard to find men with fancy robes and silly hats surrounded by their own silent, utterly devoted Lottery losers.

  Mya accepted the offering of succor from their despair, albeit with her own grim twist. “Or maybe our winners will die in three days. Then we could live like survivors, except we could have families of our own, like our moms and grandmas did.”

  Tiffany snorted. “Have fun raising your brood. My winner bites it and I’m getting my tubes retied that fuckin’ night, yo.”

  Brandy for once decided to be helpful, returning to Chanda’s point. “OK, so let’s play a hypothetical. If you could get won by any guy, who would it be? Mya, you go first.”

  There were a chorus of relieved giggles. This was easier. It was a game they’d all played before, but even so it was a happier distraction than most. Chanda didn’t point out that she’d sneaked a peek at her phone and seen that it was after midnight. Drawing Day.

  “Anyone at school, or anyone in the world?” asked Mya. The distinction was an important one, though it did elicit a whine from Tiffany. Her parents had put her pot out for auction. Not many families did. Chanda’s own parents had asked her what she preferred, and she’d unhesitatingly opted out. Auctioned women all too often wound up like Jessie, bought by some random guy in another country who flooded her pot with tickets to make it all but certain he won. It was why Mya’ family lived in that giant house they had. But after losing all contact with their eldest child, they’d not had the heart to go through it again with Mya.

  Tiffany’s parents, it seemed, had other priorities. Having a daughter as attractive as her was sometimes called pre-winning the Lottery, though pretty much only by people who didn’t have daughters. Mya, Kelsey, Brandy and Chanda had their a pool going on how much Tiffany went for that they’d declare a winner on once everybody’s time was up in a few decades. Brandy had the highest bet at three million dollars bid, but Chanda had done her own morbid research and new that minor imperfections like canine teeth that were slightly out of line and the mole on her neck could cost big. Na
tionwide there were close to two million women who would be won tomorrow, and last year’s Lottery census said that around 6% of them had been auctioned. If that held up this Drawing Day, that meant there would likely be over a hundred thousand auctioned. People with the kind of money it took to win those auctions insisted on perfection.

  Chanda’s own bet was four hundred thousand.

  Her friends took turns, and though the answers were mostly familiar, variations of the same hopes they’d shared a hundred times in these hypotheticals over the years, it was helpful. Brandy wanted someone who shared her values and wanted a big family. Kelsey wanted to be part of somebody’s mass winnings, so they’d have less time to spend on her. Tiffany still wanted Henry Cavill. As for Chanda, she would be content (as content as one could be) to be won by some local dude, where she’d at least probably still get to see her friends and family sometimes. Probably. Maybe she’d even be herself enough that they would still love her.

  The last time Jessie had visited, her parents had left town. With no contravening orders to return to her winner, she’d spent Easter weekend sleeping outside in their back yard and drinking from their pool.

  The game lasted as long as they could drag it out, but eventually, their dread eclipsed their escapism. Everybody closed their mouths and eyes, but nobody got any sleep.

  It was almost how comical how casually they all dressed the next morning. Almost. None of them had pre-planned it, either. Like most of the hot girls in most high schools across the country, Chanda and her friends had been pushed into their own clique, and coordinating outfits was not unheard of. Today, though, everybody was in loose jeans, hoodies, baggy t-shirts, sweatpants, and otherwise decked out in the least flattering things they owned. Chanda herself had chosen an ugly sweater her grandmother had gotten her last Christmas. It wouldn’t make any difference – the boys had already pledged their tickets – but it felt like an armor of sorts. One last time she could dress herself, conceal her body from strangers’ eyes.

  After a big breakfast, the girls went outside to pile into Tiffany’s car for the ride to school. Chanda had expected Tiffany to hang back to say goodbye to her mom and dad, but evidently her bitterness over being auctioned won out, and she was right on their heels in their departure. The rest of the young women in the car had already said their farewells the night before when they’d been dropped off. Chanda and her dad had both cried and cried, but her mom had been stronger, and with a little kiss on the forehead, told her “not to be a stranger.”

  Not that she’d have much choice. She’d be whatever her winner made her be.

  For the thousandth time, she wondered how it was done. Everybody knew what the results were – the losers became whoever the winners desired they become. How, though… that was a tightly guarded corporate secret from the manufacturers of whatever technology was involved. The way most people talked about it, it was like there was a switch in their Lottery implants, with one end being free-willed and sterile and the other fertile and servile. Not that the winners always, or even usually, immediately went for baby-making mode, since they make the alteration whenever they wanted and most winners were no older than their losers. But whatever happened to those women – whatever would happen to her in a few short hours, Chanda reminded herself – nobody really knew.

  She remembered last year, watching the senior girls get called out of class one at a time as their pots were won. There had been scores of losers, but it was the memory of Yvonne Vernier that stood out to her the most. The bitchy goth girl had been repeating American Lit and was in Chanda’s class with the other juniors. All semester, she’d sat in the corner glaring at the world behind a facade of dark clothes and pale skin. Then the door had swung open, and there were two of the city’s Lottery officers. They’d said her name softly to the teacher, who’d pointed Yvonne out. Her glare had wilted in an instant; Yvonne burst into tears and pleaded “No! No, god, no! Please, please, oh fuck, no!” Chanda could still hear it, still remember the look on her face. But the Lottery officers simply aimed their control baton at them (or whatever it was, another corporate secret) and Yvonne meekly stood and followed them out of the room, sable tears trailing down ivory skin.

  Many Lottery losers simply disappeared after Drawing Day. Most, actually. They did it the Friday before Spring Break to give the winners a little time to get it out of their system, but there wasn’t much more point in providing your sex slave further education. Yvonne Vernier, though… Yvonne had been in her seat bright and early the Monday after break.

  Bright being the operative word.

  Pink. Head to toe, where there was fabric, or the opportunity to tastefully color her body… pink. Pink penny loafers. Pink knee-high stockings. A plaid pink tartan skirt, not a millimeter longer than required by the school’s dress code. A thin pale pink blouse (again, concealing exactly as much cleavage as the dress code demanded), faintly visible beneath which was a hot pink bra. New glasses with bright pink frames. Chanda had thought that maybe the lenses were even tinted pink, but she couldn’t be sure if it was merely the haze surrounding Yvonne that made her think so. Then there were the pink nails, pink eye shadow, pink earrings, pink ribbons in her hair – which was itself now, of course, pink.

  The new Yvonne smiled. Always. She paid attention, raised her hand, and beamed delightedly whenever she was praised. She was patient with any guy who wanted to ogle her, and deflected any who wanted more with such sweetness that they didn’t even mind being shot down. She attended every sporting event on the arm of her winner, whose name Chanda had forgotten, but whose face she had not. She split her time at such extracurriculars between cheering on the home team and pushing the boundaries of the school’s PDA rules. Occasionally she and her winner were asked to leave when she moaned a little too loudly at how masterfully he whatevered her right there in the bleachers, but she never seemed to mind that, either.

  Had the real Yvonne still been in there? A helpless prisoner of this effervescent pastel doppleganger? Or was she put on hold, her brain cryogenically frozen on a thirty-year timer? Or was the feisty goth gone, washed away and all that she had ever been replaced by a simpering, pleasing bimbo? Would anything be left of Yvonne – the real Yvonne – in twenty-nine years?

  As Tiffany drove the carload of the hottest girls at Clark High School, nobody said a word, but they were all wondering along the same lines.

  Mya got won first.

  Chanda wasn’t there to see it, but she got an all caps text from Brandy notifying her. She didn’t know who’d won her, of course, but she assured them she’d borne it with dignity, holding her chin high and ignoring the eyes of her peers.

  Drawing Day was a phenomenon, naturally. It brought out the best and worst in people. Every woman had rehearsed and rehearsed how they would react when they were called in. Most did well. Some girls even managed to look excited, like there was some pride to be had in being worthy of having one’s pot seeded. More than a few had issued an exuberant “fuck you” to a teacher or hated classmate before the Lottery officers whisked them out the door.

  Maybe some were even happy not to have to come back to school any more, to be allowed to lay around the house having sex all day. Maybe. Chanda had suspicions that for every woman who were sincere when they said they saw the Lottery through that lens, there were a hundred more who were full of shit about it.

  Still, at least the school was pretty good about crowd control. It was easy to imagine the wolf whistles, the slaps on the ass, the lewd comments that would be made if the school didn’t crack down on such infractions. Chanda’s cousin Tony, who was in his early thirties, said that in his day, when the Lottery first started, there had nearly been riots all over school as horny guys abused the vulnerability of women being herded away to be reprogrammed, easy marks who’d never have the freedom to pursue justice, or even retribution.

  Nowadays, the guys were perfect gentlemen, at least for Drawing Day. Though the women found out their pots had been won as each drawi
ng occurred, they had no real chance for rebellion. Between the sheer dread of it all and the presence of those batons, they were no problem. The guys, however, had needed a stick whose menace matched the allure of their carrots. Very simply, any boy who received disciplinary action on Drawing Day had all of their tickets voided.

  If not for the looming threat, it would have actually been a really pleasant day. Not a one of them dared speak out of turn, harass anyone in the halls, talk back to teachers, cut in the lunch line or engage in all that macho chest-thumping that seemed to characterize adolescent malehood.

  Tiffany was next. None of them had class with her when it happened, but by the time Chanda, Brandy and Kelsey had met up at their lunch table, her absence was already being whispered about by the boys at the next table. That meant Chanda had almost certainly lost the pool. Auctions ran until 4:00 that afternoon, so if she had been pulled out already, someone had ponied up the no contest amount her parents had predetermined. Ah, well. In thirty years, she’d pay Brandy her twenty bucks.

  Somewhere in the building, Mya and Tiffany were being unmade, repackaged according to the specifications attached to their winners’ tickets. The Lottery officers did the work on-site, reserving the gymnasium for the day and strictly monitoring foot traffic around it, but the process didn’t seem to take long. Most of the losers went home that afternoon with their winners, and depending on how many losers there were in a given year, a handful might have to wait their turn after school. None had to wait long.

  As for Tiffany, Chanda saw her departure with her own eyes from her seat near the window in Mr. Amedori’s class. From her roost on the school’s second floor, she could make out a familiar figure on the school’s front sidewalk. A blank-faced Tiffany shuffled along behind two Lottery officers into a waiting car. Chanda couldn’t tell from here if it was some kind of luxury car or something more pedestrian. Probably the former. The guys who won auctioned girls had money to burn.