Purim

Jared stared intensely at the television screen.  He looked down at the paper in his trembling hands, back up at the high definition image and again at those numbers prominently displayed within his clenched palms.  Jared's once proud jaw hung open in astonished disbelief.  Tears welled up in his shining green eyes.
To his right, Cindy jumped to her feet and screamed.  Unable to contain herself, she ran into their shared bedroom of twenty some odd years.  From the living room, Jared could hear Cindy's rhythmic thumping on the hardwood floors.  This was the end of an era, he thought.  Nothing in their lives could or would ever be the same and he hardly knew how he should feel about it all.  Certainly he could understand Cindy's reaction and to this he could hardly blame her for her ill contained excitement.  The dreams Jared and Cindy had held for so long of a comfortable life free from the hard labors of a daily job full of stress and woe were so close at hand.
With a swift and decisive movement, Jared rose from the couch, turned off the television set and sat himself into the armchair of his home office desk.  This is where he was still to be found by the police the next morning, opened bottle of Macallan close at hand and nearly finished, gun half-cocked and too cowardly to fire.  Cindy had gone, packed with all the affects she could carry and vanished into the night.  He'd see her again most like.  A litany of financial documents before him, his sins laid bare for all the world to see, his sterling reputation shattered.  I am going to hang for this, he thought.  What terrible lies I've wrought, to think I could play a lottery with peoples' lives, most befitting that I should win the most deserving prize of all.