The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, is a handful of peaches. The fruit trees are plenty full this year, an ample harvest to say the least. Enough for the whole village. We each pluck a single sunset-painted peach from one of the surrounding trees. Father holds us up so we can reach one from the top. Mother smiles but it’s not full like the trees, not real like the furry peaches in our hands, swaddled like newborn kittens. Daylight shines down on the tops of our heads, warming our sun-kissed scalps. There is laughter and play, children chasing one another. Families gathering. Neighbors mingling, discussing this or that. We each take a seat in the middle of the square. The skies are blue and the air is fresh with a cool breeze. Our laughter is squelched in the fists of a man approaching the center of the square. He begins his archaic speech, and we are restless. We are hungry. Before we can eat our tantalizing fruit, we must abide by the rules. Old rules, new rules, who can tell anymore? There’s always been the peach lottery, there always will be one. Year after year after year. Then, finally, after our tastebuds have run dry, his words are punctuated with the low baritone of a gong. The first bite is always the best. Sometimes, if you open your mouth wide enough, if you take a bite big enough, you’ll catch a glimpse of it. The pit. That brown stone in the center that pulses like a welt. But as you chew, and swallow, and bite, and chew, and swallow, and bite, the peach is going fast and there is no seed yet to see. The juice trickles down your chin, seeps under the collar of your dress. People finish, holding up their solid stones for everyone to see. But in your hand, not two bites left, there is no stone at all. The sodden yellow fruit trembles in your hand. The fuzzy skin prickles against your palm. It is a lottery, after all. And the faces turn, and the arms raise higher, and you are surrounded in the center of the square, like the hapless pit of the village.