Author's Note: Not beta'd—I'm so terribly, terribly sorry for the mistakes that remain. -------------------------------------------------------------------

The Golden Ticket:

Walt awoke with a crippling hangover. Again. His brain hurt, his mouth was dry, his bladder was uncomfortably full and the early morning light streaming in through the flimsy sheets tacked to and covering the windows of his rented ramshackle clapboard house had somehow managed to stab straight through his tightly closed lids, causing his eyes to ache and aggravating the pounding in his head. All he wanted to do was turn over, pull the cigarette scorched and smoke infused blanket over his head and fall back asleep.

For about a hundred years.

But, he had an urgent need to drain the snake and to swallow half a dozen aspirin and a quick glance at the clock through his narrowly slitted eyes confirmed that once he'd done that, there would be just about enough time to make some coffee and to try and clear his head of the final, but deadly painful, last remnants of the night before—before making the half-mile walk up the road to open the driving range.

He'd have to fight his way through the hangover, a criminally brutal hangover at that—all so he could spend another mundane day sweeping up golf balls as tight-assed business men and douche-bag teenagers alike tried to spice up their own pathetic lives by aiming for his tractor as he methodically drove it back and forth across the range.

When they did—as a few were inevitably want to do over the course of the day—the ball would strike loudly and metallically against the cage surrounding Walt, sending both it and his nerves rattling for several seconds—his head suddenly pounding to the rhythm of the unwelcome reverberations. Then, of course, would come the triumphant, but thankfully muted cheers of the piece of shit who had managed—through some stroke of ridiculous luck—to hit the target.

The work sucked balls, literally and figuratively, but it was easy enough and, considering that Walt easily matched his meager salary with the money he made with the hustling of slick cocky oil men and the weekly rounds-for-money bets with the much more well-acquainted, but equally inept local suckers, the perks were most definitely worth the hassle—unlimited course-time, no greens fees and the opportunity to demo some pretty damned fine new equipment.

Walt swung his legs off the bed and groaned as he stood—scratching his balls and his belly with his right hand as he wiped his left briefly through his hair, then heavily across his face—stopping to press and rub his fore-and-middle fingers in a tight, hard circle against his left temple.

Jesus. Where the fuck were the aspirin?

Walt had been hurting the night before. He'd stumbled home from the bowling alley after spending—and apparently wasting—several hours in his as-of-yet futile quest to get into Anna's pants. He'd thought he'd actually had a chance this time. She hadn't been there, serving up the drinks, on a rare Saturday night, after the league games, but she'd been there last night and she'd come and sat with him readily enough and she'd even seemed acutely interested as he'd recounted, play-by-play, Dillon's triumph in the Mud Bowl, the Friday before.

Hell, why wouldn't she have? He'd given Slamming Sammy Meade a run for his money in the telling—at least in Walt's not entirely modest opinion of his own storytelling.

An opinion that Anna's reaction, certainly, hadn't belied. After all, she'd sat there—rapt—leaning forward to catch his every word—and she'd winced when he'd relayed how Tim had fumbled the ball when the Panthers were down by eight, with less than three and a half minutes left on the clock before the half—she'd grinned, seemingly relieved, as he'd dramatically recounted how the ball had bounced and slipped and skittered and slid through the mud (and, thankfully through several of the Vikings' hands) on its way out of bounds at the 30-yard line—she'd stiffened, sat more upright and even had looked just a bit proud, when he'd recounted how Tim'd made a touchdown-saving tackle after little Matty Saracen had been intercepted on the very next play—and she'd chuckled, squeaked and clapped her hands when he'd described how Timmy's crucial and game-winning block had allowed for Saracen's touchdown in the final seconds of the game.

Of course, she'd also petted Walt somewhat condescendingly on the head as he'd finished with the recap and—when he'd thought she'd gone off to the bathroom to powder her nose—she'd apparently ducked out the back door. A fact he hadn't realized until almost another hour and several more boiler-makers had passed and passed through him.

Fucking skirt.

He'd manage to get into her pants at some point. Of this, Walt was certain.

That point, though? Was not last night. So, he'd stumbled home, blue balls and all, and fell into bed, expecting fully to sleep it off till the very last minute, when he'd have to get up and shuffle off to the range. A plan which would have worked out just fine—except—for only—well, except for only the fucking dog.

The woman he rented the house from—well the first floor of the house from, at least—had a mutt. A nice enough dog—though it tended to pick up and distribute the fleas not entirely unlike that last prostitute he'd been with down in Mexico had picked up and distributed the crabs. Profusely—the both of them—and the both of them had made Walt itch like a motherfucker.

The fucking dog had gone off last night several times—what with the barking and the howling right outside Walt's window.

Christ!

If Walt still had had his shotgun, he'd have taken care of business right then. But, then again, Walt wasn't allowed to keep a frigging shotgun anymore—not after having, finally, been convicted and served some time on an honest-to-God felony.

It was just a couple of years upstate on a bullshit agg-assault charge in which both Walt and the victim were equally drunk and equally trying to beat the crap out of each other, but Walt had been the one who'd managed to bust the beer bottle on the bar-top, then slice it across the motherfucker's face and then—and then all of a sudden the damage had been done.

So, no shotgun—no dead, but blessedly silent dog. Instead, just the howling and the howling and the fucking howling some more, till Walt couldn't take it anymore, burying his head under a couple of pillows and pressing hard—just trying to mute the literal son of a bitch.

Walt finally found the aspirin bottle—in the bathroom, where he probably should have looked for it in the first place—and he swallowed a bunch of the small, white tablets. After that, he set some water to boil for coffee and he moved to the front door, moving the small curtain aside to check the weather.

It was then that he saw it.

A ticket. Taped to the small window in the front door.

Walt cracked the door open, snaked an arm out and pulled the ticket from the glass—held it up close—squinting to see through his right eye, since while he was dead certain that the aspirin hadn't come close to kicking in as of yet, he felt just as certain that there was a distinct possibility that a mule really might have kicked its own damned way into the house and hammered him, both back hoofs connecting solidly with his head multiple times last night—in those few minutes in which he'd managed to fall asleep.

Texas Stadium—Texas high school football state finals—Dillon Panthers v. West Cambria Mustangs—50-yard line for fuck's sake!

Just as a big grin was beginning to break on his face, Walt noticed that the ticket was torn. Torn where it pretty much ought not to be torn. Torn as if he had already entered the stadium.

He also noticed something else—black lettering, which was bleeding through from the back of the ticket. He slowly turned it over, already knowing in his gut that he wasn't going to be hitching a ride to Dallas to watch Timmy take home the state title. And there? There it was—scrawled in shaky lettering—lettering he supposed was Tim's, though he'd had no occasion to see his son's handwriting in going on six years.

According to Tim, though, Walt's ticket was unmistakably and indelibly marked:

Voyd!

--The End--