By Doug Hawley and Bill Tope

Joe Jacobs spotted something lying in the road up ahead. Puzzled, he braked, and the car rolled to a stop about ten feet in front of the mysterious object. He peered curiously through the windshield. “What is that?” he wondered aloud.

Climbing out of his automobile, he approached cautiously and realized with a start that it was in fact a man, lying face down on the pavement. He wasn’t moving.

“Hey there,” he said nervously. “Are you alright? Mister?” Drawing near, Joe knelt and put two fingers on the man’s neck, the way he’d seen actors do it in police dramas on television. But this wasn’t TV, he told himself; it was real. There was no pulse, and the man’s skin felt cold. The driver regained his feet.

He turned the situation over in his mind for a moment, then purposely knelt before the man again, extracted the man’s wallet and a cash clip holding a thick wad of fifty dollar bills, and slipped the expensive-looking wrist watch from the man’s wrist onto his own. He hurried back to his car and stopped to observe a device affixed to a light pole along the side of the highway. He stared. Was that a security camera? he wondered.

Hurriedly, he reentered his car, fired up the motor and backed away from the fallen man. Then, laying a little rubber, he accelerated around the victim and sped on down the highway, wondering, how would he spend this money? Then he chuckled and said out loud “I’ll continue my winning streak.”

He was just a couple of miles from “Lucky Run,” an Indian casino. He pulled in and paid all of his money for a stack of chips.  After an hour he had doubled his chips while consuming a couple of roast beef sandwiches and four gin and tonics.  He continued his reckless gambling, eating, and drinking until after two hours, he was broke, drunk and bloated.

He barely was able to walk to his car.  A half hour later a driver found his car wreck. Jacobs was near death, but what surprised the driver who found him was discovering his father’s distinctive watch on the dying Jacobs’ wrist.

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Doug Hawley lives in Oregon with editor Sharon. He is a retired mathematician. He volunteers for community projects and has about 1,000 publishing credits.

Bill Tope, Hawley’s co-author, is a retired caseworker, construction laborer, nude model for university art classes. He lives in the American Midwest with his mean little cat Baby. He has substantially fewer publications than Hawley, but has appeared in Bright Flash Literary Review before.