Every time I try to get rid of it, it comes back. I can throw it at a lake, but it curves around in the air like a boomerang, and settles, gently, back into my hand. I can put it in the trash but it pops right back out. I once buried it five miles away, but when I got home it was sitting on my desk.

Ever since I got this Stone of Fortune, I’ve won every single raffle I’ve signed up for, and some I didn’t. I find money on the ground so often I trip over it sometimes. Every woman I meet on the street looks at me longingly. Nothing in my house breaks, there’s never serious traffic when I’m driving, and I always find cheap gasoline.

It would be an easy life, to sit back and let everything come to me. I tried it for a couple months, bought everything I wanted, did no work. But as I’m sure you would guess, it was an utterly unsatisfying life. It felt, well, in a word, unfair. There’s no way I could have a positive effect on the world like this. So I gave away all the stuff I got, and ever since I’ve tried to give away all the extraneous wealth this darn thing has brought to me. I’ve lived as a fast food clerk, the lowest paying job I could think of. And still, I get way too much in tips, the customers are never rude, and I’ve had to turn down several promotions to manager.

Have you thought about what good luck actually means? This stone makes me win every raffle drawing I enter--which means that nobody else ever has a chance of winning. It completely destroys the meaning of a raffle. Every dollar bill I step over on the street must have been lost by somebody. Getting big tips means nobody has the choice of giving me a tip based on how much they liked my service. And seeing people fall head over heels for me who normally would never give me a single thought...well that’s the scariest of all. Nothing I do has any meaning, but worse than that, nothing people around me do has any meaning.

I got the Stone of Fortune in the first place from a man on the street, dressed in rags, old but very healthy looking. I had tried to give him a hundred dollar donation. He gave me this instead. Maybe I could give it to somebody else, but I don’t want anybody else to have this sort of life.

I don’t have much choice but to go off and live in the mountains or something. I’m sure I’ll be able to find food and shelter, as long as this darn thing follows me. This stone has brought me everything, but it has made me into nothing.