"That's the last of it!"

Monty put his tow truck in reverse, and its shrill beeping blasted away the quiet morning. He backed out carefully down the entire length of the forest road, the beeping taking a long time to fade. Once we couldn't hear its echoes any more, we knew we were well and truly alone.

My manager Tom came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. Together we looked up at the fruits of a week's labor. A house-sized pile of pennies glittered in the early morning light. It dominated our field of view, choking out everything around and beneath it.

Somehow, the pile didn't look at all odd in the forest setting. Most of the pennies had a greenish tint that matched the moss on the trees perfectly. Every one of them had come from the deceptively harmless-looking well next to me. It was older than the forest itself, and it looked like it would've collapsed ages ago if it weren't for the pennies inside. Without the coins, the water level was a long-lost memory.

"Well," Tom said with a slap to my shoulder.

"Sure is," I replied.

"Guess you better get to work. I'll come check on you in the afternoon."

With that, he dropped a bucket and a lunchbox at my feet and got into his own pickup.

"Remember," he called as he drove away, "you get to keep any nickels and dimes that you find!"

Unpaid internships sucked.

I turned over the bucket, sat on it, and looked up at the pile of coins. I'd be spending the next whole week going through it one penny at a time. My job was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard: take each penny, chuck it into the well, and make a wish. Any wish*.

*Terms and conditions applied.

It was all because little Martha came home last month with a unicorn. Supposedly it was pearly white, with a horn as long as her arm. Some even said it pooped rainbows and talked, though that was mostly Martha's 'uncle' Jimmy. But the vet claimed that the horn was real, or at least indistinguishable from a rhino's horn. Nobody seemed to notice or care that the vet specialized in cats. Everyone was too excited about the world's very first miracle.

For weeks, "friendly neighbors" came by to interrogate the six-year-old about how she had acquired a unicorn. One mention of a wishing well, and well-wishing became the new national pastime. Overnight, pink became the latest fashion after her neighbor remembered seeing what she was wearing that day. The whole country went unicorn crazy.

But it was Tom who got Uncle Jimmy drunk and heard the real story of Martha's adventure. Jimmy knew exactly which well Martha had wished at, but he couldn't figure out how to trigger it again. As he whined to Tom's sympathetic ear, he mentioned something that he was too stupid to realize was important: Martha claimed that she had made the wish using her special lucky penny.

A day later, Tom hired me.

I got up and walked straight out onto the heap of pennies. The outer edge was no more than a foot deep, but I climbed right over it and tried to grab a handful straight out of the side. But the pile was too dense, and I couldn't even get a finger under one layer. By prying and heaving, I managed to cause a small avalanche and bruise my arms up to the elbows.

After that I just grabbed handfuls of pennies from the fringes, pulling up fistfuls of grass with them. Then I chucked them in one at a time, wishing fervently for a fifth of Jack Daniel's.

Halfway through the morning, my fingers were turning purple and I'd changed my wish to a fifth of Fireball. I had made exactly zero progress on the pile, mostly because I had to wait for the splash before making each wish—Tom was very specific about this point. But since half the time I couldn't hear the splash, I would space out for ages between every wish.

Eventually I ate my lunch out of boredom, though I continued tossing pennies in with one hand. I kept thinking how nice it would be to wash down the food with some whiskey, but the stubborn well wouldn't oblige.

Late in the afternoon, I found my first nickel. I whooped and bit it like it was gold, nearly chipping a tooth. Then I tucked it into my pocket and spent the next half hour searching fruitlessly for more. The only thing I found was a crushed bottle cap, which could've come from a bottle of beer. After that I spent an hour wishing for a boilermaker.

By the time Tom drove back up in his truck, I was standing on the well, throwing the pennies in overhand and shouting my wishes out loud. I was back to wishing for a fifth of Jack Daniel's.

The next day, I changed tacks. Taking the bucket, I filled the whole thing with pennies and hauled it to the well. Then I lay down on the crumbling wall and flipped the pennies in like I was tossing for heads. I imagined that I could hear the splashes a little better, like the water level was slowly rising.

I spent the whole day wishing for wild, impossible things. Forget Martha and her unicorn, I wanted a dragon. Or a magical sword. Or a fairy godmother. For a while I wished for a tyrannosaurus rex, but then I realized it would probably just eat me. So I started working my way through Lord of the Rings characters, which lasted me all the way through lunch.

Partway through the afternoon, a horrible thought occurred to me. What if it wasn't even the penny that was special? What if it was the time of day, or the alignment of the planets, or the exact combination of Cheerios and Captain Crunch that was for breakfast? What if Martha was the chosen one, or the well only granted wishes for unicorns? I refused to wish for a unicorn.

Then I realized I was being ridiculous. There was no such thing as a magical well. For the rest of the day I went back to wishing for whiskey.

When Tom dropped me off on the third morning, I looked at the heap of pennies and instantly gave up. The pile looked no smaller than it did two days ago. And yet my whole body ached from hauling coins around, and my fingers were stiff and bruised. Even my throat had a little tingle from saying all my wishes out loud. I turned around to beg Tom to take me back, but he had already driven back down the forest road.

I spent that day listlessly dropping pennies over the side of the well, wishing for things like loving parents and my husband back from the war. I wasn't even married. But I kept wishing, escalating to world peace and perpetual motion. It was all just as likely to happen anyway.

By the fifth day, I had gone a little crazy. After spending an entire day wishing for a blue Ferrari, I was now completely out of things to wish for. Unless I wanted a yellow Ferrari. Yelling incoherently, I started chucking in pennies by the handful. Screw Tom and his rules. I wished Tom had never existed.

On the sixth day, I realized I could see the water level in the well. If I squinted really hard, I thought I could make out the glimmer of pennies below it. Maybe the pile behind me was a little smaller, too. Cackling madly, I started pouring in pennies by the bucketload. For a while I forgot to even wish for anything.

On the seventh morning, the pile was the size of a car. All morning, I sat on my bucket and stared at it. I would've stared past lunch, but around then it started raining. Getting up, I walked over to the pile and selected a single penny. Then I took it to the well, tossed it in, and wished for a swift end to me, this job, and the rest of the world with it. When I turned around, there was a bottle of Jack Daniel's sitting on the forest floor.

Wordlessly, I turned back to the well and peered into its depths. There must have been thousands upon thousands of pennies in there. And there was no way to tell which one I had just tossed in.