Barty Blackwood's Cosmic Punchline

Bartholomew "Barty" Blackwood’s relationship with luck was less a casual acquaintance and more a sworn blood enemy. Every silver lining in Barty’s life came with a dark, thunderous cloud—usually one that dropped a piano. That Tuesday, it began with a stubborn shoelace that spontaneously combusted, singeing his favorite argyle sock. A minor inconvenience, he thought, until his umbrella, purchased specifically for the predicted monsoon, inverted itself into a useless, skeletal cage the moment the first drop hit. He then slipped on a discarded lottery ticket (a winning one, of course, which fluttered into a sewer grate as he fell), landed in a puddle of what he sincerely hoped was just rainwater, and bumped his head on a sign advertising "Unbeatable Luck Charms."

He finally made it to work, only to discover his desk had been replaced by a small, sentient black hole. His boss, ever the understanding one, fired him for "disrupting company-wide quantum stability." Dejected, Barty decided a change of scenery might help. He booked the cheapest flight he could find, which, naturally, was scheduled on Friday the 13th, via a carrier named 'Hindenburg Air'. Mid-flight, the plane encountered an unexpected phenomenon: a flock of migratory anvils. As the plane plummeted, Barty, surprisingly calm, pulled out his phone to text his last goodbyes. But before he could send it, his battery died. The plane crashed, miraculously, into an emergency inflatable bouncy castle set up for a charity event. Barty was the only survivor. He crawled out, covered in a sticky sweet substance, only to be immediately flattened by the *actual* meteor that had been heading for the plane all along, but had been slightly delayed by a tailwind. As he lay there, a final, ironic thought sparked: at least he wouldn't have to clean the sticky sweet residue off his clothes. Then, his lottery ticket, which had somehow avoided the sewer, landed on his corpse. It was still a winner.