The Goldfish of Grim Fortune
Arthur, a man whose shadow had once been mistaken for a premonition of plague, decided a pet might change his luck. A goldfish, he reasoned, was the least offensive, most low-maintenance creature imaginable. It was, after all, just a fish.
He arrived at 'Fin-tastic Friends,' only for a rogue pigeon to dislodge a gargoyle from the roof, collapsing the entire façade the moment he stepped through the door. Arthur emerged, miraculously unscathed, from a pile of rubble, clutching a solitary, terrified goldfish in a surprisingly intact, albeit cracked, bowl. All other critters, sadly, had been... rehomed by gravity.
"Well, you're tenacious," he muttered to the gasping orange fin, purchasing it out of a profound sense of obligation.
The journey home was a ballet of disaster. A meteor, no larger than a pea, missed his left ear by a millimeter but perfectly shattered the already cracked bowl. Arthur, with reflexes born of constant peril, snatched the fish mid-air, only for a freak, localized frost to instantly encase the puddle it landed in.
Desperate, he attempted to thaw his new friend by a roaring bonfire he’d started from a discarded newspaper (which, naturally, had spontaneously combusted near a gas leak). The bonfire quickly became a conflagration, consuming his entire flat, leaving him and the now slightly poached-looking goldfish, still encased in ice, staring at the smoldering ruins.
Homeless and hungry, Arthur decided the goldfish deserved freedom. He found a promising-looking pond, but as he leaned to release it, a newly erected "WET PAINT" sign, which had been previously invisible to the naked eye, swung down, knocking him off balance. He tumbled, and the goldfish, now liberated from its icy prison by the fall, sailed through the air and, with the precision of a professional diver, landed directly into Arthur's open, gasping mouth.
Arthur choked. A passing ambulance, responding to a separate incident (a flock of geese spontaneously bursting into song, causing a mild traffic jam), screeched to a halt after hitting the very banana peel Arthur had discarded hours earlier. Paramedics, after extricating themselves from their upside-down vehicle, valiantly performed the Heimlich maneuver. The goldfish, alas, was never seen again.
Days later, recovering in a hospital bed from mild concussion and a severe sense of existential dread, Arthur developed a baffling, life-threatening allergy to... fish. "It seems," the doctor said gravely, "your body has developed an extreme aversion to anything remotely piscine."
Arthur just stared at the ceiling, a single, bitter tear rolling down his cheek. He’d just wanted a pet.