When Bad Luck Wears a Hat and Sits on Your Face

Marvin considered himself a connoisseur of misfortune. His toast always landed butter-side down, his shoelaces spontaneously untied themselves mid-sprint, and pigeons seemed to use his head as target practice. Today, he’d outsmart fate. He’d stay inside. No stray meteors, no rogue banana peels, no surprise sinkholes. Just Marvin, his armchair, and a meticulously prepared cup of chamomile.

He’d barely settled when a particularly brazen housefly buzzed past his ear. “Oh no you don’t,” Marvin muttered, a glint of defiance in his eye. He grabbed the nearest weapon: a well-worn copy of "An Illustrated History of Unfortunate Accidents." He swung.

The fly dodged. The book, however, found its mark – a precarious stack of tax documents perched on the edge of his desk. They scattered like startled pigeons. One particularly important-looking form fluttered into his chamomile tea. Another, less fortunate, drifted out the open window.

Marvin lunged, tripped over his own feet (which had, of course, chosen that precise moment to become entangled), and fell face-first into an antique grandfather clock. The clock chimed midnight, then collapsed, revealing a hidden, surprisingly deep hole in the floorboards beneath. Marvin, naturally, tumbled into it.

He landed in his own flooded basement, having apparently ruptured an old pipe during his descent. As he struggled amidst the rising water and forgotten Christmas decorations, the fire alarm, somehow triggered by the original short-circuited lamp that powered the now-broken clock, shrilled. Rescuers, responding to the automated alert, found him moments later, soaked and tangled in fairy lights, being pecked enthusiastically by a very confused pigeon that had flown in through the open window, attracted by the flashing lights of the emergency services outside. At least, Marvin thought, his tea was still warm. For a moment. Before the pigeon finished pecking holes in the teacup, too.