Well, we could all use some good luck this month right?
Let's have a flash fiction contest (prize to be determined) to focus on luck!
The usual rules apply:
1. Write a story using 100 words or fewer.
2. Use these words in the story:
luck
chance
fate
kismet
bon
3. You must use the whole word, but that whole word can be part of a larger word. The letters for the
prompt must appear in consecutive order. They cannot be backwards.
Thus: luck/lucky is ok, but kismet/Kiss Me Ted is not.
4. Post the entry in the comment column of THIS blog post.
5. One entry per person. If you need a mulligan (a do-over) erase your entry and post again. It helps to work out your entry first, then post.
6. International entries are allowed, but prizes may vary for international addresses.
7. Titles count as part of the word count (you don't need a title)
8. Under no circumstances should you tweet anything about your particular entry to me. Example: "Hope you like my entry about Felix Buttonweezer!" This is grounds for disqualification.
8a. There are no circumstances in which it is ok to ask for feedback from ME on your contest entry. NONE. (You can however discuss your entry with the commenters in the comment trail...just leave me out of it.)
9. It's ok to tweet about the contest generally.
Example: "I just entered the flash fiction contest on Janet's blog and I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt"
10. Please do not post anything but contest entries. (Not for example "I love Felix Buttonweezer's entry!")
11. You agree that your contest entry can remain posted on the blog for the life of the blog. In other words, you can't later ask me to delete the entry and any comments about the entry at a later date.
12. The stories must be self-contained. That is: do not include links or footnotes to explain any part of the story. Those extras will not be considered part of the story.
Contest opens: 8:39am, Saturday, 12/2
Contest closes: 9am, Sunday, 12/3
If you're wondering how what time it is in NYC right now, here's the clock
If you'd like to see the entries that have won previous contests, there's an .xls spread sheet here http://www.colindsmith.com/TreasureChest/
(Thanks to Colin Smith for organizing and maintaining this!)
Questions? Tweet to me @Janet_Reid
Ready? SET?
oops too late. Contest is closed
56 comments:
“Of all the luck,” he says, in his best Cary Grant voice.
She rolls her eyes. Not again.
He falls to his knees in front of her, blocking the TV screen. “What chance do I stand against such beauty?”
She should have given more thought to falling for an actor.
“It’s fate, I tell you. Kismet!”
She wanted to catch up on Stranger Things, in peace.
She picks up a chocolate bon bon, plugs it into his mouth, and moves his head to the side. “I want to see what happens next.”
He drank coffee wherever fate and his vagabond life took him. Diners, mostly. Rarely where they put your name on the cup. Like the one waiting marked QOTKU. Anagram? Acronym? He liked puzzles. They passed the time while hitchhiking.
“Excuse me, that’s mine.”
He looked at her. A bold face. Gimlet-eyed. Fierce expression. The face you want in your foxhole. The enemy’s face, if you’re unlucky.
“That’s your name, ma’am?”
“No, it’s my title.” Her eyes assessed him.
He smiled. Kismet really delivered today. “Do tell. Sit with me?”
“Reacher!” His order arrived.
She smiled back. “Sure, I’ll chance it.”
This story is about Reginald. He owes his good luck entirely to his rich ancestors. His many times great-grandfather was an actual Uckewallist, but as chance, or kismet, would have it, his mother's people believed only in making money. So his fate is not to be a pauper, but a wealthy, if a terribly profligate, bon vivant. Unfortunately, he's also a lazy over-privileged jerk. He's too thick to even realize that this work is meta.
Actually, forget Reginald anyway. I did a lousy job on this. It's not even really a story. But it is better than he deserves.
It’s luck, they said when the new heart came right as my fragile one was about to give out.
It’s fate, they told him when she couldn’t be revived after the accident.
I toasted to second chances when I got the call about the job not long after my surgery.
He mixed soda and bourbon most nights to burn away her memory.
My new boss was callous. Rough with his words. Cold with his stares.
For months, I hated him.
One day, he told me. Then, I understood him.
Now, I love him.
It’s kismet. My heart was always his.
Rabbit, rabbit hear me say
Twice your name upon this day
Give me luck, at least a chance
To find an agent in shark skin pants
I write and write and hope that fate
Can see I don't procrastinate
I write, revise, and edit too
Kismet I leave it all to you
Wait, what's this, a Christmas gift
I made it through Chum bucket sift
I found an agent, what a feat
Wow! All those teeth, bon appetit
Luck stared at the woman pinned underneath the car. Changelings mewled by his feet.
“Kismet” he said, “is a total bitch.”
“Take that back.” Kismet appeared beside him in a puff. “I’ll ruin your boney face.”
Luck snapped and his changelings shifted the car off the woman.
“Fate smiles on her today.”
Kismet glared. “Dammit, luck. I worked pretty fucking hard to kill her.”
“Why?” he didn’t care, but it was polite to ask.
“She has the potential to ruin the world. She is reuniting Limp Bizkit.”
Luck wept, realizing the depths of his mistake.
Leave it to Lawrence to bechance upon that blackheart. "Kismet," the man said "Trade me your cow for this goose that lays golden eggs!"
She plucked feathers viciously. At least they'd have goose dinner. After that? Fated to starvation.
He said the man told him not to tell his mother the truth or she'd beat him. No, he said, his mama wouldn't do that.
"If you're wrong, you're bonded to me forever. If you're right, I'll give you another goose."
"Yes!"
Even more furious, she beat him.
What's that gold glittering in the entrails? A round stone?
Lawrence! Lawrence! Lawrence?
POWER OF THE PASS
Kiss and don’t tell is my motto—I give an equal chance for everybody to get a little love.
Instead, as luck would have it, she told the entire world everything. At first, they laughed.
She spread the truth like fire in a forest, and changed my fate. She persisted.
Meant to destroy me for my simple pleasures—a pinch here, a grab there, a compliment.
Everybody knows that boys will be boys—we’re only kidding. No harm, no foul, no choice.
To the workmates who still care—Bon Voyage! Signed: Damaged Goods
Call it fate or chance, I was the only one of my kind to survive that night.
“Ah, my bons amis,” he had said. Then he laughed at his own joke. “Thanks to luck or kismet, I shall also be having an old friend for dinner.”
A short while later, he looked at us, then at the roast he was removing from the oven. “The fava of your presence is requested at dinner. It’s bean so long since our last meeting.” His laugh was restrained and horrifying.
Then he poured himself a glass of Chianti. Or was it Amarone?
Our cul-de-sac was its usual midnight quiet. My ancient disposable lighter fired up like a boss to light the tumbler of cheap bourbon. The blue flame danced along the rim as it did years ago when we boys memorialized Bon Scott’s death.
Wonder what those boys are doing tonight? Through blind luck and chance, we’d survived. But now our fate is more Malcolm’s than Bon’s.
I blew out the flaming Fighting Cock and drained the glass with a shiver. Wearing a smile born of youthful kismet, I raised the empty glass to Malcolm Young’s memory.
“For those about to rock...”
I met her by chance, on a business trip to Paris where I had no intention of finding someone. Fate, as it often does, had other ideas.
She was plucky, a breath of fresh air. I spied her from across the bar, and in true clichéd fashion, our eyes locked and everything else stopped. We walked toward each other, inches from one another. “Kismet,” she said, so I kissed her.
Bonehead that I am, I realized too late what she meant and now I’m alone on the other side of the Atlantic. I hope I can find her again.
When good luck became real, megacorporations and governments wasted no time in dominating the lucky artifact market. Rabbits hunted to extinction, four-leaf clovers became controlled substances. Fate and chance were now mere products of existing wealth.
But, try as they might, bad luck remained elusive. Except for me. Bona fide unluckiest girl in the world (how’s that for kismet?). But hey, it’s a living. People pay big money for me to dole out bad luck to their enemies. The only catch? I’m a total fraud.
Bad luck is not real. I’m just really good at making it look that way.
It seemed like chance when we bumped into each other at the bon voyage party on the Lido deck. It seemed like luck when neither of us had a partner for the ballroom dance class. It seemed like kismet when he quoted my favorite Pablo Neruda poem, If You Forget Me, at dinner. It seemed like fate when he offered to share a cab ride home. Now, bound and gagged in a windowless room, staring at a wall papered with photos printed off my social media accounts, I knew it was none of those things. He had planned it all.
I’ve never posted before, but I’m taking a chance you’ll read this.
Yesterday, we met at Union Square Park – us, a pair of tourists watching people try their luck against disparaging chess players. We talked about our lives while you toyed with a long, purple ribbon in your hair.
I felt a connection – perfect lucidity in my soul. You’re the one I never knew I was looking for. But I never asked your name.
Luck is met – no, fate is met in such moments. And I want another.
Reply with what you were wearing so that I know it’s you.
I’m not two steps into Tony’s Bar, and the guys start fucking with me.
“Hey Gino, luck be a lady tonight.”
“May I have this dance Juliette…Romeo…both?”
Some friends, huh? I walk to the dark corner booth. For the last six months, fates had a bone to pick with me.
I never had a chance, really. Ever since that jerk-ass caught me in bed with Kismet, his girlfriend. Such a fitting name, and she’s worse than him. She seduced me. Well…mostly.
So, now I never know who I’m going to wake up next to.
Cupid’s such a vindictive little prick.
Madame Kismet sat upright in the red and white booth; a sign saying, 'Bonne Chance,' above her. Cross her palm with silver, and fate might carve diamonds out of stars just for you.
Her luck was out tonight. The place was dead; only the carousel putting people in a spin. Her eyes, the blue of Neptune, were staring into space. Cold; her fingers glowed the colour of the faux sapphires decorating them; peculiar bouquets blooming on strange stalks.
Though not gifted, she'd forecast a night- this night- when she'd be wearing her
candy-striped booth as a brightly painted casket.
I’m a sucker for a man with a trombone. There’s something plucky about those hep cats venerating the slides and bwaaps enough to embrace the bupkis method of wealth accumulation.
They approach my stool. I smile. I sip my whiskey as they reminisce about gigs gone by. Slowly, shyly, they open their cases. We lean close to admire the gleaming brass.
We share a fateful look.
The poor boys never stand a chance.
Heartbreakingly soon, they stumble into the night, claim slip clutched tight.
The trombone joins the others on the wall behind me.
Waiting for the next hep cat.
She’d been stupid. Naïve. Or just plain unlucky.
He’d said it was love. Maybe it’s what they all said.
And it wasn’t supposed to happen the first time. It was fate, she thought.
She’d made a choice. Took a chance. Ran from the back street clinic.
Now, the church bin coat barely covering her belly, she stood in the freezing rain. Opened the iron gate.
La Place des Bonnes Enfants.
Down the street came a girl. Twisted spine, crutch tapping. Face slanted.
Step, drag, step.
Two months and one girl’s lonely ordeal would be over.
Like a lightning bolt. Kismet.
“Choose your poison. Cheap bourbon further ruined by Crayola-colored liquid sugar punch, or tepid gluhwein spiced with last century’s cloves?”
I take gluhwein. With luck, I’ll choke on a clove and be ambulanced away.
Of course there are games. Christmas Carol Pictionary; no chance I can make anyone guess Mele Kalikimaka even though I draw palm trees and a damn fine ukulele.
Howard’s stagewalk is met with insincere applause. We know what’s coming. Our twenty dollar bonus check, minus tax.
Announcement. Time for white elephant gift-swap.
I swipe another gluhwein.
Office Christmas parties are a fate best faced with fortification.
“She's going to rabbit.”
“Not a chance. Fate says she doesn't go down here.”
“Fate's luck isn't always with the one you think it is, and if the girl gets to the cookie instead of the bonbon, you'll have a lot to answer for.”
“Yeah, well. . .Crap.”
“Told you. Right down the rabbit hole. You can't fight kismet, sir, she and the Hatter are just meant to meet. Of course, I'll leave it to you to inform the Queen.”
Bonilla looked around. “There’s nothing here.”
“Exactly,” Torres said. “Scene’s been stripped.”
Bonilla’s innards went cold. “Stripped?”
“All cells with human DNA, gone. Blood, hair. Even dead skin cells floating in the dust. All disintegrated.”
Oh, dear fate, no. The KISMET-II particle stripper. “You think one of my scientists did this?”
“There’s a good chance,” Torres said. “Someone’s been stripping crime scenes all over the city. No evidence left at all.”
“That’s some hard luck there.”
“Sure is.”
“And you’re saying the suspect is —”
“Yes, Dr. Bonilla, a physicist by day, stripper by night.”
Damn, Bonilla thought. Another one.
Dumb luck put her in two pairs of high heels.
She teeters around on short little legs while fate laughs about the layers of lard.
As a baby, most people would say she was cute, but now they see her and think, “Bon Appetit!” She does smell good.
Ironically, the peccadilloes of her personality collided with kismet giving her a permanent smile. Even though there isn’t much to smile about. Her eyes? They appear human if, by chance, you dare to look.
She lay in her hospital bed. "'Good luck!' you said, when I bought my San Francisco home. I weathered the earthquake in my bathtub. 'Bon voyage!' you said as I boarded the Titanic. I barely made the life boat. 'Take a chance,' you said, and I invested. I escaped the crash with the $500 hidden under my mattress. 'It's kismet,' you said, as I set off for Poland. I tunneled out as the Nazis marched in."
"Would you change anything if you could?"
She smiled. "No."
Fate kissed her and took her last breath. "Buona Fortuna."
Her next adventure began.
She plucked the leaf from the jaws of death:
some fat-eyed mouse with a taste for caterpillars.
Secured the cocoon in a glass case.
Took a chance on a fragile life.
Four weeks later she let the monarch go
to flutter its wings into the New Mexico sunrise.
He plucked the girl from the wave of death,
the day the sea broke their world.
Had her climb on a wooden crate.
Used water skis, meters of rope, carried her home.
Tenderly healed her broken spirit; gently healed his widower soul.
Then spread their wings for the New Mexico sunrise.
The 3:20 was on schedule, my life was not. 46, divorced, missing my kids. I always did my best, but, as my ex had so eloquently put it, "Your best just isn't good enough." Thanks dear.
Luck, chance, fate, kismet, call it what you will, all I know is that, if it hadn't been for that French girl, it would have been me. Her hand gently touched mine, as I stood, wavering, by the platform edge. She looked at me, smiled, and whispered, "C'est bon," and let go.
I don't think she felt any pain as the 3:20 pulled in.
The Lucky Aces Casino bus pulls into the rest area. I never miss a chance to pee.
The lined snakes out. I’m slow and fat enough to be last. A tattooed girl queues up behind me. Her stench nauseates, but I smile. My look is met with grim indifference. Nobody’s kind to the obese.
I wedge myself into the stall; my purse hung over a red sign with tear-off tabs. “If you are being held against your will, call 888-BON-DAGE.” I am trapped alright - in my body.
A tattooed hand passes a red slip under my stall door. 888-BON-DAGE.
Friends, I wanted to participate in the contest, but I won’t get a chance to write today, barring a miracle. I planned to work on it yesterday. My brother had knee surgery, so my butt was bonded to a post-op waiting room chair for five hours. Talk about a perfect opportunity to spin a tale! No such luck. I tried to conjure an idea, but got bupkis. META bupkis. As a pantser, lack of inspiration is a fate worse than banana pudding. So, unless my fingers miraculously type something without my brain participating, I’m out. Sorry! Prosperous writing, all.
Not fate. Chance. Chaos, not kismet, dredged them up from the primordial sludge and smeared them over the rocks.
Those carbon catastrophes. Metazoan wickerwork. Walking vesicles. Oozing from meal to meal like slime mold.
Scavengers. Parasites. Cannibals.
An infection. In swarms they suck the life from the very soil. Mosquitoes too bloated to fly.
Stinking and slinking.
Clambering over each other's drowned corpses. A raft of ants in a flood.
Reeking and leaking.
A fleck of crud on the cosmic boot. Stochasticity's vomit.
Rotting.
And they think they're special.
Not for much longer.
Humanity's luck has run out.
Les Miserable
It is my fate, my horrible kismet, I suppose, to perform such deplorable acts of cruelty. I am cursed by darkness, filled with sanguineous evil; my generosity toward my malignant captor knows no bounds. For my cravings are none I would willingly gift to another — burnt offerings of bon chance.
The celestial face of luck eludes me, the tendrils of her warmth forsake my soul, as the demon breathing inside me directs and fuels my rage. He is ravenous, he is insatiable, he is hateful with need, and I obey without question, selecting my next innocent victim.
It's not kismet; it's been a methodical plan. But you think it was fate and I feel lucky to have you and that cancels out my guilt. I'm simple like that.
You are anything but simple. I boned up on my cooking and I pretend to like movies. After all, I followed you for years; I once read an article over your shoulder about genomes and how we can't escape them in an airport. I can hear you calling me now for help in the kitchen and the sound of my fake name soothes my conscience. Chance, not at all.
The bondat of Project Kismet was questionable but the Big Orange Interregnum caused repercussions. An effort was made to draw a line but everyone had a different line. In the end it became a game of chance, the luck of the draw.
I drew the number four. My fate came in April. At the top of the gallows I met my accuser. She wasn’t familiar. She murmured “Softball.”
She rounded first and was heading towards second. The throw from the outfield was low and away. I only had time to scoop it and followed through with my glove. Nothing sexual.
“You’re so lucky,” Bonnie says, bouncing Chloe on her hip. “You have everything. Your freedom. Your figure. You traipsed around Paris, while I grew fat, eating everything in the house. We should’ve traveled when we had the chance.”
Her words doth protest regret, but belie enviable joy.
“It’s amazing to watch them turn into ‘little people.’ Nick is his daddy. And Riki’s meticulous ways. Mini me! I tell you...”
While she babbled on, gushing baby bliss, my mind wandered upstairs, to the would-be nursery where the crib sat. Half assembled.
“Yes, we have everything,” I say, holding it all in.
The Fates settled around their bonfire of souls, a relaxed gathering arranged for Cousin Kismet’s birthday. He was late.
“You sure you sent the invitation?” asked Clotho.
“Recorded delivery. He signed for it. Look.” Lachesis plucked a card from her pocket.
A twig snapped. “He’s here. Ready, girls?”
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked …”
“No, dear,” said Clotho to Atropos, now suddenly awake. “It’s Kismet, not Macbeth.”
A tiny creature hopped towards them.
“Sister?”
Lachesis looked at the signature again, Kermit. Oh. Mischance had sent him, but on the upside they were short of toe of frog.
Some fat evil prick paces around me. He doesn’t look at me, just fumbles with his badge and gun.
“How much longer?” No response.
“I have medication I need to take.” Nothing.
“Can you please say something?” Nope.
I give up on disrupting his monkism ethic. Every minute that passes, my chances of survival disintegrate. There’s nothing I can do strapped to this bomb on my chair.
“HEY!” I yell. “What if I peed on this device?”
“That'd be very unlucky for you,” he finally says.
Nevertheless, I have his attention. “You too. So let me use the bathroom then.”
It was fate. Kismet.
He plucked up courage.
‘Perchance, I may, take you out?’ Nerves made him Victorian.
She smiled. Devastatingly.
‘No thank you’.
Organs rushed out as pain set it. Anger, sadness, hate.
Tomorrow she waved. Emotions swelled, but he squashed them into a ball of it.
He added to it when she laughed; wore that ebony sweater.
It tripled when she dated.
Then one day it shriveled. A Christmas cracker without the crack. That was it.
She introduced her friend.
‘He accepted my no’.
Ache. Perhaps he needed it?
Her friend smiled. Devastatingly.
‘A glowing recommendation. Wanna date?’
Luck is metabolic.
So the oncologist told us. A game of biological odds. Each ancestor’s DNA compounding, co-authors of a microscopic story.
We’re building on bones. So she said.
But -
Mom started improving. Daily thiosulfate injections. We argued bitterly. She’s a better love than a patient. But patience won. Slowly, her color drained back.
She began to gain flesh. Building on bones.
One Sunday, she wobbled outside. Inhaled the fresh air. Wrinkled her eyes at the sun.
Her fifth anniversary found her building again. A baby brother in six months. A miracle, the obstetrician called it.
We called him Luck.
“It’s kismetic stuff, ain’t it?” Chancy offered gnomically between gulps of a dubious Bourbon brewed by ‘some mate I met in a pub’.
“I see it as a mixed blessing.”
“Well, to be fair,” Chancy countered breathlessly, idly wondering whether to chance another drink. “You’re always a bit hit-and-miss, Lucky.”
“Not my fault. It’s all to do with human perception and nominative determinism,” the pseudo-deitity dismissed gently with bonhomie.
“Could be worse,” Chancy concluded, downing another shot. “You could be all fateful.”
“Oh, he’s coming, then?”
“Yeah...said he had to: something to do with misfortune and a risk-taker kicking off.”
Raj’s shoe shop was life-changing, everyone said. Buy shoes there – something will happen.
“Put yoor fate in my hands,” Raj said, sliding on a shoe. “Buy today, luck in great price.”
You paid in cash, and Raj took great delight in, “I count out your chance.” People went away with shoes and a feeling of … hope. In winter, Raj said he blessed all the warm kismets he sold, even the ones with pam-pams. But in summer, Raj declared, “I bon the flip-flops! You wear, you fall apart.”
Raj’s motto: Shoe business is about soles.
"Bonne chance," he said.
"Bon kismet," she replied.
"But I made you of luck."
"Bad luck, good luck," she said. "You rolled the dice of creation and took the chance."
"I hoped to avoid fate," he said. "Was it fate that we met?"
"And I leave you to your fate," she said.
He removed all things ill-defined, leaving only the definite, only intelligence. And attraction and attachment - to himself, of course. What emerged looked at him once and flowed out the door.
“But that can’t - where do you go?”
“To find you.”
“But here I am!”
“The rest of you.”
Sir Godrey ironically didn’t believe in divine beings. For years he had been a benefactor of luck in a competition of chance and skill that ended in life or death. In this arena he was a king.
Today fate had not been as kind. This duel resulted in a kismet that nobody, not even the King, saw coming.
Having been skewered by his opponents lance he fell like a cut ribbon to the ground. His body, an opening ceremony. His career, a closing ceremony.
He offered a final smile, aware he was passing toward an afterlife granted only to legends.
There are three ways to survive a bear attack.
First, you can run. But Edward wasn’t a runner. Too bold for that fate. He’d brought down giants in prison. Finding a bear, it was kismet.
Second, you can play dead. But Edward wasn’t the pretending type. He didn’t mind the color under his girlfriend’s eye. “She’s clumsy,” he’d shrug. And she’d never leave him.
Third, you can fight back. But with Edward’s luck, he’d survive. And since I couldn’t leave it to chance, I watched the finessed bear meet my daughter’s boyfriend through the scope of a rifle.
Bon appetite.
HARK, THE WOODLAND CRITTERS CRINGE
“It's kismet!”
“It’s fate!”
Taking no chances, Liam bonded each sentence with an eye-catching exclamation. Writing a brilliant elegiac couplet Western just last month, he knew he was smart, but 683,966 words in thirty days? Any Agent would be lucky to have him, he added in bold red type.
Not wanting to waste another minute, Liam pressed “send” before spellcheck was complete. He wasn’t going to follow those inhibiting Agency rules either; the quicker the query process, the faster his money was going to roll right in.
He was sure of it.
The stench of morning in the French Quarter could turn a steel stomach. All that fate of the night, that sparkling kismet, dried up at dawn and left the stink of reality. I knew better than to inhale.
I sped soundless on the sidewalk; fists shoved into pockets. I rounded a corner, and nearly collided with two officers.
“Morning,” I said, steady.
Then their radios clucked the alert. They sprinted off.
I continued; hands fisted. Justice had stained my fingers like I’d dipped them in Kool-Aid. Guilt bled cherry red.
I glanced behind me.
“Bonne chance,” I whispered. And smiled.
Lucky Lucchesi hiked his khakis methodically off his shoes. Sauntered downstairs to the bar.
Two shots of bourbon, and he was in a fight.
“Not this guy,” his friend, Curly, warned. “Chance McCall has the fastest draw in the west.”
The fateful words didn’t find Lucky’s ears.
“Let’s settle this.” They moved outside, walked off ten paces.
“Luck versus Chance,” Sheriff Brown remarked. “What are the odds?”
“One. Two. Three,” the town accountant announced. They fired simultaneously. Died the same way.
The tour guide smiled. “That’s why our charter guarantees this will always be … the dead center of Las Vegas.
Gisèle's vile colleague had disappeared completely. Luck.
This opportunity to collect more rare thermal bacteria was hers and would cinch her American tenure.
Kismet.
Most Yellowstone boiling springs had the stink of sulfates or alkaline sting; this one was neutral and relatively safe, if you didn't fall in.
Gisèle lifted one small square of microbial mat, it looked like a slice of lasagna. Ca ne devrait pas être!
These springs had green cyanobacteria, not the reds of thermophiles. Une erreur.
And they did not bleed.
She carefully tucked the sample back into its bed.
"Bon chance, mon ami, your loss"
Mislaid by mischance, a crash landing in the short sticks.
The treeline of the taiga’s a poor place for ill-fate ill met.
The holy trinity I’ve got—water, food, and shelter, aye—but the only fire’s in my belly from the bourbon on my lips, so it’s bad luck all the same.
The white wrath of winter is leukism etched on the face of the world, the death of a thousand cruelties for me and writhing maggots in the spring.
I keep hollering and hallooing and hoping someone’ll come.
That’s what it takes to live another day.
30.03.83 19:45
B rants against party during dinner. K is quick to defend. Too quick? Feels forced.
01.04.83 09:15
K is met by F at edge of market. Mentions uncle in south. Reminiscing? Or planning?
01.04.83 21:55
B on balcony, trumpeting praise for Chancellor Kohl and the FRG. Subdued, arrested.
02.04.83 08:00
K not seen since B arrest. House quiet.
02.04.83 14:00
Still no sign of K. Recommend questioning B, sending men to uncle's.
03.04.83 10:35
Report from Luckau: K and F long gone. Toward inner border? Czechoslovakia?
06.04.83 20:20
B back at house. Bruised, limping. Has not stopped smiling.
“Well, that Clyde Barrow never did have no luck. Poor folk from West Dallas. Stole a turkey, then got buggered in prison, regular like. Barrow smashed that man’s skull in.
“He’s a killer after that. Now, Miss Parker, she always had that bon vivant spirit. You see the picture with the cigar and the pistol? Real cutie.
“Them meetin’ up like that—pure kismet. Fate. But Clyde killed some good lawmen and Bonnie followed for love. They had no chance against those Rangers.”
“Guess theys lucky to last long as they did.”
“Dead at 25? 23? Maybe not so lucky.”
There are three kinds of luck in this world—good luck, lousy luck, and my luck.
Good luck is the kind of luck people wish for on New Years, the bonne chance of true love.
Lousy luck is the kind of luck people deal with during the new years, the wicked kismet that made Tevye a poor man and politicians so crooked they need to screw their socks on.
My luck is chasing the white rabbit, only to catch a smashing New Years performance—lights skid, SHRIEK, hands pump—where pain meets lips meets fate, making the new year bearable.
The head chef treated us bussers the worst. We would joke about ways to kill him. My brother thought he’d make a decent barbecue--head and entrails removed, of course. I wondered if his acrid attitude would bleed into his flavor like bad meatloaf.
Bro and I finally earned enough money. Bought new sets of skis, met with potential renters.
Hit the road, opened our lives to the unexpected…
…funny thing about chance.
Fat eggs rotting on the counter.
Head chef bludgeoned to the bone.
Police on our tail.
Luck dissipating with the meatloaf stink that isn’t ours.
“Bon chance, monsieur” Smiling as though luck brought us together, the young lady wanted to hand me a croissant. Rotten fate intervened. I am morbidly allergic to wheat. And probably to this damsel with fair hair, an upright carriage, and a pert nose. The woman had intrigued me for weeks. I’d thought, when we met, the chemistry would be good between us. It was that special kismet you read about. She was a chef specializing in all things wheat. And when I stood too close to her, my eyes itched. I sneezed, and whispered “Adieu.”
“What are you doing!? I said give Lucky a bone, not Kismet.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t tell them apart. Pugs are all so similar.”
“What? We’ve been together for two months and you can’t tell my pugs apart?”
“What are the chances that a man would have twin pugs?”
“Chances!? It was fate that brought me these two! Get out. Get out of my life.”
Bleedin’ luck. My heel, snapped in a crack in the sidewalk.
I leaned against the building to break off the other heel—the zombie stride not being attractive, or efficient. I would miss the Chancellor’s reception now.
I looked up. Our eyes met through the Kismet Cafe window.
It was fate. In Prague, he had shoved me away from a runaway motorcycle.
He motioned me in.
“Rabbit.” He pointed to the Chinese Zodiac placemat.
“Rabbit?” I sat. “I never got your name.”
“Bond. James Bond.”
“Double-oh seven,” I said, as I screwed on the silencer in my purse.
"Nyah, what's up, Doc?" the rabbit asked the duck. **chomp, chomp**
"Thuffering thuccotash." Spittle spewed from its bill. "All I wanted was a chance."
"This is a hard business, ya know." The rabbit stood straight. "Who knows what fate holds for ya? Some folks get all the luck."
The duck swallowed hard. "Only bupkis." A tear ran down its cheek.
"Bupkis?"
"Yeah, bupkis. #Me, too." The duck spit out a tooth, which bounced on that ribbon of highway.
"This land was made for you and me," crooned the rabbit.
Tears welled in the duck's eyes.
“Kis’ me, Tom,” she purred. Her Soviet accent was as fake as her jugs, but I took her home to Mother anyway.
“Femme fatale wannabe,” Mother proclaimed. “Your relationship has as much chance as a snowball in Hades.”
As it turned out, it was Mother’s pussy, Bon-Bon, who sealed our fate.
“Cat scratch fever,” the doctor declared, pulling the sheet up over my beloved.
I stumbled home only to find Mother being dragged away, handcuffed and kicking, by two men in black. “Luck of the Irish,” she spat. “How was I to know your gal was on our side?”
Luc killed it out there tonight. But then he would: his butterscotch ancestry and debonair grin won the judges’ hearts before his angelic voice sounded a single note.
“I hate Luc,” I say.
“Me too, definitely,” says Abeba.
“His ego’s fat enough already,” I say. “I hope he trips.”
“Luc’s too graceful to trip.”
“Maybe he’ll catch the flu,” I say.
TV quackism etiquette says contestants can’t be sick, though.
Luc will win the record deal. The money. The glory.
Eventually Abeba whispers, “We’re still voting for him, right?”
I don’t look at her as I dial.
I hate myself.
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