Six And A Half Jobs You Should Never Consider Getting - The Complete Guide To Ruining Your Life

Social Worker – Position: Fortune-teller

Stories tell of magical people who peer into a crystal ball and see wonderful futures. Sometimes the stories are right, but they fail to mention the years of practice that prophets go through, staring into a foggy ball for so long that they become living zombies, rewarded by a flicker of future about a dull, mundane action by some inconsequential menial that changes nothing, which they'll forget anyway as soon as the vision is over.

In the professional capacity – you don't earn much. Most clients bring lie-detectors, most are so sceptical they'll only pay you half price for a talent that took many hopeless years to nurture. Most demand refunds when you can only prophesize disaster – worse. Most have never heard of not blaming the messenger.

In the private capacity – what if you finally saw something? Something big. Something like your husband dying in a car crash. What if you became so upset with the idea, so obsessed with changing it, that you worried yourself into a coma and slept through the accident?

What if your grief becomes so acute that your voice-box spontaneously stopped working? What if, unable to communicate the futures you see, you quit. What if, after a few days of lamenting your losses, you enrol in a new job.

Vet – Speciality: Dragons

Many years of training may lead you to the knowledge that dragon diseases are so unpredictable it's not worth studying them. But you'll persevere, intent on not quitting a second time.

Your university may stick you in a small town, where you're the only dragon doctor. There, you may begin to wonder why the job ever seemed glamorous to you.

You'll grit your teeth and bare the dozens of people with complaints of exotic diseases when all their dragons have are colds or mild flu. You drown your sorrows in your work - tirelessly, endlessly prescribing ineffectual remedies for the unsatisfied customers and their spoilt pets.

Days will turn to weeks and weeks turn to months of breathing in the same smoke and fire of sneezing dragons. Your voice may return but there's something dearer to you that won't. Eventually you crack, unable to bear it any longer.

A week of rest as the doctor ordered, then onward to hunt for another job.

Farmhand – Animals: Kelpie

You were never the best swimmer, but that doesn't stop you from applying for the job of corralling the kelpies. Having grown up in Scotland, you've always been fascinated by the strange creatures – water-horses that could take human form. In the streets of your childhood home you used to scan the passers-by, wondering if each were a kelpie in disguise. Although your parents frequently warned you of how dangerous the creatures were, you couldn't stifle the childish fantasies of meeting one, befriending one.

Arriving at the corral on your first day, your heart breaks to see these beautiful beings herded in horse-form to a small pen as they struggle, their eyes blazing. You can't bear to see them suffer, so you quit and go searching once more.

Companion – Client: Nymph

Another deceptively glamorous occupation.

Nymphs are solitary creatures, too jealous of each other to live together at all. Despite their appearance of beautiful youth, nymphs are old hags at heart.

The first evening on the job, all you can do is stare. Sure, you're a woman too, but no-one can be blamed for temporarily losing their breath when faced with their first nymph. Her silky voice and graceful movements enthral you – have you found the right job at last?

Quick disillusionment follows. The beautiful silky voice is used to throw spite and jealousy at her fellows, so often raised in a whine as she asks you again to assure and reassure of her of how beautiful she is, as she asks you is she really beautiful?

You're thinking of buying a pocket thesaurus as your mind races for yet another way to tell her how wonderful she is. Spectacular, breath-taking, stunning, you repeat, until she commands you to stop so she can gaze at herself in the pool that is her mirror. Your head has already labelled her a female Narcissus, and you hope vainly for her to suffer the same fate.

Unable to bear it any longer, you speed up the process and receive a sentence of wilful murder.

Penal Service – 'Employer': Phoenix

Going up in the world isn't such a good thing when you're afraid of heights.

Your sentence sends you to solitary confinement – a small wood cabin halfway up a snowless mountain. Service – once a year, to prepare the phoenix' nest for its rebirth. Away from civilisation at last.

The time comes, and no-one visits to give or lend you climbing equipment. Shrugging, telling yourself you've faced worse, you climb.

After almost falling to your death multiple times, you reach the top only to realise that you've left the phoenix' flamed twigs, leaves and ashes in the cabin. Groaning and cursing, you descend and return with the objects, shaking from your near-death experiences.

You arrange the nest carefully, and hide behind a large rock to watch the phoenix appear.

It comes in a blaze of heat and you shield your face. You miss the moment the phoenix dies, its ashes falling and melding with the ones you prepared. You miss The Sight, as precious as a glimpse of the Aurora, the phoenix' rebirth in a golden blaze. You miss it because you can no longer see.

The Hand Of God guides you down the safe path to the bottom of the mountain-way, to a small, sympathetic village below.

Blood Donor – Receiver: Vampire

You wanted an escape. They gave you a vampire.

Vampires have a tendency to overindulge when offered blood. If someone offers them a hand – they take an arm. But you're not worried about that because you've started thinking, maybe it would be better if they did.

You can't see when they bring him in, but you've seen enough vampires in your time to know what he looks like. Pale skin, blood-red eyes. You shiver, then, in a hoarse whisper, tell him you're ready. What a way to start 2024.

You were right about overindulging. The blood flees from you like rats from a sinking ship, and you suffocate on the air that fills your veins. You wonder why he's screaming, then realise that it's not him, it's you.

Author – Forte: Nonfiction

The doctors tell you that you'll live three hours more, and they'll take your last request. So here you are, dictating. The worst job on the list is the one that forces you to relive every horrifying moment. The new year starts as your life ends.