1 comment

Fiction

You enter the house, moving through the corridors of dust and shadows, finding a small study lined with ancient bookshelves. A few pieces of paper lay scattered on a rickety wooden desk, they are crinkled in a way that would suggest they were soaked in water and dried at some point. One piece of paper has the slightest speckle of blood on the right-hand corner. A shattered jade bracelet and dried four leafed clovers sit in a horseshoe beside the paper, bite marks are indented into the metal of the shoe. The papers are covered in rough handwriting which is littered with words that have been crossed out but are still intelligible. If you were to find the right order of the papers and read them, it would read like so:

A Journal on Lunch Luck

By Jonathan Kallem

As a student at Dullmere Academy I am (almost) legally able to submit this paper to the United Investigation Front. So do not fear being scammed!

I am sure you all know what it feels like to be out of luck, weighed down by the inevitable truth that tomorrow is going to bring new situations. bad situations? horrible situations? events flood of unfortunate events that sprinkle your day with misery. I too have experienced this overwhelming tide of unfairness! But fear not, for I have written this journal in the hope of putting an end to our, your, the world’s misery. Interested? Why wouldn’t you be? It is now time to venture forth into my experiments, I will not stop until I find a way to end bad luck. Forever.

… Please work

Day one: Four leafed clover.

After spending six hours on the hill outside Dullmere Academy I have found a grand total of no four leafed clovers… Luckily My dear friend Envera Gullerhan managed to find two within the first hour and has kindly allowed me to use them for my experiment. I spent over thirteen hours fishing in the river every day for a week with the four leafed clovers about my person. Sadly, only a toad fish bothered to pull on my rod and that was on the Wednesday.

From this I can conclude that unless one is looking for a toad fish for some ungodly reason, the four leafed clover is not in fact a way to change your luck. Next week I plan on taking a trip to my local crystal store to buy some testing jade, once again I will be fishing in the same river in hope of a noticeable change in luck.

Week two: Jade Bracelets in pieces. Pieces of jade

I bought five jade bracelets to test. When I took them out of the packet, I found that they had bashed together and all broken. Anyway, it was another useless experiment. The river yielded a boot, or at least I thought it was a boot, a mass of algae covered leather rotting in a browned river that had already passed through the city could really be anything. The jade was another failure, giving no extra luck my fishing efforts. I only managed to fish up algae? Catch algae? Ah nevermind all this! The jade brought nothing to my rod by algae, see not so hard was it? , this begs the question of whether the four leafed clover was doing some good. The best way to test this will be a test at the end without any lucky objects.

Week three: Lucky pendants

I have been informed that any item can become lucky if the barer believes it to be, from small charms to a sock. This helps with the fact that my fellow students will not lend me their lucky objects after what happened with the jade bracelets, because they find them to be such a necessity that they can not bare to be parted with them. So, I have used a stuffed frog (A plush toy, not a dead frog… is that too much info?) in the place of a pendant that is already being used. After placing it hilariously? comfortably? safely? snugly on my hat I commenced with the experiment.

I have decided to split this already because I have had such luck on the first day alone!

On the first day:

Quite a large Bass actually jumped out of the murky waters and landed in my lap, managing to pull my hat off as it swung past!. this happened on two occasions that day and already the stuffed frog is proving to give more luck than the jade and the clover combined! Which leaves me in high hopes for the conclusion of this journal and the rest of a bass filled week.

The second day sadly put an end to this part of this journal, this section of the experiments? The second day marked the unfortunate end of this experiment and the stuffed frog. Another bass jumped from the water and grabbed the frog! It pulled my favorite toy, it, the frog into the depths!. I am very extremely disappointed in this end to the week.

Fourth week four: Horseshoes

This week’s writing is even rougher than the others yet without any crossed-out words. The ink appears smeared from water.

I acquired a horseshoe from the local blacksmith. It burned red hot as I took it into my house, so I decided to leave it on the grass rather than near my books. I sat by the stream with my rod in the water when again my experiments were cut short. A large creature came out of the water and dragged me in. I struggled and managed to get free from its horrible grasp, but it took this journal down with it, so I had no choice but to dive in and retrieve it. This week has truly shown that the horseshoe is not lucky unless your idea of luck is being drowned by a mystical sea creature from the murky depths of hell itself.

Conclusion:

I seemed to have lied when I said that I will not rest until I bring an end to my bad luck, our bad luck. For I have not found any way to be lucky and I am tired. I am tired of fish taking my frog, I am tired of finding broken jade scattered around my house and I am tired of finding algae in my clothes. I have not been able to find any objects that are lucky, While this has not been a long experiment, and is much shorter than I had hoped, but I have been called away to go home? Focus on my schoolwork? I… I have officially been given another much more extremely important experiment by the United Investigation Front itself!. Surely you see how this is more important, one day I may finish this journal but until then, goodbye faithful reader who longs for luck.

Best of luck in continuing my investigations for yourself.

If you publish anything expanding on this I require full credit! Credit for my work would be appreciated.

The tired

-         Johnathan Kallem 

June 18, 2021 08:49

You must sign up or log in to submit a comment.

1 comment

Alun Williams
06:23 Jun 24, 2021

An interesting take on the prompt. I enjoyed the "out of the box" idea although I feel that it could have done with a little more humour. The writing was solid throughout. Overall a thoroughly good read,

Reply

Show 0 replies
RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. 100% free.