“BRRRIIINNNGGG”
“Ughhhhh” Joseph groaned, he reached for his alarm clock in growing annoyance, he reached, trying to find the snooze button. When all hope seemed lost, the tips of his fingers touched the cool glass, he reached inside to turn it off.
“OH GOD, REALLY?!” He yelled out as his hand went directly into his cold glass of milk, he accidentally tipped it over, he was instantly aware of how badly he screwed himself as the cold milk washed over the still blaring alarm clock. “GODDAMN IT!” he managed to choke out before a nasty shock hit his system. As if the gods of luck had decided to abandon him, not only did the shock knock him onto the floor without his blanket into the cold milk, he was met with another vicious “BRRRINGGGG,” the shock had not short circuited his goddamn alarm clock.
So much for a wonderful morning. He thought ruefully. He tried to turn off his alarm clock, now that he was awake enough. Tried, what an interesting word, it relates everything from supreme effort to a lack of motivation, but it joins everything in the worst way possible, through failure. In Joseph’s case, his trial was one of supreme effort, one of a massive quest, an epic journey, straight to the floor.
As his socks slipped on the now milk filled floor, he had a moment of pure rage at his still blaring alarm clock, pure animalistic rage, just before his now useless body slammed onto the cold, wet floor, he accidentally let go of the bane of his entire existence. The BOOM of his body hitting the floor was only matched by the CLUNK of the electronic alarm clock hitting him right in the head.
He went to put on new socks after these had been effectively covered in milk, he tried to pull them off, but as they were sopping wet, the reader can imagine how difficult that must have been. At least nothing else can go wrong buddy-boy, you got through the worst of it, the universe must have heard the confidence in Joseph’s guarantee to himself, as it didn’t spare a second before throwing a wrench in Joseph’s plans, and by a wrench, we mean a radiator, in his frenzy to get the uncomfortable socks off, Joseph didn’t realize how far his desperate one legged jump hops had taken him until he felt the wall behind him, Ahh, finally, why didn’t i get to the wall beforehand? As his hand reached down for his table, he was searingly aware of his new mistake. As his hand burned on the radiator and as his hopes for a normal day were turned to ash in front of him, he sighed, defeated, got his socks off and applied some ointment to his hand.
Joseph put on his clothes and walked downstairs, he was surprised for a minute, it had been almost 10 minutes and nothing had gone catastrophically wrong, he was prepared for the universe’s worst at the moment, but nothing was happening, maybe the day is getting better, he thought gleefully.
He got to the table and got out a bowl, as he walked back to the table with growing hope, his momentary happiness was dashed on the rocks of fate as he stubbed his toe on his table, as he lay groaning from his absolutely mortal wound, his bowl slipped off the table in front of him and shattered. Huh, he thought painfully, that bowl looks like my hopes for the day, he started to laugh, a momentary rebellion against the apparent gods of his misery. He was silenced quickly when he realized that he was bleeding into his suit. His most expensive suit, obviously, as today was screwing Joseph over so badly. Joseph got up to change out of his now almost red suit, promptly slipped on his ceramic mess and fell back down. Today was not Joseph’s day.
Once Joseph was finally ready to leave for work, he checked the time, it was half past 11. MY GODDAMN, GODDAMN ALARM CLOCK BEEPED LATE!, Joseph thought. He got into his car, and started to speed off. He looked out, a little confused, the red octagon sign that usually says STOP, now says S- S-, he couldn’t read it, why couldn’t he… Joseph smacked his forehead with his palm, he had managed to forget his glasses at home. It was okay, as long as the police didn’t catch him he was fine, his eyesight wasn’t that bad, but he still had prescription lenses written on his driver’s license. He reached instinctively for his pocket, his wallet, he had forgotten his wallet at home.
As Joseph was hoping for even the slightest amount of mercy from his bad luck, he drove straight through the red light, and managed to hit a tree. As the police made their way over, Joseph was slightly amused at this point, his shattered windshield and his walletless pockets were indicative of how badly his day was screwed.
“COME ON FATE! HOW WORSE CAN THINGS GET, HUH?” He laughed maniacally, how much worse could things get? None, not at all, he knew he was testing fate, but he was blissfully aware that there was no way his day could have gotten any worse. Weirdly enough, his windshield, that was shattered beyond repair moments ago, was pristine, and his wallet was in his pocket, he wasn’t in front of a tree any longer, he was on the road. Weird, Joseph thought, had he broken his fate for the day? Had he broken his loop of horrible luck? Had the universe realized it was messing with the wrong person and moved on?
“SCREW YOU LUCK!” Joseph yelled out gleefully, things were finally going his way. He decided to test the extent of his newfound luck, he stopped at a convenience store, picked up a ticket for the multimillion dollar jackpot and drove home carefully. As he sat down on his sofa, noting that he didn’t stub his toe or hurt himself in the process, he turned on the tv and got to the lottery number readings. The voice on the TV droned “3… 7… 13… 6… 66… 12,” Joseph was absolutely correct about his intuition, his numbers were all there, he had won the goddamn lottery. As he stood up to celebrate, his ticket gave him a papercut, he shrieked and dropped it, as his roomba slowly made its way over and ate it without a look back…
As the demonic laughter continued, Satan sat assured, with each day of Joseph’s life that he managed to screw up in the underworld, his counter went down by one. 20 million? With each life that Stalin had stubbed out, one more day would be lived in utter agony, hopes dashed in universal karma, moment by moment, day by day. Oh Great! Satan laughed, only 19,356,200 days to go. Well, another day, another soul ruined. Satan slowly makes his way over to Adolf’s slot.