Author’s Note: It was originally going to be a one-shot, but I’ve decided on chaptered story (yes, yes, another one!). Or at least, a vignette.

Ramen and Wine

I broke a mirror yesterday.

It wasn’t really intended – I hadn’t actually wanted to break it into three hundred billion pieces – but I was still the one who threw my computer’s mouse at it. They both broke. I need to get a new mouse, but I’m too lazy and besides, I’ve learned some interesting new ways to do things without it. God save the tab key.

But that isn’t the point. The point is, I broke a mirror yesterday and that’s supposed to foretell bad luck. Seven years of bad luck, which I really don’t think I can afford. I mean, I’ve already endured 22 years of karma kicking my ass, I don’t need seven more years, self-inflicted as they may be.

So, here I am, at the Library (of all God-forsaken places), trying to find some spiritual mumbo jumbo to save me from impending doom and seven more years of broken mouses (well, you can’t really call them mice, now can you?) and rotten Ramen noodles. Or worse, seven years of wormy Ramen noodles and another cockroach invasion like last year’s. I wish that was more forgettable than it really turned out to be. But I hate cockroaches.

And I’m really not lucky enough to have seven more years’ bad luck due to my broken mirror/mouse combination. In fact, my utter bad luck is already manifesting itself in that the only librarian here is a fifty year-old, horny out-his-ears, drugged-up-on-something man who clearly hasn’t learned the value of shampoo and the fact that the only books I’ve found on luck so far deal with luck in the bedroom.

But the latter might just explain something about the former. Which is disgusting, but whatever. I grab another book and leaf through it, this one an old tome that must have been written in the 1700’s (copyright date says 1965… close enough), full to the brim with suggestive pictures and advice on things that really don’t pertain to what I’m doing right now. And some of these pictures are just wrong.

Like the one I’m seeing right now. Heaven forbid I ever end up in that position. It looks not only supremely painful but also supremely embarrassing. Especially seeing as she somehow made her way into that twister-like pose (as in, the game Twister) alone.

Okay, I’ll admit, I’ve tried the contortionist thing before. I entered into a yoga class run by a really creepy Gollum-lady with short, platinum blonde hair who kept twisting herself into odd positions while she was lecturing us and made us all hug each other for ten minutes and speak with our backs, which was quite possibly the strangest thing I’ve ever endured. My friend said that most yoga classes aren’t like that, and tried to convince me to go to another one, but I wasn’t brave enough.

I pull another book out of the case a little to hard and it tilts toward me threateningly. I yell and jump out of the way, but it just sits back up. Typical.

Even my bad luck likes to make fun of me.

The door opens and I hear someone rush in, muttering about the rain and thunder and I glance back, half-expecting to see Macaulay Culkin talking to Christopher Lloyd before I remind myself that this is not the Pagemaster (though, admittedly, it’d be cool if it were. I’d be having a lot more fun).

Some tall guy is standing there, shaking off rainwater.

Ah, shite. It’s raining. I walked here.

I sigh and turn back to the wannabe porno, tell-the-future crap I’m trying to save myself with and have to wonder why I bother. The only karma I’ve ever cared about is the karma that has four wheels and an engine and may (or in my case, may not) run when a key is turned in the slot. But desperate times call for desperate measures and my tantrum yesterday has certainly turned my bad luck into a desperate time.

I am so stupid. I can’t believe I broke my mirror. Now I’ll look even worse in the morning, and my roommate is going to tear my heart out with a butter knife and feast on it for lunch tomorrow. Or breakfast. Depends on how fast and far I can run before she figures out that I not only destroyed the mirror, but the computer mouse, too.

I warned her when I moved in that I break things by just glancing at them. She thought I was kidding until I somehow shattered her supposedly shatterproof pot set. At least she got a refund, though the man who sold it to her couldn’t understand what had happened. And, seeing as I pointed to my cat the entire time and made up a wholly unbelievable, incredibly stupid and vague story about something (not me!) startling Maurice and making him jump (three feet high, apparently, because it was on the counter and Maurice is afraid of heights and would never in a million years climb on the counter) and knock off the pot.

It goes to show how incredibly stupid my roommate is that she actually believed me.

But still. And again, finding nothing that could feasibly help me in the porno.

“Well, hello.” I snap the book closed and turn five shades of red in quick succession as the man (the one I half-expected to be Macaulay Culkin) walks up behind me.

“It’s a long story, don’t ask me why I’m – Oh.” I stop my rant dead in its tracks as I realize whom I’m talking to. Jared Wardlow. Ex-Fiancé and jackass extraordinaire. Needless to say, I don’t in any way, shape, or form wish to discuss life (or, more importantly, the book in my hand) with Jared Wardlow. Especially not after I flushed his stupid ring down the toilet.

Which I really shouldn’t have done, seeing as that ring must have cost him a good 3-400 dollars, and I could have easily sold it and lived in dorm-room semi-luxury for three days. But I’m an idiot.

“Ask you why what, Lise?”

“None of your business, and don’t call me Lise.”

I re-e-e-e-ally loathe Jared Wardlow.

“Oh, come on. You know you want to talk to me. And I happen to know that your car is not in that parking lot, so you most likely taxied or walked here, so you won’t be leaving any time soon. What better time to catch up on things?”

“I would rather eat my own soul.” I don’t know how you’d do it, but I’d find a way, if that’s what it takes to get rid of Jared before I forcibly remove him from the gene pool. Now, whether that involves death or the decidedly more satisfying castration, well, that depends on how much he pisses me off before the rain stops. If he’s lucky, I’ll just kill him with a self-help book.

“That would be difficult, seeing as you don’t have a soul.”

That might have stung if he hadn’t used it eight thousand times before. “Clever, Wardlow. Go piss off the gods elsewhere.”

“Putting yourself in high company there, aren’t you, Lise?”

“Don’t call me Lise.”

“Lise.”

I have a very, very, very short temper. Which might explain why, as of an hour later, I’m sitting in front of the police, explaining why I attacked Jared Wardlow with Luck and How it Affects You

Let the bad luck begin.

--

“Hey, Bree… No, I’m fine… Well, actually, I’m in the police station… Oh, it’s not much, I just… Well, I ran into Jared… Yes, Wardlow. And I hit him with a book because he wouldn’t shut up. So I’m at the police station… No, he says he isn’t pressing charges… Anyway, can you come and pick me up?”

Praying to God, Allah, Buddha, the trees, the road, and my dead grandmother that Bree will, in fact, pull through and care enough to save me from this hell, I take a seat on the crappy cot of the jail cell next to Hannah, the biggest Hell’s Angel I have ever seen, let alone been stuck in close proximity with. I wish I was kidding about that.

And she’s giving me scary looks. Like “I’m going to eat you” looks. Hurry up, Bree.

The policeman has decided that he really likes talking to Jared, and apparently because Jared enjoys making my little piece of hell stink even more like brimstone, is sitting right next to my cell door, chatting with the police officer and casually dropping hints that he’s better than me.

Asshole.

Jared and I split up over a year ago, when some lady I hardly knew asked how I was doing after our breakup, and when I asked her why she was asking she told me that she had “seen him with his new girlfriend the other day in the park.” I didn’t believe her at first, but then I found this new girlfriend’s… accessories, shall we say? A satin, sheer, black bra that I have neither the body nor the money for, on the floor of my apartment, where he had claimed to be waiting for me “for nearly two hours” the day before.

I asked him about it, thinking, I dunno, maybe a friend was with him and brought his girlfriend along (keep in mind, I intended to marry him. I was really, really, blindly in love with him). But no. He just grinned and acted all smug about it, like I was supposed to be proud of him for nailing some other woman in his spare time. That was when I flushed his ring down the toilet and told him that if he ever dared to speak to me again, I would show him the meaning of “pain”. And then I ran over to my best friend, Anna’s apartment and cried for three hours while her husband interjected how much of an asshole Jared really was.

Anna’s husband is a really nice guy. If she hadn’t married him, I would have.

But now, Jared has decided to laugh in my face, discussing his new fiancée and how much of a friggin trophy wife she is. And the worst part is, there’s nothing I can do about it, and he knows this, the scumbag.

“Oh, yes. Rachel is a computer programmer, she studied at MIT, graduated top of her class.” I already hate her.

“Wow, she must be something. Pity we can’t all get that lucky.” The policeman says, leaning back in his seat and sighing, which I’ve learned is his way to stare down my shirt, so I shift and turn to sit against the wall. It would be a good thing, except that now I’m facing Hannah, who is also attempting to stare down my shirt.

Dammit, Bree. Where are you?