BokkenMonkey: “So much makes sense now! All those times people said I did something but it was you!”
Aladdyn: “Maeve, I never disguised myself as you!”
BokkenMonkey: “As BokkenMonkey, not Maeve! Like when Sally Bodkin said I stole her goldfish!”
Aladdyn: “I never stole anyone’s goldfish! I freed him from a life of servitude in a tiny bowl so he could live free in the ocean!”
BokkenMonkey: “Pretty sure goldfish are fresh water fish.”
Aladdyn: “The water was fresh! It’s the ocean!”
BokkenMonkey grimaced.
BokkenMonkey: “Was it you that wrote ‘good suck’ on Ms Patel’s car?”
Aladdyn gasped.
Aladdyn: “I would never write anything like that!”
BokkenMonkey: “… but you did write on it?”
Aladdyn: “I just wished her good luck!”
BokkenMonkey shook his head.
BokkenMonkey: “Your handwriting is really sucky.”
Aladdyn: “Thanks!”
BokkenMonkey: “… I said sucky!”
Aladdyn: “Oh…” ☹
BokkenMonkey: “And you got drunk and snogged that old granny in the middle of the street!”
Aladdyn: “Uh… I never did that?”
BokkenMonkey: “You… you didn’t?”
He looked sheepish.
BokkenMonkey: “Can we just agree that you did?”
Aladdyn: “Sure, friendo!”
BokkenMonkey: “Then I forgive you for disguising yourself as me.”
Aladdyn: “Great! But…”
BokkenMonkey: “What?”
Aladdyn: "I already told you, Maeve, I didn’t disguise myself as you!”
BokkenMonkey groaned and rubbed his eyes.
Aladdyn: “Do you need aspirin?”
BokkenMonkey: “Actually, that’d be great, thanks brother!”
Aladdyn suddenly yanked on BokkenMonkey’s arm.
BokkenMonkey: “Aaaaargh! Why’d you do that!? You gave me a sprain!” He paused. “If you’re going to mix up all your words like this, I’m going to need a lawyer.”
Aladdyn: “I have a business card for a lawyer that Losien gave me!”
BokkenMonkey remembered the last time he encountered Losien’s ‘lawyer’ and recalled there was a lot of running, screaming and thrown axes.
BokkenMonkey: “On second thoughts, how about you just attend an English class? We are at university after all. Speaking of which, what classes do you have?”
BokkenMonkey was a white man that appeared to be in his forties, but was actually not even thirty yet. Years of being cursed with bad luck – literally – had weathered him considerably. Only his muddy blonde hair contributed youth to his visage because of it being a curly, foppish mess on top of his head looking like a Hobbit. He wore a long, beige trench coat that made him look like a wannabe Colombo.
Though he had been born into a well-off family, Bokken had given away most of his inherited wealth and tended to live day-to-day on whatever came his way. Usually on the road, moving from place-to-place, job-to-job, Bokken’s bad luck was notorious and affected not only himself, but everyone else around him. If something could go wrong, it would… and then some. He had tried to pass many courses at NeSU and kept failing them for one reason after another. He had tried to be a teacher, chef, engineer, even a janitor, but none worked out.
And now he was back at NeSU for a new attempt, though he was already resigned to the idea he would fail this course. Having a big, blue menace as a roommate would probably make all this worse for him.
Ironically, he hated college. Though he always blamed his bad luck for failing, he had to admit, a big part of it was probably also because he spent most classes asleep at the back of the room, or staring out the window squirrel-watching – something he considered a professional sport. The one thing that he was certain of in this universe was luck, and that his was bad. He considered himself to not just be unlucky, but to be a locus of misfortune. He didn’t want anything truly bad to happen to anyone else, but he did believe it was his calling to spread his ‘gift’ with everyone else.
There was a bang at the door, startling Bokken. But then there was silence.
BokkenMonkey: “That was weird.”
Aladdyn: “It’s probably just my clothes chest.”
BokkenMonkey: “Your… what?”
Aladdyn opened the door and there, sat on the floor, was a large, wooden chest.
BokkenMonkey: “That’s weird. They delivered it and just left it there like that?”
Aladdyn: “I think it delivered itself.”
Atop of the chest was a gift-wrapped box tied with a pretty little bow.
Aladdyn: “OOooooh! A present! I love getting presents!”
BokkenMonkey: “Because I’m here to give you all this bad luck, it’s probably a lump of coal.”
Aladdyn: “A lump of coal would be wonderful!”
BokkenMonkey: “It… would?”
Aladdyn opened the little box and took out the contents.
A grenade.
BokkenMonkey: “Holy crap! I guess my bad luck is riding a high today! At least it’s still got the pin in—”
Aladdyn pulled the pin.
Aladdyn: “I guess this is the keychain?”
Bokken’s face went stark white as blood drained from his features.
BokkenMonkey: “Had my bad luck finally met its match?”
Newb: “Say uncle!”
Losien: “Ow! Ow! Ow! Okay! Uncle!”
Newb: “Heh! Victory!”
Losien: “Actually, you should have made me say Auntie, Uncle doesn’t count!”
Newb: “This pillow is going straight to your face you—”
The two of them were blown over as the window crashed through and there was a horrendous explosion from the direction of the men’s dormitories. After recovering, Losien and Newb groggily peered through the, now glassless, window.
Newb: “Aladdyn’s made himself a new record time for destroying everything he touches!”
Losien: “Aladdyn wouldn’t…” She mused for a moment, shaking bits of glass and pillow feathers from her hair. “We’ll pretend we don’t know him if anyone asks.”
They look down at the path below them where they see Iriana and Maeve giving CPR to someone.
Losien: “Oh no! Someone is actually hurt!”
There was a dreadful wail from Iriana and Maeve was openly weeping. As they move a little, Losien got a look at who was, apparently, deceased.
Newb: “Let me guess, it’s a teapot isn’t it?”
Losien: “It’s a teapot, yes.”
Aladdyn awoke in a rose bush, which caused him no small amount of agony as he tried to clamber out of it, fell, got pricked all over his bare blue flesh, tried to get out again, only to be bowled over by BokkenMonkey and fell back into the bush.
BokkenMonkey: “I hope that grenade was intended for you and not me…”
Bokken held out his… well, his bokken, for Aladdyn to hold and be helped out of the bush. But as Aladdyn is helped out of the bush, Bokken noticed that there was something tethered to… the PhD holder.
BokkenMonkey: “Is that… the lost tiara of Mrs Cosine Chylde, the founder of Neverending State University in 1888, who lost all her priceless possessions in a major fire that almost destroyed the university in 1900 under mysterious circumstances that implicated her husband had tried to burn the university to the ground for insurance money!?”
Aladdyn: “Dr Arse is feeling sore.”
BokkenMonkey: “Sure, just ignore my exposition.”
Aladdyn: “Can I please remove the lost tiara of Mrs Cosine Chylde, the founder of Neverending State University in 1888, who lost all her—”
BokkenMonkey: “Okay, okay, you made your point, you were listening. But you’ll have to tend to, uh, Dr Arse yourself. I ain’t touching it, and certainly I won’t be kissing it better either.”
Aladdyn: “Do kisses really make it feel better? I’ll try!”
Next moment, Aladdyn was on the floor like some kind of contortionist, trying to ‘kiss it better’. Bokken hoped everyone was dead so they wouldn’t witness this.
He snatched up the tiara from the ground, which had fallen off in the attempted make-out session (which mostly involved Aladdyn rolling around rather than any actual snogging with anything, let alone his own backside). Bokken frowned at it. How could he have such good luck to find something like this? It wasn’t possible…
He looked at Aladdyn (which he regretted) and then back at the tiara. Could his own bad luck locus have intertwined with Aladdyn’s… whatever the hell is wrong with him, and thereby create the opposite effect? Some kind of awful bad luck that leads to this good luck?
Newb: “Is Al trying to kiss his own butt?”
Losien: “I was hoping to not have to speculate, Newb. Can we just fight over beds instead?”
