Fated

Do you believe there’s such a thing as good or bad luck?

I’m not referring to all that stuff about making your own luck, working hard and cutting a swathe through all that stands in your path. The “yeah, I got luckier the harder I worked” brigade.

Fuck you, prick. Fuck you and the condescending motherfucking horse you rode in on. I work harder than most and still look back at a wake of shattered dreams and mediocre achievements.

No, it’s not that. I mean something different entirely.

I’m talking about pure luck, the genetic shit. Can someone actually be naturally lucky or not? Like, how do you fare when your fate is decided upon the flip of a coin? Simple 50/50 shit. That kind of luck.

I know how I do when it comes to it. When there’s that 50/50 outcome, for me, the coin nearly always errs on the side of the shitty call. This has been proven in a simple game of higher or lower with a deck of cards and some friends; most of whom would fall in a pile of shit and come out smelling of roses. Me? I’d fall in a barrel of tits and come out sucking my thumb.

Anyway, higher or lower, for those who have lived under a rock all their lives, is a pretty simple game.

A number of cards (eight, ten, twelve, whatever) are lined up facing away from the player, the first card is turned over and then the next card is guessed as to whether it is higher, lower; or very rarely: the same. Our game ended badly. I never got past card number three, with a couple of occasions of the card being the same number; whereas lucky friends would speed through all twelve cards, deftly predicting the next card’s denomination as I wallowed in my self-pity and luckless existence. Time and time again they fared well, then just one too many times.

And there. That was the catalyst. This simple game had shone a brutal and stark light upon over forty years of bad luck. Several rounds in and soaked in whiskey and self-pity, I felt a switch move in my head.

And then this: 

If my version of a coin flip was always a negative one, what of other's fate decided upon by my luck? My luck. My rules. In their lives.

Well, they certainly suffered. It wasn’t my doing though. OK, that’s not strictly true. It was me that gouged out the eyes of my oldest friend. But that wasn’t until after I’d made him watch me cut open his wife’s belly and fuck the wound as she screamed. He screamed. They all screamed.

Yes, it was me that left her violated and tethered to her beloved via the loops of her grey and red guts wrapping him like a visceral hug. My other friend couldn’t watch or shriek, however, as the coin (not me) left him without a head containing the prerequisite nerves and brain impulses to watch or utter screams from. Luck, not me dictated that I should try to actually shit down his neck. Now that was a messy business, the crap and plasma will no doubt be a nightmare to get out of the suede on that sofa. If anyone feels inclined to, that is.

But what I’m getting at is that it wasn’t me. It was fate. And fate has been deciding what happens to anyone else that has crossed my path in the gore streaked week since I quietly clicked shut and locked the door on that reeking pile of shit, come and blood covered body parts and entrails, still surrounded by Christmas decorations. I’ve got their cat, of course and she is well fed. That was a given without a coin toss. I’m not a barbarian, and I’m not cruel. Unlike destiny.

And unlike the man that nearly knocked me down as I walked out of my house the next day, his bike a whir of wind as he hammered by on the path in front of me with not an acknowledgement or apology. If I’d been a dullard like him, it would have ended in injury, but I stepped out of harms way. Otherwise it could have been painful. Well, it was, ultimately. Not my decision, though.

No, I bit down on my fury and let the universe decide. The coin flipped, had its say, and so I hunted him down to his house nearby, dragged him out, kicking and shouting, in front of his kids and smashed his face and skull open on the kerbside as cars hurried by to their lucky lives, oblivious to the anguished cries of his ginger twins; their watching faces ovals of open mouths, snot and tears. They may have only been eight or nine, but I gave them a fair chance.

It wasn’t me that decided they were a job lot, that twins counted as one flip. I asked the coin. Neither was it me that decided they should be stomped and tramped into the same porridge of brains, teeth, red hair and bone shards as their Dad. My dance of death on what had been their family of heads drew no audience, traffic didn’t care. No one seemed phased by the punishment that fate was serving up.

I surveyed the mess that chance had borne and not I. It was quite comical, the small star of humans the coin had left sprawled and occasionally twitching, equally set apart with bodies and neck all joining in one pulpy pile full of my boot marks. I wondered when the Mum would get home, if there was a Mum.

My bloody footprints faded as I sauntered away, flipping my coin and letting fate decide what happened to the next human.

Man, woman, girl and boy; they will all bow to providence. And I shall deliver what their or my generic luck deems fated, whatever was written in their stars.