Harland Bixby was not cursed. That would imply something grand and supernatural, a fate woven into the fabric of his existence by unseen forces. No, Harland was something worse. He was just unlucky. Not in any way that made a good story, not in a way people pitied. He was simply the kind of person who always got the short end of the stick but never short enough for anyone to feel bad about it.
His life had been a collection of tiny misfortunes, things so small they didn’t warrant complaint but so persistent they wore him down like waves eroding a rock. The vending machine would eat his dollar but work fine for the next person. The grocery store would be out of the one thing he needed, but only when he was in a rush. If there was a single chair in a room with a loose screw, he’d be the one to sit in it.
As a child, this had driven him insane. He had tried to beat it, outthink it, prepare for it. If the universe was going to stack the odds against him, he would compensate. He left early for everything, knowing that if a road was going to be unexpectedly closed for construction, it would happen when he was on it. He double-checked every bag before leaving the house because, if anyone was going to forget their wallet at home, it would be him.
The routine became his shield. If he couldn’t control the world, at least he could control himself. He found comfort in predictability, in habits that grounded him. It wasn’t that he was incapable of change. It was just that change had never been kind to him.
Harland had never been particularly ambitious. He didn’t dream of fame, wealth, or power. He just wanted things to go the way they were supposed to, for once. He wanted to walk into a store and buy the thing he came for. He wanted to sit in a chair that didn’t wobble. He wanted, just once, to win something, a contest, a raffle, a simple coin toss.
But he never did.
At some point, he had made peace with that. It wasn’t a bitter thing, not really. The world was unfair to everyone in different ways. His unfairness just happened to be constant and mildly inconvenient instead of catastrophic. There was no point in shaking his fist at the sky. That was the kind of thing that made the power go out right as you were saving a document.
So Harland learned to work around it. He made lists. He left early. He checked and rechecked. And for the most part, it worked. His life wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. It was steady. It was predictable. It was enough.
And then, one day, it wasn’t.
Because something had noticed him. Not in a grand way, not in a way he could explain. He just knew the way you know when someone is staring at you in a crowded room. The way you feel the silence in a place that should not be silent. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t know how, but he knew that this time, his bad luck was not just a series of small misfortunes.
This time, it was watching.