It was as though the god of luck had cursed him.
Mickey Hallan thought of Lenith as a miserly kind of god, more gifting of curses than a bit of good fortune here and there. Sad eyed and mopey, Lenith regularly cursed people like Mickey for no apparent reason; special curses that turned sure odds into something as flaky as a bookkeeper’s smile. It seemed that the god of luck only dealt in the kind of rundown gutter-bound, penniless kind of fortune that was better suited in a copper penny paperback than real life, this life.
Stepping into a puddle and feeling as if there was no place as low this, Mickey, the taciturn cultist, stopped for a moment and let his shoulders drop.
What had he done to deserve anything? Sure, he lied and stole a bit, but that was the trick with clean-handed slow crimes. Nobody got hurt in slow crimes.
But what about the crimes of luck? Well luck had decided that he should be robbed; luck had decided that a cult leader should order him around for less than a thug’s wages; and worst of all, luck had ordained that he should be asked to find the robbers and ask if they would like to join a cult. What an errand! What a foolish ramble that he, himself had smuggled his way into. Mickey knew that he had a problem, he knew that his mouth was usually too smart for his brain. It was just that lies were all too reachable as he spoke, that the stories he would imagine in his head were too easily spun into balls of deceitful yarn. He had said that the horse thieves were indoctrinated into the cult, he had made himself out to be clever.
Clever people get more responsibility, he almost spat, but smart people act dumb and enjoy having none.
But the worst thing to happen? The very worst section of this entire misbegotten day? All the money that he had made was still in the bookshop’s till.  Â
A fearsome kind of rain snapped down over Sandulk like a pin cushion, upended and unknowingly stepped on in the dark. There was cruel cold to the night that loped across the cloud line with a lingering cough held in its grubby pockets. Locked doors where lightless and providing no warmth, gas lamps were dim in the cold tumult, the fire inside hunching downward as if it were afraid.
Sandulk was a miserable place in any weather but for Mickey Hallan, it was especially miserable tonight.
With one wet shoe and an over-stressed umbrella, Mickey ducked into the shelter of an awning and shook some of the clinging rain from his coat and flat cap.
It was adjacently beautiful in many ways, this moss-covered city, Mickey thought as he tried to stamp some warmth into his foot. A great stone set of arches lined the street and supported an overlooking level above, providing a decently covered walkway in the accidental benefits of good architecture. It had an age to it that the small-time thief was unable to ponder. Newer buildings blossom as the city grew. A place emerging from well-made rubble, Mickey laughed at the thought.
Following the archway, A light soon streaked across the floor with a welcoming glow laced between the stone columns. A tavern, humming with burble of merry voices, built into the wall. The sound of glassware clinking, and warm air rolled out into the night. It whispered on smoke clouds and sung hitherto pleasantries to any who happened past.
Mickey wasn’t much for drinking, but he loved taverns. They were warm places of compromised reason and blurring odds. He and Colin had made good money from the pot-valiant drunks of Lundra, whose bravery dropped away when met with knifepoint as they left.
How did all this feel so long ago?
Micky took a moment to bow his head against the old stone wall and apologise to Lenith. It was no good to curse bad luck when misfortune was something that could be passed off onto others. The trick with something bad, he thought, was that it should be direct off towards an innocent bystander before anyone had the chance to say otherwise. If you knew how to manipulate her curses, the luck of old Lenith would always be on your side.
~
Two-thousand years prior, a stone mason rested his head on this same wall and lamented having to build another archway.
The mason didn’t hate archways, it was just that they were always more trouble than they were worth building. Would they stay standing forever? Would anyone care about their beauty when enough time had passed?
Feeling a scatter of sand fall upon his neck, the stone mason looked up and saw that a small section of the brickwork gutter had fallen away, a tiny scar in the overflow watercourse of a city where it barely ever rained. Seeing no ladder and weary for ten days of labour, the mason wondered if anyone would notice and decided to leave its repair for another day.
Time, noticed. The rain, noticed.
Drip by drip, two-thousand years of a rainstorm fell with interminability, and a mathematically perfect guttering system had finally received its first checksum error. If the rain were to fall at this particular angle, and if its velocity should be as accurate to how if fell on this night, then a trickle, the smallest bead of water would then find its way into the dusty gutter system and a drip would fall through this long-forgotten crack.
Sighing and hearing the familiar patter of rain fall behind him, Mickey finished his prayer to Lenith and wondered why it had gotten so cold all of a sudden.
Leaning back from the stone, a sudden drip from the gutter above fell with such accuracy as to land down the back of his coat and sent a shiver down his unexpectant spine that was as if a graveyard had snuck up and whispered that it was happy to see him. Starting forward, Mickey had no other option but to bring his face directly into the stonework and then snap his head backward as he fell into the unconscious darkness of cobbled street.
Luck, Mickey thought in the dreaming half-light of unconsciousness, don’t talk to me about luck.
J. McCray
2023
Sunday Short Stories 