Bartholomew Bumble's Bad Luck Bunker

Bartholomew 'Bart' Bumble wasn't just unlucky; he was a walking, talking, breathing anti-rabbit's foot. His birth certificate was printed on a faulty printer, his first word caused a stock market dip, and his shadow once spontaneously combusted (thankfully, it wasn't a sunny day). He’d been struck by lightning twice while indoors, won a lifetime supply of something he was deathly allergic to, and once, a flock of pigeons mistook his head for a very specific, inconvenient statue.

After 47 years of this cosmic harassment, Bart decided to beat the universe at its own sadistic game. He invested his entire (meager, perpetually stolen) fortune in constructing the ultimate bad-luck bunker: a reinforced, subterranean chamber, hermetically sealed, devoid of sharp edges, volatile chemicals, or even the faint possibility of an errant meteor. He stocked it with bland, hypoallergenic nutrient paste and enough filtered air to last a decade. "Ha!" he cackled, pressing the final seal. "Take that, fate! Nothing can touch me now!"

He settled into a meditative calm, savoring the silence, the utter safety. Days bled into weeks. Then, one Tuesday morning, while admiring the featureless beige walls, a rogue dust bunny, having evidently acquired a PhD in advanced physics and the will to defy all known laws of motion, bounced off the ceiling, ricocheted off a wall, and lodged itself perfectly, precisely, excruciatingly, *just under his left contact lens.*

The universe, it seemed, wasn't done with Bart. And it had a rather dry, microscopic sense of humor.