Mildred's Unmoving Misfortune
Mildred's life was a meticulously curated disaster. Every morning, she'd check the news not for headlines, but for new and exciting ways the universe had conspired against her, usually involving pigeons and small appliances. Today was Friday the 13th, and Mildred, a veteran of countless unfortunate incidents, decided to preemptively strike. "Today," she announced to her perpetually worried goldfish, Bartholomew, "I shall remain perfectly still."
Her "perfectly still" plan began with a series of minor catastrophic failures. Her attempts to read a digital book were thwarted when her e-reader, after displaying a cryptic error message reading "FATAL EXCEPTION: EXISTENCE DETECTED," spontaneously combusted, leaving a singed hole in her duvet. A fly, presumably attracted by the lingering scent of previous culinary mishaps, entered her room, performed a dazzling aerial display of figure-eights, and then, with surgical precision, flew directly into her left eye.
"Right," she declared, wiping her eye, "this calls for a tactical retreat to the kitchen for ice." The moment her bare foot touched the floor, a single, rogue LEGO brick, a relic from a forgotten childhood, positioned itself with the malevolent accuracy of a guided missile. Mildred shrieked, hopped, and promptly slipped on a banana peel (how it got there, she had no idea – she hadn't eaten a banana in years). She ricocheted off the wall, then off the wardrobe, and finally, with a groan that rattled her fillings, landed squarely in the laundry basket.
"Well," she mumbled, finding herself surprisingly comfortable amidst a pile of unwashed socks, "at least I didn't get outside." Just then, a large, dark shadow passed over the window. A deep thud vibrated through the floorboards. The newscaster on the neighbour's TV, audible through the thin walls, breathlessly reported, "...unprecedented asteroid fragment, precisely targeting the immediate vicinity of... well, Mildred’s street, it seems." Mildred just closed her eyes. Even the universe couldn't stand her remaining perfectly still.