posted
Taken from a brilliant mind at SomethingAwful:
You wake up at Southampton. Every turn and curve, when the bus leaned too much to one side, I prayed for a crash. That moment cures my insomnia with narcolepsy when we might die helpless and packed human tobacco in the triple-decker. This is how I met Lord Voldemort. You wake up at Aberdeen. You wake up at Cambridge. You wake up at Cardiff. Life insurance pays off triple if you die on a business trip. I prayed for a spell failure. I prayed for the disruption of Sidney's Sudden Stoppage Spell so we would slam into a muggle courthouse at a thousand miles an hour. A lapse of the Somebody Else's Problem enchantment that kept the muggle drivers from noticing the ridiculous triple-decker barrelling the wrong way down their highways, weaving in and out of traffic. On departure, as the bus raced out the terminal and into the muggles' road system, with the seats in full upright position and our beds sliding around like billiards on a pool table during an earthquake and all personal carry-on baggage in the overhead compartment, I prayed for a crash. You wake up at York.
...
Wherever I'm going, I'll be there to apply the formula. I'll keep the secret intact. It's simple arithmancy. It's a story problem. If a new broomstick built by my company leaves London travelling north at 60 miles per hour, and the dorsal bristles stiffen up, and the broom crashes and burns killing the ten-year old orphan trying out for Seeker on the neighborhood Quiddich team, does my company initiate a recall? You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C). A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a recall. If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the brooms and no one gets hurt. If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall. Everywhere I go, there's a burned-up crumpled-up stick of a broom waiting for me. I know where all the skeletons are. Consider this my job security.
...
I melt and swell at the moment of arrival when the bus slams to a stop but inertia hangs about for a split second in the decision to keep trying to move the bus into the building or be shunted off into a pocket dimension created by the enchantment. For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you're gone. Not your luggage. Nothing matters. Not your bad breath. The windows are dark outside and the brakes are squealing. Inertia decides to tell the wizarding world to go hang, and you will never have to file another expense account claim. Receipt required for items over twenty-five sickles. You will never have to get another haircut. A thud, and the gentle bump of inertia going elsewhere. The staccato of a hundred seatbelt buckles snapping open, and the single-use friend you almost died sitting next to says: I hope you make your connection. Yeah, me too.
Posts: 2258 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
is that the whole thing? if not can you link to it? a cursory search at somethingawful didn't reveal it...
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
No, it was posted in the forums by some evil genius.
And Chuck did write something like a fantasy novel. It's called Lullaby, it's about an African death curse that somehow gets printed in a children's book of lullabies. Parents all around America start singing it totheir children, only to wind up finding them dead in the morning.
As with all of his books, it's very guesome and very twisted.
Posts: 2258 | Registered: Aug 2003
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