"Bad luck! Bad luck! Bad luck!"
You!—yes, you reading this story right now—might think you understand bad luck. Maybe you spilled coffee on your shirt this morning. Maybe you missed your bus. Maybe your crush laughed when you tried to flirt. Cute. Adorable, really. But let me tell you what real bad luck looks like.
I was born under a death curse. My mom got pregnant during a drunk truth or dare game with my dad.
My mother held me for exactly three seconds before she bled out. The doctors said it was a rare complication.
My father lasted two days longer—just long enough to name me before a drunk truck driver turned his car into a metal pancake.
The orphanage nuns told me God works in mysterious ways. But I think God just really hates me.
At two years old, the Johnson family adopted me. They have a Nice house. White picket fence. A Golden retriever dog. Picture perfect, right? Two months later, a gas leak turned that house into a fireball. The dog actually saved me by knocking over my crib. The Johnsons? Not so lucky.
When I was three, the Parkers took me in. Young schoolteachers. The kind who baked cookies and read bedtime stories. Five months later, their car hit black ice and flew off the Bridge. The coroner said they died on impact. I survived because my car seat got wedged between two trees. By this point, the orphanage staff stopped making eye contact with me.
By age four, I had my own nickname "The Black Cat Kid." Families would visit the orphanage, take one look at my file, and suddenly remember urgent appointments elsewhere. The nuns started hanging extra crosses around my crib. When I turned seven, Sister Margaret accidentally called me "Damien" during chapel. I didn't even correct her.
So before you tell me about your bad luck because your WiFi cut out during a Netflix binge, ask yourself one question 'Are you still breathing? Still walking around? Still able to complain about trivial nonsense?' Then congratulations—your luck is infinitely better than mine.
And if you're reading this as a ghost... well, first of all, impressive spectral literacy skills. And Secondly, do me a favor and recommend this book to your ghost buddies. I promise it only gets worse from here.
When I turned eighteen, I'd already lived in twenty-five different foster homes. Twenty-five different beds, twenty-five different sets of rules, twenty-five different goodbyes. Thirty families had met me and changed their minds about adopting me - the smart ones probably. Twenty families who actually took me in? They all died. Car accidents, house fires, freak accidents-you name it.
What are the odds, right? This wasn't coincidence anymore. It was like I was designed to bring death wherever I went. Even my own uncle—my father's brother—refused to take me in. That's how I ended up in the system to begin with. They didn't just call me bad luck-they whispered it like a curse when they thought I couldn't hear.
Now I'm twenty years old. The system finally spit me out when I aged out. Not that anyone was fighting to keep me anyway. It was more like they'd been counting down the days until they could legally get rid of me.
For months I lived on the streets. No one would hire me. Not the grocery stores, not the fast food places—nobody. I'd see the look in their eyes when they checked my ID. Sometimes they'd make up excuses. Other times they'd just tell me straight up—"We don't want your kind of bad luck here."
Then came the miracle.
The city morgue hired me as a night cleaner. Yeah, I know what you're thinking—cleaning up dead people all night? Most folks would call that depressing. But for me? This was the biggest break of my life.
No more foster homes. No more families to accidentally destroy. Just me, the dead, and a steady paycheck. It wasn't glamorous, but it was mine. For the first time in my life, I had something that was truly mine.
The clock finally struck 9:54 PM as I stood in front of the "Cold Storage Facility", the words glowing under flickering fluorescent lights. I took a deep breath—this was it. My first real job. My chance to finally escape the curse of my past.
I pushed the heavy door open. Inside, the air smelled like chemicals and cold metal. Two elderly men and a young woman in casual clothes stood near a desk.
"It's your first day, and you're late," one of the old men grumbled. He was still in his morgue uniform—wrinkled white coat, gloves tucked in his pocket.
Late? That couldn't be right. I had been staring at the clock all day, making sure I wouldn't mess this up.
"I'm sorry, I was—"
Before I could finish, he threw a uniform at me. "Wear this. We have work to do."
The other man and the girl headed for the door—their shift was over, mine was just beginning. As she passed me, the girl winked at me.
Why did she do that?
I didn't have time to think about it. The old man—Dr. James Scott, according to his shiny badge-dragged in a gurney with a dead woman lying on it.
I wasn't scared. After everything I'd seen in foster care, a corpse was nothing.
"Ren is your name, right?" he asked, not looking up.
"Yes. Ren Kurosowa," I answered, rushing to help him.
Together, we lifted the limp body onto a steel table. Then, he opened his toolbox and pulled out scissors and a long, sharp blade.
"Good. Now watch closely, Ren."
With precise cuts, he carved a "Y" shape into her chest.
"This is called an autopsy."
One by one, he removed her organs, examining each under the bright light.
"You know you shouldn't be here, right?" he said suddenly, still not looking at me. "No training. No experience. You shouldn't even be working in a morgue."
I swallowed. "Yes, sir. But... nobody else would hire me."
"I've heard lots of things about your past, Ren," He said, his hands still buried deep inside the corpse's chest cavity. The metallic scent of blood mixed with formaldehyde made my stomach churn, and I'd been gathering spit in my mouth for the past five minutes just to keep from gagging. "It seems people tend to die wherever you are or go. Do you have any idea why?"
He didn't even pause his work as he spoke, fingers slick with fluids as he prodded at the woman's liver. "You can throw your spit there and give me an answer," he added, nodding toward a rusted bucket near the autopsy table.
I didn't hesitate. I turned and spat into the bucket, the acidic taste in my mouth finally easing. "I have no idea," I admitted, wiping my lips with the back of my hand. "Perhaps it's because I'm just bad luck."
At that, Dr. Scott actually stopped. His bloodied gloves hovered mid-air as he turned to look at me, his expression unreadable-until suddenly, he burst into laughter. "Hahahaha!" It was a deep, wheezing laugh, the kind that shook his whole body. I almost laughed too, just from the sheer absurdity of it.
"This," he gasped between chuckles, pointing at the hollowed—out corpse on the table, "is what I call bad luck."
I managed a weak smile. "It seems death actually follows me everywhere I go."
We both laughed, but mine was hollow. My mind was racing. Why did they hire me anyways? Like he said, I have No experience, no training—nothing. It didn't make sense. Unless... maybe my bad luck had finally turned into good luck?
"Poisoned," Dr. Scott said abruptly.
"What?" I blinked, snapping out of my thoughts.
"She was poisoned. See?" He tapped the woman's heart with his scalpel. "Grey. Her lungs too. Discoloration in organs usually means poison."
I stared as he began carefully placing her organs back inside her body, his movements methodical. Before I could even process what he'd said, a deafening BANG echoed through the morgue.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. My heart slammed against my ribs, and-oh God—I was pretty sure I'd just peed myself a little. I could feel the dampness.
Dr. Scott, meanwhile, was laughing harder than before, clutching his stomach like this was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. "Come on, Ren, don't shit yourself—at least not yet!" he wheezed. "That's just the pipes acting up. This sound's been here for years, even before I was here."
Just the pipes. Right?.
But my body wasn't buying it. Goosebumps erupted across my skin, my hair standing on end like static electricity. Normally, fear like this would fade after a few seconds. Not this time. My skin stayed prickled, my nerves on fire. Twenty minutes passed, and the sensation still hadn't faded.
Then—BANG again.
Louder and even Closer.
I quickly bend down trying to hide from whatever it is.
This time, Dr. Scott didn't laugh. His expression a total disappointment, lips pressing into a thin line. "I'll be right back," he muttered, peeling off his gloves.
As he walked toward the dark backrooms, I could've sworn I heard him whisper under his breath
"How could they even say he might be a vessel? Has Neon Dawn gone delusional or what?"
Then he disappeared into the shadows, leaving me alone.
With the corpse.
And whatever was making that godforsaken noise.