Chapter 1: The Epic Fortune

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/MUSIC TRACK LIST:

HORRIBLE CROWES - LAST RITES,

ANDREW BIRD - DARK MATTER,

BRIGHT EYES MAKE A PLAN TO LOVE ME

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David's POV

Do you believe in fate? I do. I believe I was put on this earth for a reason. A special destiny. It's not like I'm saying I'm destined for greatness, per se. And if you got one look at me, I'd think you'd agree. I'm pretty much your average guy: average height, average looks, with mud brown eyes and scraggly hair that can't decide what color it is. On more than one occasion a girl has described me as "cute". To my face. So I could stand there with this expression -- > : | 

as I felt the knife plunge in and gut me open—my intestines slithering around her feet in agony as I braced myself for the next line: "...but I think of you more as a friend than anything." And then I'm forced to scoop my spleen off the floor, dust it off, and smile nonchalantly while choking out a saccharine, "Friiiieeeends...sure."

My point is, and I do have one: there won't be any statues erected in my honor anytime soon. So no, I don't think I'm destined for greatness in an Olympiad kinda away (although I would settle for an action figure if that was at all in the cards). I feel that my destiny...is more like: significance. I just know for certain that somehow my actions will have an impact on the world. For humanity's greater good or ill, I do not know (I'm leaning towards good, I hope). But whatever it is, I know my name will go down in history because...

...a fortune cookie told me so.

I know you must be thinking at this point that I must be a few potatoes shy of a sack to believe in all that hullaballoo... Hell, I just said "hullabaloo," didn't I? But before you "close the book" on me, give a poor guy the benefit of the doubt and allow me to explain.

It just wasn't any fortune cookie. You see, until recently, I used to work for a fortune cookie factory. Yeah, they come from a factory like everything else. Where did you think fortune cookies were made anyhow? China? They don't even EAT fortune cookies there. Fortune cookies are actually produced in the good old U. S. of A. And the number one purveyor of all the fortune cookies doled out in all the Chinese restaurants of the mid-west was Happy Lucky's Good Fortunes. If that wasn't an auspicious name, I don't know what is. Even the company logo had a red dragon snorting flames and shit, and folded in on the backside of each fortune, inside every cookie, at every Panda Kitchen purveyor, sat that fricken dragon -- which is supposed to mean "lucky as hell". This was before the company hit a bit of bad luck and folded of course, no pun intended (lame, I know). But what nobody tells you is Happy Lucky's Good Fortunes was owned by a guy named Bob. Bob, a middle-aged white balding fat guy that immigrated to Los Angeles from the Far East... as far East as Poughkeepsie at least.  I was one of his employees.

It was my job to write all of Happy Lucky's Good Fortunes' fortunes. To be honest, my job was to print the fortunes or rather to make sure the printer was always running properly. But ya' know -- we always have our jobs and the names we give them, right?

Whereas Wonton Foods (the big guns in America's fortune cookie production) has a catalog of over ten thousand fortunes, Happy Lucky's Good Fortunes had only two hundred and fifty variations all together. Most of them weren't really well written (I know what you're thinking, "neither is this!" Bear with me; I have a point to make, alright?). And some of them are so vague they could hardly be considered a fortune at all. "The path to happiness is just ahead, if only you take it." What path?? What happiness? It could mean anything! I'm feeling a little content, but not quite happy. Am I on the road to happiness? Or did I miss the bypass? Should I turn around and go back?

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