Ralf M. Ludwig was a very peculiar man in his late forties who was was extremely paranoid and superstitious. Many years ago; 13 I believe; he walked out of the bank where he regularly got his paycheck cashed at. Some time earlier he had been shorted a small amount of money and since that day he meticulously counted it to determine if he had received the full amount he should have. The dollar bills were still in his hand but without thinking he inadvertently put the loose change in his pocket. When he ascertained that the teller had given him the correct amount of paper money he remembered placing all the coins in his pocket. Since he already had some change in his pocket it would be difficult to determine what he had just been given from what he already had because it would all be mixed together. He was completely distracted by this task when he absent mindedly stepped off the curb and was struck by a car speeding through the drive-thru windows.
When he awoke his surroundings were unfamiliar and his mind
was disoriented. He vaguely remembered walking out of the
bank while counting his pocket change but all else was
blank. The mental “clouds” were starting to clear up and he
even remembered how much change he had. You guessed it; 13
dimes and a nickel! About that time a voice said; “Well, you
finally decided to join the land of the living, huh?” He
focused his eyes for the first time toward the attending
nurse, who was the source of the question. Before he could
respond, she explained that he had been unconscious for a
week after being struck by a car.
“A week exactly?”;
he asked with more than a mild amount of
interest.
“Yes, today is Friday the 20th; a week after you were
admitted.”
“Oh no! That’s seven days after Friday the 13th!;
He said
fearfully.
“And I had just counted 13 dimes and a nickel in
my pocket when it happened!”; He exclaimed.
“What room
number am I in?”; He inquired fearfully.
“You’re in room number 679.”; The nurse stated slowly. She
was disturbed over his extreme agitation over such
insignificant facts.
Ralf’s eyes grew to the size of saucers and filled with
terror.
“That’s 13 more than 6 hundred and 66!”;
he
whispered with a trembling voice. He began screaming and
pleading for his lucky rabbit’s foot.
“Mr. Ludwig! All of these things are only coincidences.”
She tried to reassure him but nothing she said could
convince him otherwise. Maybe his fears were reasonable, who
can say? Eventually the nurse was instructed to give him a
sedatitive.
“Doctor, we can’t keep him under sedation
forever; what can we do to keep him from having further
superstitious episodes when he wakes up?”
“Unfortunately superstition isn’t considered a mental
illness so the only treatment that I can prescribe for him
is this.” The doctor said.
“What’s that?”; she inquired before accepting the object in
the doctor’s outstretched hand.
“My lucky rabbit’s foot and horseshoe.”; The doctor
grinned.
Six weeks of healing and therapy at the hospital had
Mr.Ludwig back on his feet. He had a slight limp but could
get around reasonably well. He was discharged from the room
and was on his way home when he stopped at a newsstand to
buy a copy of “Horoscope Digest” to find out what “fate” had
in store for him. The magazine’s price was $3.50 so he
placed a ten dollar bill on the counter. The cashier said;
“With tax that comes to $3.65; out of ten dollars. Your
change is $6.35. Here is a five but the rest will have to be
out change because I am out of ones. Thank you and come
back.” Ralf thanked the clerk and walked away from the
newsstand while reading his horoscope for that day.
Surprisingly it read; “You luck will get even worse today
as an unheeded bad omen will surface again to put you back
to where you came from; look out for pitfalls.” Remembering
what he perceived to have put him in the hospital before, he
swallowed hard and reached into his pocket. As he
reluctantly examined the contents he noticed there were no
quarters or pennies. Slowly he counted the change, hoping
the undeniable truth of the horoscope could be wrong for
once.
“Eighty, ninety, a dollar, a dollar ten, dollar twenty, a
dollar twenty five. I only have a twelve dimes and a nickel!
Maybe horoscopes can be wrooo-nnn-ggggggggg aaaahhhhhh! At
that instant he fell into an uncovered manhole on the
sidewalk. As his body lie twisted and broken ten feet below
the road, he painfully reached into his other pocket and
found the other dime. If there ever had been any doubt about
the various superstitions that influenced his life, they
were no more.
A witness to the accident called the emergency squad who took him back to the hospital for another extended stay. Because he wasn’t completely healed from his first accident, the recovery for this accident would require much more time. During this extended period he had plenty of time to “understand what it all meant”. To test out his idea when he was finally discharged from the hospital he cautiously carried 14 dimes and a nickel in his pocket. After a week without any catastrophes he got rid of 2 dimes and had the same result. Then he added the 13th dime hoping he could discard it when he spotted disaster approaching. Later that day when he was going over a railroad crossing his car stopped dead on the tracks. He nervously tried to start the car but it was flooded. He had no choice but to put the car in neutral and push it off the tracks. Remembering the lethal combination of change in his pocket and the “potentially deadly” situation he faced, he quickly sprang into action. Unfortunately his car was a heavy older model and there was a hump on either side of the tracks. He tried with all his might but it would only rock a few inches in either direction. Then he heard the trains whistle blow! He gave it a few more tries and gave up. The train was approaching fast and he knew he would have to do something very soon. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the 13th dime and pitched it away. The train kept blowing its whistle and racing toward him and his car. He couldn’t understand why altering the unlucky coin combination didn’t free him from the trains deadly mission. Ralf Ludwig could feel the tracks rattle beneath his feet but his fear rendered him unable to move. He could imagine being mutilated by the trains deadly impact. In what could only be described as an involuntary reaction his hand opened and released ALL the change. At that instant the train switched to another track and missed him and his car completely. It was this event that led him to believe the only way to completely avoid disaster was to discard all of the coins when he realized he held that exact change combination. Over the years he went through life walking around ladders and black cats, and constantly checking his pockets for the “deadly change combination”. Of the few rare occasions where he did find 13 dimes and a nickel in his pocket he quickly threw them over his left shoulder and silently congratulated himself on averting disaster. He had always been considered “a little touched in the head” by the other townspeople but when the word spread of his latest superstitious obsession he was dubbed “Crazy Ralf”.
In all of his years Crazy Ralf had never crossed paths with the town’s other “crazy”; “Loony Larry”. Unlike Ralf; who was rather harmless with his eccentricities; Larry had been in and out of mental institutions all of his life and was a “crime scene waiting to happen”. However, because he had yet to be convicted of anything serious he continued to be a free man. Both of those facts changed late one night not long ago. Armed with various good luck charms and trinkets, Ralf walked down a deserted alley on his way to “Sister Darvula’s Crystal Ball Shoppe” when he noticed a full moon overhead. A full moon was always a bad sign he thought to himself as he gazed up hypnotically at the glowing orb in the sky. Suddenly he tripped over set of trash cans in the alley. To his horror, a broken mirror and a spilled container of salt were visible amid the trash on the ground. He got up and tossed a pinch of the salt over his left shoulder and whispered a good luck chant in hopes of reversing the 7 years of bad luck from the mirror. If there was one thing he had learned, it was prevention of bad luck was worth a whole pound of cure so he checked his pockets for the unlucky change combination that had caused him so much suffering before. He was relieved to only count 6 dimes in his hand and then he remembered the other pocket. He slowly pulled out its contents and examined them in his palm. Mixed in with a wadded up Kleenex and his car keys were a nickel and 7 dimes! He instantly tossed all the change into a storm drain as if it were too hot to hold. Thinking he had averted a much bigger catastrophe he smiled and made a mental note to be even more meticulious in his pocket examination ritual from then on.
Around the next corner, Loony Larry was anxiously lying in
wait for the next person to walk by. The identity of the man
didn’t matter because he was only attempting to disrupt a
dark prophesy concerning him and a strange man bearing an
evil omen which Sister Darvula had informed him of a few
moments earlier. She told Larry that she could see her next
customer arriving very shortly for a reading and would bring
with him a very unlucky future for both of them. When the
agitated and extremely unstable man pressed her for more
critical details, Darvula’s psychic “gift” was focused on
the peculiar change combination Ralf held in his pocket..
“Somehow you and he will have a fatal future together unless
you can remove the bad omen he brings.”
“How can I be sure that I have found the right one?”; He
demanded fearfully.
“There will be a sign. He will have in his pocket exactly
13 dimes and one nickel. If you take these coins from him
and place them in your right shoe for 3 days you will be
free of the curse but if you fail you are both doomed!”; She
exclaimed.
Already spooked by the bad omens earlier, Ralf nearly
jumped out of his skin when Larry jumped out of the shadows
with his gun. “Hold it right there and empty your pockets!”;
He demanded. Ralf obeyed the order while looking down the
barrel of the lunatic’s gun. Naturally Larry wasn’t
satisfied with the remaining contents of Ralf’s pocket and
screamed; “Where are they! Where are the 13 dimes and a
nickel you have!!!”
Ralf was perplexed beyond description. “How did you know
about THAT? Were you the one that gave them to me? That is a
VERY UNlucky change combination to have so I...”
“Give them to me! NOW!”; Larry snarled. Almost immediately
he relaxed when he realized that all of Sister Darvula’s
predictions had come true so far. There was still hope....
Ralf was alarmed at the gunman’s disturbed tone. “I can’t
give it to you because I just threw them in the storm gutter
to rid myself of its evil curse. You can relax.... we are
safe now.”
Larry’s eye began to twitch spasmodically as the
realization struck him that he was too late to prevent the
dark prophesy from following through. With rage he fired all
13 slugs from his extended clip 9 MM automatic at Ralf from
point blank range. Crazy Ralf was dead before he even hit
the ground and that desperate action sealed the fates of
both men. Maybe before, 13 dimes and a nickel was an unlucky
coin combination for Ralf to possess but at that exact
instant it was unlucky for him to be without it! Sister
Darvula’s prophesy had only been half correct. Her next
customer DID bring bad luck to himself and Larry; but it was
because of her inaccurate advise to Larry; not because of
Ralf’s pocket change. At least I think so!.
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