The Cursed Puzzle

I should have known it was a bad omen.

My new, still in shrink wrap, Halloween puzzle, All Hallow’s Eve, was completely ignored during the trick or treat season, but sold a couple of days after Christmas.

As puzzles go, it wasn’t very expensive, around $16, but, hey, a sale is a sale.

Only, I couldn’t find it. I literally searched high (upstairs in my inventory area) and low (in my guest house that doubles as Amazon/eBay storage). 

I then searched my Amazon sold listings for a prior sale (in case I duplicated the listing by mistake), then sort of, kind of, remembered having some indecision about how to list it.  My faulty memory convinced me that I had listed the puzzle, then decided to send it to Amazon (FBA) to sell instead.  However, I reasoned, I must not have delisted the book, and it sold again.

Still, not quite aware of the puzzle’s sinister intentions, I found another source for the puzzle, and had it drop shipped, expedited mail, just to avoid canceling the order.  Since I heard no complaints from the buyer, I assumed the story of the errant puzzle was over.

No such luck.  Upon watching TV in the bedroom a few days later, I spied the puzzle tucked neatly under the bed.  Huh?  Not quite believing my eyes, I retrieved the item, and verified that this was the puzzle that had sold.  But how did it get under the bed?

Perplexed, I decided to question my wife, Ella, who professed complete innocence,   I had nothing to do with it, she said, and I believed her, because she’s the organized one, and I’m, well, not the organized one.  After much consideration, though, here is how the puzzle came to be under the bed (at least until I find a more plausible explanation).

My office is not that big, and when I list items, I tend to move them out into the hallway, usually in totes.  Unfortunately, the puzzle didn’t get put in a tote, and was part of a stack of items.  The totes got stored, but Ella, not sure what the stacks were, moved the stuff into bedroom so she could clean the hallway (she has verified this).  She then proceeded to clean the bedroom, and somehow the puzzle got separated from the rest of the stack, and got pushed under the bed so she could vacuum.

Oh, well, no harm done, I thought.  So, I relisted the puzzle, and put it in the proper inventory location.  Much to my delight, it promptly sold again within a few days, which should have been the end of the story of the cursed puzzle.

Not so fast.

A week or so after the puzzle was delivered, I get an email from the buyer asking for a refund.  THE NEW, IN SHRINK WRAP, PUZZLE WAS MISSING PIECES, and the buyer sent a picture to “prove” it.  Sure enough, the picture showed a completed puzzle missing a few pieces. 

Now, I could be a cynic and think that the buyer put the puzzle together, then decided to remove a couple of pieces, and take a picture of it so she could get a refund.  But given the history of the puzzle, I don’t think so.

I think the puzzle was cursed from the beginning, and when I get it back from the buyer, provided it doesn’t get lost in the mail, I think I might burn it.