Submitted anonymously by Steve Druzinsky, who clearly doesn't understand the meaning of anonymously, but no matter. Steve, who says he's seventeen, living in an obscure town in one of the I states - Iowa? Idaho? Indiana? Okay, there are only three, so one of those - is obviously a budding talent in the suddenly very hot Y.A. sub-sub-genre of Filthy Flash Fiction For Adolescents.
F * * k
Light screaming through
an exposed window straight into my fucking eyeballs. Fuck me for
forgetting to close the fucking window shade before falling into this
fucked up bed.
Fuck
Fuck
Fuck
Get fucked! Go fuck yourself! Fuck off!
I
Am
Totally
Fucked
Okay, you've probably
already figured it out. I use the F word a lot. A lot, a lot. A fucking
lot, actually. Thing is … it's not my fucking fault. I have a
condition, a sort of mental disease. Single Word Compulsion Disorder
is the technical term; S.W.C.D in the parlance of the verbal
minimalists that constitute the mainstream of the psycho/medical establishment. Shrinks like talking in abbreviations; meaningless sound bites; sparse, choppy
sentence fragments meant to convey that a) the burden is entirely on you, the
patient, to keep the ball rolling, and b) they don't really give a
shit one way or the other. It's a bit like trying to pry secrets from a Chinese postmodernist with a serious opium habit.
Maybe if I had some
fucking opium to smoke ...
... was too fucking stoned to utter sound
Take Doctor Rick
Rasmussen, for example – call me Dr. Rick – my first therapist, back in
the days when nobody had ever heard of S.W.C.D. It was more or less
assumed that I was nothing more than an angry little shithead with a
runaway foul mouth; maladjusted in the extreme; blatantly narcissistic; classic sociopath with a tendency to self-mutilate. The sort of kid who tortures animals as a hobby. Fantasizes the murder of teachers and family members. Left unchecked,
will almost certainly evolve into a serial killer. Sorry, don't you mean fucking serial killer?
"So, tell me," Doctor Rick says. "Why do you think you use the F word so much?"
(Okay, if I knew why, I
wouldn't be here talking to you, would I?)
"I don't fucking do that,"
I tell him.
"You just did it."
"The fuck I did."
"Fine, I'm just going to keep
count of your F word usage."
Great! My parents are
forking out a hundred and fifty bucks an hour for this fucking quack
to count my fuck usage. Meanwhile, who even knew that Dr. Rick could
count, or that he was the sort of sick fuck who would actually consider doing it? But there he
was, after each one of our sessions, presenting me with the official
fuck results for the day.
“Based on my
calculations,” Dr. Rick says, “you've used the word
sixty-seven times in the past forty-five minutes.”
“What word?” I ask.
“You know what word.”
“I fucking do not.”
“There, you did it
again.”
“Fuck!”
“And again.”
“You know, even for a
shrink, you're fucking weird.”
“Keep going. If you can
make it to a hundred in the next thirty seconds, my partner will owe
me fifty bucks.”
“You made a fucking
bet? The fuck is up with that?”
“Excellent!”
"Fuck you!"
"Uh huh ... "
Things got a bit better
later on when some fucking scientist discovered the tiny mutant gene fragment
responsible for my condition. It was genetic, therefore nothing deserving of blame, although I was inclined to blame my parents, except I'd already put them
through so fucking much. I mean, seriously, how many times can you remind your father that he's the World's Best Fuckhead Dad before it's starts wearing on his capacity to express
paternal love? Or like trying to thank your Mother for the fried eggs and English muffin breakfast, but instead hearing yourself blurt out, "fuck you for the
fucking eggs, Mom-fuck."
Keeping in mind that these are the sort of people who actually employ, Oh My Gosh! to express surprise.
Without even a trace of self-reflective irony.
Fucking God forbid.....
Still, I vividly recall
the day I could shout out with near-absolute conviction that it was not my
fucking fault. I was a mutation, a sad and worthy-of-pity watered
down version of a normal kid. I was handicapped. Fucked up beyond all hope. I began to look
forward to handicap express lines at the bank, reserved parking
spaces, special discounts from drug dealers and prostitutes. Problem
was, nobody really cared. Even people who pretended to care about
everything couldn't be bothered. Oh yeah, right, was the predominant
sentiment. Go ahead, blame any and all reprehensible behavior on some
obscure, hypothetical and probably made up, anyway, brain ailment. It's like some fucked up kid who bludgeons
his grandmother for the eleven bucks and thirty-two cents in her
purse, then claims it was the god-awful smell of her perfume that made him do it.
We're all victims, in one way or another.
Still, I had to believe
there was a glimmer of light at the end of this fucking
tunnel.
But then what the fuck did I know?
