FVCKD

• There’s a house next to yours that caught fire. No one has come to tear it down. It’s been there for years. They’ll never come. At night you hear the fire crackling.

• On the way to town, you drive past a cow field. There are a lot of cow fields. The cows stare. You pass the cow field, but there’s another one. There are more cows than before. They all stare. Have you ever not been passing a cow field?

• The locals all say the letter R too hard. You hate the letter R. It consumes the other letters. The whole word is shaped around the R. It invades other words it shouldn’t be in. You don’t think “hollow” has an R in it. You know “wash” doesn’t. It sounds like a growl. You’re not sure it’s a human sound anymore.

• Someone spit a wad of dip on the sidewalk. You can’t stop looking at it. Something about it seems strange. It’s too shiny, too compact. There’s a stain bleeding out from under it. It’s too red.

• You don’t usually drink Mountain Dew, because you heard it rots your teeth. You buy some at the gas station one day, though, because it’s the cheapest drink there. You wake up the next morning with your teeth on your pillow. You check the mirror. New teeth have grown in. They look sharper than your old ones. You crave more Mountain Dew.

• No one asks how you are. They always ask if you’re alright. You feel like you shouldn’t be. You feel like something happened you don’t know about. They say it slowly, like they’re expecting you to say no. What happened?

• Everyone knows everyone’s business, but no one gets involved in it. You see a man bleeding out on the sidewalk in town one afternoon. No one looks at him. They quickly walk past and avert their eyes. You approach the man and ask if he needs help. He glares at you, lip curled in disgust. You feel the stares of the locals on you. You hastily walk away.

©Philomena Famulok