Fuck You Pen

The alarm clock sounded and I lay still, awake, for twenty seconds before the room was silent and I can sleep again.

“Fnord,” it called.

When I woke again, I checked the clock.

“Fnord,” it read. I was late for work.

I sat at my computer to read the news, checked off the fnords in every story, even the one about a girl who kicked cancer and was now singing in the children’s choir.

I read the news and checked the weather.

Fnord. It was pretty damn cold.

I dressed and put my keys in my pocket, my phone in the other pocket, and checked my wallet before pocketing it as well.

Fnord. I was broke.

The bus came and I hopped on, flashed my pass at the driver, whose clean, crisp uniform read “fnord” across the breast. He waved me in and some punk kid had the same shirt, only his was too big, stained, and matched his un-laced shoes. Shit, he was a living fnord. He even had fnords for eyes, staring right at me as I found a seat.

I was late and my boss was hollaring:

“Fnord, fucking fnord, fucking fnord.”

“Fine,” I told him and pulled the mob bucket out of the closet.

Someone shit a big fnord and it clogged the toilet, so I plunged it on down and cleaned off my hands with the gallon of fnord that’ll fnord you if you drink it and don’t dial a certain number.

“Fnord,” my boss called at me from his office. He was hollering my name.

“Sit down,” he said calmly when I walked in. “Shut the door.”

I did and sat and he went on talking about how I was late so often he couldn’t keep me. He even said he waited to tell me until I’d gotten rid of that big shit and washed my hands off.

“Here’s your final paycheck.”

Not enough. “Fnord,” it read. Rent was due in two days.

I left, said to hell with the bus and started walking.

“Fnord miles,” I guessed, said it out loud in front of some old lady who backed away from me looking like she’d just seen a fnord.

Some dogs were barking.

Fnord.

Some kids were cussing.

Fnord.

A stoplight lit up a big red hand.

Fnord.

Everywhere.

I walked on into the street and caught a flash of a fnord in the corner of my eyes, looked and saw it coming straight at me before I fell. The fnords were there but it was too dark to see them.

I was fnord.