A stupid fucking story that’s not even a story just a steaming pile of shit masquerading as words
This is a stupid fucking story. You might as well stop reading it right now. There is really nothing in it for you. No heartfelt shit. No characters learning things. No ideas worth holding on to it. It’s just one steaming pile of shit.
I have spent a long time trying to write stories that weren’t shit. Stories with characters that you were supposed to maybe care about. Their lives and predicaments were supposed to be so-called real. You were supposed to feel things about and with them. Empathy and all that. It was like a bad magic trick. Sometimes I thought I pulled it off.
NOT ANYMORE!
I am done writing shit stories that are supposed to be good. Now I’m on to writing shitty fucking shit that is supposed to be shitty shit. Do you smell that? It’s the smell of this piece of shit piece of writing just steaming off the screen. I DON’T CARE ANYMORE. The world is such a piece of shit anyway, why bother.
I’m sorry, but there’s really no point in trying anymore. I spent years, YEARS, getting up every morning and tiptapping on a little laptop— using a notebook before that, writing in a cramped cursive no one could read. For almost forty years I’ve done this! Making shit up about made up shitty people doing made up shitty things. Leaving their families or being forced into crime by some stupid fucking circumstance or doing fuck-all with fuck-all else.
What was the point of any of it? Who the fuck knows?
I had spent most of my life reading other people’s mostly shitty writing and fooling myself into feeling things about their shitty fucking characters. It was all a game! It was all make believe! I realized (recently) that I had never really grown up to live in the real world! I was still a child! I looked down on people who read fantasy and sci-fi stuff but here I was fooling myself I could understand what anyone felt about anything. What a stupid fucking schmuck!
I published a bunch of stories in small online journals. Maybe a dozen people read my stuff. One or two of them liked it. I FELT GOOD ABOUT THAT! Like I was doing some good in the world. Not just jerking off. But that’s all I was doing. Over and over again. Every morning.
BUT NO MORE!
Now I am only telling the real truth which is that NONE OF THIS MATTERS. NO WORDS will ever add up to anything. We will ALL DIE!!! And no one is better than anyone else just because they read a bunch of shit about made up people.
I am basically an anarchist. Really. I don’t believe in divisions.
You want to read about dragons and shit? Do you.
You want to read about crimes committed by made up weirdos? COOL.
You want to think you’re special because you can read weird shit written in a weird way? COOL.
I SALUTE YOU. But I, for one, am not doing it anymore. Good-fucking-bye.
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Jamey Gallagher lives in Baltimore and teaches at the Community College of Baltimore County. His stories have been published in more than seventy venues, including Punk Noir Magazine, Poverty House, Shotgun Honey, Pembroke Magazine, Bull Fiction, and LIT Magazine. Look for his collection, American Animism, published by Cornerstone Press in 2025.