Fucked: A Very Very Short Story

“How fucked are we?”

Malmsten asked the question with the tone of someone who’s perfectly aware of how badly they are fucked, but who wants to hear someone else verbalize and confirm it.

“It’s bad,” said Powers.

“How bad?”

“It’s ‘levels of complete and total fuckery’ bad, sir.”

“Fuck,” said Malmsten.

There were four of them — Malmsten, Powers, Jones and Stempek, and they were all very aware of how fucked they were. The levels of collective fuckery were off the charts here. Their individual levels of expertise in their respective fields gave them all absolutely no doubt as to how fucked the situation was.

“How are we fucked?” Malmsten asked, hoping for action.

“It’s difficult to explain, sir,” said Powers. “But I can tell you without a doubt that we are most certainly and completely fucked.”

“Totally.”

“Yes.”

“Fucked.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dammit,” said Malmsten. “So how do we get out of this situation?”

As they spoke, from the north there came a great pounding, as if someone was successively striking steady blows from a giant hammer. A god-drummer, pounding away. Everything in the room jumped a small distance into the air every time a blow was struck.

“It’s tricky, sir,” said Stempek. “Given the amount of fuckedness we’re experiencing, this could be an unfuckable situation.”

“There’s no such thing as an unfuckable situation,” stated Jones, wagging his finger at Stempek. He said it loudly and forcefully but his eyes were bulging out of his skull and he was sweating right through his officer uniform.

“I think we may have just discovered one,” said Stempek grimly.

“If this is unfuckable,” said Malmsten (and the rhythmic pounding was starting to get louder now, with each one sounding bigger and closer). “Then how did we get so fucked in the first place?”

“I have a theory, sir,” said Powers, and everyone leaned in to listen to him.

Powers raised his voice to be heard over the increasingly louder pounding. Small amounts of debris and dust began to fall from the ceiling like torn packets of Sweet N’ Low, sprinkling the table and the floor.

“Well, let’s hear it, then, man,” said Jones. “We’re all trying to not be fucked here! Anything could help!”

“We got this fucked because — “

Before Powers could finish, there was a tremendous cracking as the roof and floor both gave way and the four suited men were swept away in a chaos of drywall and cement and steel.

“FUUUUCK!” they all screamed.