FOCKS News has its origins in the mountainous Algiers, where its eccentric founder, J. Simon Schurst, famously rescued a burning Underwood typewriter from local children using it to cook flatbread. Schurst, with his newfound treasure, was soon chased by the enraged children, snapping at his heels like a pack of Arctic foxes. As the flames of the old machine cooled, Schurst sat down and penned the FOCKS News Manifesto, birthing something both profound and ridiculous.
Ever the visionary, Schurst decided this charred relic would become the cornerstone of his irreverent publication. He promptly wrote an 834-word piece titled “The Attacking Children of Ouled Salama,” which, to his surprise, garnered Nobel Prize-like recognition.
From a tiny shed (grandly dubbed “a remote cabin”), Schurst launched FOCKS News, a platform where absurdity met the news head-on. His satirical headlines, like “Man Declares Bread is Round!” used humor to spark debate. The typewriter, affectionately named “Ol' Smoky,” became legendary, churning out tales of flying baguettes and invisible camels, solidifying FOCKS News as a bastion of wit and satire..
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There always comes a moment in history when once must ask, "Have you no decency?"
The parody is brilliant.
Where’s my quesadilla?
For fourteen months, Stephen dragged himself through days that bled into nights. Depression had clawed its way into his marrow, turning even the smallest acts—getting dressed, making coffee—into battles. Every action had to mentally be rehearsed over and over, and the same applied to conversation, what little there was. Thoughts of self-harm loomed, dark whispers urging him to quit the fight. He had been fighting all his live. Fighting to matter and be seen. Fighting to make his family proud. Fighting to set a good example. The urge to just quit came with a amicus brief. But something, a tiny stubborn flicker, kept him a bbb live.
And then, as if by cosmic whim, it was gone. One morning, he woke up feeling… fine. Not great, not ecstatic, but clear-headed. Over the next weeks, that clarity morphed into determination. He started jogging at dawn, signing up for art classes, saying yes to friends he’d ghosted. “Life’s short,” he told himself, “might as well enjoy it.”
Soon, Stephen wasn’t just living—he was thriving. A promotion at work, laughter at every dinner table, and a giddy, reckless joy in saying exactly what he felt. One night, he spontaneously booked a trip to Italy for his family. Another, he leaned across the couch and whispered something so outrageously flirty to his wife that she actually blushed for the first time in years.
“This is the promised land,” he thought.
At work, his energy became infectious. He won over clients, inspired his team, and even caught the attention of higher-ups. During a meeting where he was inexplicably skipped for recognition, a colleague joked, “Maybe they skipped you because you’re already dead.” The room laughed, and so did Stephen, but the words lingered.
What if I really am dead?
The idea burrowed into his mind. What if, during those dark months, he had ended it? What if this “perfect” life was some kind of afterlife reward—or punishment?
As if in response, his body began to betray him. A scratchy throat, a fever that wouldn’t break, and a cough that rattled like loose change. He’d never felt more mortal. Sitting in his doctor’s office, he realized something terrifying: I don’t have much time left.
And yet, instead of despair, Stephen felt liberated. If his days were numbered, he’d make them count. He took bigger risks at work, stood up for colleagues, and confronted unfair policies. He flirted shamelessly with his wife, made her laugh until tears streaked her face. He called his estranged brother to apologize.
In those weeks, he lived more fully than he ever had.
One rainy evening, as Stephen lay in bed beside his wife, he whispered, “I think I wasted the first half of my life.”
She frowned. “You didn’t waste it, Steve. You just… forgot how much you were loved. And I think the hospital was wrong about you being a trash person.”
Stephen froze. He hadn’t told her what the hospital staff had said during his darkest hours. How had she known?
His throat tightened, not from illness but realization. He hadn’t been dead before—he’d been dead inside, abandoning the people who cared most for him. The only way to honor his second chance was to keep showing up, no matter how broken he might feel.
He kissed his wife on the forehead and closed his eyes, promising himself this: if life was a finite gift, he’d make damn sure to use it wisely.
Let me know if this aligns with your vision or needs tweaks!
The office lights are a little too bright, and the smell of burned coffee is already working its way into the day. I step into the bullpen, drop my coat, and don’t bother looking at the faces of the other investigators. I know what I’ll see: the thousand-yard stare, the quiet shake of their heads, the tap-tap of fingers on their desks as if they can keep the real horror at arm’s length if they just work fast enough. I know that stare. I wore it once, before I learned it wasn’t any use.
They bring me in when things get really ugly. I’m the one who walks into the rooms where other people hesitate. Where they stand on the edge, and the moment hits—what they’re actually looking at—and they realize this job isn’t what they signed up for. Most people think the Treasury investigates numbers. Tax evasion, embezzlement, fraud. But sometimes those numbers lead us straight to a darker place. A place so twisted it sends your garden-variety investigator running to HR for “temporary leave.” And they do go, one after the other. The burnout rate’s nearly 100%—that’s what you’d see if you ran the numbers on our unit. It got to the point where I didn’t even learn there names. They’d be on leave before a second meet. . That’s why I’m here. They bring me in when the rest of the bullpen can’t cut it.
Why can I cut it? Honestly, I can’t say for sure. All I know is that something in me got wired differently a long time ago. I don’t stand on the edge looking in. I just step through. It’s like I learned the language of insanity somewhere along the way, and now I can translate it. It doesn’t hit me, or break me really. Those pieces of me were already broken. So it has little effect on me. Like someone pulled back the curtain, and I understood that life does not even hit at peace and joy. It’s simple a series of events, in which we assign meaning as to appear fulfilled. But really we are all living as we have for millennia; nervous monkeys in clothes, scampering from rock to tree, and hoping to survive. My speciality is putting together peace’s when someone not only doesn’t survive, but whose circumstances make you question any and all beliefs. I don’t believe in anything, so the work suits me.
My first case in the unit, I went in like everyone else. Green, wet behind the ears, thinking all I needed to do was understand the rules and stay focused. Then I opened the file on that first one—no details here, but let’s say it was enough to make me feel like I’d been pulled underwater, trying to make sense of something no sane person should ever see. But I kept flipping pages. I kept reading, kept looking, kept at it, as if I was putting myself back into that hell. You know why? Because the other option was to stay broken, to go on feeling like some half-alive version of myself. And eventually I learned to breathe underwater, and even scream.
There’s a psychological study somewhere—Harvard, maybe—that says the best people for the truly horrifying work are the ones who have stared down horror themselves. The ones who come into it already cracked, a little off, the kind of person who isn’t fazed by broken glass because they’ve been glass themselves. Maybe that’s why I can do this. I don’t know if it’s bravery or just madness. All I know is that I show up, I do the work, and it doesn’t chew me up the way it does the others. I wouldn’t say I’ve stared down horror. I’ve tried. But horror has been here since antiquity, it has a head start, and it know’s it’s game. You might think you’re special, or that you can “crawl across the edge of the straight razor and survive”. You might live, but you didn’t survive. You simply exist alongside unspeakable pain.
Today, the rookie walks over, the newest face on the squad, someone who’s still got that idealistic gleam in their eye, like they’re here to make a difference. I see them drop the file on my desk, eyes darting to the side like they’d rather look anywhere else.
“They… uh… wanted me to hand this off to you,” they mumble, shuffling backward. I give a nod, a little smile. They want out. I get it. I’ve been there. But if they stay around long enough, they’ll learn that the best way out is through. That’s a lesson you don’t get until you’re staring down the worst of it, and you either keep going or break for good. There is a part of you that is wants to know how it feels to ends. Or how you are going to end it. It’s a burning curiosity that lights the way, even if it’s a morbid curiosity as well.
I flip through the new file, and my mind absorbs the details like someone taking in a grocery list. The sick, the twisted, the parts that would drive someone else straight to a shrink. But for me, it’s just another translation exercise. The way I see it, someone’s got to do this. Someone’s got to look at these things, and I’m the one who can do it. Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t need to “translate” insanity to something I can understand. I’m fluent in this language, been speaking it since I was a kid. I can see the why and wherefore of mental illness, mental instability. I cut my teeth being hyper aware of feelings, vibes, I don’t know. All I know is that it was a mutant skills that allowed me to anticipate what shit was about to go off. And it’s what I relied on to rationalize what happened to me, when it was all over. Most live their whole life without having to confront any of this. And God bless them. Maybe they take a job like this to better the world. Protect the world
But this job? For me? …well it does something different . Maybe it’s because I’m not here to play on the same field as the monsters, not here to meet them with the same kind of madness. Every twisted thing I’ve seen, every horror, it’s only added to one thing: a resolve that the world doesn’t need any more broken souls. A fractured soul has two paths—it can break others, pass the hurt forward, or it can take a stand, act as a guide, see the things others can’t, and be the one who cuts it off at the root.
I’ll stick around for that reason alone.
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In the long tradition of American storytelling and mytholog, our Arts, Style & Crafts section is please to curate the following list of short stories.