Jerry: a (very) short story

There’s a kid in his bedroom, with a ridiculously-overfilled trash bin in the room’s corner. The kid can be any age, but here he’s like, 17. He’s insecure and depressed, trying to muster the energy to empty his garbage bin.  Unfortunately for this kid — we’ll call him Jerry — his mom’s dead, and has been for two months. Two months ago was also the last time his garbage can was emptied because Jerry is just a spoiled brat with a dead mom. 

He had tried once, a few weeks ago, to take out the trash. But he realized when he got up from his bed that he didn’t know where the replacement trash bags were, so he didn’t bother taking the current bag off the erupting trash can. 

It was a depressing presence in the corner of Jerry’s room, a reminder that he would never be able to seek his mom’s help ever again — if only to ask where the fuck those trash bags were.

But finally, on this day two months later, Jerry decided to man up. After stuffing as many of the over-flowed tissues into the existing bag as he could, he was surprised when he took the bag off the bin that there were extra trash bags underneath the full one. It was his mom’s doing.

Jerry smiled, wiped a tear off his face, and continued cleaning.