It was a dreary day when I arrived in Spoons, but that was all to be expected. Spoons in the dreariest place on Earth, where it rains practically every day without end. My father Charles was waiting for me at the small, tiny, miniscule little airport, which was nothing but a strip of deep, midnight, jet black tarmac with white lines drawn on it, and green, green grass all around the sides, and big, stormy, grey, heavy thunderclouds hovering ominously, threatening and menacingly overhead, in the sky up above. I sighed in deep chagrin as I approached Charles' car. It had a huge, embarrassing, humiliating slogan on the side, which read 'CHARLES PEACOCK, PURVEYOR OF FINE MEATS'. My father was the only butcher in the town of Spoons. He always went around proclaiming he was the best butcher in Spoons, but everyone knew that wasn't true: he was prone to sneaking bits of minced feral cat into his famous meat pies.

"Hey, Billie-Marie-Sarah-Anne," Charles said awkwardly as I neared his embarrassing little Daihatsu. I sighed in chagrin and opened my pretty, full, red mouth to reply.

"It's just Bill, Ch… dad," I said, rolling my pretty, chocolate brown eyes, the exact colour of ten-year-old oak wood soaked in caramel latte under the full moon for 2 days. I never called my father 'Charles' to his face, but it was a bit embarrassing admitting that I was related to him when out in public. Charles shuffled his feet a bit to cover his awkward inept self-consciousness, and opened the car door for me.

As I made to squeeze into the little car, I tripped over a blade of grass and went flying, landing on my hands and knees with my head just about resting on the front passenger seat. I let out an unearthly, wailing yowl and began to curse my luck, my father, Spoons, God, grass, and just about everything I could think of. Charles, who was distractedly calling out a goodbye to one of the air strip workers, absently slammed the car door. The metal side caught me smack in the side of the face. I reeled in pain, seeing cartoon-style stars as my relatively small brain bounced freely around the cavernous inside of my skull.

"Charles, you motherfucker!" I screeched. It was probably for the best that I was trying to open the car door with my tongue at the same time, so my oath came out as a garbled shriek. After several failed attempts and with much drool around my eyebrows, owing to an overzealous aim, Charles noticed his mistake. His face was a blank and apologetic mask of chagrin as he opened the door and heaved me into the car by my limp wrists. After having had them broken so many times, owing to my extreme and crippling clumsiness, I never bothered having them splinted or cast anymore. I'd broken them at least three times on the plane coming here. The manufacturers of Pepsi are going to be receiving a very angry letter sometime soon, reprimanding them for making soda can tabs impossible to manipulate.

On the long and boring drive into Spoons proper, I moodily slumped down in the seat, nursing my broken wrists, slobbery eyebrows and badly battered face. While I sulked, I thought back nostalgically to my childhood. I had grown up in Las Vegas, Nevada; with my mother Renata. At an early age she had taken to showing me what is known as 'the ropes' (a technical term). I believe I was around five years old when she began taking me to dance lessons – pole-dancing, that is. I sat in the corner and watched as my mother, along with a myriad of other cranky, flabby women, twirled around a metal pole wearing clothing of which the entire mass was the approximate size of a postage stamp. It was then, even at such a young age, that I knew I would have to take care of my mother like she couldn't take care of me.

It started out gradually: soon I was accompanying her to every one of her pole-dancing lessons. After a few years she was teaching me how to roll drunks for their spare change, smack up them hoes what don't got no respect for nobody, and always substitute half the cocaine with icing sugar so you've got some left over for your own reserves. Along with these duties, and once I was a bit older, I took on even more responsibilities: fetching her smokes and cheap cask wine, playing the pokies for her, doubling her on my bike to her escort (read: prostitution) appointments, and calling up her pimp for her when she was too hung-over to work.

I love my mother. My poor, hard-done-by, harebrained mother. I felt terrible leaving her and coming to Spoons, to live with the man she had been married to for 3 months after he'd knocked her up. But still, I was content knowing that there was, at least, someone to watch out for her: her new pimp, Harry.

My thoughts wandered even further, and I started thinking about myself, which is nothing unusual. I'm a bit of a loner. By choice, of course – I'm not a weirdo loner or anything. I just don't fit in with anyone my age because I'm so special and unique. When I tried talking to my mother Renata about this one day, she went red in the face and started saying that she didn't know crystal methamphetamine would affect her unborn child, nobody had told her, and anyway, she didn't even know she was pregnant with me until her water broke all over the bargain bins at Wal-mart. Obviously even my own mother doesn't understand me; that's how much of a total loner I am. For one thing, I look completely different to everyone at my old high school. I'm as pale as an albino's ass, and I have long, long, shiny, beautiful, shimmering and gleaming brown hair. Not to mention my brown, chocolatey mud pool eyes, a colour that you don't often see in people.

I didn't really have any friends at high school, or at primary school either. They used to hold hands and dance around me in a circle, crying, "Your mom's a crack whore, your mom's a crack whore!"
And of course I couldn't run away, because I always had one, if not both, legs in a cast. If I wasn't in a wheelchair. I've always been misunderstood.

Eventually, Charles interrupted my silent musings.

"We're here, Bill," he said cheerfully, and gestured with one hand out the car window. I followed his gaze and took my first look at the town of Spoons. It was tiny, consisting of one main street with a pub, a Laundromat, a run-down little motel and a kindergarten, among other things. I pointedly averted my gaze from the small brick building, squashed in close beside the others, which screamed out into the streets: "CHARLES PEACOCK * PURVEYOR OF FINE MEATS * DELICATESSEN".

It was a depressing little hovel of a town. I sighed in chagrin as I looked at the streets sliding by, and my heart quailed at the thought of having to start at the local high school – tomorrow! My lower lip began to tremble unbecomingly, and I felt like crying, not for the first time since leaving Las Vegas.

Presently Charles pulled into the driveway of a squashed-looking two-storey brick house on the outskirts of town. "Here we are, home sweet home!" he cooed sickeningly. I looked the ugly house in despair. What a shit hole. Things could only get better, though – I didn't see how anything could be worse than the hideous house.

"Now Bill," Charles said to me, and cleared his throat awkwardly. "I know it's a fair walk to school and everything, and I realised that you would probably want to drive like the other hipster teens do… so I took the liberty of – "

"Oh Ch – dad!" I gushed, realisation coming to me. "You bought me a car!" I jumped up and down in excitement and squealed. Three of my toes snapped.

"Well, uh… not exactly," Charles mumbled, embarrassed, and cleared his throat again. "Still, I'm sure you'll appreciate it all the same." He beamed and lead me into the garage: in one corner was a sizeable hulk covered in a white sheet. With a flourish, Charles whipped the sheet away.

"Tada!" he exclaimed, all smiles.

I stared in horror at the shiny purple motorized scooter.

Apparently I was wrong. Things could definitely get worse.