bad habit

"This might be the worst thing I've ever seen. You should probably delete your channel," a young boy droned in monotone, looking at his screen. He spun his mousewheel through the comments section of a popular internet video involving college aged men engaging in shenanigans meant to disrupt or disturb public passerby, a term colloquially referred to as 'just a prank bro.' He read aloud, "this is stupid. Off yourself."

"Henry!" A middle-aged woman called to him from the doorframe of his room, her plucked eyebrows in a scolding stare. The boy's eyes drifted lazily over to her, confused as to just what her problem was. He hadn't even realized what he'd said. "Watch your mouth!"

Taking a mental step back, he traced his eyes over the comment again and mumbled the words out loud. "Oh. Oh, sorry mom."

The woman let loose a heavy sigh, turned around and left the room without another word. There was nothing to be done; the child had a terrible of habit of reading things aloud and no matter how he was scolded or reprimanded, it never seemed to stick. His brain lagged behind his mouth, the words he read took an extra moment to process after they had already entered the ears of everyone near enough to hear.

The habit was usually innocuous enough. Perhaps he was reading the label on a candy bar or drink, or maybe he was reading the subtitles of a show he was watching. Sure, a little redundant with the characters speaking them at the same time, but that never seemed to bother him. Or rather, it seemed incapable of bothering him, as he was hardly aware he was doing it. An unconscious tick, like he couldn't help but read words aloud when presented with them.

His mother was a worrywart, and the undue stress had built up in wrinkled layers on her forehead. What would happen if he was on a busy train someday, and someone had lent him a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey? She began to chew her nails, imagining the queer looks from passerby as her boy recited the detailed descriptions of chains and whips colliding with bare skin, the sultry moans of objectified women moistening the dry, public air through his innocent and unthinking voice. What am I to do with him? What can I do?

She wiped the sweat from her forehead and looked out the window. Soft drops of rain were gently falling on the single sedan parked in the driveway. Oh, if only Richard was still around...

Her attempts to stymie the flow of unbidden words from the boy's automatic text-to-speech had been met with failure. She'd put soap in his mouth, but that only confused the punishment. "But I brushed my teeth today," he would say.

She'd tried medicating him, which seemed to work at first glance. He was very calm, speaking to no one unless first spoken to. The conversation between his brain and his mouth when he read had not quieted, unfortunately.

The middle-aged woman stood there for another moment, whittling away a year or two of her life with stress, until finally her troubled thoughts were interrupted by more droning speech from the room behind her.

"Warning, this website is not safe for work. Are you over the age of eighteen..."

"Henry, no!"