Chuck Palahniuk - Rant - The Oral History of Buster Casey

Maybe people don't travel back in time. Maybe it's lies like that, anything that smells better than the idea of death—black, inky, forever death—it's those kind of sexy lies that set up world religions. Maybe Rant is just dead.

Echo Lawrence:Consider the source. Maybe Shot Dunyun just wants to slip back in time without any competition.

Shot Dunyun:Bullshit. You know, if Echo jumps back in time, she'd be around today, but with both regular arms and legs. Normal. And with living, alive parents. Not whittling and staining sex toys. Echo would be the same age as Rant or Chester, or whatever he calls himself now. They'd be just two regular, boring middle-aged people.

Echo Lawrence:If Neddy manages to go back, there'll be no Infrastructure Effective and Efficient Use Act. People will live the way the cavemen did, everyone indoors or out, anytime they choose. No curfews. One colossal traffic jam, the way the world used to be.

Shot Dunyun:You could argue that we constantly change the past, whether or not we actually go back. I close my eyes, and the Rant Casey I picture isn't the real person. The Rant I tell you about is filtered and colored and distorted through me. Like any boosted peak.

And all these ways I change the past—I don't even know I'm doing most of them. You could say I constantly fuck up the past, the present, and the future.

Echo Lawrence:If Rant ever gets it right—if he ever gets back in time to save his mother from…becoming his mother—chances are you'll never have heard the name Rant Casey. He and Green might both be Historians, without beginning or end.

Shot Dunyun:How weird is that? Instead of a biography, this story will become fiction. A factual historical artifact documenting a past that never happened.

Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, another obsolete truth.

Bodie Carlyle ( Childhood Friend ):My head's working overtime to swallow the mess of this. Folks say Rant's skipped back in time, crazy folks, and maybe he'll do something so none of this won't never be. Or maybe just so only he won't be.

Gossip says a secret dog pack of folks run the world. Folks who can't never die, so they keep the rest of us stirred up for laughs. Depends on how they monkey with history, but tomorrow could be I won't be no more real than Superman or King Arthur.

It don't take a brain surgeon to tell, that talk's got to be made-up lies.

Neddy Nelson:Ask yourself: What did I eat for breakfast today? What did I eat for dinner last night?

You see how fast reality fades away?

Tina Something ( Party Crasher ):What would I change? The next Party Crash night, anytime any gaddamn Maserati or Rolls-Royce pulls up to the curb, I'm climbing inside.

The rest of you gaddamn losers—enjoy your death.

Hudson Baker ( Student )is currently working toward her undergraduate degree in criminal justice.

Brannan Benworth, D.M.D. (Dentist)remains isolated in government infectious-disease quarantine for an indefinite period.

Dr. Christopher Bing, Ph.D. ( Anthropologist )is currently overseas studying the culture of Noh drama in Japan.

Allan Blayne ( Firefighter )remains isolated in government infectious-disease quarantine for an indefinite period.

Wallace Boyer ( Car Salesman )is available to lecture extensively about his short-lived in-flight relationship with Rant Casey.

Vivica Brawley ( Dancer )remains isolated in government infectious-disease quarantine for an indefinite period.

Sheriff Bacon Carlyle ( Childhood Enemy )faces charges of wrongful arrest stemming from allegedly harassing visitors to the Middleton Tooth Museum.

Basin Carlyle ( Childhood Neighbor )remains active in family, church, and community life.

Bodie Carlyle ( Childhood Friend )operates and curates the newly opened Middleton Tooth Museum.

Chester Casey ( Farmer ) disappeared in connection with a single-vehicle accident soon after the disappearance of Green Taylor Simms.

Irene Casey ( Rant's Mother )is now a wealthy philanthropist, and chief financial backer and docent of the Middleton Tooth Museum.

Lynn Coffey ( Journalist )authored the nonfiction account Nail and Bail: A History of Party Crashing .

Gregg Denney ( Student )is deceased. He was shot by police under suspicion of being rabid.

Shot Dunyun ( Party Crasher ), formerly known as Christopher Dunyun, has been missing since the vehicle he was driving left the roadway and fell from the edge of a three-hundred-foot cliff.

Cammy Elliot ( Childhood Friend )remains active in family, church, and community life.

Logan Elliot ( Childhood Friend )remains active in family, church, and community life.

Ruby Elliot ( Childhood Neighbor )remains active in family, church, and community life.

Reverend Curtis Dean Fields ( Minister, Middleton Christian Fellowship )altered Communion practices after an outbreak of rabies was traced to a chalice of grape juice shared by his six-hundred-member congregation.

Denise Gardner ( Real Estate Agent )was named a Millionaire-Bonus-Plus Seller in the regional midlevel single-family-home market.

Sean Gardner ( Contractor ), with his wife, operates the GothStop telephone hotline, an intervention-and-treatment program for parents of adolescent children trapped in the goth lifestyle.

Ina Gebert, M.A. ( Theologist )is an asset at any party.

Mary Cane Harvey ( Teacher )dreams of her upcoming retirement to "any place but Middleton."

Glenda Hendersen ( Childhood Neighbor )remains active in family, church, and community life.

Silas Hendersen ( Childhood Friend )remains active in family, church, and community life.

Brenda Jordan ( Childhood Friend )remains active in family, church, and community life.

Leif Jordan ( Childhood Friend )remains active in family, church, and community life.

Allfred Lynch ( Exterminator )remains isolated in government infectious-disease quarantine for an indefinite period.

Canada Mercer ( Software Engineer )recently celebrated the first birthday of his Irish setter, Lulu.

Sarah Mercer ( Marketing Director )expects to give birth to her first child in September of this year.

Jayne Merris ( Musician )continues to perform live punk rock as her accounting career allows.

Officer Romie Mills ( Homicide Detective )was recently promoted to chief administrator of the federal Rabies Containment Program, overseeing the apprehension and quarantine of any and all infected individuals.

Jarrell Moore ( Private Investigator )remains isolated in government infectious-disease quarantine for an indefinite period.

Neddy Nelson ( Party Crasher )was last seen riding as a passenger in the car in which Chester Casey disappeared.

Galton Nye ( City Councilman )successful lobbied for a program to keep quarantined rabies suspects confined until the current public-health threat is resolved.