Chuck Palahniuk - Lullaby

And my whole body does a spasm.

And the cop says, «Boy howdy, somebody just got tight.»

I say, Officer. Please. You have no idea. I could kill you. Please don't do this.

And the cop says, «Let go of me so I can unlock your handcuffs. It's me, Helen.»

Helen?

«Helen Hoover Boyle? Remember?» the cop says. «Two nights ago, you were doing almost this exact same thing to me inside a chandelier?»

Helen?

The huge hard something still twisted deep inside me.

The cop says, «This is called an occupation spell. I translated it just a couple hours ago. I've got Officer whoever here crammed down into his subconscious right now. I'm running his show.»

The hard cold sole of the officer's shoe shoves against my ass, and the huge hard fingers yank themselves out. Between my feet is a puddle of sweat. Still gritting my teeth, I stand up, fast.

The officer looks at his fingers and says, «I thought I was going to lose these.» He smells the fingers and makes a nasty face.

Great, I say, breathing deep, eyes closed. First she's controlling me, now I have to worry about Helen controlling everyone around me.

And the cop says, «I had control of Mona for the last couple of hours this afternoon. Just to give the spell a test run, and to get even with her for scaring you, I gave her a little makeover.»

The cop grabs his crotch. «This is amazing. Being with you like this, you're giving me an erection.» He says, «This sounds sexist, but I've always wanted a penis.»

I say, I don't want to hear this.

And Helen says, through the cop's mouth, she says, «I think as soon as I put you into a taxi, maybe I'll hang around in this guy and beat off. Just for the experience.»

And I say, if you think this will make me love you, think again.

A tear runs down the cop's cheek.

Standing here naked, I say, I don't want you. I can't trust you.

«You can't love me,» the cop says, Helen says in the cop's grizzled voice, «because I'm a woman and I have more power than you.»

And I say, just go, Helen. Get the fuck out of here. I don't need you. I want to pay for my crimes. I'm tired of making the world wrong to justify my own bad behavior.

And the cop's crying hard now, and another cop walks in. It's a young cop, and he looks from the old cop, crying, to me, naked. The young cop says, «Everything A-okay in here, Sarge?»

«It's just delightful,» the old cop says, wiping his eyes. «We're having a wonderful time.» He sees he's wiped his eyes with his gloved hand, the fingers out my ass, and he tears off the glove with a little scream. His whole body does a big shudder, and he throws the greasy glove across the room.

I tell the young cop, we were just having a little talk.

And the young cop puts a fist in my face and says, «You just shut the fuck up.»

The old cop, Sarge, sits down on the edge of the desk and crosses his legs at the knee. He sniffs back tears and tosses his head as if tossing back hair and says, «Now, if you don't mind, we'd very much like to be alone.»

I just look at the ceiling.

The young cop says, «Sure thing, Sarge.»

And Sarge grabs a tissue and dabs his eyes.

Then the young cop turns fast, grabbing me under the jaw and jamming me up against the wall. My back and legs against the cold concrete. With my head pushed up and back, the young cop's hand squeezing my throat, the cop says, «You don't give the Sarge a hard time!» He shouts, «Got that?»

And the Sarge looks up with a weak smile and says, «Yeah. You heard him.» And sniffs.

And the young cop lets loose of my throat. He steps back toward the door, saying, «I'll be out front if you need … well, anything.»

«Thank you,» the Sarge says. He clutches the young cop's hand, squeezing it, saying, «You're too sweet.»

And the young cop jerks his hand away and leaves the room.

Helen's inside this man, the way a television plants its seed in you. The way cheatgrass takes over a landscape. The way a song stays in your head. The way ghosts haunt houses. The way a germ infects you. The way Big Brother occupies your attention.

The Sarge, Helen, gets to his feet. He fiddles with his holster and pulls out his gun. Holding the pistol in both hands, he points it at me and says, «Now get your clothes out of the bag and put them on.» The Sarge sniffs back tears and kicks the garbage bag full of clothes at me and says, «Get dressed, damn it.» He says, «I came here to save you.»

The pistol trembling, the Sarge says, «I want you out of here so I can beat off.»

Everywhere, words are mixing. Words and lyrics and dialogue are mixing in a soup that could trigger a chain reaction. Maybe acts of God are just the right combination of media junk thrown out into the air. The wrong words collide and call up an earthquake. The way rain dances called storms, the right combination of words might call down tornadoes. Too many advertising jingles commingling could be behind global warming. Too many television reruns bouncing around might cause hurricanes. Cancer. AIDS.

In the taxi, on my way to the Helen Boyle real estate offices, I see newspaper headlines mixing with hand-lettered signs. Leaflets stapled to telephone poles mix with third-class mail. The songs of street buskers mix with Muzak mix with street hawkers mix with talk radio.

We're living in a teetering tower of babble. A shaky reality of words. A DNA soup for disaster. The natural world destroyed, we're left with this cluttered world of language.

Big Brother is singing and dancing, and we're left to watch. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but our role is just to be a good audience. To just pay our attention and wait for the next disaster.

Against the taxi's seat, my ass still feels greasy and stretched out.

There are thirty-three copies of the poems book left to find. We need to visit the Library of Congress. We need to mop up the mess and make sure it will never happen.

We need to warn people. My life is over. This is my new life.

The taxi pulls into the parking lot, and Mona's outside the front doors, locking them with a huge ring of keys. For a minute, she could be Helen. Mona, her hair's ratted, back-combed, teased into a red and black bubble. She's wearing a brown suit, but not chocolate brown. It's more the brown of a chocolate hazelnut truffle served on a satin pillow in a luxury hotel.

A box sits on the ground at Mona's feet. On top of the box is something red, a book. The grimoire.

I'm walking across the parking lot, and she calls, «Helen's not here.»

There was something on the police scanner about everybody in a bar on Third Avenue being dead, Mona says, and me being arrested. Putting the box in the trunk of her car, she says, «You just missed Mrs. Boyle. She ran out of here sobbing just a second ago.»

The Sarge.

Helen's big, leather-smelling Realtor's car is nowhere in sight.

Looking down at her own brown high heels, her tailored suit, padded and tucked, doll clothes with huge topaz buttons, her short skirt, Mona says, «Don't ask me how this happened.» She holds up her hands, her black fingernails painted pink with white tips. Mona says, «Please tell Mrs. Boyle I don't appreciate having my body kidnapped and shit done to me.» She points at her own stiff bubble of hair, her blusher cheeks and pink lipstick, and says, «This is the equivalent of a fashion rape.»

With her new pink fingernails, Mona slams the trunk lid.

Pointing at my shirt, she says, «Did things with your friend get a little bloody?»

The red stains are chili, I tell her.

The grimoire, I say. I saw it. The red human skin. The pentagram tattoo.

«She gave it to me,» Mona says. She snaps open her little brown purse and reaches inside, saying, «She said she wouldn't need it anymore. Like I said, she was upset. She was crying.»