Chuck Palahniuk - Doomed

It’s not without appeal, the possibility that I was born already doomed and that everyone I loved knew more about me than I did about myself. If that’s the case I’m absolved from doing any wrong. I’m helpless and ignorant, but I am innocent.

What chafes me is the image of Leonard the puppet master, some slide-rule misfit telephoning my mother and jerking her chain. Leonard, seated at his telemarketing console, wearing his headset in Hell, dictating his philosophy to my impressionable eleven-year-old mom… the image prompts me to say, “I know him. I know Leonard.”

I say, “He’s book-smart, but he doesn’t know everything.”

My mom’s spirit looks Ctrl+Alt+Stunned.

I say, “He tricked you. Leonard bought your trust with winning lottery numbers and insider stock market tips just so you’d let me be murdered.” The words pour out, unstoppable. “Leonard’s a liar, Mom! Boorism is a big mistake!”

I advance to comfort her. My arms spread wide for a nurturing hug, I say, “It’s going to be okay. You were just an idiotic eleven-year-old girl. I know the feeling….”

The blow lands across my ghost cheek. Yes, CanuckAIDSemily, a ghost can slap another ghost. And apparently a ghost mother can smack her own chubby baby girl ghost. What’s more—it hurts.

Granted, my mother’s ghost is already fading. Her body sprawled on the divan, the chest stirs. Color rises in her cheeks. The ghost hand that slapped me has almost vanished. Perhaps it’s only the idea of the slap that stings.

“You’re the liar!” shouts my vanishing blue mom. “You’re a hallucination!”

It’s not the most sensitive reaction, but I say, “Don’t be stupid.” I say, “You’re leading the entire world to Hell.”

What remains of her ghost is invisible. Only her words hang in the air of the salon, almost inaudible as she says, “Whatever you are, you’re not my daughter. You’re an evil, overweight nightmare . My real child is beautiful and perfect, and on this very day she has returned to bring eternal sunshine to all of mankind.”

Gentle Tweeter,

“So why Jesus?” asks the luminous blue ghost of Mr. K. “Why did you fall for Jesus?”

My thumbs twitching across the keys of my PDA, I shrug. At the time I was on the cusp of puberty. I was eleven years old with menarche barreling down on me like a speeding bloodmobile. Meaning: my first menstruation. Meaning: Menarche is not some Old Testament who’s-it. Any morning I expected to wake up with some huge burden of mammary glands attached to my chest. Thickets of hair would be sprouting in all of my secret places, and I’d be rendered a hormonal zombie. Time and time again, I’d seen it happen at my Swiss school. One day girls would be spunky, brainy flat-chested superheroes, and the next day they’d be simpering Miss Sexy Sexpots.

“So why Jesus?” asks Mr. Ketamine’s ghost. We’re two ghosts sitting in the main salon of the megayacht, keeping watch over my conked-out mom. The blue of Mr. K’s spirit matches exactly the blue that my tongue sees when I eat crushed ice. Not that I get to eat anything, not anymore. Not that I’m shedding any pounds, either.

Continuing to keyboard, I explain that my parents are little more than their physical appetites, their recreational drugs and casual sex. They’re just hungry carnal stomachs forever consuming. By dating Jesus, I wanted to sidestep all of the blood and spit and sperm that seemed to loom in my immediate future.

To CanuckAIDSemily, thanks for the heads-up. Reading your latest text, I say, “Fie! Gadzooks!”

Mr. K’s blue ghost says, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s my cat,” I say. “It’s Tigerstripe.”

CanuckAIDSemily tells me that Satan is nosing around Hell, asking everyone whether they’ve seen an orange-striped tabby. He’s offered a reward of one hundred full-size Mars bars to whoever can capture Tigerstripe and turn him in, no doubt for Satan to use as a hostage against me.

Yes, Gentle Tweeter, I did once attempt to flush Tiger down a toilet at the Beverly Wilshire, but that was only after he was dead. And that’s different, because I loved him.

Mr. City, he looks down on his earthly body, sprawled there on the floor. His scabrous, pocked face. His mangled ears and nose. “I wish I were dead.”

“No, you don’t,” I say.

“Dead and rich,” he says. Even his ghost has crooked teeth, leaning together in some places, missing in others, teeth like the ruins of Stonehenge and approximately the same lichen colors.

I text, asking whether anyone has seen Tigerstripe, and whether anyone is hiding him. This might sound like a case of misplaced priorities, but I’m less worried about Satan getting his mitts on my parents than I am about him flaying the lovely fur off my pet pussycat. Just the idea makes me Ctrl+Alt+Frantic.

“I want to be dead and in Heaven,” says Mr. K’s ghost, “and making love to Sahara. Did I ever tell you about Sahara?” The ketamine must be wearing off, because Mr. K’s already pale blue ghost is fading.

According to CanuckAIDSemily, Satan has released my prisoners from the Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions. Hitler, Idi Amin, Elizabeth Bathory, they’re all set free to terrorize the occupants of Hell once more. Caligula, Vlad the Impader, and Rin Tin Tin, they all have special orders to seek out one special little orange kitty.

Overhead, I can hear propeller blades chopping the Pacific air. It’s the unmistakable sound of the Gaia Wind setting down on the deck above us. Not looking away from my PDA screen, I pause. Without making eye contact with Mr. K’s ghost, trying to sound Ctrl+Alt+Nonchalant, I ask, “Did you and my papadaddy talk at all… about me?”

Mr. K’s flickering blue silhouette, barely there, nods.

Gentle Tweeter,

Aboard the Pangaea Crusader my borrowed PDA begins to play “Barbie Girl,” and on the device’s backlit screen the name of the caller appears as “Your Author.” I cautiously put the phone to my ghost ear.

“‘…Madison knew she would not be able to hide her true nature for much longer,’” a voice says. A guttural, robust voice, it says, “‘Soon Maddy would have to embrace the fact that she personified chaos, and that her reason for being was to bring misery and conflict to everyone whose life she touched!’”

It’s Satan. Of course it’s Satan. Gentle Tweeter, the dark lord claims to have authored the story of my life—to have written me into being, if you will—and he insists that I’m no more real than Jane Eyre or Huckleberry Finn. Periodically he telephones to read me portions of his so-called novel as proof that he’s dictated my every continuing thought and action. In the Devil’s version of my life every sentence ends with an audible exclamation mark. At least one. I wish I shared Satan’s enthusiasm about me.

“‘…Already,’” he continues reading, “‘Madison had lured multitudes of souls to eternity in the fiery pit!’” The telephone voice says, “‘And Madison knew that if she didn’t strive to complete her infernal mission of total damnation, soon the Devil’s hellhounds would locate her helpless kitty cat and utilize it for conducting skin patch toxicity tests of a new feminine hygiene spray!’”

On her divan my unconscious mother stirs, moaning softly. Gradually the noise of helicopter blades begins to subside. Footsteps bound across the helipad overhead, thudding the deck that is this salon’s ceiling. Every step brings some hideous revelation a moment closer.