Chuck Palahniuk - Damned

"To monitor the tremors in your speech patterns," Leonard explained. One sensor sticks to the cricothyroid muscle on the front of your neck, he says. Another sensor, the cricoarytenoid muscle on the back of your neck, near your spine. As you speak, a low-voltage current runs between the two sensors, registering any microtremors in the muscles which control your voice box, indicating when you're telling an untruth.

The demon with the leathery wings and cat's claws, his breath smells putrid.

This comes after Babette escorted us into the headquarters building, sidestepping the endless lines of waiting people to usher our little party through a crumbled portion of the building's simultaneously unfinished yet decayed facade. Babette shepherded us into a cavernous waiting hall as large as any stadium, wherein countless souls stood around, constituting a sort of Department of Motor Vehicles mélange: people wearing soiled rags next to people wearing Chanel couture and carrying briefcases. All the plastic scoop-seated chairs were booby-trapped with wads of fresh chewing gum, so, really, only the people who've succeeded in abandoning all hope risk sitting down. An enormous reader board sign mounted at the front of the hall said, Now Serving Number 5. The distant stone walls and ceiling looked to be brown. Everything earth-toned, sepia, the color of grime, the color of nose pickings. Almost everyone stood, their heads sagging at a slight angle, dispirited, like the heads of broken necks.

The stone floor teemed, almost carpeted by legions of fat cockroaches feasting on the ever-present popcorn balls and nonpareils. Hell is very much like Florida in that the resident bug life never dies. As a result of the steamy heat and immortality, the roaches achieve fat, meaty proportions more associated with mice or squirrels. Babette watched me hopping, one-legged, always holding the opposite leg aloft, storklike, to avoid treading on roaches, and she said, "We need to steal you some high heels."

Even Patterson, wearing his football shoulder pads and jersey, practically danced, skewering an ever-thickening layer of cockroaches smashed under his steel cleats. World-weary Archer also pranced, the chrome chains clanking around his boots, his feet skidding and skating on the crushed beetles. In contrast, even falling to pieces, Babette's fake high-heeled shoes allowed her to stilt-walk, impervious, above the roachy debris.

Outstriding the rest of us, elbowing aside the aeons of people already waiting, Babette arrived at a counter or long desk that ran the entire length of the far wall. There, a row of demons appeared to work as clerks, standing on the opposite side of the desk. Babette plopped her fake Coach bag on the countertop, addressing the demon who stood closest, saying, "Hey, Astraloth." She produced a Big Hunk candy bar from her bag and slid the candy across the counter, leaning into the demon's face, and said, "Give us an A137-B17. The short form. For an appeal and records search." Babette jerked her head in my direction, adding, "It's for the new kid, here."

It was clear Babette meant business.

The air in the assembly hall was so humid that every exhalation hung like a white cloud in front of my face, fogging my glasses. Cockroaches crunched beneath my every footstep.

No, it's not fair, but my mom and dad were always happy to tell me the sordid details of every sex act or fetish that existed. Other girls might get a training bra at thirteen, but my mom offered to have me fitted for a training diaphragm. Beyond the birds and the bees—and tea-bagging, rimming, and scissoring—my parents never taught me a single thing about death. At most my dad pestered me to use moisturizer with sunblock and to floss my teeth. If they perceived death at all, it was only on the most superficial level, as the wrinkles and gray hairs of very old people fated soon to expire. Therefore they seemed heavily invested in the belief that if one could constantly maintain one's personal appearance and mitigate the signs of aging, then death would never be a pressing issue. To my parents, death existed as merely the logical, albeit extreme, result of not adequately exfoliating your skin. A slippery slope. If one simply failed to practice meticulous grooming, one's life would grind to an end.

And please, if you're still in denial, eating low-sodium, heart-healthy skinless chicken breasts and feeling all self-righteous as you jog on a treadmill, don't pretend you're any more realistic than my loopy parents.

And do NOT get the impression that I miss being alive. AS IF I really regret not getting to grow up and have blood gush out of my woo-woo every month and learn to drive a fossil-fueled internal-combustion vehicle and watch crappy R-rated movies without a parent or guardian, then drink beer out of a keg, frittering away four years to snag a soft-ball degree in art history before some boy squirts me full of sperm and I have to lug some big baby around inside me for almost a whole year. Bummer—sarcasm fully intended—I am really missing out on the Good Times. And, no, this isn't just Sour Grapes. When I look at all the bullshit I'm skipping, sometimes I thank God I overdosed.

There, I said the G-word again. Ye gods! So kill me.

As it turns out, my damnation records have been lost. Or they have yet to arrive. Or my records were accidentally destroyed. Whatever the case, I'm forced to start from scratch, assigned to take a basic lie-detector test and submit for drug testing.

Babette, it seems, is not quite as useless as I'd first imagined. She's sidestepped no small amount of red tape and bureaucratic redundancy, leading our little team through the maze of corridors and offices, bribing low-level bureaucrats with Hershey bars and Sweet Tarts. Hell is aeons away from establishing a paperless culture, and most of the floor is layered knee-deep in misplaced records, disemboweled manila folders, the discarded polygraph readouts, Butter Rum Life Savers, and cockroaches.

En route to my testing, Archer told me not to cross my arms, not to look to the right or upward. Both of those: physical gestures that betray a liar.

After we submit the filled-out appeal form and slip the attendant demon a Kit Kat bar, Babette wishes me good luck. She gives me a little hug, no doubt leaving dirty handprints all over the back of my cardigan sweater. Babette, Leonard, Patterson, and Archer wait in an outer hallway while I go through a door into the all-white testing room. The polygraph machine. The demon inflating the blood-pressure cuff around my arm.

You might recall this same demon from the classic Hollywood masterpiece The Exorcist, where he possessed a little girl who was the spoiled, precocious child of a middle-aged movie star. Talk about déjà vu. Here he is now, watching my eyes for changes in pupil dilation which might betray dishonesty. The demon's wiring my skin to test whether I sweat. What Leonard calls "skin conductivity."

I say that I loved the scene where he made the little girl, Regan, crab-walk backward down the stairs with gore spilling out of her mouth. More out of nerves, I ask whether the demon has had any personal experience possessing people. Did he make any other movies? Does he get any residuals? Who's his agent?

Without looking away from his scrolling readout, those wavering little needles that squiggle lines on the rolling belt of white paper, the demon says, "Is your name Madison Spencer?"

The control questions. To establish a baseline of honest answers.

I say, "Yes."

Tweaking a knob on his machine, the demon asks, "Are you, in fact, thirteen years old?"

Again, yes.

The demon asks, "Do you reject Satan and all his works?"

Easy enough. I shrug and say, "Sure, why not?"

"Please," the demon says, "it's very important that you answer only either ryes' or 'no.'"