Chuck Palahniuk - Damned

I say, "Sorry."

The demon says, "Do you accept the Lord God as the one true God?"

Way-easy, no sweat, again, I say, "Yes."

The demon says, "Do you recognize Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"

I don t know, not for certain, but I say, "Yes?"

The needles squiggle on the readout paper, not much but a little. I can't feel for sure, but maybe the irises of my eyes suddenly contract. The dogma seems pretty familiar, but this isn't any sort of catechism my parents trained me to recite. The demon's own eyes never leaving the inky, wavering lines, he says, 'Are you now or have you ever been a practicing member of the Buddhist religion?"

I say, "What?"

"Yes or no," the demon says.

"What?" I say, "Buddhists don't get to Heaven?"

While my parents fell far short of being perfect, none of their mistakes were intentionally malicious, so it feels downright traitorous to disavow every ideal they did their best to instill in me. Mine is the age-old conundrum of betraying one's parents versus betraying one's deity. Me, I just want to wear a halo and ride on a cloud. I just want to play a harp.

Without missing a beat, the demon says, "Do you believe the Bible to be the one and only true word of God?"

I say, "Does that include the way-crazy, loony parts of Leviticus?"

Plunging forward, the demon says, "In your honest opinion, does life begin at conception?"

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be dead, with no corporeal body and physical needs or physiology, but I start sweating like a pig. My face feels hot with blushing. My teeth sit on edge, softly grinding together. My fists clenching, tight, the bones and muscles take shape under the whitening skin of my knuckles.

I venture, "Yes?" "Do you sanction mandatory prayer in public schools?" the demon asks.

Yes, I do want to go to Heaven—who doesn't?—but not if it means I have to be a total asshole.

Whether I answer yes or no, those little needles are going to wiggle like crazy, responding to either my dishonesty or my guilt.

The demon says, "Do you view sexual acts between individuals of the same gender to be an abomination?"

I ask if we can come back to that question later.

The demon says, "I'll take that as a 'no.'"

Throughout the history of theology, Leonard tried to explain, religions have argued over the nature of salvation, whether people are proved holy by their good works or by their deep, inner faith. Do people go to Heaven because they acted good? Or do they go to Heaven because it's predestined... because they are good ? That's ancient history, according to Leonard; now the entire system relies on forensic science. Polygraph tests. Psychophysiological detections of deception. Voice stress analysis. You even have to submit hair and urine samples due to the new zero-tolerance policy for drug and alcohol abuse in Heaven.

In secret, putting my hands into the side pockets of my skort, I cross my fingers.

The demon asks, "Does mankind hold ultimate dominion over all earthly plants and animals?"

Fingers crossed, I say, "Yes?"

"Do you approve," the demon says, "of marriage between individuals of differing racial backgrounds?"

The demon continues without hesitation, asking, "Should the Zionist state of Israel be allowed to exist?"

Question after question, I'm stumped. Even fingers crossed. The paradox: Is God a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic ass? Or is God testing to see if I am?

The demon asks, "Should women be allowed to hold public office? To own real property? To operate motor vehicles?"

Now and then, he leans over the polygraph machine, using a felt-tipped pen to scribble notes next to the readouts on the rolling banner of paper.

We've journeyed here to the headquarters of Hell because I asked about filing an appeal. My reasoning is... if convicted murderers can linger on death row for decades, demanding access to law libraries and gratis public defenders, while scribbling briefs and arguments with blunt crayons and pencil stubs, it seems only fair that I ought to appeal my own eternal sentence.

In the same tone that a supermarket cashier would ask, "Paper or plastic?" or a fast-food server would ask, "Do you want fries with that?" the demon asks, 'Are you, yourself, a virgin?"

Since last Christmas, when I froze my hands to the door of my residence hall and was forced to rip off the outermost layers of skin, my hands have yet to totally heal. The lines crisscrossing my palms, the lifeline and love line, are almost erased. My fingerprints look faint, and the new skin feels tight and sensitive. In my pockets, now, it hurts to keep my fingers crossed, but all I can do is just sit here, betraying my parents, betraying my gender and politics, betraying myself to tell some bored demon what I hope is the perfect mix of blah, blah, blah. If anybody should spend eternity in Hell, it's me.

The demon asks, "Do you support the profoundly evil research which utilizes embryonic stem cells?"

I correct his grammar, telling him, " That... research that utilizes..."

The demon asks, "Does physician-assisted suicide fly in the face of God's beautiful will?"

The demon asks, "Do you espouse the obvious truth of intelligent design?"

With the needles scribbling my every heartbeat, my respiration rate, my blood pressure, the demon waits, watching for my body to turn traitor on me when he asks, "Are you familiar with the William Morris Agency?"

Despite myself, my hands relax a little and let my fingers slip and stop lying. I say, "Why... yes."

And the demon looks up from his machine, smiles, and says, "That's who represents me...."

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Don't get the idea that I'm way homesick; but lately, but I've been thinking about my family. This is no reflection on you or the fabulousness of Hell. I've just been feeling a tad nostalgic.

For my last birthday, my parents announced we were headed for Los Angeles in order for my mom to present some awards-show trophy. My mom had her personal assistant buy no fewer than a thousand-million gilded envelopes with blank pieces of card stock tucked inside. For the past week, all my mom's done is practice tearing open these envelopes, pulling out the cards, and saying, "The Academy Award for Best Motion Picture goes to . . To train herself not to laugh, my mom asked me to write movie titles on the cards like Smokey and the Bandit II and Saw IV and The English Patient III.

We're sitting in the back of a town car, being driven from some airport to some hotel in Beverly Hills. I'm sitting in the jump seat facing my mother so she can't see what I write. After that, I hand the card to her assistant, who tucks it into an envelope, affixes a gold-foil seal, and hands the finished product to my mom to rip open.

We're not going to the Beverly Wilshire because that's where I tried to flush the dead body of my kitten, poor Tiger Stripe, and a plumber had to come and unclog half the toilets in the hotel. We're also not going to the house in Brentwood, because this trip is only for, like, seventy-two hours, and my mom doesn't trust Goran and me not to mess up the whole place.

On one blank card, I'm writing Porky's Revenge . On another I write Every Which Way but Loose . As I write Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy's Dead, I ask my mom where she put my pink blouse with the smocking on the front.

Tearing open an envelope, my mom says, "Did you check your closet in Palm Springs?"

My dad isn't here in the car. He stayed back to supervise work on our jet. Whether this is a joke, I won't even venture a guess, but my dad is redesigning our Learjet to feature an interior crafted of organic brick and hand-hewn pegged beams, with knotty pine floors. All of it sustainably grown by the Amish. Yeah—installed in a jet. To cover the floors, he hoisted all my mom's last-season Versace and Dolce on some Tibetan rag-rug braiders and he's called this "recycling." We'll have a jet outfitted with faux wood-burning fireplaces and antler chandeliers. Macramé plant hangers. Of course, all the brick and wood is just veneer; but trying to take off, the plane will still consume somewhere around the entire daily output of dinosaur juice pumped by Kuwait.