Chuck Palahniuk - Choke

Cold spots, bad smells, eerie feelings—most people don't need an exorcist. They need a new furnace or a plumber or an interior decorator. The point is, it's not important what you think. What's important is that they're sure they have a problem. Most of those jobs come through realtors. In this city, we have a real estate disclosure law, and people will admit to the dumbest faults, not just asbestos and buried oil tanks, but ghosts and poltergeists. Everybody wants more excitement from their life than they'll ever get. Buyers on the verge of closing, they'll need a little reassurance about the house. The realtor calls, and you put on a little show, burn some sage, and everybody wins.

They get what they want, plus a good story to tell. An experience.

Then came Feng Shui, the kid remembers, and the clients wanted an exorcism and they wanted her to tell them where to put the sofa. Clients would ask where did the bed need to go to avoid being in the path of cutting chi from the corner of the dresser. Where should they hang mirrors to bounce the flow of chi back upstairs or away from open doors. It turned into that kind of job. This is what you do with a graduate degree in En- glish.

Just her resume was proof of reincarnation.

With Mr. Jones, she'd run through the alphabet backwards. She'd tell him, you are standing in a grassy meadow, but now the clouds will descend, coming lower and lower, settling over you until they're all around you in a dense fog. A dense, bright fog.

Imagine standing in a bright, cool fog. The future is to your right side. The past to your left. The fog is cool and wet on your face.

Turn to your left and start walking.

Imagine, she'd tell Mr. Jones, a shape just ahead of you in the fog. Keep walking. Feel the fog start to lift. Feel the sun bright and warm on your shoulders.

The shape is closer. With every step, the shape is more and more clear.

Here, in your mind, you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be. You're not going to catch any disease. Or crab lice. Or break any law. Or settle for any less than the best of everything you can imagine.

You can do anything you can imagine.

She'd tell each client, breathe in. Then out.

You can have anyone. Anywhere.

In. Then out.

From Feng Shui, she went to channeling. Ancient gods, enlightened warriors, dead pets, she'd faked them. Channeling led to hypnosis and past-life regression. Regressing people led her here, to nine clients every day at two hundred bucks per. To guys in the waiting room all day. To wives calling and yelling at the little boy:

"I know he's there. I don't know what he claims, but he's married."

To wives sitting in cars outside, calling on car phones to say:

"Don't think I don't know what's going on up there. I've followed him."

It's not as if the Mommy started with the idea of summoning up the most powerful women in history to give hand jobs, blow jobs, half-and-half, and round-the-world.

It just snowballed. The first guy talked. A friend of his called. A friend of the second guy called. At first, they all asked for help to cure something legit. Smoking or chewing tobacco. Spitting in public. Shoplifting. Then they just wanted sex. They wanted Clara Bow and Betsy Ross and Elizabeth Tudor and the Queen of Sheba.

And every day she was running down to the library to research the next day's women, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

In, and then out.

Guys called wanting to pork Helen Hayes, Margaret Sanger, and Aimee Semple McPherson. They wanted to bone Edith Piaf, Sojourner Truth, and the Empress Theodora. And at first it bothered the Mommy, how all these guys were obsessed with only dead women. And how they never asked for the same woman twice. And no matter how much detail she put into a session, they only wanted to pork and bone, slam and bump, shaft, hole, screw, drill, pound, pile-drive, core, and ride.

And sometimes a euphemism just isn't.

Sometimes a euphemism is more true than what it's supposed to hide.

And this really wasn't about sex.

These guys meant just what they asked for.

They didn't want conversation or costumes or historical accuracy. They wanted Emily Dickinson naked in high heels with one foot on the floor and the other up on her desk, bent over and running a quill pen up the crack of her butt.

They'd pay two hundred bucks to go into a trance and find Mary Cassatt wearing a push-up bra.

It wasn't every man who could afford her, so she'd get the same type again and again. They'd park their minivans six blocks away and hurry over to the house, staying near the buildings, each guy dragging his shadow. They'd stumble in wearing dark glasses, then wait behind open newspapers and magazines until their name was called. Or their alias. If the Mommy and the stupid little boy ever met them in public, these men would pretend not to know her. In public, they'd have wives. In the supermarket, they'd have kids. In the park, dogs. They'd have real names.

They'd pay her with damp twenties and fifties from sopping wet wallets full of sweaty photos, library cards, charge cards, club memberships, licenses, change. Obligations. Responsibility. Reality. Imagine, she'd tell each client, the sun on your skin. Feel the sun get warmer and warmer with each breath you exhale. The sun bright and warm on your face, your chest, your shoulders.

Breathe in. Then out.

In. Then out.

Her repeat customers, now they all wanted girl-on-girl shows, they'd want a two-girl party, Indira Gandhi and Carol Lombard. Margaret Mead and Audrey Hepburn and Dorothea Dix. Repeat clients didn't even want to be real themselves. The bald ones would ask for full, thick hair. The fat ones asked for muscle. The pale, tans. After enough sessions, every man would ask for a strutting, foot-long erection.

So it wasn't real past-life regression. And wasn't love. It wasn't history, and wasn't reality. It wasn't television, but it happened in your mind. It was a broadcast, and she was the sender.

It wasn't sex. She was just the tour guide for a wet dream. A hypno lap dancer.

Each guy kept his pants on for damage control. Containment. The mess went way beyond just peter tracks. And it paid a fortune.

Mr. Jones would get the standard Marilyn experience. He'd be rigid on the couch, sweating and mouth-breathing. His eyes rolled back. His shirt would go dark under the arms. His crotch would tent up.

Here she is, the Mommy would tell Mr. Jones.

The fog is gone and it's a shining, hot day. Feel the air on your bare skin, your bare arms and legs. Feel yourself getting warmer with every breath you breathe out. Feel yourself growing longer and thicker. Already you're harder and heavier, more purple and throbbing than you've ever felt.

Her watch said they had about forty minutes before the next client.

The fog is gone, Mr. Jones, and the shape just in front of you is Marilyn Monroe in a tight satin dress. Golden and smiling, her eyes half closed, her head tilts back. She stands in a field of tiny flowers and lifts her arms, and as you step closer her dress slips to the ground.

To the stupid little boy, the Mommy used to say this wasn't sex. These weren't real women as much as they were symbols. Projections. Sex symbols.

The power of suggestion.

To Mr. Jones, the Mommy would say, "Have at her."

She'd say, "She's all yours."

THAT FIRST NIGHT, DENNY'S OUTSIDE THE FRONT DOOR holding something wrapped in a pink baby blanket. This is all through the peephole in my mom's door: Denny in his giant plaid coat, Denny cradling some baby to his chest, his nose bulging, his eyes bulging, everything bulging because of the peephole lens. Everything distorted. His hands clutching the bundle are white with the effort.