Diary by Chuck Palahniuk (classic fiction .txt) 📗

Misty and Tabitha, they walk past the bronze statue of Apollo. Past the meadow. Past the crumbing mausoleum, a moldy bank built into a hillside, its iron gate hanging open. The darkness inside. They walk to the end of the point, and Tabitha—not her daughter, no longer part of Misty, someone Misty doesn't even know—a stranger, Tabitha pours each urn off a cliff above the water. The long gray cloud of what's inside, the dust and ash, it fans out on the breeze. It sinks into the ocean.

Just for the record, the Ocean Alliance for Freedom hasn't issued another word and police have made no arrests.

Dr. Touchet has declared the only public beach on the island closed for health reasons. The ferry has cut service to just twice each week, and only to island residents. Waytansea Island is to all intents and purposes closed to the outsider.

Walking back to the car, they pass the mausoleum.

Tabbi . . . Tabitha stops and says, “Would you like to look inside now?”

The iron gate rusted and hanging open. The darkness inside.

And Misty, she says, “Yes.”

Just for the record, the weather today is calm. Calm and resigned and defeated.

One, two, three steps into the dark, you can see them. Two skeletons. One lying on the floor, curled on its side. The other sits propped against the wall. Mold and moss grown up around their bones. The walls shine with trickles of water. The skeletons, her skeletons, the women Misty's been.

What Misty's learned is the pain and panic and horror only lasts a minute or two.

What Misty's learned is she's bored to death of dying.

Just for the record, your wife knows you were bluffing when you wrote about putting every toothbrush up your ass. You were just trying to scare people back into reality. You just wanted to wake them up from their own personal coma.

Misty's not writing this for you, Peter, not anymore.

There's nowhere on this island she can leave her story where only she'll find it. The future her in a hundred years. Her own little time capsule. Her own personal time bomb. The village of Waytansea, they'd dig up every square inch of their beautiful island. They'd tear down their hotel, looking for her secret. They have a century to dig and tear and hunt before she comes back. Until they bring her back. And then it will be too late.

We're betrayed by everything we do. Our art. Our children.

But we were here. We are still here. What poor dull Misty Marie Wilmot has to do is hide her story in plain sight. She'll hide it everywhere in the world.

What she's learned is what she always learns. Plato was right. We're all of us immortal. We couldn't die if we wanted to.

Every day of her life, every minute of her life, if she could just remember that.

September 10

1445 Bayside Drive

Tecumseh Lake, GA 30613

Chuck Palahniuk

c/o Doubleday

1745 Broadway

New York, NY 10019

Dear Mr. Palahniuk,

My guess is you probably get a lot of letters. I've never written to an author before, but I wanted to give you a chance to read the attached manuscript.

Most of it I wrote this summer. If you enjoy it, please pass it along to your editor, Lars Lindigkeit. Money is not really my goal. I only want to see it published and read by as many people as possible. Maybe in some way it can enlighten just one person.

My hope is this story will be read for generations, and it will stay in people's minds. To be read by the next generation, and the next. Maybe to be read by a little girl a century from now, a little girl who can close her eyes and see a place—see it so clear—a place of sparkling jewelry and rose gardens, that she thinks will save her.

Somewhere, someday, that girl will pick up a crayon and start to draw a house she's never seen. My hope is this story will change the way she lives her life. I hope this story will save her—that little girl—whatever her name will be the next time.

Sincerely,

Nora Adams

Manuscript enclosed

About the Author

CHUCK PALAHNIUK'S five novels are the best-selling Lullaby and Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Choke.

ALSO BY CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Invisible Monsters

Survivor

Fight Club

Choke

Lullaby

Fugitives and Refugees

PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

a division of Random House, Inc.

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Paint Brush on Black Background by Steve Huschle/Getty Images

Painter's Palette by Anne-Marie Weber/Getty Images

Fish illustration by Dana Leigh Treglia

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Palahniuk, Chuck.

Diary: a novel / Chuck Palahniuk.—1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Women painters—Fiction. 2. Suicidal behavior—Fiction. 3. Coma—Patients—Fiction. 4. Married women—Fiction. 5. Contractors—Fiction. 6. Islands—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3566.A4554D53 2003

813'.54—dc21

2003043900

Copyright © 2003 by Chuck Palahniuk

All Rights Reserved

www.randomhouse.com/anchor

eISBN: 978-1-4000-9531-5

v3.0