Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk (read e book TXT) 📗

“If you feel bad about that cat,” the Missing Link says, “you should.”

Holding her belly and rocking, Miss America says, “It was either that cat or me . . .”

We're all of us sitting in the “Frankenstein Room,” in front of the yellow-and-red glass fireplace, watching each other. Making mental note of each gesture and line of dialogue. Taping over every moment, every event, every emotion with the next.

Sitting in a yellow leather wing chair, the Missing Link turns to the Countess Foresight in the next chair and says, “So? Who did you kill to get here?”

Everyone pretends not to know what he means.

Each of us trying to be the camera, not the subject.

“Doesn't it seem like we're all hiding out from something?” the Missing Link says. With his long nose, his awning of a single dense eyebrow, his beard, he says, “Why else would people walk through that door with Whittier—a man they don't really know?”

On the yellow silk wallpaper, between the tall, pointed windows of stained glass with the eternal twilight of fifteen-watt lightbulbs behind them, on the yellow wallpaper, Saint Gut-Free has drawn hash marks to count off our days so far. With just the thumb and forefinger he has left on one hand, he holds a pastel crayon and makes one mark for every day Sister Vigilante turns on the power.

On the fit-stone floor, Agent Tattletale rolls back and forth with the pink exercise wheel, trying to lose more weight.

The furnace is broken—again. The water heater, too. The toilets, stuffed and choked with popcorn and dead cat. The washing machine and dryer are both hairy with yanked and hacked-off wires.

People piss in a bowl and carry it to a sink. Or they hike their skirt and piss in the dark corner of some huge, grand room.

Us in our fairy-tale wigs and velvet, killing each day in these echoing cold chambers, in the stink of piss and sweat, this is what fancy court life was like for the aristocracy a couple centuries ago. All those palaces and castles that look clean and elegant in today's movie version, in reality—brand-new, they were stinking and cold.

According to Chef Assassin, the kitchens in French châteaux were so far from the royal dining rooms that the food would arrive at dinner cold. That's why the French invented their zillion thick sauces, as blankets to keep food hot until it arrived at the table.

Us, we've found all the scavenger-hunt items: the bowling ball, the exercise wheel, the cat.

“Our humanity isn't measured by how we treat other people,” the Missing Link says. Fingering the layer of cat hair on his coat sleeve, he says, “Our humanity is measured by how we treat animals.”

He looks at Sister Vigilante, who looks at her wristwatch.

In a world where human rights are greater than at any time in history . . . in a world where the overall standard of living is at a peak . . . in a culture where each person is held responsible for their life—here, the Missing Link says, animals are fast becoming the last real victims. The only slaves and prey.

“Animals,” the Missing Link says, “are how we define humans.”

Without animals, there would be no humanity.

In a world of just people, people will mean nothing . . .

“Maybe that's how the folks at the Villa Diodati kept from killing each other, all those rainy days, trapped indoors,” the Missing Link says.

By having their big collection of dogs and cats and horses and monkeys, to make them behave like human beings.

Looking at Miss America, her eyes red and her face sweating with fever, the Missing Link says how, in the future, the people protesting outside clinics—those people holding picket signs that show smiling babies, those people cursing and spitting on expectant mothers—in that miserable, crowded world, the Link says, “Those folks will rail against the few selfish women who still choose to give birth . . .”

In that future world, the world outside here, the only animals will be the ones in zoos and movies. Anything not human will just be a flavor for dinner: chicken, beef, pork, lamb, or fish.

Miss America clutches her belly and says, “But I needed to eat.”

“Without animals,” the Missing Link says, “there will be humans, but no humanity.”

Looking at her engagement ring, the fat diamond of Lady Baglady sparkling on her thin finger, Mother Nature says, “What you said about protesting babies . . . it's so terrible, you sound like Comrade Snarky.”

The fourth ghost of here.

“I agree,” says Saint Gut-Free, watching Mother Nature. “Babies are . . . wonderful.”

Mother Nature and the Saint—still our romantic subplot.

Then the Missing Link lifts his hands and shakes back the sleeves of his coat. With an index finger pressed to each temple, he says, “Then I'm channeling her.” Channeling Comrade Snarky. And, channeling Mr. Whittier, he's saying that human beings need to accept the wild-animal side of their nature. We need some way to exhaust our fight-or-flight reflexes. Those skills we learned over the past thousand generations. If we ignore our need to hurt and get hurt, if we deny that need and let it pile up, that's when we get wars. Serial killers. School shootings.

“You're saying we have wars,” Saint Gut-Free says, “because we have a low threshold for boredom?”

And the Missing Link says, “We have wars because we deny that low threshold.”

Agent Tattletale videotapes the Earl of Slander, who tape-records the Missing Link, all of us looking for a telltale bit of physical business we can relay to an actor, on a set, someday. Some detail to make our version of the truth more real.

Reaching one hand up, underneath the layers of her skirts, Miss America lets her eyes roll down to stare at nothing on the carpet. While the fingers of her hand work under her skirts, her breathing, the rise and fall of her chest, it stops.

When she brings out her hand, the fingers shine, wet with something clear. Not blood.