Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk (best time to read books txt) 📕

The poor Matchmaker standing with his hips pressed into the black wood edge of the table, his dick flopped out, he says, “Don't rush me.” Sweat pumping out the pinholes of his forehead, he says, “You guys had your chance to suffer. It's my turn now.”

“Then suffer already,” the Chef says. He snaps his leftover fingers, saying, “Or give me my cleaver back. That is my cleaver . . .” He stands there, his hand out.

The Earl steps up to the table, his hands holding out the tape recorder, the little-mesh microphone ready to tape over the past with the single sound of the chop. The Earl of Slander, he says, “Be a man.”

He says, “Here's your last chance. Be a man and whack off that dick.”

The Missing Link, his shirt open, his chest nothing but dark hair and the ladder of his rib bones, he says, “When that door swings open, it's going to be too late for any of us.” He says, “So hurry.”

And the Matchmaker looks at himself reflected in the big blade of the cleaver. He holds the blade out toward the Reverend Godless and says, “Help me?”

The Reverend takes the cleaver. Gripping the handle in both hands, he hiss-slashes the air with it.

The Matchmaker sighs, deep, in and out, and he pushes his hips against the table. “Don't tell me when, just do it,” the Matchmaker says.

And the Reverend says, “Remember.” He says, “I'm doing this only as a favor.”

The Matchmaker shuts his eyes. He cups both hands over the top of his head, his fingers basket-wove together.

And . . . then . . . and: Shooo-rook. The cleaver's stuck in the black wood of the table. The table done-jumped and humming, and something's shot across to drop off the other side. Something blurred pink and pushed along fast by a hot geyser of blood. The zipper still exploding with steaming-wet red, the Matchmaker reaches a hand after the gone object. To catch it. Then his knees buckle.

Both his hands grab the table edge, but the fingers slip. His chin hits the tabletop and his teeth hard-click together. After that, both the Matchmaker and his penis are under the table. Both of them, just gray meat.

Our poor Matchmaker, now just a prop we can build into our story. Our new puppet. His family story about death camps and blows jobs, now it's our story.

The Missing Link ducks under the table. He stands, and in his open hand is the gray cut-off dick, most of it wrinkled skin from changing size and shape with every hard-on. Just regular pink meat at the cut end . . .

“Dibs,” the Link says. He sniffs it, once, twice, his nose tipped up and his nostrils flared and almost touching the meat. He shrugs, saying, “Everything we cook in that microwave is going to taste like popcorn . . .”

Even the Link knows that eating a dead man's severed penis will get him extra prime-time exposure on every late-night talk show in the world. Just to describe how it tasted. After that will be the product endorsements for barbecue sauce and ketchup. After that, his own novelty cookbook. Radio shock-jock shows. After that, more daytime game shows for the rest of his life.

A victim, someone with the missing toes and fingers to prove they suffered, they'll have the world's okay to be in always-bad taste.

And with arms out, hands up, stopsigns, Miss Sneezy says, “You can't.”

Watching from their green satin niches, our audience is all the naked statues.

“Watch me,” the Missing Link says, and tilts his head back, his mouth gaped open at the green ceiling. Holding his arm straight up, he drops the fleshy blob down his tongue. Past his teeth, whole, he swallows.

He swallows again and his eyes bulge. He swallows again and his hairy face swells, red. Eyes tight, shaking-shut under his one eyebrow. His hands grab around his throat and tears spill down his hot cheeks. The Link holds his throat, not breathing, Frankenstein-lurching one step, then another step, then another step around the room.

His panic-red face yawns, his werewolf teeth and lips making words with no sound. He drops to his knees on the bloody green carpet and makes each hand into a fist. Kneeling, he pounds, slugging himself in the stomach. All of his effort—the crying, the slugging, the begging—silent.

Nothing for the Earl to tape-record past the Link saying, “Watch me.”

On his knees, the Missing Link leans to one side. He falls, to lie there, silent, his eyes still tight-puckered shut, his fists still buried in his gut.

Chef Assassin looks at the Earl, who looks at Miss Sneezy, who sniffs and says, “The people coming to rescue us, they might be able to save him . . .”

And the Reverend Godless shakes his head.

Downstairs right now, nobody's drilling the lock in the alley door. No rescue team. No one's arrived to save us. We lied because we were tired of the Matchmaker hogging the cleaver.

After now, we have two less ways to split the money. Only eleven of us left.

Coming up the stairs, her skirt bunched and pulled high in both hands, the Baroness Frostbite comes trudging. With her pink, scar-frilly lips, she's smiling, until she sees the Matchmaker on the floor, most of his clothes soaked black with blood. Next to him, the Missing Link, with his eyes dead-tight, rigor-mortis-shut, in his hairy gray face.

Her greasy pucker gaping, slack-open, the Baroness says, “Which one of you shits killed the Matchmaker?”

None of us, we tell her. It was him. After all this time, he cut off his dick.

And the poor Link, he choked to death trying to hog down the cut-off dick.

The Missing Link—the last link on that food chain. Well, the last link if you don't count the microbes and bacteria Mrs. Clark talked about eating her daughter.

Already, we can figure how this scene will sound on radio. Already, we're wondering if you can say “penis” on broadcast television. This scene