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

the villains whom no one will believe.

The Matchmaker has been asking around, trying to find someone willing to lop off his penis. Because it's perfect—how that torture fits with some old family joke.

One slice, he says, and all your problems are solved. Just a severed penis in the dirt.

“Besides, I'm not using it for anything,” the Matchmaker says, and smiles. Wink, wink.

So far, no one's volunteered to swing the cleaver. Not because it's too disgusting, too awful, but because it would so put him in the driver's seat. A chopped-off penis is something none of us could top.

Still, if he did it—and bled to death—it would mean the royalties would only get split fifteen ways. Fourteen ways if Miss Sneezy would hurry up and suffocate on the mold. Thirteen ways if Miss America is considerate enough to die in childbirth.

Everyone feeding their bits and pieces to the cat, Cora Reynolds is getting huge.

“If you do chop your dick,” says Director Denial, “do not feed it to my cat.”

She says, “That's not something I want to know every time Cora licks my face . . .”

It was looking for bandages that we found the costumes. Backstage, we were hunting for clean cloth to tear into bandage strips, and here were gowns and coats left over from vaudeville and light opera. Folded away with tissue paper and mothballs, in trunks and garment bags, here were hoop skirts and togas. Kimonos and kilts. Boots and wigs and armor.

Thanks to Mrs. Clark cutting the plug off the washing machine, any clothes we'd brought were stinking with dirt and sweat. Thanks to Mr. Whittier wrecking the furnace, the building was colder every day. So we started to wear these tunics and sarongs and waistcoats. These velvets and satin brocades. Pilgrim hats with silver buckles. Elbow-long gloves of white leather.

“These rooms . . . ,” the Countess Foresight says, stumbling in her turban, hacking off her toes, but not the security tracking bracelet around her wrist. “These clothes . . . all this blood . . . ,” she says, “I feel as if I'm in a very creepy Grimm's fairy tale.”

We wore fur stoles made of small animals biting each other in the ass. Minks and ferrets and weasels. Dead, but their teeth still sunk in, deep.

Here, in the Italian Renaissance lounge, down on one knee, holding her bloody hand and looking up her slit nose, Saint Gut-Free said to Mother Nature, “Can you pretend to love me for the rest of your life?”

And, kneeling there, he slipped the sticky-red three-carat diamond he'd hacked off Lady Baglady's hand, Saint Gut-Free slipped sparkling-dead Lord Baglady onto Mother Nature's red-hennaed finger.

And his stomach growled.

And she laughed, blood and scabs—everywhere.

By now even these silk shirts and linens are stiff and matted with blood. The fingers of gloves hanging empty. Shoes and boots stuffed with balled-up socks to replace missing toes.

The fur stoles, the weasels and ferrets, soft as the fur on the cat.

“Keep feeding that cat,” says Miss America. “And he can be our Thanksgiving turkey.”

“Don't even joke,” Director Denial tells her, scratching the cat's fat stomach. “Little Cora is my baby . . .”

With the roots of her bleached hair grown out, brown, a kind of measuring stick to show how long we've been trapped, Miss America watches the cat pick the meat off another finger. Looking up, at Director Denial, she says, “If it was you who took my exercise wheel, I want it back.” Holding her hands a little ways apart, Miss America says, “It's pink plastic, about so big. You remember.”

Brushing the layer of cat hair from her sticky, yellow silk bandages, the Director says, “What about your unborn child?”

And, stroking her own little belly, Miss America says, “The Matchmaker should feed me his penis.” She says, “I'm the one not eating for two . . .”

Job Description

A Poem About Director Denial

“A police officer,” says Director Denial, “has to protect a Satan worshiper.”

You don't get to pick and choose.

Director Denial onstage, the tweed sleeves of her blazer disappear around her back,

where her hands are holding each other

hidden, the way you'd stand for a firing squad.

Her hair, salted with gray and cut short to look bristling

on purpose.

Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment:

A security video, grainy black and white,

of suspects under arrest, standing in lineups for identification by a witness.

Suspects wrestling with handcuffs, or their coats pulled up in back

to hood their faces as they go into court.

Onstage stands Director Denial, with the bulge of her shoulder holster

swelling one lapel of her blazer.

Her tweed skirt hemmed above cuffed white running shoes,

the shoelaces double knotted.

She says, “An officer of the law has to die for pretty much everybody.”

You die for people who kick dogs.

Drug addicts. Communists. Lutherans.

You die to protect and serve rich kids with trust funds.

Child molesters. Pornographers. Prostitutes.

If that next bullet has your name on it.

Her face crowded with victims and criminals, black and white,

Director Denial says, “You might die for welfare queens . . .”

Or drag queens.

For folks who hate you, or folks who'd call you a hero.

You don't get to discriminate when your number comes up.

“And if you're really stupid,” Director Denial says, “you die still hoping.”

You made the world just a little bit better place.

And maybe, just maybe, your death

will be the last.

Exodus

A Story by Director Denial

Please understand.

Nobody here is defending what Cora did.

Maybe two years ago was the only time anything like this had ever happened. Spring and fall, the county staff has to take a refresher in mouth-to-mouth. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Each group meets in the health room to practice heart massage on the dummy. They partner up, the agency director pumping the chest, the other person kneeling down, pinching the nose shut, and blowing air into the mouth. The dummy is a Breather Betty model, just a torso with a head. No arms or legs. Rubbery blue lips. Eyes molded open, staring. Green eyes. Still, whoever makes these