Burnt Tongues

by Chuck Palahniuk

  I’m in new employee training all day for two more days after this one still. They hired a dozen of us at once and have a full schedule of mysteriously acronymed sessions for us to attend. At this point I’m not even sure what my job entails. My title is Actuarial Research Analyst. Not an actual actuary because this wasn’t exactly the plan, and hence I haven’t taken any actuarial exams. The fact that I was a thesis away from a PhD took a backseat to the three terms of statistics and the one business class I had taken as an undergrad. So much for grad school.

  In the conference room the lights are dimming, brightening, dimming, brightening in decaying oscillation about some ideal equilibrium. Our team trainer is fine-tuning the dimmer switch, trying to get the lighting at the right spot where the PowerPoint stands out, but it’s light enough for everyone to take notes.

  This first presentation is an overview of New Employee Success Training (NEST), which is apparently different from yesterday’s New Employee Orientation (NEO). After the overview, we’re being sent to another room with three fold-out tables lined with eight-by-eleven pictures. Pictures of famous works of art. Photographs of well-known places. Close-ups of everyday items. We’re asked to walk around silently and pick the picture that we feel represents us in our new work environment.

  Later I’m explaining to my seat neighbor that I feel this eight-by-eleven close-up of a face with an acupuncture needle in the cheek represents how new employment is about being vulnerable to something potentially painful in the hopes it will make you better in the end.

  My seat neighbor Karin (that’s Karin, not Karen, and indeed she felt the need to dot the i on her name tag with a heart) has chosen a picture of smiling children holding hands because the new job is about learning and teamwork. Karin thinks she’s my buddy because we’re the only women in the room, but honestly, all we have in common are our vaginas and our tits.

  I’m in a stall in the bathroom at break time, hiding out, trying to kill the time alone. I pull a pen out of my pocket. On the side of the giant toilet paper roll stuck on the wall to my left, I draw a circle. I draw a smiley face inside the circle. Next I add a stick figure body and stilettos that reach just to the bottom edge of the roll. A triangle dress, long hair, and a bow on her head complete the ensemble.

  After washing my hands and tearing off my paper towel, I unroll, leaving approximately twelve inches of towel ready for the next person’s use.

  Kyle says he had a dream. A weird dream. He was trying to save me, but he couldn’t find me. I was through some sort of invisible portal. I tell him he plays too many video games. He says, no, serious. The weird part, he says, was that he knew if he could only access the fourth dimension, he would get to me. It was one of those dreams where you know something, even though no one’s told you and you can’t see it. He was standing in sand. There were five pebbles in the sand evenly spaced in a circle. He says he drew in the sand with a stick. Drew lines connecting each of the pebbles to each of the other pebbles.

  “A complete graph,” I tell him.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s a complete graph—when you connect each vertex to every other vertex.”

  “Oh,” he says, “well, anyway, that’s how I got to the fourth dimension.”

  At work, my stick figure woman on the toilet paper roll has lost her feet. She is now just the triangle of her dress, arms, and head. A bow in her hair and a smile. I pull the pen out of my pocket again and draw a quote balloon coming from her mouth. In it I write: Oh no! I feel like I’m being used! But she still has that stupid smile, so I add Tee-hee!

  We’re sitting around the big table in the conference room, and anytime someone looks my way all I can think about is how my sweater’s too big and I didn’t wash my hair this morning. Two hours into database programs overview and there’s this feeling like my heart’s beating faster than it really needs to. This internal panic coming from nowhere, this feeling that anyone in the room might attack at any moment and I should be ready to run—every time my chair so much as squeaks, it turns up a notch.

  At lunchtime, since they’ve finally assigned us offices, I hide out in mine. I sit under my desk because it’s nice down here. It feels safe. In my own little world eating a sandwich while everyone else hangs out in the lunchroom and gets to know each other. The standard, “So where did you go to college and where are you from originally?” and such. Though by today they’ve probably moved on to dietary restrictions, family lineages, and favorite sports teams.

  The only really annoying thing about being under here is that I can’t quite sit upright. My choices are slouching forward with my neck making a forty-five-degree angle or reclining back against the wall, but the wall—they went a little overboard texturing the paint—snags the back of my shirt. But it’s worth it. This space is worth it.

  I finish my peanut butter and jelly right as there’s a knock on the door. Three hard taps. It could be Karin, but it sounds like a guy knocking. I hold my breath. My door’s not locked, so whoever it is might come in and see me like this. I count out sixty seconds in my head before exhaling again. Whoever it was must be gone, but it’s left me feeling like I did in the conference room again. I hate this feeling. My hands are even shaking.

  There’s still twenty minutes left for lunch, so I take the pen out of my pocket. On the underside of the desk I draw Kyle’s five rocks as dots. I connect each point to every other point. The result is a pentagram inscribed inside a pentagon. I scribble over it.

  I draw three points and connect each of them. This is simple. It’s a triangle. In topology they call this a 2-simplex, sort of the fundamental prototype of two-dimensional space.

  I draw four dots and connect each dot to every other dot. This one’s trickier to see, but it’s a tetrahedron squished down into two dimensions. A 3-simplex. Fundamental prototype of three-dimensional space. Imagine taking four triangles and gluing all their edges together to make a closed figure. Squish it flat, and you’ve got the picture I’ve just drawn.

  Five points connected to each other in this way is a 4-simplex. Fundamental prototype of four-dimensional space. Kyle’s subconscious is genius. Imagine taking five tetrahedrons and gluing all their faces together. You can’t do this in 3-space, but if you could, you’d have a 4-simplex. Project that 4-simplex into two-dimensional space, and you have an inscribed pentagram.

  I walk in the door to the smell of garlic, and Kyle’s in the kitchen draining pasta. He made dinner. A nice dinner. And he hates cooking. If I don’t make a meal, he lives on cereal. We have this whole line of cereal boxes on top of the fridge, each with about a bowl’s worth of stale cereal left in it. You know—you don’t want to eat the scraps at the bottom of the box, but throwing it away would be a waste of food, right?

  “Hey,” he says, “how was day three?”

  I say, “You’ve been busy.”

  He says, “Sit, sit. Food’s almost ready, then I want to hear all about it.”

  A glass vase with red roses sits in the middle of the dining room table. That floral shop smell of flowers and packaging and I remember working in my grandma’s flower shop back in high school. My first job. Back before college. I touch the soft petals and pluck one off. I sit and rub the paper-thin petal between my thumb and forefinger and wait for Kyle.

  He comes over with a steaming plate in each hand. Sets one down in front of me and the other in front of the seat next to me. He turns the lights down, sits, and smiles at me, his stringy hair hanging in his face again. I reach out and tuck the loose strands behind his ears. He expects me to say something. I pick up my fork and start poking around the pile of pasta with it. He watches me a moment, then does the same.

  I tell him that thing he drew in the sand in his dream was really a four-dimensional figure. Halfway through my meal, I get out of my seat and walk over to turn the lights back up.

  Kyle watches, his mouth hanging open just a bit and the skin between his eyebrows all bunched together.

  I get a piece of pap
er out of the desk in the living room and pull the pen out of my pocket. I sit back down and shove my plate to the side, click the pen open, and look up at him.

  His lips are pursed. He’s waiting.

  I give him a topology lesson. I show him how to see the squished tetrahedrons. Tell him how really the space around it is the interior of that last tetrahedron and is kind of where the fourth dimension lies.

  He says he knows. That’s how it worked in his dream. He says he didn’t get to tell me the end of his dream.

  The end of the fourth and final day of orientation and my toilet paper girl is just a head. A bow on top and a smile still. She’s upside down today, so I spin her back to upright. Today she gets a new quote bubble: See, ladies? This is what happens when you let it go too far! When I dry my hands, I unroll some paper towel again. This time I fold the end of it into a point like they do with the toilet paper in hotel rooms.

  On my way out of the building I pass by one of the big meeting rooms. The door is open, and one side of the room is nothing but a huge window overlooking the city. No one’s in there, so I go in to have a look. We’re ten stories up, and I can see all the way across the river. Can see where the highway leads down to my exit.

  I flinch when a voice behind me says, “It’s hard to find women working in the field who are actually qualified.”

  I turn around, and it’s the team trainer guy. Not more than an arm’s length behind me. He must be mistaking me for someone else. I’m probably the least qualified new hire here by their standards.

  “Sorry. I, uh, didn’t mean to startle you.” He motions to the window. “Nice view, huh?”

  I nod and turn back around. I point. “I can see where I live from here.”

  “Yeah, you can see a lot of things from here.” And he must have stepped even closer because there’s the hot humidity of his breath on my neck.

  I’m scared to turn around now. Maybe it’s my imagination. Or he’s just trying to look over my shoulder and see where I was pointing. Ignore it, real or not, and it will go away, right?

  But I’m frozen.

  Hot breath on my neck every time he exhales.

  Staring at the river. Watching the cars move through the traffic lights.

  Hot breath on my neck.

  Frozen.

  He says, “Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I manage a nod, and the breath leaves my neck. I count out sixty seconds before turning around again.

  It’s near midnight, and neither of us has been able to sleep. Kyle is curled up facing away from me in bed hiding his hard-on and resentment. It’s been two weeks since Kyle and I have made love. Fucked. Done the deed. Whatever name you want to give it.

  I throw the blankets off and sit up at the edge of the bed.

  Kyle turns the lamp on and says he doesn’t get it. “What did he do to you, Jane? What did that asshole do to you?”

  For whatever reason, it’s always weirded me out that Kyle uses my name when he talks to me. The asshole he’s speaking of, my ex, he’d always call me honey. I used to think that was somehow special. Now I kind of think it just meant I wasn’t really me. I was honey.

  “I’m sorry. It’s the job. I’m worn-out.”

  “Don’t lie,” he says.

  I flinch at his words. Subconscious response. I give myself away.

  “You think I would ever hurt you?” The look on his face. That I would flinch at his words. “I’m serious,” he says. “Talk to me.”

  I tell him, “I hate my job.”

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  “It’s true. I hate it. I wish I’d finished my PhD.”

  Kyle sighs. “I never did tell you how my dream ended last night.”

  “You did. You found the fourth dimension,” I say. “You know I was going to work on dimension theory? Now I fucking enter shit into databases for a living.”

  “That wasn’t the end of the dream,” he says.

  I look him in the eye.

  “Sorry. Sorry you’ve had a rough week at the new job.”

  “Why are you sorry? It’s not like it was your fault.”

  “I know.”

  “I feel like a has-been already, and I’m not even thirty yet. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.”

  “Nobody does. Nobody does.”

  “What is the point in the end?”

  “Does there need to be one?”

  “So, how did it end, then? Your dream?” I move to sit cross-legged in the bed facing Kyle who’s now sitting up, leaning back against the headboard.

  “It was about you, you know. I had to find the fourth dimension to get to you.” He looks right at me.

  I pull my T-shirt over my head and throw it to the side. “Go on.”

  “I drew the lines in the sand, then I somehow just slipped into elsewhere and you were there. But. You were bald. You had no hair. And no clothes.”

  “Why do you stick around?” I say. “Why do you even put up with me?”

  “Because I want to. And you know, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more. Why are you here with me, Jane? Why do you stick around?”

  I get up on my knees and slide down my underwear.

  Kyle says, “What are you doing?”

  I don’t really know why or where it’s coming from, but I’ve got that knotted anxious feeling in the center of my chest again. That feeling like I’m going to cry, but I’ve swallowed it. My hands are cold, numb. My mouth shakes; my voice shakes when I speak. “Tell me the rest of your dream.”

  Kyle grabs the blankets and drapes them around my shoulders. Stares down at my breasts a moment before he pulls the blankets tight around me, hiding them from view.

  “You had a knife in your hand. In my dream. A big sharp blade. I think you had used it to cut off your hair, because you had a fistful of your hair in your other hand. You gave me your hair. You said, ‘Hold this for now,’ and you closed my fingers around it. Then you walked away from me and stepped onto this flat rock. You turned around and looked down at your stomach, rubbing your fingers over it. Still holding the knife in your other hand. You lifted the blade, and I said, ‘What are you doing?’ You said, ‘It’s got to come out, and this is the only way.’”

  I shrug the blankets off my shoulders. “What’s got to come out?”

  Kyle has gone from looking drowsy and irritated to full alertness. He’s sitting all the way upright now and not leaning back against the headboard anymore. He’s watching my face so closely I can’t bring myself to look at him for more than a passing glance because those green eyes of his are too much.

  “I couldn’t get to you in time.” He reaches out and traces a line down the middle of my belly. “You stabbed your stomach, sliced down the middle, and your guts—your intestines—just fell out onto the rock.”

  “I would never do that.”

  “Well, you did in my dream.”

  My eyes burn, and soon they’ll be wet enough that my eyelids won’t hold in the tears. I suck in air, hold it for a count of ten, let it out slowly, but each exhale shakes more than the last.

  Kyle says, “I turned away, but you said look at it. You’ve always wanted to know what’s inside.”

  Kyle’s hand on my chin turns my face right towards his, and I can’t avoid his eyes anymore. And his eyes—they’re red around the edges, too.

  “Then you dropped the knife and fell to the ground. Crumpled like paper.”

  Mating Calls

  Tony Liebhard

  Squirrels spend months preparing for winter, gathering nuts and hiding them in various locales, hoping to hoard enough grub to last until spring. Only problem is, sometimes they forget where they stashed their snacks. In rare events, even the smartest, most hardworking rodents starve to death.

  All that time and effort for nothing.

  Staring at the last question on the Animal Behavior midterm today, I have total empathy for all the squirrels lying dead in trees somewhere.


  For two weeks I memorized lecture notes, studied flash cards, and participated in study groups. But nothing prepared me for the only essay question on the entire exam. Worth ten points out of a possible hundred. And 10 percent of the freaking grade. The difference between an A or a B. What might drop my GPA and keep me out of vet school.

  Describe the mating habits of bluegills.

  With the rest of the exam completed, I sit and watch the clock, trying to recall anything aquatic. Half a semester worth of material and Dr. Penn decides to ask us about something that wasn’t even in the PowerPoints. The bluegills thing was just some rambling tangent he went off on one day in class. The rant was so random I probably didn’t even jot down any of it in my notes. Though I should’ve known better than to disregard it. When a professor who calls himself Aquaman gives you a test, you should expect at least one question will be about fish.

  Even if I did write it down it wouldn’t have mattered. Odds are I wouldn’t have read about it last night when I was cramming anyway. I barely had time to look over the important stuff, let alone the insane yammering of some vet school reject.

  I wish I’d never found that damn cell phone.

  Yesterday was immortalized in ink inside my planner. 8-10: calc. 10-12: research. 12-1: lunch. 1-3: Vertebrate Ecology. 3-12: study for doomsday. An hour break was scheduled in the evening to walk dogs at the Humane Society, one of my many duties as Pre-Vet Club president.

  Somehow Vert Eco ended early. There was a new gap in my schedule for a quick nap. Half asleep, I began walking home. Right as I passed the Social Sciences Building, a distorted version of “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison erupted from a row of bushes.