The Invention of Sound

by Chuck Palahniuk

  How could Foster make them see? It wasn’t how it looked. He flexed his hand, balling his fingers into a fist and then spreading them wide. Letting the pain from the airport bite mark distract him.

  Robb shushed the group. “Friend,” he asked. “Is your child dead or alive?”

  Foster began the story he always told. “We’d gone to my office. Lucinda stepped into an elevator—”

  Robb interrupted. “Then you need to hold a funeral.” He meant an empty-casket ceremony, a memorial service where all her false friends and distant social media followers could pay their last respects to a coffin filled with her old dolls and stuffed animals and clothes. Pallbearers would carry this to an open grave. In short: a hollow ritual.

  As the harangue continued, his phone buzzed. A text appeared on the screen. From Lucinda.

  This Lucinda, alive and beautiful and so addictive, she asked: Up for next week?

  The girl on the bed stirred. She blinked slowly, and her lips curved into a loopy, dopey smile. Her bare arms and legs twisted, stretching against the rope that held her wrists and ankles tied to the posts of the rented brass bed. Her movements crinkled the clear-plastic sheeting that protected the mattress. It had taken Mitzi longer than she’d expected to assemble the bed, an antique delivered from a properties warehouse. She’d hardly had time to position the monitor and move the mic booms into roughly the right locations before the Rohypnol had started to wear off.

  She lowered a Shure Vocal SM57 until it almost touched the girl’s lips. Next to it, an old-school ribbon mic waited, like something left over from Orson Welles’s radio days. Reaching in from other directions were can mics. A shotgun mic dangled down. Each connected to its own preamp. She waited for the girl to speak, watching for the needles to jump on each of the VU meters in this, her palace of analog.

  The needles twitched as the girl spoke. “Oh, it’s you.” She gave Mitzi a slow-motion, underwater wink. Lifting her chin, she looked down at her exposed breasts, her complete nakedness.

  Mitzi nudged a mic closer. “You fell asleep during our talk.”

  The girl sighed with relief. “I was afraid this was a rape.”

  In response to a monitor, Mitzi withdrew a mic a smidgen. She said, “I need to check my levels. Can you tell me what you had for breakfast?”

  Still woozy from the sedative, the girl lifted her face toward the Shure. So close she looked at it cross-eyed, she began, “Pancakes. Potatoes. French toast.” Clearly playing along, inventing things, she continued, “Scrambled eggs, oatmeal, bacon…”

  A waitress reeling off breakfast specials.

  The popping p’s and b’s pegged the analog needles into the red. Oversaturating the recording, making it warm. But clipping the digital, turning it into useless static. Mitzi pulled the Shure back a little more. She brushed a strand of pale hair off the girl’s forehead, and doing so gently pressed the girl’s head back down into the plastic-covered pillow.

  Without resisting, the girl continued, “Orange juice, grapefruit juice, oatmeal…” Her eyes drifted shut as if she might once more fall asleep. Her restaurant uniform lay draped across the chair near the wall. Her stomach growled, making the needles jump. “Sorry,” the girl mumbled. “All this food talk makes me hungry.”

  Mitzi wondered if she needed to readjust for room tone. She said, “Not to worry. You won’t be hungry much longer.”

  She went to the chair where the girl’s things sat and opened the purse. Removed a billfold. Sought out a driver’s license and studied it. “Shania?” She stepped back to the bedside, repeating louder, “Shania, honey?” She spied, in the billfold, the three one-hundred-dollar bills she’d offered as bait. Mitzi retrieved the bills, folded them, and slipped them into a pocket of her jeans.

  The girl’s eyes opened. Her brow furrowed as her focus darted from one mic to the next as if she’d forgotten them.

  Mitzi pressed on. “Do you know what the Wilhelm scream is, dear?” The girl’s eyes found her own.

  The girl shook her head. The driver’s license had been issued in Utah. Jack Mormon because there’d been no special underwear to find when Mitzi had cut away the waitress uniform.

  “You’ve heard it,” Mitzi prompted, “the Wilhelm scream.” It was a man’s scream first recorded in 1951 for a film titled Distant Drums. In one scene, soldiers wade through an alligator-infested swamp, hence the scream’s formal title, Man, Getting Bit by Alligator, and He Screamed. Since it was created, the Wilhelm scream has been used in more than four hundred features, as well as countless television projects and video games.

  “The classic screams have such elegant names,” Mitzi continued. “Like paintings.” The second most famous scream, for example, is titled Man, Gut-Wrenching Scream and Fall into Distance. “Like a masterpiece of art.” This scream’s more common name is “the Howie scream” because it was used to dub Howie Long’s 1996 performance in Broken Arrow, but the scream itself was recorded for a 1980 film called The Ninth Configuration.

  The third most famous industry scream was The Goofy Holler, but the less said about that the better.

  A chime sounded. Her phone, sitting on the mixing console, it chimed again.

  From the bed, the girl said, “You have a call.”

  Mitzi lifted the phone and held it to show the photo of a man. “My boyfriend. Jimmy.”

  “He’s cute,” said the girl, squinting.

  Mitzi considered the photograph of a shaggy-haired greaser wearing an oil-stained bandanna knotted around his head. “You’re still delirious.” She waited for the call to go to voicemail. “He wants to hook up.” She lifted her chin and turned her head to display some fading purple bruises around her neck. Doing so, she watched the monitor. Watching and rewatching the short clip the production company had asked her to loop. The monitor positioned so the girl on the bed couldn’t see it. Mitzi knew she was droning on, but she needed the girl to be fully awake. There’d be no chance for a second take.

  She lifted a FedEx mailer and felt the surprising weight inside it. Something so long and thin yet so heavy, it had to be metal. The shape of it obscured by layers of Bubble Wrap.

  Healthy as the girl looked, hers wasn’t the body type casting agents kept on file. Her lips parted. As if praying, she continued to whisper, “English muffins…biscuits and gravy…”

  Mitzi stretched a latex glove over one hand. Watching the meters pulse softly, she stretched on the second glove then began to bundle her hair under a cloth surgical cap.

  Clear as the girl’s skin was, it hid nothing. Her face and neck flushed red while her hands and feet faded to a blue-white. Her breathing grew shallow. Beads of sweat pebbled her chest and belly.

  On the mixing console a bottle of pinot gris sweated in a chrome bucket of ice. A cloisonné saucer held a few pills. Always the same saucer enameled with pink poppies, those flowers of forgetfulness. Always Ambien in the strongest dose available. Mitzi poured a glass of wine and took a few sips with a pill.

  She wondered if Jack Mormons prayed. If they had prayers to recite when they found themselves naked and tied spread eagle in an acoustically perfect recording studio.

  The Ambien seemed to push the blood through her veins a bit faster. The typical side effect had started, the mania. Before conking out, people on Ambien reportedly binged on ice cream. They went on internet or cable-television shopping sprees. Engaged in marathon sex with strangers. Even committed murder. Murders for which they’d later be acquitted because they had no memory of the event.

  That was crucial, to have no memory of the event.

  She poured her glass full again. With latex fingers she lifted a second pill from the saucer and drank it down.

  On the video monitor the actors dressed as Confederate soldiers attacked the actress in the bed, the scene looping over and over again.

  Mitzi reached up and pulled the shotgun mic a skosh closer to the girl’s mouth. At a keyboard she typed in the name of this new file. Using a felt-tipped pen, she wrote
the same on an old-style DAT cartridge. She wrote: Praying Girl, Stabbed Brutally, Rapid Exsanguination. She asked, “Now, Shania, tell me what else you ate for breakfast, please.”

  Pain never brought about the best results. No, severe pain only triggered shock. A doomed catatonia, silence as the last refuge of a mortally wounded animal playing possum. Only dread and terror brought out a marketable recording. A masterpiece.

  Her voice reduced to a whisper, hushed as if she were praying, the girl said, “Two fried eggs…an English muffin…”

  Mitzi tore open a small plastic package containing two foam rubber plugs. With latex fingers she twisted one until it would fit inside of her ear.

  The girl stopped after “…orange juice.” Her eyes intent on Mitzi, she asked, “Will this be noisy?”

  Mitzi nodded, twisting the second earplug into a small, tight cylinder. It wasn’t lost on her that this army of microphones would continue to record even as the sleeping pills short-circuited her own memory. She struggled to recall the girl’s name and how they’d met.

  Before Mitzi could insert the second earplug, the girl asked, “Would you do me a favor?” Maybe she was still high, or it could’ve been denial, but the girl said, “I hate loud noise. Can I have earplugs, too?”

  The monitors, their needles bounced softly with the request.

  Mitzi was tearing open the express package, about to remove and unwrap the knife. But she considered the request. There was no reason the poor girl should have to listen. Mitzi drained her glass of wine. Swallowed another Ambien. She tore open a new package of foam plugs and twisted each before inserting it into the girl’s warm, soft ears.

  The face, the girl’s blushing, teary-eyed face, mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

  Mitzi answered, “You’re very welcome,” but neither woman could hear the other.

  Only the huddled microphones heard, leaning in, ready to collect the sound of what would have to happen next.

  Foster asked to be seated with his back to the door. So he could hear her before she came into sight. For that same reason he’d arrived early and chatted up the maître d. He’d drunk half his Scotch when a voice behind him said, “Hello.”

  A young woman said, “My name is Lucinda, and I’m meeting my father for lunch.”

  He didn’t turn, but waited.

  “He’s very handsome. Very distinguished,” the voice added.

  A man’s voice, the maître d’s, said, “Right this way, please.”

  It was worth the wait when she came into sight. Her mother’s auburn hair, Lucinda wore it down on her shoulders the way he liked it best. His own blue eyes looked back at him as he stood to greet her. She was wearing the dress he’d bought for her in Singapore. The one she’d modeled on Instagram. They kissed cheeks. To the maître d, Foster said, “Alphonse, you’ve met my daughter?”

  The gentleman stood by, saying, “So charming a young lady,” as Foster seated her.

  For the maître d’s benefit, he asked, “Lucy, do you remember the time you stepped on the bee?” He smiled at the memory.

  She was a quick study. “Of course.” Quick on the uptake, she asked, “How old was I?”

  “You were four.” Foster loved how she knew to echo, never to ad-lib. If she wasn’t an actress, she ought to be. She was so gifted at spontaneous role-playing.

  The waiter arrived and took her order for a glass of wine. Foster asked for another Scotch. Keeping to their long-established script, he asked about her classes in college. She was on the dean’s list, of course. She asked his advice about graduate school. Her hand ventured across the table, and he reached forward and squeezed it with his own. She said, “It’s so good to see you!”

  Foster winced in pain. The bite mark on his hand. She didn’t ask.

  Unseen, his fingers pressed the usual fee into her palm. Two hundred in cash, plus another couple hundred as a tip. Their agreed-upon rate for a one-hour lunch. It might seem expensive, the dinners, the trips together, but it was better therapy than he’d gotten from any psychiatrist. To simply look at her filled him with joy.

  How many years had it been? He’d used the latest age progression of her from the side of a milk carton. He’d gone online and surfed escort sites until he’d found an exact match.

  A silence fell over the dining room, and all heads turned. The restaurant lighting dimmed. A waiter had entered from the kitchen carrying a small, elaborately decorated cake on which several small candles burned. No one sang, it was far too elegant an establishment, but muted applause erupted as the waiter delivered the birthday cake to the beautiful young woman. Lucinda beamed appropriately. She brought her fingertips to her lips as if to stifle a cry of joy.

  “Happy birthday, my darling,” Foster said. He reached under the table to where a shopping bag waited. He brought out a small box wrapped in pink foil and frothing with ribbons.

  Ignoring her candles, she slipped the paper and ribbons from the box and opened it to reveal a gleaming double strand of natural pearls. She gasped. Everyone watching gasped.

  “They were your mother’s,” Foster said regarding the pearls. “And your grandmother’s.”

  Not acting, not for the moment, she looked at him with genuine affection. He knew the difference. In this moment he hated the mourning support group for putting a stop to this sweet fantasy. The necklace coiled in its box. A satin-lined box not unlike a casket.

  He nodded toward the cake, saying, “Make a wish.”

  The pink-polished fingertips of one hand touched the pearls. She regarded the cake before whispering, “I want to be in the movies.” And as she followed her instructions, the tiny flames winked out, and a ghost of bitter smoke wafted over him.

  The next sunrise wasn’t her enemy. The Muzak in the elevator wasn’t torture. Minus a hangover, odors, people’s colognes, even the faint stink of bleach on her own hands, didn’t cramp her stomach and spin her mind dizzy with pain. Without sunglasses she could sit in the waiting room and read the trades. Even in the Southland, only a few doctors’ coffee tables offered the Hollywood Reporter and Variety, but Dr. Adamah wasn’t just any doctor.

  She’d awoken with no memory except the dream of assembling a complex something made of brass. All curves and shining, polished curlicues, accented with porcelain knobs hand painted with pink roses. It wasn’t an unpleasant dream. It was a bed, a masterpiece of an antique brass bed.

  As she sat waiting for her name to be called and thumbing through Entertainment Weekly, her phone chimed. A new text from a private number said: Magnificent results. Per usual.

  Her inbox showed one new file. An audio file labeled Praying Girl. Those words, those and the whiff of bleach on her fingers brought back a dream. Something butchered. Someone slaughtering a pig. Something she must’ve seen on the television as she’d drifted off to sleep. The squealing shrieks, ghastly, and blood everywhere. Her shoulders ached as if she’d spent the night chopping wood.

  As she turned a page, her phone chimed again. A new text asked: Yur $1M holler still avail?

  Before she could text a response, a voice asked, “Mitzi?” She looked to where a young woman sat behind a carved and white-lacquered desk. This woman, the receptionist, said, “Dr. Adamah will see you now.”

  As Mitzi gathered her things, a door opened and the bearded doctor met her with the usual warm smile. They crossed a hallway to the open door of an examination room. Inside, a paper-covered table sat opposite a stainless-steel sink and a bank of glass-fronted cabinets. The doctor nodded for her to take a seat on the table.

  Dr. Adamah asked, “Feeling better?” He sat, leaning back against the lip of the sink. Eyed the fading bruises around Mitzi’s neck. “How’s Jimmy?”

  He meant Mitzi’s latest boyfriend. The reason she wanted a tubal ligation.

  The doctor reached toward Mitzi and curled an index finger, prompting. “You have something to give me?”

  Mitzi leaned over her purse. She picked out three one-hundred-dollar bills.


  The doctor took the money and held the bills over the sink. He took a cigarette lighter from a pocket of his lab coat and sparked a flame. This he held under the money until it blazed, and the smoke drifted toward the ceiling. Dr. Adamah followed Mitzi’s glance to a smoke detector and assured her, “It’s disconnected.”

  The burnt smell suggested sweat and plastic, plastic and aluminum foil. A foul whiff brought tears to Mitzi’s eyes. As smoke rose, the crumbling flakes of charred rag paper drifted down into the sink. The flames neared the doctor’s fingers, and he let the burning remnants drop. What remained, it curled and blackened against the steel. Larger flakes broke into smaller. The flames along the final edges burned blue and died. A last puff of smoke dispersed in the hazy room.

  Mitzi peered into the purse nestled on the table beside her hip. Inside coiled a roll of bills. Back at her condo a room held nothing but money.

  Before doctors had become sawbones…Before psychologists had been headshrinkers, they’d all been seers. They’d been fortune-tellers, temple whores, shamans. As such they were trained to read the best tells people presented. Subtle aspects of body language, skin tone, scent. They could diagnose the unrecognized problem by asking evocative, probing questions. At least that was how Dr. Adamah explained his gift. Having attended medical school in Port-au-Prince, he had a skill set that went beyond physical diagnosis. To him everything was a ritual. Ritual was everything.

  How long had she been consulting with him? Mitzi sifted through her memory. Schlo it was, Schlo or some other producer who’d referred her. Back when the rage that had fueled her first kill was spent, and she’d needed something more to do the next job.

  Mitzi wasn’t sold on the mumbo jumbo, but she had no idea how penicillin worked. She’d still take it if need be.

  Leaning over the sink, the doctor examined the scorched ashes as if they were tea leaves in a cup. He asked, “Does the name Shania Howell mean anything to you?”