Damned

by Chuck Palahniuk

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison Desert Flower Rosa Parks Coyote Trickster Spencer.

  You've thrown down the gauntlet. You've brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living. But if I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist... then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master.

  When I return to Hell, prepare to die by my hand. Or be ready to kill me.

  My worst fears have been realized. In the Swiss boarding school where I found myself locked out-of-doors, naked in the snowy night, I have become the ghost rumored into being by silly rich girls.

  Why is it that I occur as a story to everyone except myself?

  Crowded into the small residence hall room I once occupied, the various classes of students—these giggling, nervous girls—spend this Halloween around my former bed. Seated upon the bed in approximately the same positions in which they held me and suffocated me and baited me back to life, there are the three Miss Whorey

  Vanderwhores. It is their trio of little Miss Skanky Von Skankenberg voices that recite, "We summon the everlasting soul of the late Madison Spencer."

  In unison, they say, "Come to us, Madison Desert Flower Rosa Parks Coyote Trickster Spencer......" And they all three snicker over my ludicrous name. They intone, "We demand the ghost of Maddy Spencer come and do our bidding....."

  Skanks or Satan. Why am I always called to do someone's bidding?

  Centered on the bed, a plate stolen from the dining hall holds a few burning candles, but otherwise my former room is dark. The curtains are open, revealing the ragged trees and wintry night. The door to the hallway is closed.

  One Miss Slutty MacSlutski leans off the side of the bed. She reaches under the mattress and retrieves a book. A dog-eared book. "With this personal object," the Skanky Skankerpants says, "We exercise our power to control you, Maddy Spencer.

  The book? It's my beloved copy of Persuasion. A collection of characters who've long outlived their author.

  At the sight of my personal possession, my favorite book, the other giggling, wide-eyed witnessing girls fall silent. Their eyes flicker with candlelight.

  It's on that cue, just as I'd press Ctrl+Alt+C on my mother's laptop computer, that I begin to slowly draw the curtains closed, and with the first hint of movement the assembled girls scream. The smaller girls scramble and tumble over one another in their hurry to escape the room. As easy as pressing Ctrl+Alt+A, I increase the air-conditioning, dropping the room temperature until the remaining girls can see their breath hang, hazy, in the candlelight. In the same way I'd toggle Ctrl+Alt+L, I flash the room's overhead lights on and off, on and off, strobing the lights as fast as lightning. Filling the room with the equivalent of every flash photograph of every People magazine photographer who'd ever snapped my picture. I blind the assembled girls as would an army of mercenary paparazzi.

  With this, the remaining girls claw their way to the open door, spilling out into the hallway, screaming and wailing like doomed souls locked within the soiled cages of Hell. They skin their knees and elbows climbing over each other, leaving only the three evil Miss Pervy Vanderpervs still seated around the candles on my bed.

  Yes, here I am, the legendary naked girl who left the ghost prints of her dead hands on the doorknobs of this very residence hall. Miss Madison Desert Flower Rosa Parks Coyote Trickster Spencer. Here I am, returned to you for just this one night, the dummy dumb-ass spoiled daughter of a movie star. I gaze down at these three with their pointed ballet feet smudging my bed and the knobby hip bones of their anorexic butts digging into my old mattress, and as easy as keystroking Ctrl+Alt+D, I slam and lock the hallway door. I seal them inside my room just as my mother would hold some Somali maid hostage until the bathroom tile truly gleamed.

  In the time-honored ageless way the dead have always sent messages to the living, I wail my subsonic attack on their shriveled Miss Sleazy O'Sleaznoid bowels, roiling and boiling the watery contents of their so-abused digestive tracts, bubbling and churning the stewed refuse contained in their intestines, stomachs, colons. I push the mess in violent peristaltic waves, making the three grab at their own midsections, their nether orifices erupting in methane clouds, exploding the tiny candle flames, dousing the room in stinking, suffocating darkness. I force outward the hot slop of their past meals, pushing it against their clenched oral and anal muscles. Trumpeting this scalding putrescence in a slurry against those confining fleshy walls.

  Their hands clamped to cover their burning mouths, the girls scream between their fingers, wailing and calling for aid. They clutch their bloating midriffs. In the hallway, beyond the locked door, the assembled students and faculty wrestle with the locked knob.

  Only then do I announce myself, that I am arrived. I am Madison Spencer, the nominal ruler of Hell. Making my soprano voice all eerie and wailing-ethereal, I warn that the three Harlot Von Harlotty girls must make all efforts to not find themselves damned... for if they do, they will suffer my wrath for all eternity. They will be subject to my whims and endure the endless tortures which I shall decree. Like Archer ranting and railing in his cemetery at night, a human lightning rod, I decree that should these three girls find themselves condemned to Hades, I will force them to stand lips-deep alongside Hitler and Company in the Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions, forever.

  The acrid, sulfurous stench of Hell already wafting out, spouting, issuing from their own lithesome, ballet-trained bodies, the three girls weep and beg for forgiveness and release. The locked door reverberates with the pounding fists and shouted entreaties of those students and teachers excluded in the hallway

  "Heed my words," I tell them. From this moment forward, in order to save themselves, they must utilize the slang terms nigger and fag at every opportunity. They must never wash their hands after using the toilet. They must refrain from ever covering their mouths when they cough or sneeze, especially while aboard crowded airplanes during in-flight meal service and filmic presentations of The English Patient. Oh, I just go on and on. Damn, but I'm having so much fun. And at the last possible instant before they choke totally to death, mired in their own pungent filth, I throw open the door, allowing every one of their peers full view of what these three Miss Twatty Twatlanders have become.

  There they sprawl, moaning in their own slippery degradation for all the world to observe.

  And yes, I am petty and vengeful, but I have places to be and flowering trees to plant. I have evil hordes and bloodthirsty armies to command. According to my sensible, durable wristwatch it's twenty minutes to Halloween midnight.

  To anyone reading this who isn't already dead, I wish you luck. Honestly, I do. You just keep swallowing your vitamins. Keep jogging around reservoirs and avoiding secondhand cigarette smoke. Cross your fingers... maybe death won't happen to you.

  And yes, I am thirteen and dead and a girl. I might be a touch of a sadist and a little bit jejune... but at least I'm not a victim, not any longer. I hope. I hope, therefore I am. Thank God for hope.

  For the rest of you, please don't be afraid. If you go to Heaven, bully for you. But if you don't—well, look me up. The only thing that makes earth feel like Hell, or Hell feel like Hell, is our expectation that it ought to feel like Heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. Another insider fact about the afterlife: If you miss your midnight curfew on All Hallows' Eve you'll be stuck wandering the earth, a ghost trapped among the living, until the next Halloween.

  Now, if you'll excuse me, it's late, and I'm in a terrible, terrible hurry to go kick some satanic ass.

  To be continued...