Read Online Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Chuck Palahniuk
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standing on a platform at the top of the stairs in a castle.
"We can use vinegar,” Tyler says, "to neutralize the burning, but first you have to give up.”
After hundreds of people were sacrificed and burned, Tyler says, a thick white discharge crept from the altar, downhill to the river.
First you have to hit bottom.
You’re on a platform in a castle in Ireland with bottomless darkness all around the edge of the platform, and ahead of you, across an arm’s length of darkness, is a rock wall.
"Rain,” Tyler says, "fell on the burnt pyre year after year, and year after year, people were burned, and the rain seeped through the wood ashes to become a solution of lye, and the lye combined with the melted fat of the sacrifices, and a thick white discharge of soap crept out from the base of the altar and crept downhill toward the river.”
And the Irish men around you with their little act of rebellion in the darkness, they walk to the edge of the platform, and stand at the edge of the bottomless darkness and piss.
And the men say, go ahead, piss your fancy American piss rich and yellow with too many vitamins. Rich and expensive and thrown away.
"This is the greatest moment of your life,” Tyler says, "and you’re off somewhere missing it.”
You’re in Ireland.
Oh, and you’re doing it. Oh, yeah. Yes. And you can smell the ammonia and the daily allowance of B vitamins.
Where the soap fell into the river, Tyler says, after a thousand years of killing people and rain, the ancient people found their clothes got cleaner if they washed at that spot.
I’m pissing on the Blarney stone.
"Geez,” Tyler says.
I’m pissing in my black trousers with the dried bloodstains my boss can’t stomach.
You’re in a rented house on Paper Street.
"This means something,” Tyler says.
"This is a sign,” Tyler says. Tyler is full of useful information. Cultures without soap, Tyler says, they used their urine and the urine of their dogs to wash their clothes and hair because of the uric acid and ammonia.
There’s the smell of vinegar, and the fire on your hand at the end of the long road goes out.
There’s the smell of lye scalding the branched shape of your sinuses, and the hospital vomit smell of piss and vinegar.
"It was right to kill all those people,” Tyler says.
The back of your hand is swollen red and glossy as a pair of lips in the exact shape of Tyler’s kiss. Scattered around the kiss are the cigarette burn spots of somebody crying.
"Open your eyes,” Tyler says, and his face is shining with tears. "Congratulations,” Tyler says. "You’re a step closer to hitting bottom.
"You have to see,” Tyler says, "how the first soap was made of heroes.”
Think about the animals used in product testing.
Think about the monkeys shot into space.
"Without their death, their pain, without their sacrifice,” Tyler says, "we would have nothing.”
10
I STOP THE elevator between floors while Tyler undoes his belt. When the elevator stops, the soup bowls stacked on the buffet cart stop rattling, and steam mushrooms up to the elevator ceiling as Tyler takes the lid off the soup tureen.
Tyler starts to take himself out and says, "Don’t look at me, or I can’t go.”
The soup’s a sweet tomato bisque with cilantro and clams. Between the two, nobody will smell anything else we put in.
I say, hurry up, and I look back over my shoulder at Tyler with his last half inch hanging in the soup. This looks in a really funny way like a tall elephant in a waiter’s white shirt and bow tie drinking soup through its little trunk.
Tyler says, "I said, ‘Don’t look.’”
The elevator door in front of me has a little face-sized window that lets me look out into the banquet service corridor. With the elevator stopped between floors, my view is about a cockroach above the green linoleum, and from here at cockroach level the green corridor stretches toward the vanishing point, past half-open doors where titans and their
"We can use vinegar,” Tyler says, "to neutralize the burning, but first you have to give up.”
After hundreds of people were sacrificed and burned, Tyler says, a thick white discharge crept from the altar, downhill to the river.
First you have to hit bottom.
You’re on a platform in a castle in Ireland with bottomless darkness all around the edge of the platform, and ahead of you, across an arm’s length of darkness, is a rock wall.
"Rain,” Tyler says, "fell on the burnt pyre year after year, and year after year, people were burned, and the rain seeped through the wood ashes to become a solution of lye, and the lye combined with the melted fat of the sacrifices, and a thick white discharge of soap crept out from the base of the altar and crept downhill toward the river.”
And the Irish men around you with their little act of rebellion in the darkness, they walk to the edge of the platform, and stand at the edge of the bottomless darkness and piss.
And the men say, go ahead, piss your fancy American piss rich and yellow with too many vitamins. Rich and expensive and thrown away.
"This is the greatest moment of your life,” Tyler says, "and you’re off somewhere missing it.”
You’re in Ireland.
Oh, and you’re doing it. Oh, yeah. Yes. And you can smell the ammonia and the daily allowance of B vitamins.
Where the soap fell into the river, Tyler says, after a thousand years of killing people and rain, the ancient people found their clothes got cleaner if they washed at that spot.
I’m pissing on the Blarney stone.
"Geez,” Tyler says.
I’m pissing in my black trousers with the dried bloodstains my boss can’t stomach.
You’re in a rented house on Paper Street.
"This means something,” Tyler says.
"This is a sign,” Tyler says. Tyler is full of useful information. Cultures without soap, Tyler says, they used their urine and the urine of their dogs to wash their clothes and hair because of the uric acid and ammonia.
There’s the smell of vinegar, and the fire on your hand at the end of the long road goes out.
There’s the smell of lye scalding the branched shape of your sinuses, and the hospital vomit smell of piss and vinegar.
"It was right to kill all those people,” Tyler says.
The back of your hand is swollen red and glossy as a pair of lips in the exact shape of Tyler’s kiss. Scattered around the kiss are the cigarette burn spots of somebody crying.
"Open your eyes,” Tyler says, and his face is shining with tears. "Congratulations,” Tyler says. "You’re a step closer to hitting bottom.
"You have to see,” Tyler says, "how the first soap was made of heroes.”
Think about the animals used in product testing.
Think about the monkeys shot into space.
"Without their death, their pain, without their sacrifice,” Tyler says, "we would have nothing.”
10
I STOP THE elevator between floors while Tyler undoes his belt. When the elevator stops, the soup bowls stacked on the buffet cart stop rattling, and steam mushrooms up to the elevator ceiling as Tyler takes the lid off the soup tureen.
Tyler starts to take himself out and says, "Don’t look at me, or I can’t go.”
The soup’s a sweet tomato bisque with cilantro and clams. Between the two, nobody will smell anything else we put in.
I say, hurry up, and I look back over my shoulder at Tyler with his last half inch hanging in the soup. This looks in a really funny way like a tall elephant in a waiter’s white shirt and bow tie drinking soup through its little trunk.
Tyler says, "I said, ‘Don’t look.’”
The elevator door in front of me has a little face-sized window that lets me look out into the banquet service corridor. With the elevator stopped between floors, my view is about a cockroach above the green linoleum, and from here at cockroach level the green corridor stretches toward the vanishing point, past half-open doors where titans and their
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