Chapter One
47
Testing, testing. One, two, three.Testing, testing. One, two, three.
Maybe this is working. I don't know. If you can evenhear me, I don't know.
But if you can hear me, listen. And if you're listening,then what you've found is the story of everything that wentwrong. This is what you'd call the flight recorder of Flight2039. The black box, people call it, even though it's orange,and on the inside is a loop of wire that's the permanentrecord of all that's left. What you've found is the story ofwhat happened.
And go ahead.
You can heat this wire to white-hot, and it will still tell you theexact same story.
Testing, testing. One, two, three.
And if you're listening, you should know right off the bat the passengersare at home, safe. The passengers, they did what you'd calltheir deplaning in the New Hebrides Islands. Then, after it was justhim and me back in the air, the pilot parachuted out over somewhere.Some kind of water. What you'd call an ocean.
I'm going to keep saying it, but it's true. I'm not a murderer.
And I'm alone up here.
The Flying Dutchman.
And if you're listening to this, you should know that I'm alone inthe cockpit of Flight 2039 with a whole crowd of those little childsizedbottles of mostly dead vodka and gin lined up on the place yousit at against the front windows, the instrument panel. In the cabin,the little trays of everybody's Chicken Kiev or Beef Stroganoffentr‚es are half eaten with the air conditioner cleaning up any leftoverfood smell. Magazines are still open to where people werereading. With all the seats empty, you could pretend everyone's justgone to the bathroom. Out of the plastic stereo headsets you canhear a little hum of prerecorded music.
Up here above the weather, it's just me in a Boeing 747-400 timecapsule with two hundred leftover chocolate cake desserts and anupstairs piano bar which I can just walk up to on the spiral staircaseand mix myself another little drink.
God forbid I should bore you with all the details, but I'm onautopilot up here until we run out of gas. Flame out, the pilot callsit. One engine at a time, each engine will flame out, he said. Hewanted me to know just what to expect. Then he went on to boreme with a lot of details about jet engines, the venturi effect,increasing lift by increasing camber with the flaps, and how after allfour engines flame out the plane will turn into a 450,000-poundglider. Then since the autopilot will have it trimmed out to fly in astraight line, the glider will begin what the pilot calls a controlleddescent.
That kind of a descent, I tell him, would be nice for a change.You just don't know what I've been through this past year.
Under his parachute, the pilot still had on his nothing specialblah-colored uniform that looked designed by an engineer. Exceptfor this, he was really helpful. More helpful than I'd be with someoneholding a pistol to my head and asking about how much fuelwas left and how far would it get us. He told me how I could getthe plane back up to cruising altitude after he'd parachuted out overthe ocean. And he told me all about the flight recorder.
The four engines are numbered one through four, left to right.
The last part of the controlled descent will be a nosedive into theground. This he calls the terminal phase of the descent, whereyou're going thirty-two feet per second straight at the ground. Thishe calls terminal velocity, the speed where objects of equal mass alltravel at the same speed. Then he slows everything down with a lotof details about Newtonian physics and the Tower of Pisa.
He says, "Don't quote me on any of this. It's been a long timesince I've been tested."
He says the APU, the Auxiliary Power Unit, will keep generatingelectricity right up to the moment the plane hits the ground.
You'll have air-conditioning and stereo music, he says, for as longas you can feel anything.
The last time I felt anything, I tell him, was a ways back. Abouta year ago. Top priority for me is getting him off this plane so I canfinally set down my gun.
I've clenched this gun so long I've lost all feeling.
What you forget when you're planning a hijack by yourself issomewhere along the line, you might need to neglect your hostagesjust long enough so you can use the bathroom.
Before we touched down in Port Vila, I was running all over thecabin with my gun, trying to get the passengers and crew fed. Didthey need a fresh drink? Who needed a pillow? Which did they prefer,I was asking everybody, the chicken or the beef? Was that decafor regular?
Food service is the only skill where I really excel. The problemwas all this meal service and rushing around had to be one-handed,of course, since I had to keep ahold of the gun.
When we were on the ground and the passengers and crew weredeplaning, I stood at the forward cabin door and said, I'm sorry. Iapologize for any inconvenience. Please have a safe and enjoyabletrip and thank you for flying Blah-Blah Airlines.
When it was just the pilot and me left on board, we took offagain.
The pilot, just before he jumps, he tells me how when eachengine fails, an alarm will announce Flame Out in Engine NumberOne or Three or whichever, over and over. After all the engines aregone, the only way to keep flying will be to keep the nose up. Youjust pull back on the steering wheel. The yoke, he calls it. To movewhat he calls the elevators in the tail. You'll lose speed, but keepaltitude. It will look like you have a choice, speed or height, buteither way you're still going to nose-dive into the ground.
That's enough, I tell him, I'm not getting what you'd call a pilot'slicense. I just need to use the toilet like nobody's business. I justwant him out that door.
Then we slow to 175 knots. Not to bore you with the details, butwe drop to under 10,000 feet and pull open the forward cabin door.Then the pilot's gone, and even before I shut the cabin door, I standat the edge of the doorway and take a leak after him.
Nothing in my life has ever felt that good.
If Sir Isaac Newton was right, this wouldn't be a problem for thepilot on his way down.
So now I'm flying west on autopilot at mach 0.83 or 455 milesper hour, true airspeed, and at this speed and latitude the sun isstuck in one place all the time. Time is stopped. I'm flying abovethe clouds at a cruising altitude of 39,000 feet, over the PacificOcean, flying toward disaster, toward Australia, toward the end ofmy life story, straight line southwest until all four engines flame out.
Testing, testing. One, two, three.
One more time, you're listening to the flight recorder of Flight2039.
And at this altitude, listen, and at this speed, with the planeempty, the pilot says there are six or maybe seven hours of fuel left.
So I'll try to make this quick.
The flight recorder will record my every word in the cockpit. Andmy story won't get bashed into a zillion bloody shreds and thenburned with a thousand tons of burning jet. And after the planewrecks, people will hunt down the flight recorder. And my story willsurvive.
Testing, testing. One, two, three.
It was just before the pilot jumped, with the cabin door pulledinside and the military ships shadowing us, with the invisible radartracking us, in the open doorway with the engines shrieking and theair howling past, the pilot stood there in his parachute and yelled,"So why do you want to die so bad?"
And I yelled back for him to be sure and listen to the tape.
"Then remember," he yelled. "You have only a few hours. Andremember," he yelled, "you don't know exactly when the fuel willrun out. There's always the chance you could die right in the middleof your life story."
And I yelled, So what else is new?
And, Tell me something I don't know.
And the pilot jumped. I took a leak, then I pushed the cabin doorback into place. In the cockpit, I push the throttle forward and pullthe yoke back until we fly high enough. All that's left to do is pressthe button and the autopilot takes charge. That brings us back toright here.
So if you're listening to this, the indestructible black box ofFlight 2039, you can go look and see where this plane ended its terminaldescent and what's left. You'll know I'm not a pilot after yousee the mess and the crater. If you're listening to this, you know thatI'm dead.
And I have a few hours to tell my story here.
So I figure there's maybe a chance I'll get this story right.
Testing, testing. One, two, three.
The sky is blue and righteous in every direction. The sun is totaland burning and just right there in front. We're on top of the clouds,and this is a beautiful day forever.
So let's us take it from the top. Let me start at the start.
Flight 2039, here's what really happened. Take one.
And.
Just for the record, how I feel right now is very terrific.
And.
I've already wasted ten minutes.
And.
Action.
Chapter Two
46
The way I live, it's hard enough to bread a veal cutlet.Some nights it's different; it's fish or chicken. But theminute my one hand is covered in raw egg and the other'sholding the meat someone is going to call me in trouble.
This is almost every night of my life now.
Tonight, a girl calls me from inside a pounding danceclub. Her only words I can make out are "behind."
She says, "asshole."
She says what could be "muffin" or "nothing." The factof the matter is you can't begin to fill in the blanks so I'min the kitchen, alone and yelling to be heard over the dancemix wherever. She sounds young and worn out, so I ask if she'll trustme. Is she tired of hurting? I ask if there's only one way to end herpain, will she do it?
My goldfish is swimming around all excited inside the fishbowlon the fridge so I reach up and drop a Valium in its water.
I'm yelling at this girl: has she had enough?
I'm yelling: I'm not going to stand here and listen to her complain.
To stand here and try to fix her life is just a big waste of time.People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problemssolved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved.Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Justthe big scary unknown.
Most people who call me already know what they want. Somewant to die but are just looking for my permission. Some want todie and just need a little encouragement. A little push. Someonebent on suicide won't have much sense of humor left. One wrongword, and they're an obituary the next week. Most of the calls I get,I'm only half listening anyway. Most of the people, I decide wholives and who dies just by the tone of their voice.
This is getting nowhere with the girl at the dance club so I tellher, Kill yourself.
She's saying, "What?"
Kill yourself.
She's saying, "What.>"
Try barbiturates and alcohol with your head inside a dry cleaningbag.
She says, "What?"
You cannot bread a veal cutlet and do a good job with only onehand so I tell her, now or never. Pull the trigger or don't. I'm withher right now. She's not going to die alone, but I don't have all night.
What sounds like part of the dance mix is her starting to cry reallyhard. So I hang up.
On top of breading a veal cutlet, these people want me tostraighten their whole life out.
The phone in my one hand, I'm trying to get bread crumbs tostick with my other. Nothing should be this hard. You flop the cutletin raw egg. Then you shake it dry, then crumbs. The problemwith the cutlet is I can't get the crumbs right. Some places, the cutletis bare. The crumbs are so thick in other places you can't tellwhat's inside.
It used to be this was a lot of fun. People just call you on theverge of suicide. Women would call. Here I am just alone with mygoldfish, alone in my dirty kitchen breading a pork chop or whatnot,wearing just my boxers, hearing somebody's prayer. Dishing outguidance and punishment.
A guy will call. After I'm fast asleep, it happens. These calls willcome all night if I don't unplug the phone. Some loser will calltonight just after the bars close to say he's sitting cross-legged onthe floor in his apartment. He can't sleep without having these terriblenightmares. In his dreams, he sees planes full of people crash.It's so real and then no one will help him. He can't sleep. He can'tget help. He tells me he's got a rifle tucked up under his chin andhe wants me to give him one good reason not to pull the trigger.
He can't live with knowing the future and not being able to saveanyone.
These victims, they call. These chronic sufferers. They call.They break up my own little tedium. It's better than television.
I tell him, Go ahead. I'm only half awake. It's three in the morning,and I have to work tomorrow. I tell him, Hurry before I fall backasleep, pull the trigger.
I tell him this isn't such a beautiful world that he has to stay init and suffer. This isn't much of a world at all.
My job is most of the time I work for a housecleaning service.Full-time drudge. Part-time god.
Past experience tells me to hold the phone a ways from my earwhen I hear the little click of the trigger. There's the blast, just aburst of static, and somewhere a receiver clunks to the floor. I'm thelast person to talk to him, and I'm back asleep before the ringing inmy ear starts to fade.
There's the obituary to look for the next week, six column inchesabout nothing that really mattered. You need the obituary, otherwiseyou're not sure if it happened or if it was just a dream.
I don't expect you to understand.
It's a different kind of entertainment. It's a rush, having that kindof control. The guy with the shotgun was named Trevor Hollis in hisobituary, and finding out he was a real person feels wonderful. It'smurder, but it's not, depending on how much credit you take. I can'teven say doing crisis intervention was my own idea.
The truth is this is a terrible world, and I ended his suffering.
The idea came by accident when a newspaper did a featureabout a real crisis hotline. The phone number in the paper wasmine by mistake. It was a typo. Nobody read the correction they ranthe next day, and people just started calling me day and night withtheir problems.
Please don't think I'm here to save lives. To be or not to be, Idon't labor the decision. And don't think I'm above talking towomen this way. Vulnerable women. Emotional cripples.
McDonald's almost hired me one time, and I only applied for thejob to meet younger girls. Black girls, Hispanic, white, and Chinesegirls, it says right on the job application how McDonald's hires differentraces and ethnic backgrounds. It's girls, girls, girls, buffet-style.Also on the application McDonald's says if you have any ofthe following diseases:
Hepatitis A
Salmonella
Shigella
Staphylococcus
Giardia
or Campylobacter, then you may not work there. This is more ofa guarantee than you get meeting girls on the street. You can't be toocareful. At least at McDonald's she's gone on the record saying she'sclean. Plus, there's a very good chance she's going to be young.Pimple young. Giggling young. Silly young and as stupid as me.
Eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty-year-old girls, I only want to talk tothem. Community college girls. High school seniors. Emancipatedminors.
It's the same with these suicide girls calling me up. Most of themare so young. Crying with their hair wet down in the rain at a publictelephone, they call me to the rescue. Curled in a ball alone inbed for days, they call me. Messiah. They call me. Savior. They sniffand choke and tell me what I ask for in every little detail.
It's so perfect some nights to hear them in the dark. The girl willjust trust me. The phone in my one hand, I can imagine my otherhand is her.
It's not that I want to get married. I admire guys who can committo a tattoo.
After the newspaper got the phone number right, the calls startedto peter out. The loads of people who called me at first, theywere all dead or pissed off at me. No new people were calling. Theywouldn't hire me at McDonald's, so I made a bunch of big stickylabels.
The labels had to stand out. You need the stickers to be easy toread at night and by somebody crying on drugs or drunk. The stickersI use are just black on white with the black letters saying:
Give Yourself, Your Life, Just One More Chance. Call Me forHelp. Then my phone number.
My second choice was:
If You're a Young Sexually Irresponsible Girl with a DrinkingProblem, Get the Help You Need. Call—and then my phone number.
Take my word for it. Don't make this second kind of sticker. Withthis kind of sticker, someone from the police will pay you a visit.Just from your phone number, they can use a reverse directory andput your name on a list as a probable felon. Forever after that you'llhear the little click ... click ... click ... of a wiretap behind everytelephone call you ever make.
Take my word for it.
If you use the first kind of sticker, you'll get people calling to confesssins, complain, ask advice, seek approval.
The girls you meet are never very far from their worst-case scenario.A harem of women will be clutching their telephones on thebrink and asking you to call back, please, call back. Please.
Call me a sexual predator, but when I think of predators I thinkof lions, tigers, big cats, sharks. This isn't so much a predator versusprey relationship. This isn't a scavenger, a vulture, or a laughinghyena versus a carcass. This isn't a parasite versus a host.
We're all miserable together.
It's the opposite of a victimless crime.
What's most important is you need to put the stickers in publictelephones. Try inside dirty phone booths near bridges over deepwater. Put them next to taverns where people with no place to goget thrown out at closing time.
In no time at all, you'll be in business.
You'll need one of those speakerphones where it sounds likeyou're calling from deep inside somewhere. Then people will call incrisis and hear you flush the toilet. They'll hear the roar of theblender and know how you couldn't care less.
These days, what I need is one of those cordless telephone headsets.A kind of Walkman of human misery. Live or die. Sex or death.This way, you can make hands-free life-and-death decisions everyhour when people call to talk about their one terrible crime. Yougive out penance. You sentence people. You give guys on the edgethe phone numbers of girls in the same position.
The same as most prayers, the bulk of what you hear is complaintsand demands. Help me. Hear me. Lead me. Forgive me.
The phone is ringing again already. The thin little coating ofcrumbs on the veal cutlet is almost impossible for me to get right,and on the phone is a new girl, crying. I ask right away if she'll trustme. I ask if she'll tell me everything.
My goldfish and me, both of us are just here swimming in oneplace.
The cutlet looks dug out of a cat box.
To calm this girl down, to get her to listen, I tell her the storyabout my fish. This is fish number six hundred and forty-one in alifetime of goldfish. My parents bought me the first one to teach meabout loving and caring for another living breathing creature ofGod. Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everythingyou love will die. The first time you meet that someone special,you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.
Chapter Three
45
The night before I left home, my big brother told meeverything he knew about the outside world.
In the outside world, he said, women had the power tochange the color of their hair. And their eyes. And their lips.
We were on the back porch in just the light from thekitchen window. My brother, Adam, was cutting my hairthe way he cut wheat, gathering handfuls of it and cuttingit with a straight razor at about the halfway point. He'dpinch my chin between his thumb and forefinger and forceme to look at him straight on, his brown eyes darting backand forth between each of my sideburns.
To get my sideburns even, he'd cut one, then the other, then thefirst, over and over until both sideburns were gone.
My seven little brothers were sitting along the edges of theporch, watching the darkness for all the evils Adam described.
In the outside world, he said, people kept birds inside their houses.He'd seen it.
Adam had been outside the church district colony just one time,when he and his wife had to register their marriage to make it legalwith the government.
In the outside world, he said, people were visited in their housesby spirits they called television.
Spirits spoke to people through what they called the radio.
People used what they called a telephone because they hatedbeing close together and they were too scared of being alone.
He went on cutting my hair, not for style as much as he waspruning it the way he'd prune a tree. Around us on the porchboards, the hair piled up, not so much cut as harvested.
In the church district colony, we hung bags of cut hair in theorchard to scare away deer. Adam told me the rule about not wastinganything is one of the blessings you give up when you leave thechurch colony. The hardest blessing you give up is silence.
In the outside world, he told me, there was no real silence. Notthe fake silence you get when you plug your ears so you hear nothingbut your heart, but real out-of-doors silence.
The week they were married, he and Biddy Gleason rode in a busfrom the church district colony, escorted by a church elder. Thewhole trip, the bus was loud inside. The automobiles on the roadwith them were roaring. People in the outside world said somethingstupid with their every breath, and when they didn't talk their radiosfilled the gap with the copied voices of people singing the samesongs over and over.
Adam said the other blessing you have to give up in the outsideworld is darkness. You can close your eyes, and sit in a cupboard,but that's not the same thing. The darkness at night in the churchdistrict colony is complete. The stars are thick above us in this kindof darkness. You can see how the moon is rough with mountainranges and etched with rivers and smoothed with oceans.
On a night without the moon or stars you can't see a thing, butyou can imagine anything.
At least that's how I remember.
My mother was inside the kitchen ironing and folding theclothes I'd be allowed to take with me. My father was I don't knowwhere. I'd never see either of them again.
It's funny, but people always ask if she was crying. They ask if myfather cried and threw his arms around me before I left. And peopleare always amazed when I say no. Nobody cried or hugged.
Nobody cried or hugged when we sold a pig either. Nobody criedand hugged before they killed a chicken or picked an apple.
Nobody lay awake at night wondering if the wheat they'd raisedwas truly happy and fulfilled being made into bread.
My brother was just cutting my hair. My mother was just doneironing and she'd sat down to sew. She was pregnant. I remembershe was always pregnant, and my sisters were all around her withtheir skirts spread on the kitchen benches or on the floor, all ofthem sewing.
People always ask if I was scared or excited or what.
According to church doctrine only the firstborn son, Adam,would ever marry and grow old in the church district. When weturned seventeen the rest of us, me and my seven brothers and fivesisters, would all go out for work. My father lives here because hewas the firstborn son in his family. My mother lives here becausethe church elders chose her for my father.
People are always so disappointed if I tell them the truth, thatnone of us lived in oppressed turmoil. None of us resented thechurch. We just lived. None of us were tortured by feelings verymuch.
That was the complete depth of our faith. Call it shallow ordeep. There was nothing that could scare us. That's how peopleraised in the church district colony believed. Whatever happenedin the world was a decree from God. A task to be completed. Anycrying or joy just got in the way of your being useful. Any emotionwas decadent. Anticipation or regret was a silly extra. A luxury.
That was the definition of our faith. Nothing was to be known.Anything was to be expected.
In the outside world, Adam said it was a bargain with the devilthat powered automobiles and carried airplanes across the sky. Evilflowed through electric wires to make people lazy. People put theirdishes back in the cupboard dirty, and the cupboard washed them.Water in pipes carried away their garbage and shit so that it wassomeone else's problem. Adam pinched my chin with his thumband forefinger and leaned down to look me straight in the face, andsaid how in the outside world, people looked in mirrors.
Right in front of him on the bus, he said, people had mirrors andeveryone was busy seeing how they looked. It was shameful.
I remember that was the last haircut I got for a long long time,but I don't really remember why. My head was a bristling field ofstraw with just the short hairs that were left.
In the outside world, Adam said, all the counting was doneinside machines.
All the food was fed to people by waitresses.
The one time he left the colony, my brother and his wife andthe church elder who escorted them stayed overnight in a hotel indowntown Robinsville, Nebraska. They didn't any of them sleep.The next day the bus brought them home for the rest of theirlives.
A hotel, he told me, was a big house where a lot of people livedand ate and slept, but no one knew each other. He said thatdescribed most families in the outside world.
Churches in the outside world, my brother told me, were just thelocal stores that sold people lies made up in the distant factories ofgiant religions.
He said a lot more I don't remember.
That haircut was sixteen years ago.
My father had sired Adam and me and all fourteen of his childrenby the time he was the age I am now.
I was seventeen years old the night I left home.
The way my father looked the last time I saw him is the way Ilook now.
Looking at Adam was as good as looking in a mirror. He was mybig brother by just three minutes and thirty seconds, but in theCreedish church district there was no such thing as twins.
That last night I ever saw Adam Branson, I remember thinkingmy big brother was a very kind and a very wise man.
That's how stupid I was.
Continues...
Excerpted from Survivorby Chuck Palahniuk Copyright © 2006 by Chuck Palahniuk. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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