Disclaimer: Characters belong to Chuck Palahniuk. No money is made nor offence intended.
Rating: PG15
AN: A Birthday fic for Brenda, 2003.
Pairing: Narrator/Tyler
Teeth are overrated. In this day and age you can eat babyfood from a jar, can eat pureed whateverthefuckyou want out of an easy-to-hold jar .. so, unless you really cannot do without your porterhouse steak, losing teeth is no detriment to a comfortable lifestyle. An eye, on the other hand, well that is kind of useful to have. Lose one and you are down to one. Like a kidney.
His fist comes towards your face and it’s like a messenger from the gods. Or a bunch of digits wrapped up in bone and skin and sinew.. Whatever. When it connects with your cheekbone all you can really be sure of is pain. The good kind, the clean kind. The I-am-alive kind.
Your blood spurts in gouts from crash sites located all over your head and with every drop of blood lost a tiny bit of you is lost, too. But it’s the bits that are expendable, so fuck em.
You think of every sexual experience you ever had, every teacher you wanted to crucify in the schoolyard with rusty nails, every parking ticket...
His fist connects with you and its like you are reborn. There and then. In pain and blood and snot. His foot, naked and hard and smooth, caresses the side of your head, around about the left ear.. he is toying with you because you are now perpendicular to the hard cement floor and he can do that to you.
A kaleidoscope of colours and shapes erupts in your synapses and its so fucking beautiful. Orgasmic. And its down to him. He does this to you. Again and again and again.
“Stop…” you manage to say, more of a slur, choked out with coppery bloody phlegm that lubricates your mouth, mingling with beads of sweat.
Almost instantly, his hand grasps yours. He pulls you up off the floor. The crowd – yeah, there’s a crowd, fuckers - clap hands, appreciative of a good show. In truth, you know he could beat the crap out of you every minute of every hour of every day. He is better than you.
But it’s not about winning and losing. Its about Fight Club.
And in the alley, in the cold night air, when he punches you again, hard, in the stomach.. well, that’s Fight Club. And when he pulls you up by the hair, that’s Fight Club.
But when he pushes you backwards against the dumpster, well, that’s not Fight Club. That’s Tyler.
And if you are hard as iron, well that’s you. See, it’s important to differentiate between what’s Fight Club and what isn’t. Cos his hand holding your head in position so he can fuck you with his tongue, well, that’s not in the rules.
The first rule of Fight Club is - you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is - you DO NOT talk about Fight Club. Third rule of Fight Club, someone yells "Stop!", goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule, only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule, one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule, no shirt, no shoes. Seventh rule, fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule, if this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.
And the ninth rule – open your mouth and take deep into your throat the cock of your friend..
And you do.
He doesn’t give a shit that you are crumpled against the wall, that you are sitting in garbage. He deep-throats you and you take it, because this is Tyler Durden and he just knocked a rainbow of shit out of you in there and you would eat his. And with each thrust, you pay the price for not being him. And you pay it gladly.
Lights and pain again. That’s him yanking you up by the roots of your hair until you are standing more or less upright, given the general drunken stance you seem to have made your own.
And when you realise that something is missing, and the something missing is your pants and you never liked those pants anyhow, then you go all cosmic and make friends with the hard, cold metal of the dumpster as it fucks your back.
His hand, when it closes around you, is calloused and insistent and a hundred degrees away from gentle, thank the Lord. You feel like maybe you should do the friendly thing and reach for him in return, show some reciprocation, but he practically snarls at you and you drop your hand. He yanks at you, fisting your shaft in long, twisting tugs which defy description cos how can you describe that?
“Fuck,” you say, “fuck..” and his eyes are so close, his breath warm and rancid on your cheek, but he won’t relent, won’t slow down or take a hint. And when you give it up all over his hand he still doesn’t stop, just wanks away at you until you want to cry for him to end it. Then, just when he seems set to carry on flogging a very dead horse, he releases you. And holds his drenched, sticky fingers to your mouth to lick clean.
“Thank you, “ you say, pathetic little piece of shit that you are, as you tongue his hand and accept the gift. Mmm, not bad, though it tastes nothing like chicken..
And just for the barest second, a flicker of something registers and then it’s gone and maybe it was never there. But as you zip up your pants you have this time-lapse thing sort of running through your head. And if you could just rewind it maybe it would make sense. Frame by frame by frame, backwards, nearly there. Almost there.
And that’s when you start to clench, to heave. And then the film is running forward again and you are so fucking relieved that you can leave that bad scene behind, it’s history. And it makes no sense.
Cos for just a second... Tyler wasn’t there. And he never was.
End