Disclaimer: I don't own Fight Club (Chuck Pahlaniuk does) or the lyrics to 'Warning' (that's all Incubus). The only I own is the Haiku in the beginning which I wrote when I was really bored in Driver's Ed. =)

A/N: Based mostly off of the book (and if you're not going to read this now because you haven't read the book - what is wrong with you? If you love the movie then read the book - it's so damn good!) I did take the liberty of inserting some parts that were in the movie and not in the book when they were more convenient for me (such as the end). This may not be very profound but I just had to put into words how much this song reminds me of Marla. I just hope to offer some new insights into the narrator's feelings about Marla. Sorry for the weird formatting - I don't know what's up with that.

Insomnia bites

A copy of a copy

Marla needs to leave

Warning

You close your eyes.

She's there.

You open them.

She looks absently at the wallpaper patterned like a fading tablecloth as it hangs off its last shred of glue from the otherwise barren wall. She takes a drag of her cigarette. The man who really had his huevos removed slumps against her shoulder and shakes with rhythmic sobs.

~ Bat your eyes girl

Be otherworldly ~

Faker.

Liar.

I try to lose myself in the salty damp cotton of Big Bob's shirt, voluptuous over his excess estrogen breasts.

~ Count your blessings
Seduce a stranger ~

Fast forward. I wake up one morning and Marla's in our house on Paper Street. Tyler is sickeningly non-chalant when I interrogate him about her being here.

I am Joe's clenching fist.

~ What's so wrong with
Being happy? ~

You just want to sleep. There are days, maybe even weeks, depending on the severity of the blows inflicted after Fight Club where nothing can touch you.

Insomnia is far away, but not like that. You feel everything is so close, invading your last shred of personal dignity space and yet you can't really get a grasp on any of it. All I want is to sleep and wake up as the same person. Not a copy of a copy of a copy of me.


~ Kudos to those who
See through sickness

…Over And Over And Over… ~

I don't need exercise or a change of diet. I need to be rid of her.

After many nights of floor rattling humping from the other room, Marla calls me. Not Tyler. Oh great.

She wants me to play doctor.

I can't get rid of her. She's the one who needs help.

Fine. Let Marla have the support groups. As long as she isn't in my house. As long as she isn't in Tyler's bed.

~ When she woke in the morning
She knew that her life had passed her by ~

Laying precariously on the edge of the plastic slip-covered mattress she must have come close to feeling what I feel.

Or not.

She must have felt so close to death where you can see the gates of heaven or hell but you're still stuck on earth. Laying on your stomach on a mattress covered in clear plastic instead of sheets.

Or not.

She said she was dying. Or else it was a cry for help. Either way I didn't want a part of it.

I should have just hung up the phone. Gone to do something. Anything but go to sleep. She said I had to keep her up all night. I was really the one who needed to be kept awake.

She could listen to herself breathing. Her soul would be fine leaving without anyone but her knowing. I was sure of it.

~ And she called out a warning
Don't ever let life pass you by ~

A cry for help. That's what she said her accidental suicide attempt was. To me, she's a walking cry for help.

Tyler tells me, "At least she's trying to hit bottom."

As if living in an abandoned ramshackle house, because my entire life was forcibly launched out of the cement shell of my condominium, where we have to shut power off every time it rains or else the wiring will short out and where at night there is not another living soul around for a half a mile in every direction is not the bottom. Or below.

Sure.

And buying ugly dresses for a single dollar at a throwaway thrift store is living life to the fullest. The animal shelter. The used car lot. That's not a life. It's pathetic. And saving collagen from your mother's "gleaning" surgeries to implant in your shriveling lips when you start to age is living for the moment. Carpe fucking diem.

~ I suggest we
Learn to love ourselves before it's
Made illegal ~

I sit at my orderly generic desk, a drone performing my task of writing recall reports and calculating the gains and losses of allowing a faulty product to stay on the consumer market. A times B times C. We're all going to die. In flames of burning fuel sparked by a faulty ignition. Good.

I think of Marla. Her features gaunt like in death. Pale skin drawn over frail bones.

Loathe.

No, I don't loathe her. Not really, anyway. I loathe that I feel the way she looks when I sit at this desk and my boss stands over me, averting his eyes away from the crater in my face.

It would all be better if she would just leave. She's fine living in her apartment scotch guarded in plastic, eating the lunches of dead tenants. Not fine in my support groups. Especially not fine in my house. In my life.

I don't think another woman is the answer.

Loathe.

It's not really her. No. Something else. What she does maybe. Her mother in my freezer. Maybe. Me. Maybe.

Tyler maybe. It's been days since I've seen Tyler.


~ When will we learn?
When will we change?
Just in time to
See it all knocked down ~

Death is imminent.

Prepare for departure in three.

In two.

In one.

Headlights sear through my pupils, open wide, and panicked horns blare. The driver does not change his course, heading straight into an oncoming truck.

Prepare for departure. If only.

The driver asks me what I want to do before I die. I want to respond, die. Of course that would be too simple. The driver looks at me and not at the looming silver grate that towers over our sedan.

I wonder if becoming a Space Monkey in Tyler's Project Mayhem is really a change for the better.

I wonder about hitting bottom. Is becoming Marla, coming closer to her, really a change for the better?

~ Those left standing...will make millions
Writing books on the way it should have been ~

Tyler said his goal was equality. Drop everyone down to zero and start from scratch. Square one. That way, he will never have to raise himself up. We'll bring them all down to our level. Then they'll know.

That's why they'll sip their soup and our blue-collar piss out of sterling silver soupspoons. They'll eat salmon flambé contaminated by our working class scum farts until it comes down to it. Until we can desecrate priceless works of art and architecture because they no longer hold any monetary worth or societal esteem.

People will look back on this time and shake their heads. Wonder what went wrong. Only, we know. That's all we're trying to do. Tell the rest of them. Save them from themselves. They just don't know it.

According to Tyler's philosophy, if we level everything, Marla will be queen. Queen of the bottom. I am Jack's nauseous innards.

~ When she woke in the morning
She knew that her life had passed her by

And she called out a warning… warning
Don't ever let life pass you by ~

She won't spend her time being depressed in the public service healthcare facilities. She describes the people there to me. They sound somehow worse off than Marla does. And yet she would fit right in. I don't tell her that. It's on the tip of my tongue. I don't know why I don't. Instead, I tell her a stupid story. To make her laugh.

Maybe she needs it. Maybe I need it. No. I need sleep. And she needs to stop calling me.

Neutral. I'm safe to her. I'm not safe to myself. How can I be anything to her?

Bad news. That's what she is to me. And yet she listens. I tell her about my 10-minute cancer. I tell her more than I've told anyone. Except maybe for Tyler. But Tyler and I we're alike. Marla and I are not.


~ Floating in this
Cosmic Jacuzzi
We are like frogs oblivious
To the water
Starting to boil ~

I know there is something wrong when Tyler is not home. It's too quiet. Not a peaceful sort of Hippie wilderness silence, but a creepy mortuary dead silence.

Did I miss something while I was asleep, or while I was awake?

Everywhere I go to look for Tyler it is "Sir". "Yes, Sir." "No, Sir." This, that. Nothing. Poor soulless Space Monkeys.

I am so close to him I can smell him like you can smell the sickly fumes of gasoline before your car bursts into a fiery ball of death. I pray for such a welcome event as the taxi slows at yet another airport drop-off site.

~ No one flinches
We all flow face down ~

"It's all taken care of, Sir," each and every one tells me. A monotonous and sickly calm voice tells me. I am Jack's disturbing realization.

Then from the top floor window I see them bringing Marla. She is struggling less than when I tried to warn her about exactly that. I dragged her into this and somehow I still feel justified in remaining angry with her.

I am Jack's useless warning.

~ When she woke in the morning
She knew that her life had passed her by
And she called out a warning… warning
Don't ever let life pass you by… pass you by ~

She tells me she likes me. She can tell the difference. She allows me to take her hand. For some reason I don't need to explain. Before, I thought that she should have warned me about herself. Instead, I should have warned her about me. And me about myself.

Too late. Then again, it's too late for everyone. Maybe that makes it okay.

Economic life as we knew it blows up below us, hurling plumes of flame, smoke, and debris towards us. But it won't touch us. Can't. Paraffin has never, ever worked for me.

Maybe that's okay.