Author's Note: Hey, guys. I'm so sorry this took so long to do. I know some of y'all have me on e-mail updates and might have been hoping for this sometime in January like I promised a few, but with the holidays and everything going on in late December, it made getting away from family to write a chapter or two a little hard. Also there was the fact that I was really self-conscious about the continuation of LMFTM1 and wanted to make sure I didn't step on the wrong toes when it came to making sure everything fit. I still had a bit of a hard time in chapter eleven of this one, but I really hope it doesn't show! Anyway, uh, on with the show!

Available for download in PDF. I promise you that I don't have any viruses. I just strongly recommend it seeing as this was written in book format. Visit the Tumblr dedicated to this series, "11785", for details.

Or just read it here (:

PROLOGUE ONE

Bayview Memorial Park
Bayview, Maine
Thursday, August 3, 2006
4:35 AM

Tyler Durden and Jaime Karnes loved to race each other in the early mornings. As they ran through Bayview Memorial Park, the smell of dawn on the horizon and a light darkness in the sky, Tyler could feel the cool wind whipping past him as he headed toward the commemorative statue at the peninsula poking out over the ocean. It was the spot where Tyler usually took a heavy-breathing Jaime into his arms and the two looked out at the Atlantic until the sun rose high in the sky.

But they were at least a hundred yards from that point. Picking up his pace, Tyler dodged the bench blocking his path and made his way onto the grass, loving the softness under his sneakers. Jaime was still on the sidewalk, near the center to avoid anything jumping out in front of her, with her ponytail bouncing abruptly behind her. For a minute, Tyler's eyes absorbed his girlfriend's slender, muscular body. The way she moved under that skin-tight track suit was something enchanting, causing him to want to stop right there and pull her into a claiming kiss. But he knew she did that on purpose. He had once made a comment about the way the spandex contoured her body, and now she wore it as often as possible to distract him from his goal.

Turning his attention toward the stature at the point, he could make out a few sleeping birds in the moon overhead. The closer they approached, the more birds scattered until the iron sculpture was free of living creatures. Eventually, Tyler reached out and touched the cold metal first, letting out a victorious sigh.

"Got you this time!" Tyler laughed as Jaime slowed to a stop behind him.

"First time in a long time," Jaime breathed, smirking.

In the silver moonlight, Tyler could make out the shining blonde of Jaime's hair as she pulled it from its ponytail and allowed the wind to push it off her sweaty forehead. As the flaxen locks tumbled over her shoulders, framing her triangular face, Tyler smiled at her. She looked gorgeous with her dewy complexion and watery blue eyes, the color of which matched the ocean on a sunny day. Her body was thin and limber from years of working out and playing tennis, with nice sized breasts that Tyler loved to grab when they were alone in her bedroom. In his mind, Jaime Karnes was the perfect girlfriend—one that was so unbelievable that it made Tyler wonder why she was with him in the first place.

At twenty-two, when they had first met, he had been awkward, nerdy, and underweight. He had spent the majority of his time in his parents' basement, rebuilding computers and forgetting to eat most meals in fear of slowing down; causing him to appear gaunt and ghost-like. His two friends, Lester and Oliver, had been by his side while he tried to install an amount of RAM on an old Dell that wouldn't be able to handle it, upgrade graphics cards that were long-obsolete, or find a way to convert his screen resolution from standard to HDMI. They fed into his interests, bringing snacks and movies with them whenever they came over, and watched him work endlessly—sometimes giving input on whether or not adding a 250 gigabyte hard drive to a 1994 Gateway was a good idea. They never left the bottom of his parents' house, not even for a food run, instead waiting for Tyler's mom to take a trip to the store to save them from having to uproot themselves from their stations.

It wasn't, or hadn't seemed like at the time, a boring existence. He had enjoyed and had a passion for working with technology, but with no money for college, he had to do the best he could. After awhile, however, his father had started to become outwardly vocal over his disapproval of Tyler spending days "below deck"—his father worked on boats for a living and used the terminology far too much—and thought he could change his son's demeanor if he could find Tyler a girlfriend. Night after night, Dad called him upstairs to talk to a new girl he had invited for dinner; but as soon as he saw them, Tyler often turned around to return to his basement dwelling. Finally giving up on the idea, Dad had stopped asking his friends' daughters over, and allowed Tyler to stay where he was.

One night near Christmas, at a mandatory party his mother's work was throwing, Tyler sat near the door, sending text message after text message to Oliver about the new slim computer his friend had bought over the weekend. As the two discussed the features and the pain it was having to uninstall pre-installed software, Jaime had entered with her father. From there, the phone conversation ended and Tyler began to turn his attention to the girl who looked like the perfect mix of Alicia Silverstone and Princess Leia. She had been the most gorgeous girl he had ever seen, and he was interested in her far more than he thought he could be interested in any PC part out there.

Heading for her, Tyler's mother had stopped him, suddenly intrigued with her son's pursuit, and quickly explained that Jaime had just returned home from graduating Stanford in the fall—a full semester early. Enticed by the idea that she was not only smart enough to get into one of the top colleges in the country, but to have graduated sooner than her classmates, Tyler had crossed the room and began talking to her. After awhile, he had seen past the outward beauty and intelligence to notice that Jaime was what his father would call "the total package". She understood what he meant when he started rambling on about NVIDIA, even adding her own opinion to the conversation, and listened patiently as he began weighing the options when it came to the difference between Windows and Macintosh—shocked when she said that she would always choose Windows for their processor speed.

"It was love at first geek," Jaime later said after they had been going out for awhile.

The months passed after that, with Tyler becoming less and less reclusive and more and more outgoing. By the time spring rolled around, the two of them had made a regular thing out of racing each other through the park in the early mornings. Not only was the change good for him, but it also helped him come out of his shell a bit, allowing him to socialize more than just sitting in his basement with his two friends, eating Pringles and watching Star Wars for the thousandth time.

Now that summer was beginning to fade, however, Tyler had a feeling their morning routine was about to become a thing of the past.

A few mornings ago, he had heard Jaime on the phone with her father, discussing her options for graduate school. She had told him multiple times that she had put off heading for Brown University in the spring to go for her Masters because she had wanted a break from college, but now that the fall semester was just around the bend, she had a limited amount of time to get everything together and sorted out. Due to the look on his girlfriend's face when he had picked her up earlier that morning, he had a feeling she had gotten word from the school in Rhode Island and that their days together were numbered.

Not wanting to think about it, Tyler placed his foot on the metal railing barring anyone from falling into the ocean below to stretch beside Jaime. While he worked on his hamstrings, letting the cold breeze dry the sweat at his temples, he watched as Jaime lifted her arms over her head and bent forward, displaying the straightness of her back. Unable to resist her defenseless stance, Tyler dropped his foot onto the ground and grabbed Jaime around the middle, burying his face into her damp neck as he held her from behind. As she laughed at the surprise, Tyler soaked in the sound, wondering if he would only be hearing the delicate noise on weekends and during holidays.

"You know," Jaime began, a laugh still in her tone, "I just don't know what to do with you, Tyler Durden."

"I can think of a few things," Tyler winked.

Smacking him from behind, Jaime shook her head, the feather-like tickle of her hair on his chest. "That's not what I mean. I mean you. You're so different than that scrawny little kid I met eight months ago. I like it."

Grinning, Tyler rubbed her arms with his hands against the chilly air. "Well, I'm glad at least someone does."

Standing there in silence, Tyler continued the motion with his palms, hoping that the warmth would radiate throughout her body into his. It was unusually cold for an early morning, reminding him of the winters he had spent in Ohio when he was younger. It had snowed and frosted overnight, often with the frigidness wafting into the house and causing anyone inside to pull the blankets tighter. Thought it wasn't cold enough to freeze, it was definitely chilly enough to where he could see his breath.

Ignoring it to follow through with their morning ritual, Tyler rolled his shoulders back and stared out at the ocean. The blackness of the waves crashed against the shore, swallowing everything beneath it like a giant tongue. When the water retracted back into the bay, it collided again moments later in a monotony that was comforting. No matter how often the waves hit the sandy stretch of beach below the peninsula, nothing about it changed except the size of the swells. The noise was calming as they stood there, every now and then seeing their breath in puffs of white against the indigo sky. After awhile, the blue of the horizon changed, becoming lighter, but not bright enough to be considered daybreak. Waiting for it, Tyler pulled Jaime tighter and sniffed the strawberry perfume of her hair, surprised that he could still pick up on it over the scent of sweat and sea.

Suddenly, something that didn't sound or smell familiar came from the foliage off to their right. Moving his head to see if anything was there, Tyler strained his eyes and breathed in the cold air, half expecting to see something pop out of the bushes. When nothing did, he shrugged to himself before turning his attention back to their teal surroundings.

Good to know I'm imagining things, Tyler smirked.

A moment later and the sound of rustling leaves came from his right, causing him to whip his head in the direction of the same plants. By now, the sky was light enough to make out the shapes of branches moving in the thicket of trees in the distance. In the wind came the smell of an overheated computer, along with the hint of exhaust. Furrowing his brow, Tyler let his arms fall from around Jaime as he headed toward the moving undergrowth.

"Where are you going?" Jaime asked, sounding slightly disappointed at his release.

"I'll be right back," he whispered.

Walking slowly, Tyler placed his sneakers lightly on the ground as he made his way over to the brush. The closer he got to the shuffling greenery, the stronger the odor of burning electronics became, causing him to throw the back of his wrist toward his nose to stifle the scent. He had read about smells like that before, that it was the byproduct of o-zone, but had never actually experienced the sensation firsthand. His science classes in high school had always said sniffing it would be as dangerous as sniffing sharpies, trying to deter any of the students from trying it. Unfortunately, it was a cover-up for laziness seeing as the pollutant was already in the air to begin with.

Shaking his head to get rid of the thought of scientific facts to focus on the task at hand, Tyler stepped off the path winding around the trees and into the dried leaves on the ground. As soon as he did, the wind around him picked up, blowing his short brown hair back and causing his loose clothes to whip behind him. Over the loudness of the hurricane-like currents, Tyler could hear Jaime calling him. Turning around to make sure she was alright, he could see a panicked look on her face as her ocean blue eyes darted somewhere behind him.

"Tyler, look out!"

All of a sudden, Tyler could feel his feet being lifted off the ground as he was propelled toward a sapling further into the small forest. The sound of the tree snapping in half cracked throughout the night air, resounding over the crash of waves behind him. Getting up, he could see a dark shape at the mouth of the thicket. It was tall and burley, with long, scraggly hair and tight, striped shirt that hugged its bulky, masculine form. As Tyler backed up, the man, or what he thought was a man, headed toward him a glacial pace, measuring each step and keeping his eyes locked on Tyler. The two continued their slow movements until a twig snapped beneath Tyler's feet, momentarily taking his attention away from the man.

When he looked up, he was gone.

"Tyler?"

"I'm ri—"

But he didn't get to finish his sentence. A moment later and the man was there, blinking into existence, his hand raised to smack Tyler into another tree. Doing so, Tyler's back hit the trunk with a loud whack, his shoulder blades aching from the impact. As he sank to the ground, the seat of his sweatpants dropping into mud, he looked around for the man. It was darker this deep into the woods, but with the sun rising, the blackness gradually lessened until he spotted the man's dark shape and was able to see enough of his attacker.

What he saw, however, wasn't pretty.

The man's face was cut open from the corners of his mouth to the apples of his cheeks with a surgically-modified smile, while the area surrounding his nose was bruised and broken from beatings similar to the ones he was dishing out on Tyler. His eyes were dark and savage, as if he only had one sinister thing in mind, and as he grasped his victim around the collar of his shirt, he let out a feral laugh that chilled Tyler to the bone.

"What do you say we play a little game?" the man asked, the slashes in his cheeks reddening as he spoke.

Pulling Tyler to his feet, the man shoved his back into the tree trunk with one hand and held out an empty palm with his other. A moment later and a scalpel appeared between his outstretched fingers, faded gray underneath the muted blue leaking in through the thicket around them. At the sight of it, Tyler struggled against the man's hold, but his strength surpassed Tyler's own meager muscles.

As he stood pinned there, the sound of leaves crunching under a slight weight came from behind his attacker. A glance over the man's shoulder told Tyler that Jaime had come into the brush looking for him.

"Oh, my God."

A laugh escaped the man as he turned his head toward Jaime, the steel of the instrument glinting off the faraway sun.

"Run! Jaime! Get help!"

Gasping, Jaime turned and sprinted back the way she had come, disappearing behind the thicket of trees she had just emerged into. When she was gone, Tyler looked at his attacker, a feeling of deep dread coming over him at the sight of the man's determined glare. His gray eyes were alight with ferocity. "You robbed me!"

"I didn't!" Tyler protested, hoping the man would understand that he had the wrong guy. "I don't even know you!"

"Liar!" the man growled.

Suddenly, anger began to radiate off of his attacker as Tyler stared him in the eye to keep from looking at the weapon in the man's hand. He knew he was done for with every fiber of his being, but couldn't will himself to look at the thing that would do it. Glaring at the man would make it easier. It seemed like something Han Solo would do in his final moments against a terrible foe.

Seeming to pick up on his false bravery, the man smiled, the scars deepening with the gesture. A moment later and Tyler could see the scalpel being raised in the man's hand as he moved it toward his victim's face. "Open wide!"

Refusing to do so, Tyler moved away, but he wasn't quick enough. A cold hand gripped his cheeks and slammed the back of his head into the tree. Stars came with the bang, followed by everything tilting. In his slanted vision, Tyler could see that the man was about to jam the sharp instrument into his mouth to give him an identical fake smile. Flailing his arms in an attempt to fight him off, Tyler felt his hands go through his attacker like jell-o. A second later and cold metal found its way onto his tongue before something sharp stung the inside of his cheek.

In an instant, everything in Tyler's body went numb as the scalpel began to slice at his mouth. He could feel the blood on his tongue as the blade cut, even the dull pain of the thing jabbing at his mouth, but couldn't sense anything else. The tree behind him felt like nothing and the cold air seemed warm. A moment later and his vision became starkly contrast as the fear enveloping him caused him to pass out.