Disclaimer: anything you recognise isn't mine.
Warning: possible slash if you squint, also swearing and references to sex.
I remember the time Tyler sat in his shadow hand. Naked on the beach, naked as birth, as pornography. I'm in his shadow now, always in his fucking shadow.
I mean, maybe.
Even in heaven, all I think about is Tyler. Tyler and his rules. (Don't talk about fight club. Don't talk about fight club. When God and his specialists ask me questions, Tyler's words run through my head. Do not talk about fight club.)
Tyler the guerilla waiter. Him and all those blood-covered diamonds. All those expensive dead whales stinging in a rich woman's delicate cuts.
Did Tyler tell me that, or did I see it?
I can't remember.
And Marla.
Marla.
Her and her second-hand clothes. Bridesmaid's dresses. I embrace my own diseased festering corruption. Marla and her mother's fat. Her and her collagen lips. Marla and her glass-slipper condom stealing other people's jeans. I think she stole some from me. Or it might have been Tyler.
I mean, maybe?
Marla and Tyler humping, humping, humping. Together in the bedroom, but always, always alone. Repeating the same old disappearing act my parents perfected. Another generation of spiteful hate-fueled people tearing each other apart.
Hey, I say. Hey Tyler.
Hey fuckface. Guess what?
Hey Tyler. I'm talking now.
I mean, maybe.
Tyler is everything good about me, and Marla is everything bad.
Or.
Marla is everything good about me, and Tyler is everything bad.
Split seconds.
"So which is it?" My hallucination whispers. "Huh?"
I don't know anymore.
Tyler's talking to me again. But I'm dead. I'm in heaven, wearing a backless gown in puke-green. The uniform of all the new arrivals.
Tyler's not here.
God's here, behind his big doors with the hundred-percent naturally rippled glass windows, so thick and full of those special unique little imperfections, sitting at his antique oak and walnut desk with the dark green ink-blotter with authentic eighteenth-century ink-stains, in front of his collection of books kept still by those little hand-cast brass statues – bookends.
But not Tyler.
The Angels with their neat clean little white dresses and their shiny colourful clipboards with the pens attached on long strings and those squeaking rubber-soled shoes, they're here, giggling nervously behind their moisturized and manicured hands about my angry Japanese Jack-O-Lantern grin.
But not Tyler.
Tyler's never here.
"We're waiting for you, Sir." A beat-up janitor looks at me. Pus leaks from his wreck of a nose. I wonder if he can really see me through those swollen slits of eyes, or if he's just guessing where I am.
It takes a moment, but I look back at him and I say, Tyler?
He laughs.
Marla visited me, didn't she? In heaven? She blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth, her lips pulled tight into a little pouting frown, even though you're not meant to smoke in heaven. The cords of tendon in her neck stood out like she'd been running. She looked like a dark-haired demon in dirty second-hand clothes next to those Old Testament Angels.
Didn't she?
I mean, maybe.
I can't remember.
I can't remember anything.
Tyler?
"Yeah? What the hell do you want, you indecisive fuck?"
Tyler?
"What?"
Where's Marla? If she visited me, where is she now? Surely she would have stayed if she cared. Surely. Surely she'd still be here. Wouldn't she?
"That cunt isn't here, Sir." The janitor is back. Did he ever leave? I thought he left.
He stares at me through his big purple eyelids.
Where is she? I say, and I'm scared of the answer.
He grins like a snake after it's swallowed something small and soft and helpless whole.
"We've taken care of her," He says. "Sir."
"Come back." He says.
"Sir." He says.
And I say, my voice shaking but getting stronger, Tyler?
Where are you?
Tyler, you shithead. I know you're here. Come out.
Come out, Tyler.
Fuckhead.
I know you're here.
"Nice to see you too."
Tyler, in all his glory. Tyler in the flesh. Tyler. He's not naked, but I'm still thinking of pornography.
Tyler, I say in a voice that sounds like a stupid little kid on Christmas. Tyler, are you really here?
"Solid as you are." He grins at me.
I feel warm and golden and blinded, like I've just stepped into hot bright sunlight. Tyler's kiss throbs on the back of my hand and the fingers of my other hand touch it gently, involuntarily, experimentally.
Tyler? I say. What are we going to do?
"We're going to finish what we started." Tyler says, and stretches his lips into a grin that reminds me of a Mexican Day of the Dead sugar skull.
But hey, I say, what happened?
Tyler, I whine. Where were you? Where did you go?
"You killed yourself. I died too." He says, handing me a dirty shirt and a pair of ragged jeans. "But we're back now. We're both back."
Tyler, I say as I pull on the trousers. One last thing, Tyler. The puke-coloured gown flaps behind me as I fumble with the ties.
And he stops and he looks at me and he says, "Yeah?"
The shirt goes over my head and I'm caught up in half-darkness. A cave. My dark power cave.
I mean, maybe.
I'm deep in the dark of the cave and I ask, Marla?
My head pops out of the cave, the shirt, and Tyler looks at me.
"Sometimes." He says, and the pause between words is so long it sounds like he's finished. "Your dad isn't the only one who leaves you."
You dance for a while.
Glass-slipper condom. Glass-slipper stranger.
I mean, maybe.
You dance all night, all week, all year.
Then you throw it away.
Does he mean the condom?
I mean, maybe.
Or-
Does he mean the condom?
Please, someone, tell me he means the condom.
I mean, maybe. Maybe he doesn't-
Tyler grins his wolf grin.
Burn witch burn.