It's been a long time here in Heaven.
I still talk to God every once in a while, just to tell him that Tyler is gone, gone forever, I don't need to be here, I'm a fully reformed member of society, i.e., All the Usual Bullshit.
I'm here in Heaven, and the angels pushing the other souls past me look at me like I'm some rabid dog that's going to bite chunks out of their flesh if they get too close. The other souls are a little afraid of me. Well hell, I'm afraid of me too, sometimes.
There were a few members of Project Mayhem here before, but they're both gone now. One threw himself out of a third story window, screaming "TYLER LIVES!" at the top of his lungs with enough force to shatter concrete and kill doves flying overhead. He splattered in the parking lot. I had a lovely view from my own window.
The other one was found dispensing his various bodily fluids in the coffee pot in the break room. The angels massaged his head with their Billy clubs for a while and told the police he'd slipped.
I'm not sure what happened to the third one, but I know that one minute he was there, telling me, "We'll have you out very soon, sir." The next minute, he was lying at the bottom of the stairwell with his head on the wrong way.
Marla calls sometimes. I still won't let her see me. I don't know why; God knows she's probably dating some other neurotic corporate zombie with delusions of paradise. Paradise is dead. I put a gun in my mouth and blew his head off with it.
Tyler is dead.
Right?
- - -
It was on a cold winter morning that God came in my room and told me I was going on a trip.
I asked Him where, and He chuckled at me like some deranged clown getting ready to sacrifice a small child to the dark god of circuses.
"Well, technically you won't even be leaving this room," He told me. "Today I'm going to give you an experimental drug called Viatrax. The Viatrax will induce you into a dreamlike state, almost akin to hypnosis, and allow you to enter your own subconscious. I believe that this will allow you to finally confront your other self, and possibly rid your mind of him entirely."
But Tyler's already dead, I told Him.
"Unfortunately, I don't think he is," God told me. "The incident with the orderly the other night. . .and the fact that the nurses say that they can hear you laughing every night, in your sleep. I'm afraid it all points to the fact that, in some level of your mind, Tyler Durden is still alive. And what was it that you told me in our last session? That he said that if you ever turned against him, he would get back at you for it?"
I didn't have an answer for him. Somewhere behind my ears I could hear a voice chuckling. From deep inside my cerebral cortex came five words:
"I am Jack's Smirking Revenge."
I look up at God and tell him okay, shoot me up.
He does.
I fall asleep. Halfway, anyway.
And I go on the hunt.