Invisible Monsters

by Chuck Palahniuk

It’s all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.

No matter how careful you are, there’s going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn’t experience it all. There’s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should’ve been paying attention.

Those Burning Blueberry eyes look right at me the way no eyes have all summer. “Your perception is all fucked up,” Brandy says. “All you can talk about is trash that’s already happened.” She says, “You can’t base your life on the past or the present.”

“When you understand,” Brandy says, “that what you’re telling is just a story. It isn’t happening anymore. When you realize the story you’re telling is just words, when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in the trashcan,” Brandy says, “then we’ll figure out who you’re going to be.”

“Your brother,” Evie says, “did you really see him die? For real? Or did you see him dead? In a coffin, you know, with music. Or a death certificate?”