Survivor

by Chuck Palahniuk

Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet that someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.

People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone.

According to church doctrine only the firstborn son, Adam, would ever marry and grow old in the church district.

That was the definition of our faith. Nothing was to be known. Anything was to be expected.

Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

The parents of that Adam Maxton were also called Adam and Author Maxton, until their just-married son and his wife had a child. After that, you addressed both members of the older couple as Elder Maxton.

An airplane is just so many rows of people sitting and all going in the same direction a long ways off the ground. Going to New York’s a lot the way I imagine going to Heaven would be.

if Jesus Christ had died in prison, with no one watching and with no one there to mourn or torture him, would we be saved? With all due respect. According to the agent, the biggest factor that makes you a saint is the amount of press coverage you get.

You wonder, if there had been a low turnout at the crucifixion, would they have rescheduled?

It’s about cellular rejuvenation cream. Washing is about exfoliation. What used to be breathing is respiration.

Nobody wants to worship you if you have the same problems, the same bad breath and messy hair and hangnails, as a regular

The waitress brings the chicken stir-fry and my lemon meringue pie and fills our coffee cups. Then she smiles and goes off to die.

“We all watch the same television programs,” the mouth says. “We all hear the same things on the radio, we all repeat the same talk to each other. There are no surprises left. There’s just more of the same. Reruns.”

Inside the hole, the red lips say, “We all grew up with the same television shows. It’s like we all have the same artificial memory implants. We remember almost none of our real childhoods, but we remember everything that happened to sitcom families. We have the same basic goals. We all have the same fears.” The lips say, “The future is not bright. “Pretty soon, we’ll all have the same thoughts at the same time. We’ll be in perfect unison. Synchronized. United. Equal. Exact. The way ants are. Insectile. Sheep.” Everything is so derivative.

We feel so superior to the dead. For example, if Michelangelo was so damn smart, why’d he die?

Here I sit all downhearted, tried to shit and only farted.

Fertility says, “Can you just relax and let things happen?” I ask, does she mean, like disasters, like pain, like misery? Can I just let all that happen? “And Joy,” she says, “and Serenity, and Happiness, and Contentment.” She says all the wings of the Columbia Memorial Mausoleum. “You don’t have to control everything,” she says. “You can’t control everything.”

“Even the garden of Eden was just a big fancy cage,” Adam says. “You’ll be a slave the rest of your life unless you bite the apple.”

“The Vietnam War didn’t cause the mess of the 1960s,” Adam says. “Drugs didn’t cause it. Well, only one drug did. It was the birth control pill. For the first time in history, everybody could have all the sex they wanted. Everybody could have that kind of power.” Throughout history the most powerful rulers have been sex maniacs. And he asks, does their sex appetite come from having power, or does their will for power come from their sex appetite? “And if you don’t crave sex,” he says, “will you crave power?” No, he says.

The three hours I’ve been burying Adam is the longest I’ve ever been out of a job. Now Fertility Hollis is here to tell me what to do. My new job is following her.