Shorts

by Chuck Palahniuk

Printed in Playboy magazine
March 2004

Inhale.

Take in as much air as you can.

This story should last about as long as you can hold your breath, and then just a little bit longer. So listen as fast as you can.

A friend of mine, when he was thirteen years old he heard about "pegging." This is when a guy gets banged up the butt with a dildo. Stimulate the prostate gland hard enough, and the rumor is you can have explosive hands-free orgasms. At that age, this friend's a little sex maniac. He's always jonesing for a better way to get his rocks off. He goes out to buy a carrot and some petroleum jelly. To conduct a little private research. Then he pictures how it's going to look at the supermarket checkstand, the lonely carrot and petroleum jelly rolling down the conveyer belt toward the grocery store cashier. All the shoppers waiting in line, watching. Everyone seeing the big evening he has planned.

by Will Christopher Baer

I see myself in the dark glass of a storefront window. The image is wavering, untrue. I slip a cigarette from my pocket with pinched fingers and stare at it for two or three minutes, maybe longer. Then place it between my lips and strike a match as if I never hesitated. This is a nervous condition I developed in jail. Time becomes narrow, physical. My perception of self is incidental, and this allows me to disappear. I become a lizard the color of dust. Detached and cool as new money, untormented by echoes. But also vulnerable, exposed. I haven’t slept with my eyes closed in years. My reflection shimmers in blackened glass. I’ve been out of jail for six hours and now I stand on a street corner like I’m waiting for a bus. I’m funny, though. I’m a clown in a borrowed suit. The sleeves are too short and my hands dangle like fish on a string. The tie is singularly ugly.

by Chuck Palahniuk

Printed in Modern Short Stories
October 1990

Joni Mitchell's music was the theme to the TV series of Sybil's life. When Sybil walked down the beach, she heard Joni in her head. When she made love, she played Joni's tapes. After sex, she sang the lyrics in the shower.

She played the "up" songs, like "Free Man In Paris," when she was happy.

She played Joni's "Blue" album when she was down. Or more accurately, her husband suspected, when Sybil wanted to be down and stay down.

by Chuck Palahniuk

Printed in Modern Short Stories
August 1990

Audrey is a sexual outlaw, slave to a Latin rhythm, a C-section child of the seventies. She's a rabid panther trapped in the fetid, jungle heat of the Number 14, Bonnedale bus.

And she's sitting right behind you for the third time this month.

This can't be chance. She's there for a reason. She smells your fear like a dog would.

She's not just another white girl with damaged hair. She's a python sweating off the dead skin of a black spandex tube dress. Her headset is full of Bob Marley reggae, and she has a crude, deliberate way of letting her hem roll up her legs. Audrey makes her own way in this world, without women's rights or affirmative action or a breath deodorant. She is high and free and has all her own teeth, which is a warning.

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by Chuck Palahniuk.

I don't remember any of it. The people, the folks who let me go ahead of them in the emergency room. What the police said. I mean they gave me this hospital sheet with "Property of Providence of Memorial Hospital" printed along the edge in indelible blue. They gave me morphine, intravenously. Then they propped me up on a gurney.

I don't remember, but I've seen those pictures they took.