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Here’s something fucked up I found out while I was locked away: there’s no word in the dictionary to describe a failed martyr. A would-be saint who fucked up the second most important aspect of sainthood: being a fucking martyr.
I’m not a hero. I’m not a martyr. I’m just a guy who failed to kill himself.
I even failed to kill Tyler. Yeah, Tyler fucking Durden is still here too.
(Say hello, Tyler.)
Sometimes I’m not sure what’s worse, being trapped in this place or being trapped in this place with Tyler.
I’d rather be alone. At least I wouldn’t have Tyler whispering in my ear every night, his hot, sour breath on the side of my face.
Tyler has big plans for us, when we get out of this joint. Tyler still believes in Project Mayhem. In the beauty of chaos.
I tell him no, I tell him Project Mayhem is dead. I killed it when I put a gun in my mouth and tried to kill myself—Tyler—on the roof of that building.
But Tyler isn’t listening to me anymore. His eyes are fever-bright and big as saucers.
“You’ve seen the way people look at us in here,” Tyler says. “They look at us like we’re gods.”
I yell, I don’t want to be a god. I just want Tyler to leave me alone.
I say, I just want to sleep.
“Tough fucking shit,” Tyler says.
I get out a few months later and Marla lets me move in with her.
Our relationship is strange. Strained. Marla won’t let me come near her. She doesn’t trust me. She doesn’t trust Tyler.
I stay on the pull-out couch and pretend to—try not to—sleep.
“I can hear you,” comes Marla’s voice.
I tell her I’m sorry. I’m thinking.
Her footsteps click on wood and then her shadow’s falling over me and the smell of her perfume invades my nostrils and claws its way down my throat.
Marla asks, “Are you thinking about Tyler?”
I don’t want to tell her the truth—that I am—so I shrug it off.
I’ll only be here for a couple days at the most, I tell her. I’ll get right out of her hair.
Marla backs away from the couch like she’s worried I might try to touch her. “You can stay longer. I don’t mind.”
I want to ask her if she’s afraid of me—Tyler—but I don’t want to hear the answer to that question. Of course she’s afraid of me.
I’m afraid of me. Why shouldn’t Marla be afraid too?
“I’m going to bed,” Marla announces, like she expects me to follow her to her room.
She leaves, her footsteps clicking away. I hear the door open and shut with a quiet sigh.
I’m still crashing on Marla’s couch when I wake up and Tyler’s sitting on the armrest, looking like he hasn’t got a care in the world. His blond hair is windswept and perfect.
I ask, what are you doing here?
“I go where you go,” Tyler says. “How’s Marla doing? You think she’d be happy to see me?”
I tell him, Marla’s not even happy to see me.
“That’s understandable,” Tyler says. “Considering…”
I wait him out.
“You shot yourself in front of her,” he says. “She watched you put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger.”
I was trying to kill you, I tell him.
“You think that matters to her?” Tyler asks. He climbs off the arm of Marla’s couch. “We’ve got business to take care of.”
I just want to sleep.
“There’s no rest for the wicked,” says Tyler.
I ask him where he heard that one.
“The Bible,” says Tyler.
I laugh. Like Tyler would ever pick up a Bible.
“I used the pages to wipe my ass,” he says.
I gather up the meager belongings I took with me from the rehabilitation center and then Tyler hotwires Marla’s car and we’re off.
“She’s never going to forgive you for this,” Tyler tells me as we peel out of the driveway and down the street.
I’ll make it up to her, I say.
Tyler says nothing, just reaches up to adjust the rearview mirror. I can see the front door to Marla’s place swinging open and then she storms onto the porch cocking a shotgun.
Marla screams, “You fucking asshole.”
I lean out the car window to apologize but a bullet whistles past my head and I duck back inside.
“She’ll get over it,” Tyler says. He adjusts the mirror so we can’t see Marla anymore.
Tyler ends up taking me to a safe-house a few miles out of town. We can’t stay in any of our usual haunts because the buildings have all been condemned or are still being processed as crime scenes.
“There’s gonna be a trial,” Tyler says, sounding proud, as he ushers me inside and turns on a flatscreen TV mounted to the wall.
He puts it on a twenty-four hour news channel.
The wub-wub-wub of the newscopter puts me right back on that roof with the gun in my hand and the cool barrel tucked into my cheek.
Instinctively, I reach up and touch the mottled scar tissue on my cheek.
“Look at that,” says Tyler, leaning over my shoulder and pointing at the TV with the remote.
I do look.
The newscrawl on the bottom says AUTHORITIES STILL GATHERING EVIDENCE IN CASE AGAINST FORMER PROJECT MAYHEM FOUNDER—
Am I a fugitive, Tyler?
Tyler says “Not really,” which doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.
He explains that the state is hoping to prove my competence to stand trial.
“They explained it all when they tagged you and released you into the wild,” Tyler says.
I don’t remember having this conversation. I wonder what other things I’ve said or done that Tyler’s been keeping from me.
“It’s not important,” Tyler says. “Get some sleep.”
I wake up feeling rested for the first time in—
Forever, really. I can’t remember the last time I felt this rested.
I unfurl on the couch, stretch my legs and crack my joints.
I hear footsteps and look up. Tyler shuffles into the living room in a silk kimono, a frying pan in hand.
I ask him, what are you doing?
“Making breakfast. Got a big day planned for us,” Tyler says.
I ask him what that means.
Tyler doesn’t answer. He turns and, kimono fluttering behind him like wings, disappears back into the kitchen.
Tyler’s up to something. I don’t know what he’s planning or how, but he’s up to something.
When I walk down the street people sometimes stop and stare or smile and wink. I can never tell if they’re looking at me or at Tyler.
Tyler’s answering machine is full, mostly with messages from Marla. He keeps threatening to delete the messages but something is stopping him.
I think it’s me.
“I’m gonna gut you like a fucking fish.”
Beep.
“I thought you loved me.”
Beep.
“Come back. We can just talk.”
Beep.
“You know what? I don’t care. You broke my heart. I don’t need you.”
Beep.
“What are you doing? Are you bringing Project Mayhem back? Tyler, if you’re listening—”
Beep.
I can hear Tyler’s voice whispering to me when he isn’t even there.
Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling trying to sleep, Tyler comes to me.
“I still want to break the world and make the pieces into something better,” Tyler hisses like a snake in my ear. “But I want to mold it in my image.”
I tell him, you want to be a god.
“I already am a god, I want to be capital-G God.”
I wonder: what about me?
“I need you.”
A capital-G God doesn’t need anybody.
“You serve a purpose,” Tyler says. “You’re my foot soldier.”
I am Tyler’s flying monkey.
Tyler doesn’t get the reference.
Maybe Tyler doesn’t know everything after all.
“Together we can make the world into anything we want,” Tyler promises.
“We can both be gods,” Tyler promises.
But there can only be one. Tyler knows this.
Tyler is planning something and I don’t know if I’m going to survive it.
One night when Tyler’s unusually quiet, I sneak out of the safe-house and hop in Marla’s car and drive back to Marla’s house.
I feel the absence of Tyler’s voice like it’s a tumor I had surgically removed. There’s just a hole where it used to be, and bloody flaps of skin. But he’ll come back, like a lot of tumors do, malignant and deadly.
I park the car along the curb and leave the engine running.
I race up the chewed-up stone walkway and bang on the door. There are pounding footsteps and the door swings open. Marla stares up at me. Her dark eyes are raccoonish, ringed with her lack of sleep.
“Tyler?” she asks.
No, I say, it’s me.
“Okay.” Marla opens the door a little wider and lets me in.
She closes the door behind me and turns, tilting her chin.
“Why are you here?” Marla asks.
Marla folds her arms across her chest and waits.
I tell her what I found out: Tyler’s plan to break the world and mold it in his image. Tyler’s Godlike aspirations.
“What’s any of this have to do with me?” Marla asks. She feigns a yawn and presses her fist against her mouth. Her nails are jagged, bitten down to bloody nubs.
You can stop Tyler, I tell her.
He’s gone, I think he’s hiding, I say.
I ask, do you still have your gun?
Marla starts yelling, pounding her fist on my chest, “I’m not letting you shoot yourself with my gun.”
Marla keeps yelling, “I don’t need that on my conscience, along with everything else.”
Marla opens her fist to slap me, but I knock her hand down.
I think if I pretend, he’ll come back, I tell her.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
Tyler’s interested in self-preservation, I say.
If I threaten to shoot myself, he’ll come back, I say.
We can go from there.
“What if he doesn’t come back?” she asks.
Then I don’t know. I don’t know.
“This is a terrible plan,” Marla says. “I’ll get the gun.”
I let Marla tie me to a kitchen chair. She sits across from me and rests her gun in her lap. She caresses her fingers over the barrel like it’s a child or a pet.
“Are you sure about this?” Marla asks.
No, I say, but I don’t know what else I can do.
Tyler needs to be stopped.
“I could take you back to the clinic,” Marla says. “You could voluntarily commit yourself.”
I’ll be locked away with Tyler again.
“Isn’t that better than…” Marla picks up the gun and waves it at me.
I flinch, waiting for the flashbang and the pain of a bullet tearing through my flesh, but nothing happens. Marla sets the gun back down in her lap.
“You’re sweating,” she says.
“Is Tyler there? Do you see him?” she asks.
I look around. There are shadows all over us but none of them look like Tyler.
I shake my head.
If Tyler doesn’t come back, I don’t know what I’ll do. I know he’ll show himself at the worst possible time, or not at all. He’ll just take over when I’m sleeping and keep using my body as he sees fit.
The only way I’ll ever truly be free of Tyler is if I do what I couldn’t do months ago, and kill myself. If I kill myself I’ll kill Tyler. Only then will I be free.
“I’m not giving you the gun,” Marla says.
It’s the only way I can stop Tyler.
“If you went back to the clinic,” she says, still fingering the gun.
“If you went back they could give you these little white pills,” Marla says. “They could make Tyler go away.”
I don’t believe her. I’m at the end of my rope and all I want is for this to stop. I don’t want Tyler to pull me back in. I don’t want Project Mayhem to rise from the ashes.
All I want is to lay my head down and not be afraid to close my eyes.
I tell Marla all of this.
After a few long seconds of silence, Marla puts the gun aside. I think about grabbing for it but she must see something in my eyes or on my face because she leaves her hand over it.
“Let me,” she says.
Marla gets up and holds a hand out to me.
I stare at her hand, at the dry, cracked skin and the bloody cuticles. I reach for her hand.
The shadows shift and stir behind her, shrinking away until Tyler’s looming over Marla’s shoulder.
He smiles and lifts his hand, waggling his fingers in a childish wave.
“This game isn’t fun anymore,” Tyler pouts. “You’re no fun.”
Tyler turns his beatific smile on me. Marla links our fingers.
“I’ll go, if that’s really what you want,” Tyler croons, waving behind Marla’s shoulder.
It sounds more like a threat than a promise.
I blink my eyes and then Tyler is gone.
When I open my eyes, I find myself staring up at a ceiling that had once been white. A brown mushroom cloud of fungus covers most of the off-white ceiling panel above my head.
I try to move my arms but I’m strapped down to a hospital bed.
I can hear the squeak of sneakers on linoleum.
I must be in heaven again.
The door to my room opens and an angel clad in white pokes her head in.
“You’re awake,” she says, sounding pleased. She pushes through the door and sets a covered tray on a table next to my bed. “Time to eat up.”
She picks up a plastic-wrapped spork and unwraps it. Then she unclips a set of keys from her belt and frees my arms. I rub at the red marks around my wrists.
I open my mouth to ask why I’m here, why I’m locked up, but no sound comes out. I reach up and touch my lips, then push my fingers into my mouth. There’s a mess of stitches where my tongue used to be.
I make a moaning, keening sound. Drool spills out of my mouth and down my chin.
The angel just tsks sadly and starts spooning Jell-o into my mouth.
When she’s done, she puts the plasticware aside and takes the tray away. A shadow lurks in the doorway and she looks over at it, shaking her head so sadly.
“What happened to that one?” the shadow asks.
“It’s a real sad story,” the angel says, getting up and pulling the tray back. “Cut out his own tongue and said his split personality made him do it.”
“Wait a minute. Is that Tyler Durden?” the shadow asks, sounding reverent.
“It’s what he called himself,” the angel says, joining the shadow in the doorway. “Let’s let him get some sleep.”
I want to ask them to come back, to tell me what happened to Tyler, what happened to Marla. I try to make sounds but they only come out as garbled, unintelligible groans.
The angel snaps off the lights and I’m plunged into darkness.
I lay there, staring up blankly at the ceiling.
I’m not Tyler, I want to say.
I’m me.
I’m not Tyler.
“I’m here,” Tyler’s voice hisses, slithering into my ear like a snake. “And I’m never leaving.”