club is you don't talk about fight club.

"

I yell, go home!

"The second rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club."

Fight club is canceled! Project Mayhem is canceled.

"The third rule is only two guys to a fight."

I am Tyler Durden, I yell. And I'm ordering you to get out!

And no one's looking at me. The men just stare at each other across the center of the room.

The voice of the chapter leader goes slowly around the room. Two men to a fight. No shirts. No shoes.

The fight goes on and on and on as long as it has to.

Picture this happening in a hundred cities, in a half-dozen languages.

The rules end, and I'm still standing in the center of the light.

"Registered fight number one, take the floor," yells the voice out of the darkness. "Clear the center of the club."

I don't move.

"Clear the center of the club!"

I don't move.

The one light reflects out of the darkness in one hundred pairs of eyes, all of them focused on me, waiting. I try to see each man the way Tyler would see him. Choose the best fighters for training in Project Mayhem. Which ones would Tyler invite to work at the Paper Street Soap Company?

"Clear the center of the club!" This is established fight club procedure. After three requests from the chapter leader, I will be ejected from the club.

But I'm Tyler Durden. I invented fight club. Fight club is mine. I wrote those rules. None of you would be here if it wasn't for me. And I say it stops here!

"Prepare to evict the member in three, two, one."

The circle of men collapses in on top of me, and two hundred hands clamp around every inch of my arms and legs and I'm lifted spreadeagle toward the light.

Right now, I can imagine him calling some Project Mayhem headquarters and reporting my whereabouts. They'll have a wall map of the city and trace my movements with little pushpins. I feel tagged like a migrating goose on Wild Kingdom.

They're all spying on me, keeping tabs.

"You can take all six of these and not get sick to your stomach," Marla says, "but you have to take them by putting them up your butt."

Oh, this is pleasant.

Marla says, "I'm not making this up. We can get something stronger, later. Some real drugs like cross tops or black beauties or alligators."

I'm not putting these pills up my ass.

"Then only take two."

Where are we going to go?

"Bowling. It's open all night, and they won't let you sleep there."

Everywhere we go, I say, guys on the street think I'm Tyler burden.

"Is that why the bus driver let us ride for free?"

Yeah. And that's why the two guys on the bus gave us their seats.

"So what's your point?"

I don't think it's enough to just hide out. We have to do something to get rid of Tyler.

"I dated a guy once who liked to wear my clothes," Marla says. "You know, dresses. Hats with veils. We could dress you up and sneak you around."

I'm not cross-dressing, and I'm not putting pills up my ass.

"It gets worse," Marla says. "I dated a guy, once, who wanted me to fake a lesbian scene with his blow-up doll."

I could imagine myself becoming one of Marla's stories.

I dated a guy once who was a split personality

I know my boss is dead. I can sleep in heaven. People write to me in heaven and tell me I'm remembered. That I'm their hero. I'll get better.

The three ways to make napalm. I knew Tyler was going to kill my boss. The second I smelled gasoline on my hands, when I said I wanted out of my job, I was giving him permission. Be my guest.

Kill my boss.

The angels here are the Old Testament kind, legions and lieutenants, a heavenly host who works in shifts, days, swing. Graveyard. They bring you your meals on a tray with a paper cup of meds. The Valley of the Dolls playset. I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?" Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything. God asks me what I remember. I remember everything. The bullet out of Tyler's gun, it tore out my other cheek to give me a jagged smile from ear to ear. Yeah, just like an angry Halloween pumpkin. Japanese demon. Dragon of Avarice. Marla's still on Earth, and she writes to me. Someday, she says, they'll bring me back. And if there were a telephone in Heaven, I would call Marla from Heaven and the moment she says, "Hello," I wouldn't hang up. I'd say, "Hi. What's happening? Tell me every little thing." But I don't want to go back. Not yet. Just because.

Oh, Tyler.

I know a computer blew up.

I know this because Tyler knows this.

I don't want to know this, but you use a jeweler's drill to drill a hole through the top of a computer monitor. All the space monkeys know this. I typed up Tyler's notes. This is a new version of the lightbulb bomb, where you drill a hole in a lightbulb and fill the bulb with gasoline. Plug the hole with wax or silicone, then screw the bulb into a socket and let someone walk into the room and throw the switch.

A computer tube can hold a lot more gasoline than a lightbulb.

A cathode ray tube, CRT, you either remove the plastic housing around the tube, this is easy enough, or you work through the vent panels in the top of the housing.

First you have to unplug the monitor from the power source and from the computer.

This would also work with a television.

Just understand, if there's a spark, even static electricity from the carpet, you're dead. Screaming, burned-alive dead.

A cathode ray tube can hold 300 volts of passive electrical storage, so use a hefty screwdriver across the main power supply capacitor, first. If you're dead at this point, you didn't use an insulated screwdriver.

There's a vacuum inside the cathode ray tube so the moment you drill through, the tube will suck air, sort of inhale a little whistle of it.

Ream the little hole with a larger bit, then a larger bit, until you can put the tip of a funnel into the hole. Then, fill the tube with your choice of explosive. Homemade napalm is good. Gasoline or gasoline mixed with frozen orange juice concentrate or cat litter.

A sort of fun explosive is potassium permanganate mixed with powdered sugar. The idea is to mix one ingredient that will burn very F fast with a second ingredient that will supply enough oxygen for that burning. This burns so fast, it's an explosion.

"You have to forgive me for this," the driver says. "The committee says this is your own idea sir." Tyler and me at the edge of the roof, the gun in my mouth, I'm wondering how clean this gun is. Three minutes. Then somebody yells. "Wait," and it's Marla coming toward us across the roof. Marla's coming toward me, just me because Tyler's gone. Poor. Tyler's my hallucination, not hers. Fast as a magic trick, Tyler's disappeared. And now I'm just one man holding a gun in my mouth. "We followed you," Marla yells. "All the people from the support group. You don't have to do this. Put the gun down." Behind Marla, all the bowel cancers, the brain parasites, the melanoma people, the tuberculosis people are walking, limping, wheelchairing toward me. They're saying, "Wait." Their voices come to me on the cold wind, saying, "Stop." And, "We can help you." "Let us help you." Across the sky comes the whop, whop, whop of police helicopters. I yell, go. Get out of here. This building is going to explode. Marla yells, "We know." This is like a total epiphany moment for me. I'm not killing myself, I yell. I'm killing Tyler. I am Joe's Hard Drive. I remember everything. "It's not love or anything," Marla shouts, "but I think I like you, too." One minute.

Four minutes.

The shaved heads turn around one after another. Then one by one they stand. One's got a rag in his hand, and you can smell the ether. The closest one has a hunting knife. The one with the knife is the fight club mechanic.

"You're a brave man," the bus driver says, "to make yourself a homework assignment."

The mechanic tells the bus driver, "Shut up," and "The lookout doesn't say shit."

You know one of the space monkeys has a rubber band to wrap around your nuts. They fill up the front of the bus.

The mechanic says, "You know the drill, Mr. Durden. You said it yourself. You said, if anyone ever tries to shut down the club, even you, then we have to get him by the nuts."

Gonads.

Jewels.

Testes.

Huevos.

Picture the best part of yourself frozen in a sandwich bag at the Paper Street Soap Company.

"You know it's useless to fight us," the mechanic says.

The bus driver chews his sandwich and watches us in the overhead mirror.

A police siren wails, coming closer. A tractor rattles across a field in the distance. Birds. A window in the back of the bus is half open. Clouds. Weeds grow at the edge of the gravel turnaround. Bees or flies buzz around the weeds.

"We're just after a little collateral," the fight club mechanic says. "This isn't just a threat, this time, Mr. Durden. This time, we have to cut them."

The bus driver says, "It's cops."

The siren arrives somewhere at the front of the bus.

So what do I have to fight back with?

A police car pulls up to the bus, lights flashing blue and red through the bus windshield, and someone outside the bus is shouting, "Hold up in there."

I dive for the open window. The blood climbs the hem of her skirt, capillary action, thread to thread, climbing her skirt. Around me the men of Project Mayhem are screaming. Then Mrs. Patrick Madden is screaming. And in the basement of the Armory Bar, Tyler Durden slips to the floor in a warm jumble. Tyler Durden the great, who was perfect for one moment, and who said that a moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection. And the fight goes on and on because I want to be dead. Because only in death do we have names. Only in death are we no longer part of Project Mayhem. ! ! Chapter 25 ! TYLER'S STANDING THERE, perfectly handsome and an angel in his everything-blond way. My will to live amazes me. Me, I'm a bloody tissue sample dried on a bare mattress in my room at the Paper Street Soap Company. Everything in my room is gone. My mirror with a picture of my foot from when I had cancer for ten minutes. Worse than cancer. The mirror is gone. The closet door is open and my six white shirts, black pants, underwear, socks, and shoes are gone. Tyler says, "Get up."

She says, "Patrick, that's enough, stop being dead."

My stomach hits the thin metal windowsill, and behind me, the fight club mechanic yells, "Mr. Durden! You're going to fuck up the time."

Hanging half out the window, I claw at the black rubber sidewalk of the rear tire. I grab the wheelwell trim and pull. Someone grabs my feet and pulls. I'm yelling at the little tractor in the distance, "Hey." And "Hey." My face swelling hot and full of blood, I'm hanging upside down. I pull myself out a little. Hands around my ankles pull me back in. My tie flops in my face. My belt buckle catches on the windowsill. The bees and the flies and weeds are inches from in front of my face, and I'm yelling, "Hey!"

Hands are hooked in the back of my pants, tugging me in, hugging my pants and belt down over my ass.

Somebody inside the bus yells, "One minute!"

My shoes slip off my feet.

My belt buckle slips inside the windowsill.

The hands bring my legs together. The windowsill cuts hot from the sun into my stomach. My white shirt billows and drops down around my head and shoulders, my hands still gripping the wheelwell trim, me still yelling, "Hey!"

My legs are stretched out straight and together behind me. My pants slip down my legs and are gone. The sun shines warm on my ass.

Blood pounding in my head, my eyes bugging from the pressure, all I can see is the white shirt hanging around my face. The tractor rattles somewhere. The bees buzz. Somewhere. Everything is a million miles away. Somewhere a million miles behind me someone is yelling, "Two minutes!"

And a hand slips between my legs and gropes for me.

"Don't hurt him," someone says.

Under and behind and inside everything I took for granted, something horrible has been growing. Everything has fallen apart.

The hands around my ankles are a million miles away. Picture them at the end of a long, long road. Guided meditation.

Don't picture the windowsill as a dull hot knife slitting open your belly.

The space monkeys are cleared out. Everything is relocated, the liposuction fat, the bunk beds, the money, especially the money. Only the garden is left behind, and the rented house. Tyler says, "The last thing we have to do is your martyrdom thing. Your big death thing." Not like death as a sad, downer thing, this was going to be death as a cheery, empowering thing.

Don't picture a team of men tug-of-warring your legs apart.

A million miles away, a bah-zillion miles away, a rough warm hand wraps around the base of you and pulls you back, and something is holding you tight, tighter, tighter.

! Tonight, I go to the Armory Bar and the crowds part zipper style when I walk in. To everybody there, I am Tyler Durden the Great and Powerful. God and father. All around me I hear, "Good evening, sir." "Welcome to fight club, sir." "Thank you for joining us, sir." Me, my monster face just starting to heal. The hole in my face smiling through my cheek. A frown on my real mouth. Because I'm Tyler Durden, and you can kiss my ass, I register to fight every guy in the club that night. Fifty fights. One fight at a time. No shoes. No shirts. The fights go on as long as they have to. And if Tyler loves Marla. I love Marla. And what happens doesn't happen in words. I want to smother all the French beaches I'll never see. Imagine stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around Rockefeller Center. The first fight I get, the guy gets me in a full nelson and rams my face, rams my cheek, rams the hole in my cheek into the concrete floor until my teeth inside snap off and plant their jagged roots into my tongue. Now I can remember Patrick Madden, dead on the floor, his little figurine of a wife, just a little girl with a chignon. His wife giggled and tried to pour champagne between her dead husband's lips. The wife said the fake blood was too, too red. Mrs. Patrick Madden put two fingers in the blood pooled next to her husband and then put the fingers in her mouth. The teeth planted in my tongue, I taste the blood. Mrs. Patrick Madden tasted the blood.

find it on the list Patrick Madden was compiling, poor dead Patrick Madden.

Up here, in the miles of night between the stars and the Earth, I feel just like one of those space animals.

Dogs.

Monkeys.

Men.

You just do your little job. Pull a lever. Push a button. You don't really understand any of it.

The world is going crazy. My boss is dead. My home is gone. My job is gone. And I'm responsible for it all.

There's nothing left.

I'm overdrawn at the bank.

Step over the edge.

The police tape flutters between me and oblivion.

Step over the edge.

What else is there?

Step over the edge.

There's Marla.

Jump over the edge.

There's Marla, and she's in the middle of everything and doesn't know it.

And she loves you.

She loves Tyler.

She doesn't know the difference.

Somebody has to tell her. Get out. Get out. Get out.

I remember being there on the outskirts of the murder mystery party with the space monkey waiters standing bodyguard around me. Marla in her dress with a wallpaper pattern of dark roses watched from the other side of the ballroom. My second fight, the guy puts a knee between my shoulder blades. The guy pulls both my arms together behind my back, and slams my chest into the concrete floor. My collarbone on

Save yourself. You ride the elevator down to the lobby, and the doorman who never liked you, now he smiles at you with three teeth knocked out of his mouth and says, "Good evening, Mr. Durden. Can I get you a cab? Are you feeling alright? Do you want to use the phone?"

We should all choose a partner. The rest of the meal, the guests would get drunk and eat their Madeira Consomme and try to find clues to who among them was a psychotic killer. Marla yells, "You shot the mayor's special envoy on recycling!" Tyler shot the mayor's special envoy on whatever. Marla says, "And you don't even have cancer!" It happens that fast. Snap your fingers. Everyone's looking. I yell, you don't have cancer either! "He's been coming here for two years," Marla shouts, "and he doesn't have anything!" I'm trying to save your life! "What? Why does my life need saving?" Because you've been following me. Because you followed me tonight, because you saw Tyler Durden kill someone, and Tyler will kill anybody who threatens Project Mayhem.

Marla crosses the room in three quick steps and slaps me hard across the face.

Share yourself completely.

"You fucking suck-ass piece of shit," Marla says.

Around us, everyone stands staring.

Then both of Marla's fists are beating me from every direction. "You killed someone," she's screaming. "I called the police and they should be here any minute."

I grab her wrists and say, maybe the police will come, but probably they won't.

Marla twists and says the police are speeding over here to hook me up to the electric chair and bake my eyes out or at least give me a lethal injection.

This will feel just like a bee sting.

An overdose shot of sodium phenobarbital, and then the big sleep. Valley of the Dogs style.

Marla says she saw me kill somebody today.

If she means my boss, I say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, the police know, everyone's looking for me to lethally inject me, already, but it was Tyler who killed my boss.

Tyler and I just happen to have the same fingerprints, but no one understands.

Everybody in the room looks snapped out of their little tragedies. Their little cancer thing. Even the people on pain meds look wide-eyed and alert. I say to the crowd, I'm sorry. I never meant any harm. We should go. We should talk about this outside. Everybody goes, "No! Stay! What else?" I didn't kill anybody, I say. I'm not Tyler Durden. He's the other side of my split personality. I say, has anybody here seen the movie Sybil? Marla says, "So who's going to kill me?" ! Tyler. "You?" Tyler, I say, but I can take care of Tyler. You just have to watch out for the members of Project Mayhem. Tyler might've given them orders to follow you or kidnap you or something.

"You can suck shit," Marla says and pushes her punched-out black eye at me. "Just because you and your little disciples like getting beat up, you touch me ever again, and you're dead."

"I saw you shoot a man tonight," Marla says.

No, it was a bomb, I say, and it happened this morning. Tyler drilled a computer monitor and filled it with gasoline or black powder.

All the people with real bowel cancers are standing around watching this.

"No," Marla says. "I followed you to the Pressman Hotel, and you were a waiter at one of those murder mystery parties."

The murder mystery parties, rich people would come to the hotel for a big dinner party, and act out a sort of Agatha Christie story. Sometime between the Boudin of Gravlax arid the Saddle of Venison, the lights would go out for a minute and someone would fake getting killed. It's supposed to be a fun let's-pretend sort of death.