Haunted - Chuck Palahniuk

That’s how a scary story works. It echoes some ancient fear. It re-creates some forgotten terror.

“Our humanity isn’t measured by how we treat other people,” the Missing Link says. Fingering the layer of cat hair on his coat sleeve, he says, “Our humanity is measured by how we treat animals.”

People in France have a phrase: “Spirit of the Stairway.” In French: Esprit d’Escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer but it’s too late. Say you’re at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So, under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party. . . As you start down the stairway, then—magic.
You come up with the perfect thing you should’ve said. The perfect crippling put-down. That’s the Spirit of the Stairway.

The air will always be too filled with something. Your body too sore or tired. Your father too drunk. Your wife too cold. You will always have some excuse not to live your life.

Everybody wants to make the world a better place.

We love drama. We love conflict. We need a devil or we’ll create one. None of that is bad. It’s just the way human beings operate. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.

With the shadow of this horrible bogeyman, with it stalking the streets downtown, nobody beefed about the unemployment rate. The water shortage. The traffic. With the angel of death going door to door, people stayed together. They quit bitching and behaved.

The trouble with eternal youth is, you do tend to procrastinate.

“All those women,” the director says, “all chanting and protesting againstHustlermagazine, saying porno turns a woman into an object. . . Well,” she says, “what do you think a dildo is? Or donor sperm from some clinic?” Some men may only want pictures of naked women. But some women only want a man’s dick. Or his sperm. Or his money. Both sexes have the same problem with intimacy.

The truth is so easy when everyone agrees who to blame.

“Until you can ignore your circumstances, and just do as you promise,” he says, “you’ll always be controlled by the world.”

Because the killer has to come back. The killer has to talk, to tell this story until it’s used up. Other stories, they use you up. To the only audience a killer can risk having, his victim. Cassandra on her bed of moss. The microphone hanging above her, connected to a tape recorder and a transmitter broadcasting to a sheriff’s deputy perched on rocks across the canyon. Far enough away he can swat mosquitoes without giving himself away. The headphones over his ears. Sitting on the ground, crawling with ants. All the time, listening. In his earphones, birds sing. The wind blows. You’d be amazed how many of the killers come back to say good-bye. They’ve shared something, the killer and the victim, and the killer will come to sit at the grave and talk about old times. Everyone needs an audience.

Other events—the ones you can’t digest—they poison you. Those worst parts of your life, those moments you can’t talk about, they rot you from the inside out.

The difference between how you look and how you see yourself is enough to kill most people.

And maybe the reason vampires don’t die is because they can never see themselves in photographs or mirrors.

Of course, she still misses her friends. Her husband. But it’s like Inky would say: Being absent is the new being present.

“Every breath you take is because something has died.”
Something or someone lived and died so you could have this life.
This mountain of dead, they lift you into daylight.
The Missing Link, he says, “Will the effort and energy and momentum of their lives. . .” How will it find you? How will you enjoy their gift? Leather shoes and fried chicken and dead soldiers are only a tragedy if you waste their gift sitting in front of the television. Or stuck in traffic. Or stranded at some airport.
“How will you show all the creatures of history?” says the Missing Link.
How will you show their birth and work and death were worthwhile?