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Blood splattered across the concrete floor, the room was full of warm bodies pressed against eachother. Cheering and yelling, the sound made me feel like I'd lost all feeling in my head. If I didn't know any better, I would've thought the guy had smashed my head into the ground.
You'd never feel a buzz like this again. Fight Club gave you a reason to get out of bed, it gave you a reason to get out of that cold damp house.
Rule number 8. New guy, brunette with broad shoulders. Tyler said I should take him on, so I did.
Most things Tyler told me to do, I would do without a second thought. I can't remember the last time I asked him, "Why?" He'd reply, "Why not?"
Maybe it's because I just wanted Tyler to pay attention to me. Tyler had power over me, I couldn't tell if he knew this or not. I'd do anything for him. I need Tyler to pay attention to me.
I got into more and more fights because of him. I wanted him to see me win, I wanted him to see my succeed. Those things, winning, losing, they didn't matter to me unless Tyler was around to see it.
When you were in a fight you just had to let it all out, let go, accept the pain. That's what Tyler told me to do. I thought about that often, I thought about him often.
The guy had me on the floor in no time, tonight I guess I just wanted to feel it again. I thought about my first fight with Tyler. I wanted to feel that way again.
His fist collided with my face, I didn't even try stopping him, I didn't tap out. Opening old wounds, my face never had the chance to heal.
You would've thought I was dead.
He was on top of me now, taking full control over me in the same way I wanted Tyler to. Hit me. Scratch me. Punch me. I just let go.
Feeling everything and nothing all at the same time. I wanted him to paint the floor in my blood, the sound of my head hitting the ground echoed through the room. In Fight Club, the only thing that mattered were the two guys fighting.
But I wasn't really fighting.
I couldn't hear, I couldn't see, everything was a blur. Fights like this made me feel like I was in slow motion. My eyelids were heavy, my body was finally calm again. I only felt this peaceful was when I went to those support groups.
Chloe on that podium, talking about how she didn't fear death. She was dying. She was really dying. And I was here. I was chasing something that she never even asked for. I wanted to be dying, maybe then I'd have an actual reason to feel like this all the time.
People really listened to you when you were dying.
I could only look up. I couldn't move. The guy on top of me really had me pinned to the ground, I couldn't move my head without it feeling like I was getting a lobotomy.
The ceiling was chipped, I never noticed that before. It reminded me of Tyler's house, almost everything reminded me of Tyler. The wallpaper and ceiling tiles were flakey and cracked, I wondered how anyone could ever live in that shit hole.
I was underwater or I was underground. Everything was muffled, blurry, unclear. I felt like I was going to pass out from the blood loss, I still didn't tap out. This was going to be as close I was ever going to get to death, and nobody would step in, nobody would help, nobody would notice. I was being buried alive.
"Okay!" Everyone took notice when Tyler had something to say, I wish I could be like that. "Fights over!"
Tyler pulled the guy right off me. Sometimes I resented him for keeping me alive, sometimes I wish he would just let me go.
My body, my weak body, laid limp on the floor, like a cheap ragdoll you'd find on the side of the road, the kind that a kid would've tossed out of the car. Their parents didn't think it was worth stopping to pick it up, they'd buy another one when they got home.
Reborn. Whenever I went to Fight Club I felt like I was being reborn.
"Get the fuck out of here!" The cigarette bobbed between his lips, he always had his cigarettes like that.
And with that, everyone left. Tyler could control a room easily, it was like second nature to him. Power and control were things he had that I envied. I wish I had what he had.
He followed the men to the bottom of the stairs of Lou's Bar in the same was a shepherd dog would control the flock sheep on a farm.
Ash from his dangling cigarette hit the ground. He waited by the stairs making sure nobody came back down.
"Why would you let him beat you like that?"
That wasn't a question, Tyler didn't want an answer. He just wanted me to know that I got beat, I lost, I failed.
I am Jack's agonizing embarrassment.
I didn't say anything. He turned to look at me, my body, I was an object in that moment. I wish I became the concrete floor. I embarrassed him and that felt so much worse than embarrassing myself.
"I asked you a question." He stood over me and pulled me up by my shoulders so I was sitting.
I shook my head, which was a huge mistake. It had to be my imagination but it felt like my brain was bouncing around in my skull.
He knelt down do that we were face to face. Tyler was good at this too, intimidation. "Why did you lose?"
I told him that "I was just tired" and "I didn't know what I was getting into." He laughed in my face.
"You're fucking kidding me. You lost on purpose."
"What?" I asked him. "How did you know?"
He stood up, almost like he was too disappointed to look at me. This was the worst moment of my life.
"You just had that look in your eye." He took the cigarette out of his mouth and put it out in the pool of my blood. "Get up. We're leaving."
//
Damp and cold. Now this was a broken home. He opened the door for me and helped me walk up onto the porch. He didn't say a word.
I was six years old again. One of my parents would be waiting for me when I got home from school. They'd tell me off or ignore me. Maybe I'd been acting up in class again.
It doesn't matter. What matters now is that Tyler was the one who was mad and it was my fault.
"Follow me." He didn't even look at me. I really disappointed him now. Fuck.
"Are you coming or are you just gonna stand there?" He stopped about half way up the stairs. I followed him.
"Where are we going?" I asked him.
"You ask a lot of questions, sweetheart." I followed him into the bathroom. "Don't worry your precious little head about it."
He gathered some things from around the room, I wasn't there, I didn't want to have to deal with this right now.
I'm in my cave and I see my power animal. I'm not there. I'm not in that house, I'm not in that room. Out of sight, out of mind. It wasn't that easy when it came to Tyler. He was always on my mind, I couldn't help but think about him.
"Sit." Still wandering around the room, he pointed towards the bathtub. He pulled me out of my own world using only his voice. I sat on the edge of the bathtub and waited anxiously.
Listening to Tyler was easy. He had this way about him that made you want to listen to him. Charismatic, good-looking, a good sense of fashion. I don't think I'll ever be as good as Tyler Durden.
"Take off your shirt." He placed all of the things he gathered by my side and left the room. Maybe he was looking for something.
My arms and back ached. Who would've known that unbuttoning a shirt could hurt this much. I only got about half way down before Tyler came back in the room.
He'd changed his clothes. His jacket was gone along with his mesh top. His tight leather jeans had been replaced with baggy sweatpants.
I had so many questions for him but my jaw hurt too much to talk. Maybe I should go to a hospital, maybe I should've just won the fight, maybe I should be digging my own grave.
"Need some help with that, IKEA boy?" He didn't wait for me to answer, instead he just started unbuttoning the rest of my shirt for me. "You look like shit." He smirked. Tyler was always smirking.
I hummed an answer. "Mhmm." That was about the only sound I could bring myself to make. I couldn't embarrass myself anymore today, I didn't want to make this worse.
"He really got you, huh..." He sucked in a breath and winced. He wasn't the one who was hurt, I don't know why he acted like he was. "Here." He helped me move my arms apart from my torso and took off my shirt.
"Why are you doing all this?" My voice was croaky, throat sore, head ached.
"Well it's not like you'd be able to do this on your own." Was he doing me a kindness? Or was he just pittying me? "Shit..." I could feel his eyes burning into my skin, that hurt a lot more than the wounds and scars scattered around his body.
I am Jack's exposed weakness.
"SHIT- OW!"
He just shushed me and kept going. A cotton ball of rubbing alcohol between his fingers and thumb. He stroked the scar on the left side of my body, sweetly burning my skin
I thought about the scar on the back of my hand. I thought about how Tyler kissed me and how I never knew a kiss from the person you love could hurt so badly.
"FUCK-"
He shushed me again and gave me a sympathetic look from the floor of our dingy bathroom. "You're doing so well, dear." His hand made it's way to my right thigh, keeping me in place so that he could finish what he was doing.
He went on, applying light pressure to the the new scars that littered my body. I winced, I grimaced. I never stopped him though.
It was quiet for a while. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't be the one to talk. I didn't want him to hear the pain in my voice.
"So..." He squeezed my thigh and moved on to the marks on my face. "You ready to talk about it yet?"
"Talk about what?" My voice was a whisper, I wish I hadn't said anything at all.
"You know what." He moved the shower curtain out of his way at sat down next to me. His hand left my thigh and held my chin in place instead. "Why did you lose that fight?"
"I told you already."
"Take this and put it over your eye." He handed me a small ice pack. It was for the most part cold even though it had been sitting on the side of the bathtub since he put it there earlier.
He quietly tended to the scratch marks on my face. "I know you're lying." He moved my head so now I was being forced to look at him.
"I-I don't know what you're talking about."
"Come on... You can talk to me, baby."
"W-What?" It was difficult not getting flustered when Tyler talked to me like that. I know he does it to get this kind of reaction out of me, I guess he got a kick out of it or something.
I tried moving my face. God this was embarrassing. His hand was firm, he moved it to the side of my face. He held me in the same way a husband and wife would hold eachother.
"Talk to me."
"I don't know what you want me to say, Tyler." I tried so badly not to look at him, which was difficult when he stopped me from looking anywhere else.
"Why did you want to lose?" He finally let go of my face. His attention was back on my injury, he dampened another cotton ball in rubbing alcohol. I winced before he even touched me with it.
"I'll be done soon," He held onto my free hand and gave it a squeeze, "there we go. Does that make you feel better?" God, my face was bright red. It was so obvious, too, there's no way he didn't notice this.
"Fuck..." I held his hand tighter before I could rebuke him for holding my hand in the first place.
"That's alright," He whispered into me ear. "You're taking this so well..."
Once he was done applying that cold stinging liquid to my cheek, he kissed my jaw softly.
I am Jack's unrequited love.
"There we go..." Smirking. He would not stop smirking. "Now I just gotta sew your sides and you can go."
"Yea..." He just wants me gone. Everywhere I went was for a limited time, I was constantly in a liminal space.
He was back on his knees, his hands were fidgeting with our small shared sewing kit. "This is gonna hurt so you might wanna hold onto something."
I knew how this kinda thing went, I'd done it to myself before, this was Tyler's first time doing this kind of thing for me. It was sweet but I shouldn't read into it too much, I didn't want to let myself believe something that wasn't true.
"You can hold onto me if you want to. Ya know, to keep yourself steady." He looked up at me as if he was waiting for me to say something. Reading Tyler is a lot more difficult than you might think.
Silently, I moved my hands to his shoulders so that I could balance myself. I didn't want him to say anything about it.
I didn't want him to say anything about the way I was looking at him or the way he made me blush. Fuck. He was right to say that God probably hates me.
"HOLY SHIT, TYLER!" No warning, he stabbed the needle through my flesh. "FUCK!" My grasp on his shoulder got stronger and stronger.
"Shhh... I'm almost done, baby, I'm almost done." There was a kind of concentration in his eyes that I'd never seen before.
Not when he was in fight club, not when he was fucking Marla, not when he was boiling fat. I felt important for a second, like maybe I was the only person who got to see him like this. Like maybe there was a side to Tyler that he reserved for me.
"There we go..." He said, tying the knot at the end on the thread. He leaned down and pecked my sore skin softly, almost like he was sorry for hurting it.
"Tyler..."
"You talking now?"
"Shut up."
"You know you want to talk to me... Why don't you?" He took his spot on the edge of the bathtub again. His arm snaked around my waist and he held me again.
"You wouldn't get it, Tyler." You wouldn't be able to count the amount of times I rolled my eyes at something he'd said to me. Every other conversation I had with him felt like a shitty attempt of his at seducing me.
"I want to get it..." Tyler leaned his head against my shoulder, giving my neck soft kissed while his fingers traced the large scars on my chest.
It wasn't unusual for Tyler to be this affectionate, I'm sure that he was like this to every other guy in Fight Club. But for a minute, maybe I could just pretend he was only like this with me. For a minute, maybe I could pretend I was special.
His slow, steady breath on my neck made the hairs on my back and shoulders stand up. The tips of his fingers felt rough and calloused against my skin.
"Maybe... Maybe if I felt like I was actually dying, I'd be able to see how shitty it is..."
Nothing. Not a word.
"Maybe then I'd feel better about being alive."
Still, nothing.
I am Jack's sense of abandonment.
He smoothed my waist with his hand and didn't move from my shoulder. I felt like maybe I was the one holding onto Tyler, like maybe I was the one who needed him. I definitely needed Tyler more than he needed me, I wonder if he knew that.
"You wanna die?"
"No, no..." This is why I didn't want to explain it, I knew he wouldn't understand. "I don't want to die I just... I don't want to be alive, be here, now."
"Oh..." Sometimes it was so difficult to know what was going on in Tyler's head, I'd give anything to know what he was thinking right now.
He kissed from my shoulder up to my neck. His lips were cracked, I could feel them against me, dry, rough. As long as it was Tyler's lips that were on me, I didn't mind what they felt like.
"That's alright, I've been there before." I moved my head to the side, giving him more room to kiss me. "Maybe you should take a nap..."
"Tyler, that's not going to fix anything..." Did I always sound this hopeless?
"Come on... It'll get your mind off of it." I could feel him looking at me again. "We'll do something together tomorrow. I'll take you out somewhere."
He got up from where he was sat and stretched right infront of me. His muscles flexing, his dark sweatpants hanging from his hips, it was impossible not to look. God definitely hates me.
"Take me out?" I was still sat on the bathtub. He turned around, facing me, he looked me up and down and raised his eyebrow. He always had that smug look on his face.
He hummed. "Yea." Licking his lips.
I just sat there, stunned. I opened my mouth to say something but nothing came out.
"You don't want me to take you out, baby?"
"No, no-" I shook my head. "I mean I do-" I nodded. Good God. This was both the best and worst moment of my life.
Tyler Durden winked at me. Tyler Durden winked at me. And I was a stuttering mess. I didn't know I was this easily flustered.
"What? Did that really do it for you?"
"I- um I- just-"
"It's cute."
"Cute?"
"Mhmm." He placed his hands behind his head and stretched again before making his way out of the room. He stopped at the door frame when noticed I hadn't gotten up yet. "Come on."
"W-What?"
"Well I can't take that nap on my own, pretty boy."
I am Jack's last speck of hope.