Stories: All-New Tales

streaking down through the night, trailing bright streamers. First a handful and then a hundred and then more let go of their hold on the firmament and leaped. Way off to the west, the first ones hit with a distant rumble and firework geysers of flame. More followed, far and near, and Dex and Adeline kissed amid the conflagration.

“Pick me up at seven,” she said, her bottom lip on his earlobe, and held him more tightly.

“I’ll be there, baby,” he promised, “I’ll be there.”

With the accuracy of a bullet between the eyes, one of the million heavenly messengers screeched down upon them, a fireball the size of the Ice Garden. The explosion flipped the Belvedere into the air like a silver dollar and turned everything to dust.

Chuck Palahniuk. LOSER

THE SHOW STILL LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE when you were sick with a really high fever and you stayed home to watch TV all day. It’s not Let’s Make a Deal. It’s not Wheel of Fortune. It’s not Monty Hall, or Pat Sajak. It’s that other show where the big, loud voice calls your name in the audience, says to “Come on down, you’re the next contestant,” and if you guess the cost of Rice-A- Roni, then you fly round-trip to live for a week in Paris.

It’s that show. The prize is never anything useful, like okay clothes or music or beer. The prize is always some vacuum cleaner or a washing machine, something you might maybe get excited to win if you were, like, somebody’s maid.

It’s Rush Week, and the tradition is everybody pledging Zeta Delt all take this big chartered school bus and need to go to some TV studio and watch them tape this game show. Rules say, all the Zeta Delts wear the same red T-shirt with, printed on it, the Greek Zeta Delta Omega deals, silk-screened in black. First, you need to take a little stamp of Hello Kitty, maybe half a stamp, and wait for the flash. It’s like this little paper stamp printed with Hello Kitty you suck on and swallow, except it’s really blotter acid.

All you do is, the Zeta Delts sit together to make this red patch in the middle of the studio audience and scream and yell to get on TV. These are not the Gamma Grab’a Thighs. They’re not the Lambda Rape’a Dates. The Zeta Delts, they’re who everybody wants to be.

How the acid will affect you-if you’re going to freak out and kill yourself or eat somebody alive-they don’t even tell you.

It’s traditional.

Ever since you were a little kid with a fever, the contestants they call down to play this game show, the big voice always calls for one guy who’s a United States Marine wearing some band uniform with brass buttons. There’s always somebody’s old grandma wearing a sweatshirt. There’s an immigrant from some place where you can’t understand half of what he says. There’s always some rocket scientist with a big belly and his shirt pocket stuck full of pens.

It’s just how you remember it, growing up, only now-all the Zeta Delts start yelling at you. Yelling so hard it scrunches their eyes shut. Everybody’s just these red shirts and big, open mouths. All their hands are pushing you out from your seat, shoving you into the aisle. The big voice is saying your name, telling you to come on down. You’re the next contestant.

In your mouth, the Hello Kitty tastes like pink bubblegum. It’s the Hello Kitty, the popular kind, not the strawberry flavor or the chocolate flavor somebody’s brother cooks at night in the General Sciences Building where he works as a janitor. The paper stamp feels caught partway down your throat, except you don’t want to gag on TV, not on recorded video with strangers watching, forever.

All the studio audience is turned around to see you stumble down the aisle in your red T-shirt. All the TV cameras zoomed in. Everybody clapping exactly the way you remember it. Those Las Vegas lights, flashing, outlining everything onstage. It’s something new, but you’ve watched it a million-zillion times before, and just on automatic you take the empty desk next to where the United States Marine is standing.

The game show host, who’s not Alex Trebek, he waves one arm, and a whole part of the stage starts to move. It’s not an earthquake, but one whole wall rolls on invisible wheels, all the lights everywhere flashing on and off, only fast, just blink, blink, blink, except faster than a human mouth could say. This whole big back wall of the stage slides to one side, and from behind it steps out a giant fashion model blazing with about a million-billion sparkles on her tight dress, waving one long, skinny arm to show you a table with eight chairs like you’d see in somebody’s dining room on Thanksgiving with a big cooked turkey and yams and everything. Her fashion-model waist, about as big around as somebody’s neck. Each of her tits, the size of your head. Those flashing Las Vegas kind of lights blinking all around. The big voice saying who made this table, out of what kind of wood. Saying the suggested retail price it’s worth.

To win, the host lifts up this little box. Like a magician, he shows everybody what’s underneath-just this whole thing of bread in its naturally occurring state, the way bread comes before it’s made into anything you can eat like a sandwich or French toast. Just this bread, the whole way your mom might find it at the farm or wherever bread grows.

The table and chairs are totally, easily yours, except you have to guess the price of this big bread.

Behind you, all the Zeta Delts crowd really close together in their Tshirts, making what looks like one giant, red pucker in the middle of the studio audience. Not even looking at you, all their haircuts are just huddled up, making a big, hairy center. It’s like forever later when your phone rings, and a Zeta Delt voice says what to bid.

That bread just sitting there the whole time. Covered in a brown crust. The big voice says it’s loaded with ten essential vitamins and minerals.

The old game show host, he’s looking at you like maybe he’s never, ever seen a telephone before. He goes, “And what do you bid?”

And you go, “Eight bucks?”

From the look on the old grandma’s face, it’s like maybe they should call some paramedics for her heart attack. Dangling out of one sweatshirt cuff, this crumpled scrap of Kleenex looks like leaked-out stuffing, flapping white, like she’s some trashed teddy bear somebody loved too hard.

To cut you off using some brilliant strategy, the United States Marine, the bastard, he says, “Nine dollars.”

Then to cut him off, the rocket science guy says, “Ten. Ten dollars.”

It must be some trick question, because the old grandma says, “One dollar and ninety-nine cents,” and all the music starts, loud, and the lights flash on and off. The host hauls the granny up onto the stage, and she’s crying and plays a game where she throws a tennis ball to win a sofa and a pool table. Her grandma face looks just as smashed and wrinkled as that Kleenex she pulls out from her sweatshirt cuff. The big voice calls another granny to take her place, and everything keeps rushing forward.

The next round, you need to guess the price of some potatoes, but like a whole big thing of real, alive potatoes, from before they become food, the way they come from the miners or whoever that dig potatoes in Ireland or Idaho or some other place starting with an I. Not even made into potato chips or French fries.

If you guess right, you get some big clock inside a wood box like a Dracula coffin standing on one end, except with these church bells inside the box that ding-ding whatever time it is. Over your phone, your mom calls it a grandfather clock. You show it to her on video, and she says it looks cheap.

You’re onstage with the TV cameras and lights, all the Zeta Delts call-waiting you, and you cup your phone to your chest and go, “My mom wants to know, do you have anything nicer I could maybe win?”

You show your mom those potatoes on video, and she asks: Did the old host guy buy them at the A amp;P or the Safeway?

You speed-dial your dad, and he asks about the income-tax liability.

Probably it’s the Hello Kitty, but the face of this big Dracula clock just scowls at you. It’s like the secret, hidden eyes; the eyelids open up, and the teeth start to show, and you can hear about a million-billion giant, alive cockroaches crawling around inside the wood box of it. The skin of all the supermodels goes all waxy, smiling with their faces not looking at anything.