Project Mayhem

Please read this piece of fiction once you have completed watching the fight club movie, as I’ve picked it up from where the movie left it.

THE PROJECT MAYHEM

As I said, we had the front row seats for the theatre of mass destruction named project mayhem. I hold her hands as I watch the most brilliant scene that I have come across in my life. I taste blood. I can’t stop tonguing it even though it hurts like hell. it’s a strange feeling creeping through me. The comfort of Marla when I’m not Tyler, and of course the relief of getting Tyler off from my head. All of a sudden, I have the urge to live my life my way, the not Tyler Durden way. as the all singing all dancing crap of this world. going with the flow. I start to introspect, the plight of myself. What Tyler has done to me. The mere thought of Tyler brings a devastating effect on me.

The next morning was the most beautiful one. The Kellogg’s I had was way tastier than usual. I was in a hotel, had to go house hunting as I can’t live or even survive in that shithole again. I look at my watch, the second needle was hanging down, it was 9:45. I rang up Marla, she was sleepy, I was not surprised. After the successful completion of project mayhem, we went to a pub, got drunk drove her to her old apartment, and dragged me into this hotel.

As she regained her senses, the first thing she said was "go see a doctor".

"Is it necessary?" I replied

"Go if you love me," She said and hung up.

I stared at myself in the mirror. I was jack's piece of shit. Bruises all over my body, and a big hole on my left cheek. Now I know why the taste of Kellogg’s was special. It was the taste of Tyler leaving. I smile, the hole on the cheek stretches and it really hurts. I need to visit a dentist too. All the fight club episodes have caused my tooth a lot.

The apartment smelled of new paint and varnish. It was hard to find an apartment with all these facilities. I had 17 stitches on my left cheek. Marla looked at me as I looked at her. We had the same thing in our minds.

“We’ll take it,” I said.

This apartment was very much like the one lit up by Tyler. He still regrets the decision. He regrets it because I regret it. The most important thing at this point is not about me, it’s about Marla, that I cared about. She is damn happy. She is happy because I was happy. I can see it.

We moved in together in a week. We furnished the house with the best furniture we could afford. I managed to buy the dining table in the shape of the yin-yang-yo symbol. We bought furniture that explained our personality. I still had the paycheck coming in for doing no shit, for not showing up for work, for creating a show in my boss’s cabin. We had money and time. But, all play and no work are as boring as all work and no play. I went job hunting. Was easily selected because of my work experience (pre-fight club and project mayhem). This time, I was in a watch manufacturing unit. The pay scale was low but had something to do. Marla started writing a blog that was dull. It was a blog about mental health. The sessions in support groups taught her a lot about things going on in people’s heads.

I began working like a dog. The pay scale gradually increased. We used to make a lot of money. Very soon, I was promoted. Life was getting monotonous and a routine was created. Everything was going fine until one day Angel Face showed up, in a coffee shop.

I went near him and said, “Hello Angel, what’s up buddy?”

“Yo, do you know me?”

“Of course, I do, I’m Tyler Durden, did you forget me?”

“I think you mistook me for someone else.”

At first, I thought he was following the first two rules of project mayhem, but every time I ask questions about project mayhem, they used to say, “the first rule of the project is you do not ask questions”. This behavior was strange. Was this my worst fears coming true? Am I imagining all these things up? How can I be sure?

I didn’t want to discuss all these with Marla as she has seen me go through a lot, she can’t bear to watch me go through one more episode. I’ve decided to go to the root of this cause and solve it.

“Hi, mom,” I say as she picks up my call. I’ve been planning to talk to her about me and Marla getting married. She was the only family that I had. My father abandoned us when I was 6 years old.

“Hey, is that you, kiddo?” she answered. She always used to call me kiddo.

“Yes, mom” I responded. I could hear her sobbing. I should have called her earlier. Sometimes I feel that I should have called her more often. I then told her about my decision on marrying. Her first reaction was “okay”.

“Okay? That’s it?” I said.

“Yeah. What else should I say?”

“Mom say something.”

“Marriage is a funeral with cake. Trust me, I’ve been there. You take these decisions because of either love or fear. I chose it because of fear. I hope you chose it out of love.” And she hung up.

Fuck, that was pretty deep. And I was sure that I took this decision because of both. The love towards her and the fear of losing her.

I haven’t slept properly for a week since the Angel face episode. Tyler haunts me in my periods of sleep. The more I take him away from the head, the more it returns.

After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to get medical attention for my condition. Schizophrenia is bad, but knowing that you have it, is damn annoying. You can’t believe what you see or what you think. The next thing I remember is I have woken up in the waiting room of a counselor. Dr. Achara Anne. She was young, in fact, it destroyed all my preconceptions of how a psychotherapist would look like. She was a thin, fair blonde well-built woman contrary to a geek looking middle-aged woman with spectacles. We talked. I told her everything about Tyler and the fight club.

After the session, I thought ‘This is weird, she hears me, and I have to pay her per hour for listening to me. Damn.’

But I was much lighter. She asked me to take pills to get rid of my insomnia, as a first step. I didn’t tell her about project mayhem as it will make me a criminal even though Tyler was behind it.

I started working many shifts as I was advised to keep myself busy and awake and sleep only during the night so that I won’t be having a nightlife. I restarted attending the old parasite group, on Saturday evenings. It was my pub, my vacation. As I came closer to my health and wellbeing, I was moving away from Marla, and she knew it. We stopped making love. Neither did we did not talk about aborting our wedding plan, nor did we plan for it. That scared me.

I continued my therapy sessions. I talked to my mother in person and told Achara about it. By now I was comfortable with Achara.

After 4 whole months of therapy sessions, she said “Your dad left you and your mom at a very young age, your mom was into making money so that you would be educated enough and won’t be like your father. Hence you had abandonment issues, which made you vulnerable and prone to lying. You started to create your own world in it. This ultimately leads to more lies and apparently into this schizophrenia.”

I was not surprised as I was the part of this revelation. But first thought was, ‘you knew this by 2 weeks of therapy, why didn’t you tell me then, why you charged me 60$ per session for additional 3 months and 2 weeks?’

But that revelation did not change much of me. I started to find comfort in my world filled with lies. More lying led me farther away from Marla. And Marla started finding her own pleasures. I knew it because Marla knew it. Marla got into another relationship. It made me more depressed. I can’t go back to Achara, she can’t do much. She did try but wasn’t working. I decided to end this. Bought a gun and was determined enough to kill both Marla and her new boyfriend, as I had to release my frustration somewhere.

I reached his house. I knew his house because he knew about his house. I tried a shot at her boyfriend, but I missed it. He turned back. Fuck, it's Tyler. The Tyler Durden, apparently me, but still Tyler, whom I killed with my bare hand in my head. I can’t calculate the intensity of this scene right now, because right now, I was just a meatball soaked in adrenaline. I shot Marla, I missed her too.

Now, everything started to make sense, just like Tyler, she was also me. All dancing, all-singing, female counterpart. This is why we never got married. I can’t marry myself. Achara told me once if I ever have an episode with Tyler level intensity, I should call her. I rang her, but the mobile of Tyler started to ring.

He held me and said, “Hey, I’m back. Get this straight into your head, all the characters that meant so much to you in your life is all a lie. Including Achara.”

“What about my mom?” I asked.

“Go shoot her and see. If she gets hurt, she is real”

“Stop fucking with me” I shouted.

This is why I never see Achara, Tyler, and Marla in the same room.

“If you want to end this, you have to end yourself,” Said Tyler

“Okay then, I’ll have to shoot myself. It's better to leave this goddamn place filled with lies than to suffer in this rotten hell.” I thought that was my last word, but it was not. It would have been nice if those were my last word. It was like ‘et tu Brute?’ But God won’t let something cool happen to me.

Achara shot me in my leg and shouted, “Don’t believe yourself. You’re lying to yourself again, I am fucking real.”

And with the help of a few paramedics, I was sent into an ambulance and was tied to the bed. That escalated pretty fast. She explained to me, that everything including Fight Club and Project Mayhem was fake and was a story filled with lies that would project me as a hero, a white person and others, villains, dark people. What I deserved was not death, but proper medical assistance and I’ll be shifted to a mental asylum. I drifted off to sleep due to the drugs given by the paramedics.

My thought before drifting off to sleep was, ‘What if this is also my imagination? How could I know?’