Free Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk

soiled harbinger baby linger on the pink star beside Hollywood Boulevard, for the wind catches it and bears it a distance. The Greek statesman writes that the foul waters in the gutter collect and carry the babe. The tiny graven image, bloated with breath, faceless, it’s borne along in the company of drowned rats and bloated strays. These the gutters of Hollywood channel underground. And the subterranean sewers of Los Angeles guide the little idol and introduce it to wayward bleach bottles and spent ketchup bottles. The storm-water tunnels and the weirs manage this flood of plastic discards, this downward migration of polystyrene. And the thing-baby ventures forth on the flood, not in a basket woven of rushes, but attended to by legions of used syringes. And swaddled in dry-cleaning bags it journeys among this flotsam of toothless combs and escaped tennis balls. They all flock together, routed through buried pipes and sunless catch basins. Swimming here are the mysterious ghost shapes of blister-packaged objects, those plastic cauls of productslong ago given birth by consumers. And thus becomes the fate of all worldly treasures. And in due time the little thing-baby and all these earthly rewards, the immortal leavings of mortal humans, these are poured into the ditch of the Los Angeles River.
    The way turtle hatchlings are baited by the moon’s light, and each generation of salmon is compelled to find their destiny … so, too, will our thing-baby and its soiled host of man-made fragments be lured. A receding tide compels this entire generation of shapeless, useless castoffs to venture forth into the Pacific Ocean.

DECEMBER 21, 8:44 A . M . EST
A Sexual Predator in the Animal Kingdom
Posted by [email protected]
    Gentle Tweeter,
    Not to boast, but no adult mind could ever be as depraved, as perverted as that of an innocent eleven-year-old virgin. Before one absorbs the boring facts about reproductive anatomy, while still free of tact and mechanical knowledge, children can envision sexual goings-on with sea urchins … zebras … flamingos.
    As a predead girl I dreamed of giving birth to babies with wings. I would seduce a porpoise and our offspring would swim across oceans. Puberty enticed me with the possibility that my own children could roar with the huge heads of lions or run on hoofed feet. Why no one had done this before, who knew? I couldn’t wait.
    Inspired by my stuffed menagerie, my diary grew fat with such carnal hijinks. Needless to say these adventures, they were all fictional. I’d only invented them and carefully put pen to paper in meticulous handwriting for my mother’s inevitable consumption. “Dear Diary,” I’d write, “today I daubed hallucinogenic jellyfish toxin on my exposed woo-woo.…”
    In response to CanuckAIDSemily, yes, I could’ve started a blog, but my plan would be effective only if my parents believed I was hiding the details of my sordid vices. “Dear Diary,” I’d write, “Mother must never know, but today Isipped the
most divine
absinthe using a dried monkey dingus as a drinking straw.…” I’d shelved the imaginative diary among the Regency potboilers on my crammed bookshelves, and not a week after my initial entry my parents began their hostile spying.
    Not that they announced their campaign. I merely guessed as much because, apropos of nothing, during breakfast conversation my mother mentioned that sucking on monkey ding-dings was an excellent high-risk practice for contracting HIV.
    “Really?” I asked, nibbling my toast, secretly thrilled to know she’d taken my bait. “Does that go for all monkey ding-dings?” I licked the butter from my stubby fingertips, asking, “Does that include the
Saimiri sciureus
?”
    My father sputtered his coffee. “The
what
?”
    “The adorable squirrel monkey,” I said. My eyelashes fluttered. A coquettish blush suffused my cheeks.
    My father said, “Why do you ask?”
    And in response I shrugged. “No