Choke – chuck palahniuk

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Chuck Palahniuk
Choke

Chapter 1

IF YOU’RE GOING TO READ THIS, DON’T BOTHER.
After a couple pages, you won’t want to be here. So forget it. Go away. Get out while
You’re still in one piece.
Save yourself.
There has to be something better on television. Or since you have so much time on
Your hands, maybe you could take a night course. Become a doctor. You could make
Something out of yourself. Treat yourself to a dinner out. Color your hair.
You’re not getting any younger.
What happens here is first going to piss you off. After that it just gets worse and
Worse.
What you’re getting here is a stupid story about a stupid little boy. A stupid true life
Story about nobody you’d ever want to meet. Picture this little spaz being about waist
High with a handful of blond hair, combed and parted on one side. Picture the icky little
Shit smiling in old school photos with some of his baby teeth missing and his first adult
Teeth coming in crooked. Picture him wearing a stupid sweater striped blue and yellow, a
Birthday sweater that used to be his favorite. Even that young, picture him biting his
Dickhead fingernails. His favorite shoes are Keds. His favorite food, fucking corn dogs.
Imagine some dweeby little boy wearing no seat belt and riding in a stolen school
Bus with his mommy after dinner. Only there’s a police car parked at their motel so the
Mommy just blows on past at sixty or seventy miles an hour.
This is about a stupid little weasel who, for sure, used to be about the stupidest little
Rat fink crybaby twerp that ever lived.
The little cooz.
The Mommy says, “We’ll

have to hurry,” and they drive uphill on a narrow road,
Their back wheels wagging from side to side on the ice. In their headlights the snow looks
Blue, spreading from the edge of the road out into the dark forest.
Picture this all being his fault. The little peckerwood.
The Mommy stops the bus a little ways back from the base of a rock cliff, so the
Headlights glare against its white face, and she says, “Here’s as far as we’re going to get,”
And the words come boiling out as white clouds that show how big inside her lungs are.
The Mommy sets the parking brake and says, “You can get out, but leave your coat
In the bus.”
Picture this stupid runt letting the Mommy stand him right in front of the school bus.
This bogus little Benedict Arnold just stands looking into the glare of the headlights, and
Lets the Mommy pull the favorite sweater off over his head. This wimpy little squealer
Just stands there in the snow, half naked, while the bus’s motor races, and the roar echoes
Off the cliff, and the Mommy disappears to somewhere behind him in the night and the
Cold. The headlights blind him, and the motor noise covers any sound of the trees
Scraping together in wind. The air is too cold to breathe more than a mouthful at a time so
This little mucous membrane tries to breathe twice as fast.
He doesn’t run away. He doesn’t do anything.
From somewhere behind him, the Mommy says, “Now whatever you do, don’t turn
Around.”
The Mommy tells him how there used to be a beautiful girl in ancient Greece, the
Daughter of a potter.
Like every time she gets out of jail and conies back to claim him, the kid and the
Mommy have been in a different motel every night. They’ll eat fast food for every meal,
And just drive all day, every day. At lunch today, the kid tried to eat his corn dog while it