Make Something Up by Chuck Palahniuk Read Free Book Online Page A

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 how you remember it. Those Las Vegas lights, flashing, outlining everything onstage. It’s something new, but you’ve watched it done a million-zillion times before, and just by 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, easy yours, except you have to guess the price of this big bread.
    Behind you, all the Zeta Delts crowd really close together in their T-shirts, 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 one sweatshirt cuff, this crumpled scrap of Kleenex looks like leaked-out stuffing, flapping