Damned by Chuck Palahniuk

form and slip the attendant demon
a Kit Kat bar, Babette wishes me good luck. She gives me a little hug, no doubt
leaving dirty handprints all over the back of my cardigan sweater. Babette,
Leonard, Patterson, and Archer wait in an outer hallway while I go through a
door into the all-white testing room. The polygraph machine. The demon inflating
the blood-pressure cuff around my arm.
    You might recall this same demon from the classic Hollywood masterpiece The Exorcist, where he possessed a little girl who was the
spoiled, precocious child of a middle-aged movie star. Talk about déjà vu. Here
he is now, watching my eyes for changes in pupil dilation which might betray
dishonesty. The demon's wiring my skin to test whether I sweat. What Leonard
calls "skin conductivity."
    I say that I loved the scene where he made the little girl, Regan,
crab-walk backward down the stairs with gore spilling out of her mouth. More
out of nerves, I ask whether the demon has had any personal experience
possessing people. Did he make any other movies? Does he get any residuals?
Who's his agent?
    Without looking away from his scrolling readout, those wavering little
needles that squiggle lines on the rolling belt of white paper, the demon says,
"Is your name Madison Spencer?"
    The control questions. To establish a baseline of honest answers.
    I say, "Yes."
    Tweaking a knob on his machine, the demon asks, "Are you, in fact,
thirteen years old?"
    Again, yes.
    The demon asks, "Do you reject Satan and all his works?"
    Easy enough. I shrug and say, "Sure, why not?"
    "Please," the demon says, "it's very important that you
answer only either ryes' or 'no.'"
    I say, "Sorry."
    The demon says, "Do you accept the Lord God as the one true
God?"
    Way-easy, no sweat, again, I say, "Yes."
    The demon says, "Do you recognize Jesus Christ as your personal
savior?"
    I don t know, not for certain, but I say, "Yes?"
    The needles squiggle on the readout paper, not much but a little. I
can't feel for sure, but maybe the irises of my eyes suddenly contract. The
dogma seems pretty familiar, but this isn't any sort of catechism my parents
trained me to recite. The demon's own eyes never leaving the inky, wavering
lines, he says, 'Are you now or have you ever been a practicing member of the
Buddhist religion?"
    I say, "What?"
    "Yes or no," the demon says.
    "What?" I say, "Buddhists don't get to Heaven?"
    While my parents fell far short of being perfect, none of their
mistakes were intentionally malicious, so it feels downright traitorous to
disavow every ideal they did their best to instill in me. Mine is the age-old
conundrum of betraying one's parents versus betraying one's deity. Me, I just
want to wear a halo and ride on a cloud. I just want to play a harp.
    Without missing a beat, the demon says, "Do you believe the Bible
to be the one and only true word of God?"
    I say, "Does that include the way-crazy, loony parts of
Leviticus?"
    Plunging forward, the demon says, "In your honest opinion, does
life begin at conception?"
    Yes, I know I'm supposed to be dead, with no corporeal body and
physical needs or physiology, but I start sweating like a pig. My face feels hot
with blushing. My teeth sit on edge, softly grinding together. My fists
clenching, tight, the bones and muscles take shape under the whitening skin of
my knuckles.
    I venture, "Yes?" "Do you sanction mandatory prayer in
public schools?" the demon asks.
    Yes, I do want to go to Heaven—who doesn't?—but not if it means I have
to be a total asshole.
    Whether I answer yes or no, those little needles are going to wiggle
like crazy, responding to either my dishonesty or my guilt.
    The demon says, "Do you view sexual acts between individuals of
the same gender to be an abomination?"
    I ask if we can come back to that question later.
    The demon says, "I'll take that as a 'no.'"
    Throughout the history of theology, Leonard tried to explain, religions
have argued over the nature of salvation, whether people are