# Burnt Tongues

Burnt Tongues is a collection of transgressive fiction stories written by multiple authors, edited by Chuck Palahniuk, Richard Thomas, and Dennis Widmyer. 72 stories were submitted to the fan-made Palahniuk website "The Cult," and then put through a vetting process. Palahniuk then selected and edited 20 of these for publication in the collection.

## Narratives

| Author | Story | Description |
| Neil Krolicki | "Live This Down" | After suffering humiliation and bullying, three high-school girls plan to commit suicide by following a Japanese guide on the internet. |
| Chris Lewis Carter | "Charlie" | A man comes into a veterinarian clinic late at night, holding a battered and tortured cat in his arms. The vet who helps him recognizes the animal, and in a moment of comeuppance confesses something horrible he did to a cat in his childhood. |
| Gayle Towell | "Paper" | A woman imagines a stick-figure on the edge of a toilet paper roll and relates the image to her personal life. |
| Tony Liebhard | "Mating Calls" | A college student retrieves a lost phone while studying for his vet school midterm. |
| Michael De Vito, Jr. | "Melody" | Dougie, a mentally disabled man who lives above his parents, obsesses about a young woman who works in a convenience store across the street. |
| Tyler Jones | "F for Fake" | Twice-divorced Earl, miserable from his failed writing career and job, pretends himself to be the famous, reclusive author Don Swanstrom. |
| Phil Jourdan | "Mind and Soldier" | A disabled Vietnam veteran with schizophrenia gives advice on crushes to his young neighbor. |
| Richard Lemmer | "Ingredients" | A supermarket employee plays "The Game," a dangerous, urban legend-like activity that ultimately renders her infertile. |
| Amanda Gowin | "The Line Forms On the Right" | A man follows a mysterious woman down an alleyway and they share drinks in a bar. |
| Matt Egan | "A Vodka Kind of Girl" | A teenager dies from congenital heart failure, aggravated by bulimia. |
| Fred Venturini | "Gasoline" | A disfigured man learns that the boy he had lied about setting him on fire hanged himself in his jail cell, and recalls what led up to the lie. |
| Brandon Tietz | "Dietary" | An obese ex-homecoming queen goes to extreme lengths to gain her figure back in time for her reunion. |
| Adam Skorupskas | "Invisible Graffiti" | A man encounters an overdosed, armless junkie in an abandoned building and takes her under his care. |
| Bryan Howie | "Bike" | A father gives his son's bicycle a new paint job. The ending is left ambiguous. |
| Brien Piechos | "Heavier Petting" | While at a strip club, the narrator tells a rather graphic urban legend about a teenage girl having drugged, drunken sex with a dog, and a meditation on bestiality and the nature of storytelling. |
| Jason M. Fylon | "Engines, O-rings, and Astronauts" | After enduring a ruthless beating, an outcast boy kills his teacher and several of his classmates. Told from the perspective of a survivor many years later. |
| Terence James Eeles | "Lemming" | On Halloween, a man tracks down his twin brother causing a rash of suicides across the world. The title comes from the legend of lemmings' ritual suicide. |
| Keith Bule | "Routine" | A depressed, insomniac pharmacist finishes his last night shift routine. |
| Gus Moreno | "Survived" | Following his grandfather's death, a young boy witnesses an electrician collapse in his grandmother's apartment due to heat stroke. |
| Daniel W. Broallt | "Zombie Whorehouse" | In a post-apocalyptic world, one journalist goes undercover to expose a string of underground "zombie" sex rings. |