The Hunched Cornish delves into assumed verities of The Checkout’s recently posted alien materials
The so-called Gramps and his alleged connection to Josh Davies rigorously explored in connection with The Hunched Cornish’s lost Venus Baby, which isn’t really his
Continued from last frame
So I say:
[Having broken off the story in the preceding frame at an odd juncture, The Hunched Cornish picks it up again here, starting with this reference to himself – the “I”, which may have confused you, o, idle reader, as he describes his attempts to engage John Smith in conversation – Ed. note]
“What do you think of that Gramps?”
“Gramps?”
“Yeah, you know – Jeb Davies?”
“Why are you worried about him?”
“Well, you think maybe he’s a brother – an older one – of Josh Davies, the one here in Kyiv?”
“I don’t think he’s anyone, The Hunched Cornish. I think he’s a work of fiction.”
“Ah, come on, Smith – you’re shitting me, right?”
“No, The Hunched Cornish, I think this Jeb Davies, this Gramps… what am I saying, ‘I think’? I know – he’s a work of fiction, posted illegally on our website by anonymous hacks who somehow managed to break into its administration and post a bunch of their own shit up, which, for some reason completely incomprehensible to me, the secret editorial board of Kyiv Unedited decided to leave up – ‘for the record’ as they like to say; whatever that means.”
“No, Smith, they left it up because it’s not fiction. It’s real. Jeb Davies is real.”
“No, it’s fake, it’s garbage, none of it’s true. It’s just a story.”
“Sure, it’s just a story, Smith, but the story’s about as fictional as you and me. No, Smith, that story’s real, just like the other ones. Just like the one they told about you walking into that café on Podil where I was sitting with my wine and steak, expecting you, actually waiting for you to show up, and then you did show up – oh, that was real. And it was real when Manny Face walked in with you, with his arm around your shoulder. That was real, too, Smith.”
“No, none of that ever happened, The Hunched Cornish. It’s just a story. I never walked into that café, not with Manny Face or with anybody. That café doesn’t even exist. Go ahead, find it, tell me where it is. What ‘remote side street’ of Podil? Whoever wrote the story didn’t name the café, didn’t name the street. Neither you nor I were ever there, and we couldn’t have been there even if we can’t remember, because it doesn’t exist. And it doesn’t exist because even if you or I can’t remember, surely by recalling the occasion and the incidents pertaining to it, it would have sparked some memory – in you, in me. But it didn’t; did it? The story did nothing to bring the memories back; therefore, none of it ever happened. You weren’t there, eating a steak, or drinking wine, and The Half Guinea wasn’t there with a black chick, and Kowalski wasn’t reciting a medieval sort of poetry, which would have otherwise bugged you if your mind hadn’t been on something else. But you can’t even say what your mind was on because you can’t remember, and you can’t remember because you weren’t there and it didn’t happen, and so the story sparks no memory of the occasion. And Kowalski didn’t throw the pages of his poetry in the air when he saw me come into the place as he ran up to greet me, and that poetry doesn’t even exist, otherwise, the writer would have at least thrown in some of the lines, but they didn’t. And I didn’t walk in, either alone or with Manny Face. None of it ever happened.”
“Oh, no, it happened, all right, Smith. The writer, whoever they are, didn’t have to give any of those details for the story to be credible. They don’t have to name the street or the place or give back any of Kowalski’s poetry to make it any more real. Why should they? It’s not important. You don’t need that information to make the story any more real than it already is. And if you knew anything about narrative, it carries no obligation to spark our memories, Smith. That you or I can’t remember – well, that’s our problem; isn’t it? It may not spark memories, but it evokes feelings, all right. And while memories of that moment don’t come flooding back to me, they lie just beneath the surface of the feelings. Where else do those feelings come from if they don’t come from memories that evoke them? Oh, no, Smith, that was a good story, and that writer knew what they were doing. And it was real all right – very real. What were you doing with Manny Face? You know how much that hurt me?”
I knew Smith would remain silent, as he is from time to time wont to do, and I decide not to press him about Manny Face. There are a lot of things regarding Manny Face I suddenly want to ask him. But that will be conversation for when I corner him another time. At the moment I decide to pursue my Gramps line of questioning – as to who exactly is Jeb “Gramps” Davies and if he’s any relation to Josh Davies, the one here in Kyiv. With Smith silent and listening, I decide to answer my own question:
“I think he is related to the Davies here, Smith. Given the description, the characteristics, the overall manner, I think it is very likely that Jeb ‘Gramps’ Davies is a very close relation to the Josh Davies in Kyiv, even his brother. There are simply too many things that make the two so similar that to deny it once you compare their stories would be to defy logic itself. It’s just that this Jeb, back in the States, well, he’s simply so much more evil than Josh. It seems like Josh left home to get away from his brother to try to establish himself here. And he’s not even able to do it in a simple and straightforward fashion, like his brother, with his legions of zombified armed followers. No; he’s not as confident, never has been, and he’s uncertain of himself, confused, and he tries all of these exclusive convoluted abstruse and rarefied one-on-one approaches that have their results, to be sure, but they’re nowhere near as terrifying as the mass mobilization and world conquest approach of his brother, Jeb.”
“Maybe they’re just different approaches to the same objective.”
“Oh, no, Smith. One is just clearly far more evil than the other, and the other, our Davies, couldn’t take it. It frustrated him, and he came here to get away to try to establish his own reign, in a land of shitkickers and losers, where doing so might prove relatively easy, but in comparative terms, his efforts fall far short of the results achieved by his brother – and that, in what had until now been assumed to be the most powerful country in the world. While this one has been working frantically, casting himself here and there, affecting this person and maiming that one, or killing the odd poor soul every now and then, the brother over there bided his time. He waited until the moment was ripe, and then he projected all his power, and he’s gained the souls of millions, and the count is growing – all in one fell swoop, if you will.”
For the benefit of Smith’s understanding, I continue my comparison of the Davies brothers, using what I think is an apposite analogy.
“Smith, think of Mycroft Holmes.”
“Microsoft? I can see the similarity between the two, but I don’t really see your point.”
“No, Smith, not Microsoft. Mycroft! Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes’s smarter older brother.”
“Oh, is that right – there was a smarter older brother?”
“Yes, Smith, and his name was Mycroft.”
“You don’t say.”
“Indeed I do.”
“Right. Well, go on, then.”
“Well, Smith, imagine how frustrated our Holmes would be if –”
“Sherlock?”
“Yes, yes, Sherlock! Now shut the fuck up and just listen.”
I wait until I am sure Smith will keep his mouth shut, and then I continue.
“Now, Smith, as I was saying, imagine if the brother – eh, Mycroft – was involved in the same business.”
“Why, I imagine it would be devastating.”
“Will you shut the fuck up?!”
I wait. Smith keeps a straight face. I really don’t get this guy sometimes.
“That’s right, Smith, and sorry for the outburst. He’d be beating Sherlock at every turn.”
Smith just looks at me. I continue.
“Suddenly, we wouldn’t have a bunch of stories of the heroism of the world’s top private investigator, but of a frustrated prick always losing the case to his older brother, who doesn’t pay the least bit of attention to the psychological devastation he is perpetrating on his younger sibling. Those wouldn’t be good stories, Smith, stories that give us release, fill us with hope and make our chests swell with righteous pride in a sort of universal patriotism of the good. At best, they’d be deformed narratives, tragic evil farces, written by some vile degenerate to spite our needs. In his rage, jealousy and anguish, imagine a Sherlock Holmes trying to put a stop to his superior brother, Microsoft, er, Mycroft, but the latter, always being a step ahead of Sherlock, manages to get his younger brother tangled in situations that physically cripple him little by little without actually killing him, eventually turning him into a twisted, repulsive freak. Today, we’d have a whole different tradition of Sherlock Holmes, and I daresay, virtually all subsequent literature would never be the same. Indeed, we’d be completely different ourselves. At least you’d be, Smith.”
“That may very well be, The Hunched Cornish,” says Smith, apparently completely unfazed by my aggression, for which I, it should be borne in mind, apologized, “but it’s all quite hypothetical, and we can never know for sure.”
“You don’t have to know for sure, Smith, because I’m telling you.”
“Fine, but you never talked about Davies before. Never even paid attention to him. So, why now? And maybe they aren’t two different individuals who happen to be brothers. Maybe they are the one and the same – and only – Josh Davies, except the writer changed the identity just a little for purposes of taking off along a new storyline, not that we need it. Or maybe Josh Davies is indeed just precisely so evil that he is able to change his own identity ever so slightly, in order to be doing more evil in two places at once, while essentially remaining the same.”
“If that were the case, Smith, then why would he choose to be more devastating in the States, the most powerful country in the world, while going light in Ukraine, quite conceivably the weakest country in the world?”
“Um, because that’s exactly what one’d do. Give it all you got in the States, because it IS the most powerful country in the world, but toy with Ukraine, the way a cat does with a wounded mouse at the end of its paw, or a killer whale does with a baby seal, bouncing it off the tip of its nose before wolfing it down in one bite.”
“No Smith, Jeb Davies and Josh Davies, they’re two different people, all right, but within the same extended evil family, from among an entire mountain society of extended evil clans – and they are most probably brothers. One is just so much more evil than that other, it’s creepy; frighteningly bizarre. It makes the fire under my skin crawl.”
“I thought you’re supposed to be evil.”
“I meant on a human level, Smith.”
“I see.”
“I don’t know, Smith. I guess I’m talking about Josh Davies because something about him suddenly really bugs me. It’s a feeling I get – my intuition.”
“You mean like a hunch?”
“Yeah, something like that. Hey, Smith, you know, I haven’t been able to find my kid lately.”
“You mean the Venus Baby, the freakish interplanetary hatchling sired by Welsh Losser, which you swept off his table at Sweaty’s Place in an unsanctioned invisible-hand deus ex machina manner as The Ferret rat, Losser’s old boyfriend, was about to eat him? You mean the infant that genetically belongs to another man, regardless of how repulsive that other man is, which you stole, so that you could try to fool yourself into thinking you have a kid of your own; that with your true cosmic abilities and Losser’s insinuated fake ones, that half-extraterrestrial Venusian spawned out of the sewage deltas of Venus as so vividly described by the prophet William S. Burroughs should by all rights be yours, but for a damningly unjust fluke of nature? A baby, a child that belongs to The Hunched Cornish, one that you could raise and love and watch grow up and send out into the world, or in your case, into the universe; after all these years – and how many years has it been?; hundreds?; thousands? – so many, that you’ve lost count; isn’t that right, The Hunched Cornish?; a beautiful and loving daughter, or a son, it doesn’t matter anymore, the way it used to, as long as you could have one, just one; one that you can finally, finally call your own?”
That really hurts me, and now it is my turn at silence. I brood and agonize for a long, long time. Smith waits patiently and I lose track of the hour before I am finally able to muster up the breath to continue the conversation, without any of those cracks in my throat that portend tears, as though nothing painful has been said.
“Well, Smith, I think maybe Josh Davies is behind my baby’s disappearance. That’s the only reason I mention it.”
Once again, I am met by silence.
The Hunched Cornish, May 9, 2014