John Smith unleashes unprofessional unsanctioned fictional tirade against Andrew Plumb
Unlike Kyiv Unedited’s other stories, this one is not fact-based or in line with our editorial policies and standards
Smith to be dealt with – but perhaps mildly, as state of sanity feared. Matter to be referred to Mack for consultation
Do libel charges loom? KU scrambles in flurry of precautions
Now for the story…
Meanwhile, in a dank cellar dimly lit by one swinging light bulb in an undisclosed location of a remote corner in Podil District, things are quickly shaping up to resemble, and imitate, a Tarantino film.
Tied to a wooden chair is Andrew Plumb, shivering and stripped down to his soiled underwear with his face half-beaten in.
The animal agent works in rhythmic cycles of beating and interrogation. Now he’s taking his minute-or-two break from savaging the snakelike face of Plumb, whose head droops on his chest, a blood-and-drool mixture running out his broken and swelled-up mouth, purpling from the damage.
The agent has been working his fists into that face so hard he only now looks down at his clenched hands and notices the skin broken over the knuckles of his middle and forefingers, his own bright blood trickling into and filling the fine lines. This pleases him greatly and he smiles. It’s time to start again.
He decides to give Plumb’s mug a rest and work on his midsection, throwing pulverizing punches deep into the gut and solar plexus.
A greenish gruel-bile mixture explodes out of Plumb’s mouth, with some spraying out his nose, like water spouting out the blowhole of a whale. Plumb hacks the vomit out in convulsed anguished weeping, followed by sputtering whimpering moans that no longer sound human. The lips look like the genitals of a fat woman, or an anal sphincter that ordered too many weenie sandwiches in the Gray Bar Hotel.
More blows to the chest are rewarded with a sustained fart and loss of bowel control. Liquid shit runs down the back of Plumb’s leg while piss rushes down the inside, the two mixing at the heel.
“Go ahead, Plumb,” the agent seethes through his teeth, “admit that you’re a writer. Go ahead, say it, say it – ‘I’m a writer’ – go on, just say the words – ‘I – AM – A – WRITER’… SAAAAAY IIIIIT!!!”
The agent’s clenched grin transforms into an insane leer, the upper lip curls like a mad dog’s, his eyes open wide like the sockets holding them are about to blow apart, and bulge out of his head as he looks down at Plumb – “Say it, Plumb, say it, say it… ‘I’m a writer’… say it, goddamn your ass… so that I can kill you…”
Again the agent drives his arms into Plumb’s head, like a machine, this time pummeling his skull. The agent is demented, deranged, whipping sweat off his face with half-spasmodic snaps of his head. Sounds coming out of his throat aren’t laughter, but some kind of convulsing hysterics conducted through his soul from the demon world.
At first Plumb’s head looked like a lopsided deep-blue coconut with thin shocks of stiff hair sticking out of raised knobs, like on a fat woman’s mons pubis, but now it looks like a collection of raw T-bone steaks stitched together.
“You want to show that you know everything! You want to prove you’ve got all the bases covered, that you’re smarter than everybody, and we have to bow to your greatness. Isn’t that right, Plumb?”
Here, the agent stops bludgeoning his victim, straightens himself and looks wistfully off into the distance, which is to say, at a soundproof wall with a thick steel door he can barely see, as Plumb drops what used to be a head on his battered chest.
And then the agent says:
“But do you really know what makes the great ones real writers? Eh, Plumb? Where does the voice come from, the arrangement of the passages, the rhythm of the words, like a musical composition, like a song?
“How do they dive into someone’s past or into the depths of someone’s mind and resurface somewhere later in the narrative with a richer portrait that gives us a deeper understanding of a character without throwing the story off track?
“How do they do that – huh, Plumb? How? How do they compress layers of meaning into symbolic images and metaphors placed throughout a story that retell and summarize the entire story as small nutshell stories within the bigger story?
“What is it they do that makes a made-up story ring true?
“What makes these real writers, and you just a wannabe, a second-rate hack, admittedly of a slightly higher kind – huh, Plumb? You don’t have a clue; do you?
“It’s imagination, Plumb. That’s what they have and you don’t. Imagination – plain and simple. You can’t pull it off because you don’t have it; you weren’t given the gift. Oh, you can work on your writing, all right, if the spirit of that work is genuine and sincere, which, in your case, is highly doubtful, and you can improve it, but you’ll never actually get it.
“Because you talk through your ass, and you won’t shut up – you fucking cocksucker, you fucking piece of shit!”
The agent begins battering Plumb again, and now, in between blows, the agent thrusts and heaves clumps of words out of his lungs:
“Everything you write… is contaminated… with self-congratulatory pomposities… and falsehoods that you try… carrying on big words and sweeping phrases… always making yourself… the center of the story, the hero.”
And as he lets the bloody oozing pulp that used to be Plumb’s head fall once more, the agent again straightens himself and, though breathing hard, says calmly:
“But you’re a phony, Plumb, and I can see right through you.
“So go ahead, just say that you’re a writer. Tell me that, please. Say it – it’s what you want to say; your pride, even with everything I’m putting you through, is just screaming to defy me; every cell, every molecule of your body just wants to say it, spitting the words right in my face – ‘I am a writer’… So why not just get it over with and say it. SAAAAAY IIIIIT!!!”
And the agent is right – and he should be right, because the agent knows his man. Even in this situation, Plumb’s arrogance, vanity, and pride cannot be restrained, and despite his rather unpropitious circumstances, he indeed does want to spit the words right into his tormenter’s face, blood, gruel and all. And so with one tremendous effort, one that Plumb knows will be his last, he lifts up the blood-filled bag that used to be his face against his torturer, and with all the strength and will left in him, groans out – heartrendingly, pitifully:
“Bl-am u-u-uhhh brla-a-a-i-te-e-er…” And the head falls again.
“Well, Plumb, you’ve really made my day. What you’ve said is music to my ears. You’ve just made all this hard work really worthwhile. It’s paid off. And so I’m truly grateful to you. And to show you just how grateful, I’m going to help you.”
The agent reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out a large knife, and unfolding it, moves it toward Plumb’s neck.
Just then, a phone – the old black kind like from the 1930s – which suddenly seems to have materialized out of nowhere on the sawdust and woodchip-covered table against the wall behind the agent – starts ringing (and actually, the table, which also features a vice and a scattered assemblage of various tools, may not have been there before either).
Surprised, hesitant, uncertain, at first the agent backs away from Plumb, then waits, but the phone keeps ringing.
“Aw, the hell,” the agent says and reluctantly picks up the receiver. “Hello?!”
“Aaahh, yeah…”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I’m the one writing the episode.”
“What do you want?”
“Well, first thing, you’ve gone way too far. You were supposed to just grab him and hold him until we got there, not beat him to death. We’ll be along to take him out of there and see if we can save him. Hopefully, it won’t be too late.”
“Oh, yeah?! Anything else?”
“Yeah. Mack wants you to come down to the place. You’re going to have to give up your license and hand in your badge. You and Step – you’re both through.”
Silence; and then the agent says:
“Am I going to see you there?”
“No, you’re not going to see me.”
More silence.
“Oh, and another thing.”
“What’s that,” the agent says, now somewhat subdued.
“Don’t write any more stories about me.”
Filed by John Smith, May 12, 2014