Starring Nicolas Cage
Little by little, the poverty
Of autumnal space becomes
A look, a few words spoken
Each person completely touches us
With what he is and as he is,
In the stale grandeur of annihilation.
– Wallace Stevens
Reading the bracketed text below is optional, as you will quickly find out, if you read it, as the story of concern to us here, V-13 Part 2: The Laurels of Suspicion, is below the said bracketed text (sub-mini-Secret Editorial Board of the Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board):
[With respect to the above, that is, the text above the text directly above, which has the look of a poem and is credited to one Wallace Stevens, this is to inform our devoted readers that the Estate of Wallace Stevens is already suing us for the use of his poem without the estate’s permission, a frivolous claim for which, we assure you, not only shall they be held in contempt and severely sanctioned in the court of law, but against which we have already brought a countersuit, seeing as how we wrote the words first AND ONLY LATER found out that, by some bizarre twist of fate, sometimes erroneously explained as “coincidence”, Wallace Stevens had somehow managed to independently write the same words, thereby leaving us no choice but to press charges of copyright infringement and intellectual property theft against them, in addition to charges of damaging our reputation, bad faith comingling of poetry, waging a proxy war, defamation (I mean, there’s NO WAY there’s not going to be a defamation part to this lawsuit), and knowingly hurting our feelings, and those are just some of the charges – Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board]
AND NOW, THE STORY
First, a dark shimmering blade appears; the gently undulating scythe of a heat-haze mirage along the far-far line of a dust-parched plain, as though to reap the hour of your deepest fear.
Still far in the distance, just over the peak of the concourse horizon to Saint Stephan’s left, a muted roar rises, like a tidal wave or a death train thundering down the inevitable rail.
Stephan is astounded that Nicolas Cage, who is seated just across from him behind a small table in what looks to be the lobby of a high-class hotel and entertaining an extra-large Coffee Cabriolet between his palms – his third, or maybe even his fourth one by now – does not seem to hear the rumble’s nearing, which is terrifying.
Nicolas Cage appears to be imparting more of his wisdom to Stephan, gathered from fascinating life experiences that Stephan could never have had, or, for that matter, even imagined, but his words reach Stephan like a dull muted echo in his skull, like a hollow pounding against his eardrums, in slow motion and under water, drowned. By the time they reach him, the sounds of Cage’s voice disintegrate into a faint low gurgle and the husks of their meaning fall away.
As Nicolas Cage talks and talks, Saint Stephan looks leftward again and sees the embattled figures of Quotidians, like matchstick pine trees in a mountain landslide, helplessly fall and snap off to the sides, their place taken by dark, oil-drum-shaped containers of flesh in the aspect of men rolling over the concourse horizon.
Now the containers grow larger and barrel toward Cage and Stephan, inexorably gathering their more distinct forms – Lossers! Hundreds of them!
But they are not alone. For, it is as if a Bizarro Book of Revelation, rather than the real one, were finally coming to pass – and a Form Recalling a Man Compressed Like a Monkey hops forward sidewise, several lengths ahead, leading the Losser mob, deformities on parade. He is their grand marshal, for indeed a gnarled and twisted baton pumps he airwise and thrusts before him.
Spindly arms swing ahead of a distended stomach that pulls the rest of the body violently forward. He flails the baton about in no discernible pattern or tempo, but stabs space wildly like a madman, as the body, and everything about him, lurches and pitches nauseatingly forward.
The eyes are rolled back in the head, the head is thrown up and back, while the terrible visage slashes the air before it with a ripped-mouth leer, the sharp teeth sticking out between the curdled lips, the turned-up head vacillating from side to side – the horror of cursed lunacy jumps jaggedly out of him.
Yet in the distance, the erratic silhouette jumps perceptibly when it sees Stephan and Cage. Now, one sees the shape put greater force behind its forward lurching, betraying the disadvantage of his monkey legs, bowed out at the calves as if starved of calcium and aging, and yet with the knees caving in toward each other at the same time, which forces the corpus groundward despite itself, and being conscious of this, drives him into a rage.
And now, as he draws ever closer, hopping sidewise on severely bandied legs that are simultaneously pinched in toward each other at the knees, his squash-head visage projects a look of the vilest contempt at Stephan and Cage as he passes by.
And though Stephan understands the whole show a phony, its indefinable essence that will now solidify into a lasting moment in his memory causes him to shudder.
“Mr. Cage… Mr. CAGE… Nicolas…”
Despite himself, Stephan is clearly unnerved.
“Nyug-nyag-nyaow, nyug-ag-nyar,” the army of vehement Lossers roars, coming up and hiding behind The Squash Head with a collective hate-filled glare at Stephan and Cage from their collective hate-filled walleyes.
“Mr. Cage… Nicolas Cage… NICOLAS CAGE!!!”
“Stephan… Hey, Stephan… SAINT STEPHAN!!!”
Stephan snaps his head forward. With his eyes wide open, only slowly does he gather himself again into his own hands. Piece by piece the mosaic of confusion and panic begins to fall away. His breathing normalizes, and as he realizes he’s blinking across a small table at Nicolas Cage, this fact becomes as embarrassing as it is inexplicable, and Stephan sheepishly searches Cage’s face for an answer.
“You just fell asleep on me, there, Saint.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, I can’t believe it! Just conked out right in front of me. It was only for half a second, but… I mean, incredible, man – truly amazing! Ha-haaaaa…!!!”
Stephan takes a moment to ponder this as he begins to cautiously look around and slowly reacquaint himself with the unfamiliar surroundings.
“Yeah, I’m telling you, Saint! Truly awesome, baby! Downright absurd! Oh, man – fabulous, fabulous – ha-ha-haaaaa…!!!”
A moment passes. Cage’s laughter finally diminishes to silence.
“So, anyway, who’s Squash Head?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I keep having this almost biblical vision of a Form Recalling a Man Compressed Like a Monkey, except it’s almost like a reverse vision, more like an anti-vision, like an evil mirror reflection of the Book of Revelation – or something.”
“Yeah? So in this reverse vision, what’s this monkey man look like?”
“I… I don’t exactly know – it’s not clear, you know, it’s hazy, like in a fog, no eyes, you know, obscure… unclear… unclear…”
“Well, if you want my honest opinion, Saint, [text missing here – Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board]”
Stephan reflects upon these words, weighs their veracity. While he judges Cage’s conclusion to be somewhat off, he nevertheless deems Cage a wise man.
After a time, Stephan says, “Or maybe he’s courting death, even coveting it…”
Cage is silent, pensive, reflecting. He quietly notes Stephan’s unmistakable compassion, even though Stephan had done his best to sound off-hand.
“Ultimately, none of this matters,” says Cage. “I mean, it’s not really real because it all just came out of your head. It’s not the word made flesh.”
“No,” replies Stephan, “it’s the flesh made word.”
Cage orders another extra-large Coffee Cabriolet, perhaps his fifth. Stephan takes the last bite of his cream-cheesed bagel and finishes off the lox. He thinks maybe Nicolas Cage drinks even more dark mucky joe than does David Lynch.
They both turn to look down the concourse.
As before, here and there, Lossers walk by, alone, or in small groups or in pairs. They do not seem like a happy lot or exactly filled with good will toward their fellowman, but neither do they appear to pose any immediate threat to anyone or discernible danger. Other people – Quotidians – walk beside or past them without, apparently, paying them any mind, as if the Lossers truly did not matter, or almost as if they did not exist.
But something about that simply doesn’t sit right with Stephan. It is one of those feelings.
Are these Quotidians pretending to ignore the Lossers, thereby entertaining that ageless childish delusion that if you make believe they’re not there, they’ll go away? Or, even worse, are they keeping their eyes to themselves – from fear! and in the hopes that the Lossers won’t in any way affect them, bother them, touch them, change their lives… or even kill them…?
“Nyug-nyag-nyaaaoouurrrq…”
“Nevertheless…” continues Cage…
Filed by Jack Step, December 23, 2016 – writing from Kyiv, of course