But what of Bret Boner?
“So, there you are, another day older. It doesn’t matter what you do to make yourself younger. You’re still going to die.”
Josh Davies is pulling on his sweater. The temperature in the apartment has dropped noticeably thanks to Old Man Winter, and Josh Davies desires to keep warm so that he can carry out his day’s planned activities – as it is all very important, you see.
He is sitting on the edge of the bed, and when he is done with the necessary motions, which have not been all that easy to execute – getting his arms through the thick woolen sleeves, pulling the body of the sweater over his head and then adjusting it all around his plump sagging torso, so that he can properly function – he throws his weight forward, to get up. But he falls back onto the bed, twice, and then damns the bed in his mind, for allegedly being too soft and sagging in the middle. This, he says to himself, is the problem, not he.
But he does get up, and puts his old man’s feet with the age-gnarled toes, with pointed yellow fungal thickly ridged unclipped toenails, into his slippers, knowing now he is ready to go to the kitchen. He totters off in the necessary direction.
“It’s very impressive you’re evil. In your life, you’ve killed some people, maimed others. Done many other bad, bad things. Some truly horrible, terrifying, and unspeakably sinister – demented, sick, and utterly depraved. A psychopathic killer. A homicidal maniac and murderer. And you’ve gotten away with it. You’ve gotten away with it all. Some special powers have even devolved to you as a result. A reward from the darkness, as it were, for your particular brand of terrible persistence. So, what? Are you proud of yourself? Has this gotten you further in life? Does it send chills and thrills down your spine to think of it? Do you shudder in secret?”
Josh Davies makes his tea. Instant coffee? He doesn’t drink that swill. Although he does still allow himself to brew the best Arabica beans on Sundays. And some pastries. A Danish. His much younger blonde archaeologist wife, who has done well catching up with him in the aging department, gets them from just one bakery that Josh Davies acknowledges. He demonstratively won’t touch anything he recognizes as not being from there.
But, alas, no hearty bacon and eggs, or one of those large dripping ham, egg and cheese sandwiches – too much cholesterol and whatnot, and Josh Davies can’t allow a clogging of the arteries. Doctor’s orders. He still has a long way to go.
“You have always been an old man. You’re an old man now, and you will be an old man – until you die. And die you will.”
He looks in the refrigerator to see how much fruit punch he has left. He sees the pitcher is down to about a quarter, so he throws a few scoops of the chemically sweetened pink-red powder out of the large can into it and adds mineral water from a large plastic bottle that he has trouble lifting up and tilting over, his body shaking as he does. He stirs the contents around with a large spoon and with great satisfaction places the pitcher back in the fridge. You see, it is very important that he have his cool refreshing drink at a certain point in the late morning, just before lunch, as he finishes up his work on the computer before his big break – a three-course meal prepared by his hired old babushka, who is due to arrive with the products from the fresh produce bazaar any minute now – which he will look forward to with great hunger-induced gusto. He won’t hear of his wife doing the cooking. She must know the good life he has rewarded her with by marrying him. A masseuse and cosmetologist still come by regularly to give her rubdowns and facials.
“Oh, going to the balcony, eh? Which you have finished and enclosed as a room, which you have set up as your workstation. ‘Private.’ ‘Do not disturb.’ ‘Very important man’… uh, sorry, ‘Very important WR-I-I-I-I-I-TER at work’. Ooooohhh – ho, ho, ho, hooooo! Not to mention publisher, oh, and of course editor – that goes without saying. Just like it says on your social networking pages – Facebook and all that. Give me a fucking break! Ha, ha, haaaaa…!!!”
Josh Davies turns on his computer. He peers at the screen over his round granny spectacles, which are down on his old man’s nose, as the news from a variety of sources appears on the screen in response to his fingers’ demands. He copies and pastes items about Ukraine into his own website and signs his name to them.
“It’s funny, Davies, that empty section you’ve got on your website for other people’s fiction – oh, and that little note you wrote to go along with it; inviting ‘budding writers’ to submit their pieces, and giving them hope that they just may be published on your website by telling them to then await notice from your website’s ‘evaluation board’ that their work has been accepted. And what’s all that supposed to prove?
“Do you think that will somehow turn you into a writer by fiat or default? Does it help set you up in your own mind as an experienced and established writer who is now being good enough to give new up-and-coming writers a chance – that big break they’ve been waiting for?
“It’s a good thing no one’s been dumb enough to take that bait. What kind of trap were you trying to set with that anyway? Do you really think, pulling this diaphanous veil away, that people are going to believe you run some kind of serious publishing business with some significant publications in it? Although you would have undoubtedly published the absolutely worst shit out there if anybody had sent anything to you, you’re so damned desperate for the lie to work – and because you have no sense whatsoever of quality when it comes to writing. Because you’re no writer!”
Josh Davies grits his teeth – which, by the way, aren’t his.
“But what of your own work, Davies? In all these years that you’ve been calling yourself a writer, what have you done – aside from kill other people? What have you written? Why aren’t YOUR stories going up on that website? You don’t like to hear that, do you?”
Josh Davies clenches his fists and begins to send them out from side to side, shaking in his seat.
“And what of all those books you said you were going to write? In all these years, you haven’t written one. In all these years, you haven’t really done anything you deluded yourself into thinking you’d do. You’ve always sought the easy way. You’ve never done any real work. You’ve always tried to manipulate the people and situations around you, through phoniness, lies, and false charm, to get things to come to you, be done for you, made ready and given to you, gift-wrapped, fall right into your lap. But as for real work, achievements, success – you’re a failure.”
Josh Davies fists swoop down on the desktop either side of his keyboard several times, rattling the entire workstation. He takes off his glasses and places them off to the side. He closes his eyes and bows his head.
It takes some minutes, but eventually a change in his appearance can be discerned. He becomes noticeably younger – like an older man, but still on the young side of old. He looks like a younger Josh Davies, but also like Kyiv Poster chief editor Bret Boner.
“Davies, sucking what youngness and life Bret Boner has left out of him isn’t going to change things. So you’ve added some years to your life just now – but those extra years aren’t going to see those works produced. You’ll be just the same.
“And that trick’s only going to work for so long, Davies. Soon, the powers that gave you your powers will take them away. They get tired of the old. It’s an old story by now. It’s been told. They want something and someone new.”
Davies gets up from his computer and, no longer doddering and tottering, walks across the living room back to the bedroom, so that he can look at himself in the mirror.
“You get up on the stage, Davies, you do your little song and dance, throw a few murders in for good measure, and then, it’s all done. Goodbye, Josh Davies. You’ve had your day in the sun, and then you are no longer here. No one remembers you or cares. What, after all, have you done that people should remember you by?”
Filed by Jack Step, for Nasty, Brutish, and Short Productions, January 1, 2014