DejaVu Production

As Bad As It Gets

Book in English, written by Damien Leschevin de Prevoisin, 150 pages.

This novel in three movements draws an epic landscape of Emberpit, a shameless anti-utopic bandit town that shelters the worst kind of individuals and crime life.

In the undergrounds of Emberpit, a rumour says the daughter of a doctor was kidnapped, and the revengeful father is on a killing spree to get her back. Christopher Pontius, homeless, destitute, after losing his dog, is about to commit suicide when in a curious turn of events, holds a son-of-a-rich hostage. July M. a mysteriously important girl is dying of an aggressive cancer. Ben Cromwell, a marginal unable to make the difference between good and evil, is warned by transvestite prostitute Vanessa that he has been associated to the girl’s disappearance and that her father is looking for him. Marvin McCoy and his adopted son Mohammed, heads of one of Emberpit’s most notorious crime family, are working to take over the mayor’s seat in order bring back some order in the chaotic and deadly city.

The author reinvents the oppressing atmosphere of the black novel with a grating, disturbing humour.

Part 1, Ben Cromwell – 3, page 10

A rough man, a borderline dropout is meeting an old girl friend of his, to get some advice after having been mugged by to men the previous night.

The next day I wake up with the worst hangover. The night before, I had kept drinking until I passed out. The bastards had had a lot of fun with my face, and it feels like I have salty sand in my bruises.

It’s another cold grey morning. Really, if I could, I would sleep all day, but I have things to do, people to see. I go drink a dry gin to help me put up with washing my face: turns out the flesh bit was not mine. I live next to the railway station, it’s a quiet neighbourhood surrounded by waste grounds. Kids play there after school, and in the night, busy men finish jobs and solve problems… they don’t mind being witnessed, so it’s a relatively safe area. I take my car and head for the hills. Up there, I’m looking for Vanessa, a tall brunette with thin thighs, and “eyes that smell cunt” as I once heard a altar boy say about her.

She’s my witch, my palm reader. She knows everything about everything happening in the damn city: men talk when in bed, and women afterwards, so news spread fast in the hills. I’m always amazed by the number of men she must be fucking. I never thought so many would go for transvestites… I don’t do that. I’d rather had mine chopped off than get rubbed by a man in tights.

Her and I, we’re friends now. I respect her, that’s why I always refer to her as a girl. I met her nearly a decade ago, at that time she was still hot; she came to me and talked me into solving a problem we were both going to face. Girls… always reclining to kill. I park in front of the building and the pimps’ bodyguards wait for a sign from Vanessa to let me in. I climb up the white stairs and enter her door-less bedroom (her pimp says it’s good marketing). She’s brushing her hair in front of the mirror and even before I say hello, she starts chatting from her high-pitched voice. I lay on the bed until she’s done, my head hurts, still caught between the punches and the booze.

After a while she looks at me and screams, before scolding me, like I had done it on purpose. Anyway, she starts fixing me with needles, stitches and pills, while talking about this guy on a killing spree.

That’s when I first heard about Brad Bogart and his daughter. In two nights his score was up to seventeen cadavers, some of them in such a bad shape that kids were scared. The Surgeon – as he was now called - had built a nickname and a reputation in less time than it takes to find a real girl around here. Some rumours said he had torn their eyes and had made them eat them, poked testicles, removed skin, burned flesh…I don’t trust rumours. I only trust Vanessa, and she didn’t deny. She added that he was looking for me. At the time, I didn’t know why, so I was unafraid, but surely I was not going to try and find him.

When I tell her about the two bastards that had played clay jigsaw with my face, she tells me to look for the Buronni brothers, she heard two of their men have been badly injured; one had nearly lost his arm.

I leave the brothel and head for the park.

Part 2, Césaré and Luca – 2, page 69

A young boy, son of a prostitute, living in a poor neighbourhood, unintentionally provokes an accident that wounds badly his ‘best friend’…

The next day, as Mr. Jewels was held at the hospital for mental observation, Ben Cromwell had to stay home while her mother was working. The afternoon was warm and welcoming, an airflow streamed form the opened windows, and the cheers of children playing outside fluttered about. Benjamin’s day was given rhythm by a constant pounding, interrupted from time to time by entrances or exits of the clients. All afternoon, while Ben was playing around with his young puppy, the regular, deep and heavy sound of his mother’s bed hitting the wall resonated throughout the flat.

She had given him a newborn dog for his birthday, and since then the boy and the pet had been inseparable. They played “fetch” with a squeaky beige plastic bone around the flat. The terrible pair had already broken a few things, but never enough to make their mother really mad. She felt guilty for all she could not give him, and so she never really did anything that could upset him. He lived a peculiar childhood without boundaries or limits, and felt much above any law.

That day, her mother had arranged that two older friends of Ben would come down and keep an eye on him while he went walking his dog. Césaré and Luca, two members of the group who had witnessed the impalement next to the breaker’s yard, came knocking at his door just after lunch. The pounding was still going on, so Ben himself opened the door. They were all used to the hammering and did not pay attention anymore. She had left some cookies and milk for the guests, and they ate them without hesitating.

Before going out, Ben put the leash on his dog, and just because he knew it would make a mess, he threw the plastic bone across the room. It bounced against a cupboard. The dog ran and jumped after it like an infuriated bull; around the corner the leach handle broke a large tainted glass lamp, which splinters fell on the carpet. The dog much exited by this sudden stimulus grabbed the toy between its white teeth, and ran back to its master in a nick of time. He ran straight through the large curvy glass fragments, and cut itself badly.

Following its natural survival instinct the animal rushed to hide under a large cupboard. Thin drops of blood, underlined the dog’s dotted path. Benjamin ran at it and tried to grab it out from is hiding place but the puppy was too far away underneath. Césaré and his brother Luca quickly understood the gravity of the situation, and both started pushing on one corner of the cupboard, to make it move and enable Benjamin to catch the wounded. The brothers a little bigger and older than the young Cromwell were pushing as hard as they could on their white sneakers, and the heavy furniture was moving very slowly. Benjamin was lying on the floor, his arms trying to get hold of his furry pal, his head stuck against the wall. Finally after a few minutes, Ben managed to seize the animal and brought it back in his arms as a sleeping baby.

The creature had passed out of loosing too much blood. Benjamin was standing on his knees, his arms crossed, holding it. His hands and arms were covered with blood. The child did not make a move, and stood there looking at this catastrophe he had somehow done on purpose. The dog was cut nearly all along his chest, and some of his guts were peaking out of its brown fur. Suddenly it woke up, opened its black eyes looked at its master looking at him. He had a desperate gaze, and expressed a human pain. The young thing was suffering atrociously, looking disoriented and merely conscious; then it passed out again.

The brothers stood next to him speechless. Then one of them said:

- Ben, It’s lost too much blood, it’s gonna die.

And the other one added:

- It’s suffering for nothing, we should end this.

Ben stared at his mother’s bedroom but the banging kept on going. He had a look at his dog. He stood up, still carrying his baby friend, and went to the kitchen. He laid the furry body flat on a towel and took the largest meat knife he could find. Then without taking too much time he kneeled behind its friend and kissed him in the neck for a long moment. Tears came to his eyes, ran along his cheek and died in the brown soft fur.

Then he took the knife, looked at Césaré and Luca standing in the doorway, and he kissed the head of his dog again. He continued crying very silently. He could feel underneath his lips the slight curve of the animal’s skull, smell his tender odour, feel the heat of the tiny body and all the little pulses and startles of the puppy. Those were getting more and more violent, so he closed his eyes and pressed the knife against its throat, pushed as hard has he could, to cut quickly. He did, and stopped only when he distinctly felt the blade scraping the floor.

Despite his young age, he did it efficiently and his dog did not suffer. Benjamin stared at the two pieces of the body for a moment, not horrified but incredulous. He had blood over his mouth and nose but he did not swipe it out. Benjamin took the head and the rest in his arm and carried it close to his heart. He went to sit back on the couch in the sitting room, and kissed the head again and again. Césaré and Luca sat beside him and tried to cheer him with a hand on the shoulder. There was nothing to say.

Minutes later, the banging stopped, and a tall man with white hair and a grey overcoat got out of the bedroom. The mother was still in there and was probably on her way to the shower. In the middle of the sitting room, the costumer stopped when he noticed the blood pool, then he saw Benjamin with the two piece dog on his knees and the blood on his face.

The man slapped violently Benjamin and said:

- Fucking bastards! Don’t you have something better to do than torture animals?

Then he left the flat mumbling:

- I can’t believe it! Won’t be a surprise when they turn out to be psychos…