CHIMPO'S GRANDSON CHUMPO.

Chimpo's weird thoughts continue...

Now let's get one thing clear. Chimpo started it and Chumpo, his grandson, the one that Chimpo had acknowledged was created in the same mould as himself, carried it on. And ‘it’ was thinking.

But not the everyday sort of thinking that accompanies basic appetites such as hunger or thirst or the need to procreate but a new kind of thinking. Of seeing the world as a blank canvas and drawing your own version of what is might be on it.

And Chumpo, while he was still young, knew two things and managed almost cleverly to extrapolate a third. He knew that he himself was the sort of monkey that loved deflowering the maidens, (and there were quite a few of them in the society in which his tribe existed). He loved that above all things and he also knew that foraging in the wild forest took up a great deal of his time.

And foraging was one thing he had to do every day.

His species was omnivorous, so animal or vegetable was okay by him, but the difficulties involved in catching food of an animal nature meant that his diet was largely vegetarian, supplemented by the odd decaying corpse that littered the quieter corners of the forest, and mostly the sort of stuff later species would call inedible. But if grass, for instance, is all there is then grass it must be. And sometimes he had to resort to an even less appetising diet than rotting rat.

There were always good days, though, when the sun shone, the fruits, though usually bitter, were ripe and he could fill his own stomach before collecting enough surplus for the b*****s and nippers who were all, by virtue of other occupations like tit-feeding or their very inability to crawl yet, unable to forage for themselves. This he would carry back to the nest and make a great show of presenting it to the malnourished.

And one day whilst wrestling with a well-muscled rabbit who simply didn’t want to be eaten by a creature as reprehensible as it no doubt thought Chumpo was, he found himself thinking.

He had one thought first. Rather than doing this, his mind spluttered I ought to be procreating and not risking my life and my limb doing this, though he didn’t use the longer word for intercourse but a brief mental image of himself doing it, which put him in the mood for doing it again and simultaneously produced a familiar feeling of excitement in his nether regions.

Then the thought switched to his second observation, which was along the lines of I ought to get someone else to do this for me, like the b*****s do…

Suddenly everything seemed simple. Suddenly he would have enough time to inseminate every female for miles around until he was so wearied by all that inseminating that all he wanted to do was curl up and have a delicious sleep until he woke up, refreshed and fit and ready to inseminate the whole round of young b*****s all over again. Though his mental processes didn’t go so far as to include the inseminate word.

The rabbit got away from him and cuffed him on the nose with its hind legs before getting lost in the undergrowth. This allowed our hero Chumpo time to briefly consider what the his thoughts meant when thye were clumped together.

He hated hunting and foraging and he loved young b*****s with the sort of fervour males of all species seem to love their females.

Or more so. He could, he knew, enjoy the company of half a dozen a day without suffering too much exhaustion as the sun set and night beckoned. He was quite prolific in his love-making, though it wasn’t really love at all but a primitive instinct to ensure that today was followed, for the tribe, by a whole host of other todays in the shape of squawking nippers, some of whom would grow up and become a new generation of b*****s ripe for the taking.

But how was he going to achieve so glorious an outcome as time for him to enjoy the sweet young b*****s?

An inquisitive squirrel saw him scratching his confused head and made to lower itself to see him more clearly.

And Chump struggled with his inadequate brain. What was it Chimpo put his faith in? Somehow he had been blessed with what seemed to be an extraordinarily long life when you considered the number of others who had been born and perished of old age during his lifetime. So what was it?

The stars? Those pinpricks of light that he had interpreted as guiding lights for the gods? Were they that?

He screwed his face until it was twisted as he plucked half a dozen unripe crab apples from a gnarled old tree and tried to eat one of them, ignoring the maggots that crawled out and tried, successfully, to enter his own digestive system.

Why had Chimpo put so much faith in those stars? And how come he knew about the invisible gods that guided them across the skies at night? Were they real? The water gods, the tree gods, the forest gods?

The squirrel dared to climb from a higher branch until it could see Chumpo quite clearly, and using more strength than such a small creature might possess it launched a nut, a hard horse chestnut, at the monkey’s head and with a satisfactory thwack, hit him right between his eyes before scuttling off.

That’s it, thought Chumpo, rubbing the spot where the hard nut had hit him, that’s it, there must be gods, lots of them, and that was a message from one of them.

He hadn’t seen the squirrel, but had received its message all right.

Chimpo was right, he concluded, there are gods in the bright blue skies, gods that guide us, gods to help us…

And in one blinding flash of inspiration he knew what he must do. He must assume his grandfather’s convictions, must truly believe in the gods and their night lights and their mighty powers, and as a reward the gods would allow him the freedom to be himself and do whatever he wanted to do to as many b*****s as crossed his path.

So when he returned with a queasy stomach to his home nest he gathered the family around him.

“Chimpo’s gods,” he grunted, quite clearly, “they have spoken to me and I am their mouthpiece. They have said, so it must be so. And if you need their wisdom you must obey me. You must feed me and thus give me the strength to talk with them.”

The remainder of the family looked at him askance. Who did this silly monkey think he was? It had been all right when Chimpo had rambled on about the gods, for he had expected nothing in return and some of his words had been entertaining. But to be as slaves to his grandson, that was ridiculous.

So they laughed at him, held their sides and rocked from side to side. One of them even gave birth to twins, such was the sudden jollity aimed at the silly Chumpo.

“I warn you,” he hissed when there was relative calm, “the gods will be angry!”

And as if to add power to his words a sudden storm hit the forest and a flash of lightning followed by a terrible roar of thunder underlined them.

And a family of gibbering monkeys abruptly believed in Chumpo and his gods.

© Peter Rogerson, 30/10/19

Reviews

[OscarRat]

Good one, the second I’ve read of this series.

“This allowed our hero Chump time to briefly consider what the his thoughts meant when thye were clumped together.”
* Two errors here, the first I’ve seen. If his name, Chumpo. If not his name, no capital C. thye = they?

“And Chump struggled with his inadequate brain.”
* Chump = Chumpo?

‘At’s alll a erers I seed.

Oh, and I posted a story similar to your series: “That Endless Cycle”:
https://www.writerscafe.org/writing/hvysmker/2149045/

Oscar Rat

[Peter Rogerson]

Thanks for pointing out some of my typos. I'm often guilty of not noticing them when I edit after writing.