CHUMPO'S FALL

When a politician's promises don't materialise...

Longchimp thumped the now vastly overweight Chumpo in the stomach until he vomited, and that vomit was far from pleasant bearing in mind that the Bossmonk had greedily chewed his way through a decomposing pair of rather overweight rancid rats in the last hour.

Chumpo wasn’t a popular Bossmonk. In fact, he was the most unpopular to hold that position in living memory and was only still nominally in charge of the tribe because all Bossmonks were Bossmonks until they day they died. And usually that was in their ripe old age, with doting family members all around them.

But Chump had been a different sort of Bossmonk. He had been all for himself and far too often demanded a great deal more than the monkeys, themselves hungry in lean seasons, were able to give him. Other Bossmonks had gone to hunt or forage with their tribes-folk in times of hardship, but he didn’t, not once.

“I am consulting with the gods,” he grated, and that had to be that. Chumpo would have got away with murder, consulting with his gods.

Longchimp thumped him again and heard the air ooze out of the old Bossmonk’s lungs with a great deal of satisfaction.

“Where are all the things you promised, scum?” his guttural voice grated, harshly.

“What? What do you mean?” stammered Chumpo when he’d got some of his breath back.

“The things you promised, how the gods were telling you stuff that would make our lives easier, how there would be two, what did you call them? Harvests, I think it was, in a year?” It was a long speech for Longchimp to have made, and it left even him breathless.

“B-but...” began Chumpo.”

Longchimp thumped him again, both for the satisfaction it gave him and to provide him with enough time to work out his next speech.

“I’m your Bossmonk!” wheezed Chumpo in protest of what was very harsh treatment for anyone, let alone a great leader only just past his prime. He spat a couple of rat femurs onto the ground and struggled to suppress the moisture that was forming in his eyes. He wasn’t usually give to displays of emotion, but the thumping had hurt both his flesh and his pride.

“Then where is all the plenty you promised?” demanded Longchimp, and the noise of the altercation had attracted a fair sized audience which started cheering him on.

“Where the herbs of healing?” demanded one old b***h holding the withered hand of a deformed grandson.

“Yes, those?” demanded Longchimp. “Where can this b***h find help for her kin?”

“It’s not my doing!” protested Chumpo, forgetting for a moment that he had promised all things to all monkeys in his rise to power.

“You said,” grated Longchimp, “that you would bury yourself beneath the forest soils and happily die there if your words didn’t tally with the truth!”

“Yes,” chorused a band of youngsters who were too young to have actually heard the promise, but like all such lies it had passed down to them as a sort of folk tale.

“I will ask the gods...” spluttered Chumpo, this time spitting out some sharp rodent teeth.

“The gods!” jeered Longchimp, “all you know what to say is the gods as if everything under the stars revolves around them!”

“But it does...” wept Chumpo, finally unable to suppress the tears that had been threatening since the altercation began.

“Then let these gods of yours give us a sign!” demanded Longchimp, and the band of youngsters repeated the demand in a kind of chorus of guttural shrieks. “A sign, a sign, a sign!” they demanded.

Seeing that the bruised and battered Bossmonk was lost for words the older members of the growing audience joined in until the forest was alive with a raucous explosion of sound, all demanding a sign.

And the sign came.

It must have been all the noise and shouting and banging that did it.

It came with the collapsing of the old tree under which the altercation was taking place, a giant oak once riven by lightning and always frail. And a great bough broke free and fell as if with deliberate aim, crashing onto the group of monkeys, still gibbering and demanding a sign.

And when it landed, it fell with all its weight on the tearful figure of Chumpo, pinning him to the soils of the forest floor.

The crowd stepped back. The youngsters fell silent. Everyone fell silent. All that mattered to them was the sight of their Bossmonk as he lay, slowly twitching until he was still, with a sharp shaft of dead wood penetrating him so that when his blood oozed out it formed a brown puddle on the undergrowth that slowly melted away until all that remained was a stain.

“Well, well, well,” grinned Longchimp, “I guess the gods have spoken!”

There was a sudden outburst of grunting and sometimes squeaking conversation.

“He must have told us lies!”

“We asked for a sign!”

“The gods were angry at him!”

“The sign! The sign!”

“He was a lousy Bossmonk!”

“He was all for himself and damn to anyone else!”

“We asked for a sign...”

And so it continued until Longchimp leapt onto the dead body of their dead chieftain and beat it with his screwed up and clenched fists.

“I warned him!” he roared, his lips curling up and exposing his fine white teeth as he forced the three syllables out.

“He wanted to die in the rich brown earth of the forest floor,” said the old b***h with her deformed grandson, “so let it be!”

“Let it be,” began the chorus of youngsters, “let it be, let it be, let it be!”

And together a band of males started scraping away at the compacted forest floor, using whatever tools they could find, old pieces of rotting timber, time-sharpened stones, anything that would save the skin on their frantic fingers as they battled away and slowly scooped out a resting place for their dead chief.

And then, when it was done, Longchimp stood by it and held up one hand.

“To the gods,” he whispered, “let them have him and let his blood be down to them.”

“To the gods!” shrieked the youngsters.

And the bloated, bleeding corpse of Chumpo was ceremoniously kicked into the shallow grave and covered so that neither sunlight, moonlight nor starlight could reach it.

And Longchimp was declared their new Bossmonk, not because of any wisdom or knowledge of the gods but because, hanging on his body, was the largest set of reproductive organs seen in a generation, which gave rise to the false rumour, that biggest is obviously best.

© Peter Rogerson 02.11.19