It’s been a slow week for The Cheese; there’s been little film or music-ness
to beguile his burly man-brain. Instead he’s been reminiscing. Sitting alone in Cheese-Towers, Mr. Cheese (as he was once known) was watching the sun creep behind the tall, ugly apartment blocks that his soaring and luxurious mansion has allowed him to scoff at. Sipping on a large brandy and cramming two Cuban cigars up each yellowy nostril (as is his trademark); he began to wonder how he came to be where he is now.
‘Mummy? What’s wrong with that boy's face?’ echoed a young, rapscallion voice inside the mammoth brain canals of The Cheese. The Cheese shifted uncomfortably in his lush, burgundy leather chair. Closing his eyes now, he could see the boy’s face. Red cheeked and gap-toothed, the boy walked sideways, one hand pointing and the other being pulled by his mother. His exceedingly bushy brow crinkled over his pale blue eyes, his nostrils flared and his top-lip curled upward as if he was witnessing something horrifying. ‘Just don’t look, Jimmy, it’s not polite to look at it’ replied the boy’s mother, cloaked in a worn pink, heavy-knit overcoat, yanking the boy out of earshot. The Cheese watched curiously as the boy was dragged further and further away, his head intermittently turning from his directional path, attempting to decipher what he’d just witnessed.
The Cheese looked down at his youthful hands, they were not pink and grubby like the boy’s, instead they were of a vomit-yellow colouring, with small brown craters and a thin sheath of grease lining them. He rubbed his hands together as if the friction would bring the pink colouring, but they simply slid freely, creating little heat. A withdrawn wisp of foggy breath curled up from The Cheese’s lips, up past his teary eyes and disappeared into the atmosphere. This was London, 1941, four days past The Cheese’s 6th birthday, and it was the first time that he every felt different.
The sun was now almost completely sunk behind the unsightly concrete monoliths that littered the city skyline, left now was the luscious pinks, yellows, reds and oranges that celebrate the sun’s last breath. ‘Would sir require another sherry?’ asked a semi-cautious yet snooty English accent. ‘No, sir would not, if one would care to open one’s eyes they would see that I haven’t even touched the first one’ said The Cheese, before adding: ‘…you pasty-faced philistine’. Edward, faithful butler of Mr. Cheese, retreated slowly out of the door, almost bowing, before flicking his two fingers up in silent retaliation. ‘How did I ever get stuck with such a miserable wretch of a man?’ wondered The Cheese, taking an angry gulp of his warm brandy. As the drink hit his taste buds and gave a dull burn to his throat, he was reminded of a quote from Samuel Johnson – “Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.” Mulling over this for a moment, an unexpected wave of nostalgia washed over The Cheese…
New York, New York 1963. After living out most of his adolescent years in clandestine circumstance, The Cheese had long since given up the ghost of finding his true parents; left on the street, inside a box labelled only ‘Mutatis mutandis’, he’d come to the conclusion that he’d been abandoned due to his freakish, cheese-like appearance. He no longer hated his parents, now he simply wanted to eat them a bit. Fuelled with almost relentless hurting and anger for the burdens bequeathed upon him, The Cheese had become a warrior-champion. Nights upon nights, for years upon years, he had studied the brutal ballet of fist fighting. Turning his child-like body into a ripped, muscular mass of manly cheese-ness, The Cheese survived by competing in underground boxing tournaments for cash. The Cheese was unstoppable, his fists seemingly made of iron, he effortlessly smashed his opponent’s brains out.
One night, after bludgeoning a 16 stone Mexican near to death, The Cheese was on his way back to his dilapidated apartment in the Bronx. An unusual voice, one similar to his own English accent, was heard whimpering from inside one of New York’s unpalatable alleyways: “P-p-please, sir! Don’t – Don’t cut my fingers off! I use them in almost everything I do!” – The Cheese tipped his Borsalino Fedora hat, slid his hoary trenchcoat against the rain-soaked wall and peered around. “You’ll giff me your fackin maney, hombre, or I’ll kniff you!” – it was the Mexican that The Cheese had prior beaten, spitting thorough broken teeth; was going to kill the Englishman. A sudden weight fell to The Cheese’s husky shoulders, it was the weight of responsibility – he had been given these powers, this anger, this hatred, yet he had only used it for personal gain, beating the snot out of slow-witted Neanderthals; he realised then that he had been chosen to do something remarkable. With no further thought, The Cheese bounded into the alley, his trenchcoat flailing to reveal an overtly jaundiced torso, he took three bounds, jumped and decapitated the disgruntled Mexican with an untamed scissor-kick to the face; The Mexican’s head sailed clean off, almost in slow-motion, and irrupted with a macabre explosion against a brick wall. ‘Good lord!’ said the Englishman, ‘you kicked that chap’s head clean off!’, ‘I was aiming for his crotch’ replied The Cheese, ‘I guess I’m a terrible shot’. The Englishman eyed The Cheesed-one cautiously, ‘You’re English too?’ he asked, ‘I was once’ replied The Cheese. ‘Then we are brothers, you and I’ said the Englishman.
He introduced himself as Edward, the 17th Duke of Cheshire, he was the heir to a vast fortune, but he had abandoned his riches in the hope of what he called ‘finding life’; he was still a young man, but he felt he had been protected from the world, and that this fortification had stifled his spiritual self, he dreamt of adventure, of danger, of risk, of peril, and of simple heroism. The Cheese, it seemed, had opened Edward’s eyes to a dangerous, exciting world where decapitating scissor-kicks were possible. The Cheese had saved his life, and he vowed to return the favour in whichever way he could. ‘Oh yes?’ said The Cheese, ‘how about you give me some of that money you’ve got stored away in Cheshire, and basically wait on me hand and foot for the rest of your natural life, all the while swallowing down wanton, disparaging insults from myself?’. Edward, coyly dusting off the soot from his designer suit, said: ‘Oh, erm… well, I guess, er… that’s fair?’ the trail end of his sentence was raised slightly as in disbelief. ‘Marvellous’ quipped The Cheese and so began a long and fruitful relationship, yet something happened at that moment that would spark a myriad of intrigue and adventure; the wall next to which they were standing had inscribed a slogan of red ink, too large to be noticed in passing, the slogan read: ‘Mutatis mutandis… Tu fui, ego eris'... The Cheese knew exactly what it meant.
Stay tuned for further tales of morbid obsessions, cheese-stained violence and clichéd Englishmen in amazing future episodes…