with Bettina M. George
Once, a long, long, long, long, long, long time ago – yesterday, to be precise – there was the story of Bogovich and Gregorovich. But since you’ve undoubtedly heard it by now, there’s no reason to tell it.
Pardon? What’s that? You haven’t heard the story of Bogovich and Gregorovich yet? You don’t even know who they are?! Sorry, please forgive the sudden lapse in my composure. It’s just that everybody – from the loneliest milkman to the smallest mouse – knows the story of Bogovich and Gregorovich. Knowing the story is as necessary as breathing air, drinking water and trimming your nose hairs.
I suppose I should start with the setting – for even if you don’t know Bogovich and Gregorovich yet, you’ve surely heard of and even visited Camphortown, that mysterious town due west from where you live. It’s the one surrounded by a wall of trees, each tree a different type and size. But that doesn’t mean it’s not technologically advanced. At night bright lights spill up and out of the town, a hundred searchlights splashing the sky. Its nightlife is almost corrosive in its hedonism, with loud drunks, louder musicians and, loudest of all, the organised gang of mice that control the city. The humans that make up most of the population of Camphortown have long been hoping for a hero, squint-eyed and wearing a weatherworn poncho, to arrive in town from some dusty trail and free them from the mice – if only so they’ll no longer have any competition for their own loudness.
These mice hassle, haggle and sing harmoniously, the latter with particularly wild abandon. Their tiny bodies are typically wrapped in tiny yellow suits, so when you see a small piece of cheese coming towards you, you better watch out! They may be minuscule creatures but they pack minuscule weapons, and none of them are afraid to take on even an adult human that towers above them. They’ll beat on your ankles with miniature baseball bats and crowbars until you’re hopping on one foot, and then with one little push and one unified yell of ‘timber!’ you’ll come crashing down, your bruised feet soon wearing concrete shoes.
But it’s not my job to warn you about the dangers of Camphortown. It’s Bogovich and Gregorovich that I’m here to tell you about. And if I’m going to tell you about Bogovich and Gregorovich then I should also tell you about their owner, a mobster wizard of much magnificence, magnitude and unadulterated badness. He was a man of many names, and there can be no question that you’ve heard at least one whispered in the darkness of some seedy alleyway: Big Bad Guthrie, Bad Apple Jason, Doctor Badenstein, John . . . He was the most powerful mobster wizard that Camphortown had ever seen in all of its one year of existence, and due to his hubris he always worked alone.
The problem with that, of course, is that a mob needs more than one person in order to be classified as a mob – more than two people, really. Some even say you need more than three. But the mobster wizard found more than three people to be excessive for a mob that included him and his powers, so when it came time to enlist mobsters, he selected two. These two, as you must have figured out by now, were Bogovich and Gregorovich.
The mobster wizard found them in a pet store two blocks away from his house. Bogovich was a black and white cat of much leanness and meanness while Gregorovich was a grey cat of collected cool. Both came readymade to be mobsters, the mobster wizard felt, for they were already wearing stylish tuxedos when he found them. The tuxedos had zippers along their backs, but because the cats were perfectly sentient, the mobster wizard never felt the need to unzip them himself. Bogovich and Gregorovich were so sentient, in fact, that they could stand upright and not only speak but also comprehend the English language.
‘What shall we do today, boss?’ Bogovich had asked the mobster wizard as soon as he was purchased. ‘I have an itch for a hit that only a Colt can scratch.’
Bogovich’s voice, as with Gregorovich’s, sounded like a hundred tiny whispers cobbled together, but the mobster wizard attributed it to the fact that cats don’t normally speak English. And English is, admittedly, one of the lesser languages, often sounding like a sledgehammer banging on an alphabet until the necessary words are formed.
‘Hum; that’s a fair question,’ the mobster wizard had replied. ‘You see, I only recruited you – forcefully, I might mention – so as to be considered a legitimate mob. If you feel that your posting as an otherwise useless being is inadequate, feel free to take to the streets with your anger and frustrations. Just do it in the name of our mob.’
Bogovich had then stroked his thin white cat goatee while Gregorovich bowed smoothly.
‘Your word is our law, Master Mobster Wizard,’ Gregorovich had stated while staring at his own feet. He then rose from his bow to see the mobster wizard nodding approvingly. ‘We shall make your name known, even more than it already is. We shall put fear in the hearts of all those who dwell in Camphortown – even those pesky, brilliant mice who feel they own the streets and should not be underestimated.’
‘Yes, yes,’ the mobster wizard had then said distractedly. ‘The mice gang is a bother, indeed. I’ll be putting an end to that soon enough, however. I have been concocting a potion that, when completed, will burst into a swirl of purple, poisonous smoke so potent that every mouse particle within fifty miles of it will be obliterated. It’ll all happen faster than you can say “cheese”.’
Bogovich and Gregorovich flashed glances at each other.
‘I say it’s time for us to rough up some mice,’ Bogovich had then said. ‘G’day to you, boss.’
‘Wait, you insolent pussy,’ the mobster wizard had suddenly commanded of the impatient pussycat. ‘I have to strike the both of you. The welts will be savage reminders of my impossible badness.’
Bogovich and Gregorovich both gulped, but it had sounded like a hundred tiny gulps all happening at once. The mobster wizard then lifted his magical staff and struck them both in their hindquarters. The cats did not meow out in pain, however – instead their bottoms made screeching sounds, which the mobster wizard contentedly attributed to the sound of tearing skin.
‘Now go and spread the word of how bad I am, or whatever it was you wanted to do.’
‘As you say, boss,’ Bogovich had said before turning around and bounding off into the city streets, ripe for the mobbing.
‘Understood, sir,’ Gregorovich had said before following after his partner.
‘Yes, yes,’ the mobster wizard had then said to himself, now that he was alone – alone, that was, with the exception of a lone mouse sitting by his feet. ‘I’ll kill all the mice and make myself the hero. Then, when everyone is most trusting of me, I’ll turn on them with the wrath of the most villainous of gods. Oh, what a bad, bad, bad man I am! Oh, the glorious badness of it all!’
He then cackled, coughed, and cackled some more; all on the way back home.
Now, you may be wondering what the mobster wizard did next, and for that I provide you with a few short excerpts from his online journals. These excerpts all lead up to that fateful day that happened to be yesterday, and because of that they are as cosmically important as the most holy texts are to their corresponding religions.
Entry 59
…I have been e…
Was that a sigh I just heard? Do you not appreciate the cosmic importance of these journals? Very well – as you appear apprehensive about any further reading, I shall read them aloud for you.
Entry 59
…I have been eating various bugs & insects to further the sense of inherent badness that permeates both inside & around me. Bogovich & Gregorovich seem disgusted by my behaviour which is just as well. They must know my badness knows no bounds. I am the avatar of evil in its purest form…
Entry 62
Feeling a bad cough coming on.
Entry 63
I felt better today so I stepped on a baby duck; didn’t kill it, however, instead allowing it to live with its shame.
Entry 64
…Ah, absolute badness! My powers are truly unstoppable! I shall drink the tears of children and turn them into my slaves!
Entry 65
Spent the night infringing copyrights. Can’t work on the potion every night – sometimes you just have to take a break.
…I realise I haven’t seen Bogovich or Gregorovich in a while. Would be nice for them to acknowledge my leadership every so often, even if the mob is a sham.
Entry 66
Found Bog & Grog, as I’ve come to call them. Turns out they had become trapped in the lab whilst looking for me yesterday. They had been in there all night. I hit them with my staff a few times and sent them back into the streets.
Cough seems to be getting worse.
At this point it must be hard not to empathise with him. After all, we all want to be bad at some point, don’t we? But it takes so much effort to be bad that we simply settle with being good. ‘Good guys always win’: it just sounds so much easier. Bad guys always have to work for everything, even when they’re working towards inevitable failure.
But I digress. I’m sure you’d like to know what Bogovich and Gregorovich were up to while the mobster wizard was working on his potion and submitting journal entries to the internet. I will, of course, tell you. If I didn’t tell you then I’d be no better than your parents, teachers and other guardians charged with teaching you things – in other words, all the people who neglected to tell you this incredibly important story.
Bogovich and Gregorovich spent the entirety of their time in the spastic heart of Camphortown. During the day they kicked stones, their hands planted firmly in the pockets of their tuxedos, their bodies hunched over as they cast intimidating glances at everyone and everything. In the golden light of the sun they entered variety stores and left with whatever they wanted – sometimes cigarettes, sometimes sunflower seeds – without ever paying a cent.
‘You’re on the mobster wizard’s turf now,’ they would say to the cashiers, though always with a subtle wink, as if they had caught a fleck of dust in their eyes. ‘Consider this your payment for being allowed to stay here.’
Not even schoolchildren were safe from the harassment of Bogovich and Gregorovich. Somehow the pair could always sniff out slices of cheese hidden within the tin confines of the children’s lunchboxes. To say that the children always left these encounters sans cheese would be to say that the sky is blue.
When one saw Bogovich and Gregorovich walk along one side of the street, he or she always crossed to the other.
At night they attended the bars in alphabetical order, always ordering the most expensive drinks on the menus – from bread wines to wines that contained pencil lead – and always laughing in the bartenders’ faces when they were asked to pay. Despite their seemingly endless thirst for alcohol, however, the duo never became more than tipsy. They were true professionals at everything they did, from bullying to drinking to singing jingles in elaborate harmonies.
Sometimes they would stop a mouse in the street and ask them to get off their turf.
‘Beat it, punk,’ they would tell the mouse, their tongues moving suspiciously like tiny tails. ‘This is the mobster wizard’s sidewalk.’
To this the mouse would usually smirk and nod knowingly before scurrying away.
One night the cats were out hassling, haggling and singing harmoniously when Gregorovich suddenly stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and gazed up at the sky, each of the stars stolen by the city lights. He sighed, as if he had just come to some great and final resolution.
‘I suppose we should check in on that potion our master has been working on,’ Gregorovich suggested to Bogovich.
‘Yes,’ Bogovich concurred, ‘I’m sure he would really appreciate that.’
This would be how they had found themselves trapped in the mobster wizard’s secret laboratory. They had entered the mobster wizard’s mansion and pulled the correct book from the bookcase, triggering a switch that had caused the bookcase to turn and reveal the secret passage that led to the laboratory. They carefully walked along the secret stones that made up the secret floor, testing each stone for traps as they went along.
Soon enough they had made it through, leaving a mess of rusted blades, poisonous arrows, broken boulders and lo-fi recordings of bad poetry in their wake. They then entered the laboratory, a pristine place of white walls, floor and ceiling, with legibly-labelled vials and spotless worktables taking the place of the bubbling cauldrons and dried-out hanging toads that they had been expecting.
‘Not in a million years would I have expected this of our grand old mobster wizard,’ Bogovich said. ‘Could it be that he is, in fact, a mobster scientist?’
‘Most of these say Magic Potion in the description field on their labels,’ Gregorovich said as he held up a beaker for inspection. ‘I have to assume some level of magic is still involved.’
‘Righty-o,’ said Bogovich. ‘And now to find that anti-mouse potion.’
They looked through all of the vials, beakers and bottles until they had found a stoppered vial with an image of a mouse’s skull and two crossed mouse bones on the label.
‘I believe we have found it, Bogovich,’ Gregorovich said as he held up the vial at arm’s length and with a pair of tongs.
‘A job most swelly done, Gregorovich,’ Bogovich said as he looked at the vial with some nervousness. ‘Now to dispose of it before our boss puts anymore effort towards it.’
The two cats then headed back to the laboratory door and found it very much shut, locked and utterly impossible to open.
‘Perhaps we should have left it open,’ Bogovich said.
‘Indeed,’ agreed Gregorovich.
‘What should we do? Or rather, what would cats do in a pickle like this?’
‘I imagine that cats would meow until they were found and freed,’ Gregorovich offered, and so they meowed and meowed and meowed until the mobster wizard let them out the next day.
That all brings us to yesterday, and yesterday brings us the story of Bogovich and Gregorovich.
with Bettina M. George
Once, a long, long, long, long, long, long time ago – yesterday, to be precise – there was the story of Bogovich and Gregorovich. Bogovich and Gregorovich were two tuxedo cats – each with a zipper on his back – owned by a mobster wizard of unfathomable badness. Together they all lived in the noisy, tree-encircled town of Camphortown, which was run by a musical gang of yellow-suited mice.
The mobster wizard had been working on a potion that would make all of the mice go POOF – and by go POOF I mean that all of the particles which make mice mice would destabilise and their very existences would become obliterated. The mobster wizard was not making this potion to save Camphortown from the mice gang’s reign, however. He was making the potion so he could control Camphortown and treat it as he pleased.
Yesterday the mobster wizard was set to continue working on this potion but noticed that the potion in its current form was missing. He immediately knew it had something to do with the fact that he had found Bogovich and Gregorovich trapped in his secret laboratory the day before. After all, Bogovich and Gregorovich were not supposed to know that the laboratory even existed, let alone how to access it; and why would they be snooping around their boss’s private residence in the first place?
‘Oh, those traitors!’ the mobster wizard cried out to the heavens. ‘I’ll beat them until they’re blue! I’ll feed them snails and lice! I’ll belittle everything they’re interested in!’
He then coughed, coughed and coughed some more: he coughed until he was hunched over and clutching his stomach; he coughed until his scarred face had gone from pink to red to purple; he coughed until his knees were trembling and he coughed until he had collapsed onto the ground, dead.
The mobster wizard, as the coroner later discovered, had died from badness.
Elsewhere, at a bar, Bogovich and Gregorovich were celebrating their theft of the potion. They drank everything the bartender put on the counter for them, and everyone around them were feeling their good cheer. When somebody asked them what they were so happy about, Gregorovich pulled a stoppered vial out of his tuxedo pocket and set it on the counter.
‘This, my friend,’ Gregorovich explained. ‘We have single-handedly saved our gang from utter destruction.’
‘Ah, I see,’ the person said. ‘That’s good for the mobster wizard, I guess.’
He then stared in confusion and became absolutely mystified when the two cats laughed raucously at him.
Bogovich and Gregorovich continued pouring everything on the counter down their throats, every shot, glass, bottle and vial. This last one – vial – gave them some pause. They looked at the vial that they had just shared – the only one that had been on the counter, the one with the image of a mouse’s skull and two crossed mouse bones on the label. They gulped.
That was when the zippers on their backs suddenly unzipped, and from these openings came rushing out a steady stream of mice – hundreds of them – each wearing a little yellow suit. Everyone present watched on in disbelief as the mice flew out of the bar, never to be seen again.
And that, my friend, is the story of Bogovich and Gregorovich.
