Moment 16 Flashcards
Presley: Made me feel a bit sick, Cosmo.
Cosmo: Yeah. Makes me sick sometimes. What happened tonight. Suddenly got me. Razor blades in my gut. I said to Pitch, ‘Pitch,’ I said, ‘you’ll have to find the car yourself. I’m in too much agony.’ Off he goes. Thought, ‘In a minute I’ll puke and I’ll feel fine.’ That’s when this demented lunatic reeking of chocolate shoos me into his house. Bet you wouldn’t have cleared that puke up if you knew what it was. Well, I said it wasn’t curry, didn’t I? Ha!
Presley: You think it’s funny?
Cosmo: Just because I laugh don’t mean it’s funny.
Slight pause.
Cosmo: Where the fuck is he?
Presley: What does your mum think about what you do?
Cosmo: Ain’t got a mum.
Presley: Your dad then?
Cosmo: No dad either.
Presley: No mum or dad?
Cosmo: Nah.
Presley: You must have.
Cosmo: Why?
Presley: How else were you born?
Cosmo: I wasn’t. I was hatched. Never saw my parents. I was hatched from an egg and what you see is all I am. Once I had the skin of baby and now I got this skin. I unzipped my old skin and threw it away. One day I was shitting in a nappy, the next I was earning money. I had no childhood.
Presley: I had a lovely childhood.
Cosmo: It’s all you’ve bloody had. The whole is full of people like you. Ancient children addicted to their chocolate. Ancient children with no vocation.
Presley: And what’s your vocation?
Cosmo grabs money and -
Cosmo: This!
Presley and Cosmo stare at each other.
Cosmo: It’s a ghost train, Mr Chocolate. People love it. Sitting there in the dark. Having the living daylights scared out of them.
Tell someone there’s a photograph of car crash in the newspaper and what’s the first thing they do? But the fucking newspaper. They all say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to see it.’ But you know what that means? ‘I do want to see it.’
You know what we should do? Televise public executions. A Saturday night fry-up of all the murderers, rapists, child molesters and homosexuals. What a show that would be. Have the biggest audience in the history of entertainment.
And why? Because mankind has loved to watch stuff like that since mankind began. Public flogging, the Roman coliseum, bear-baiting, torture, crucifixion, Bedlam, bull-fighting, hunting, snuff movies, the atom bomb. They’re all part of the same thing. Man’s need for the shivers.
Afraid of blood, wanting blood. We all need our daily dose of disgust. That’s all. Nothing incredible.
… You know what is incredible? How easy it is to stop living. Not to die, but to stop being alive. There’s nothing incredible apart from that. No mystery. No magic. No dreams. No miracles. Nothing. Just freak accidents and freaks.
Darwin got it all wrong you see. Fitness has got nothing to do with it. It’s survival of the sickest. That’s all. You know why the ghost train is so popular? Because there are no ghosts. Once you’ve learnt that you can make a fucking fortune.
Presley: But I don’t want a fortune.
Cosmo: Ain’t you ever wanted anything.
