Boddah
“I assure you I will be the worst ever Kurt Cobain.”
The house had cost Cobain over a million dollars when he had bought it: three stories and nearly three quarters of an acre surrounded by the invisible rich of Seattle. It was pristine—any trace of the other Kurt Cobains carefully cleaned away. Maybe this was how the others had lived, paying cleaners or someone to keep it showroom fresh and antiseptic, but it wouldn’t be how this Kurt Cobain lived.
He glanced out a window and caught sight of the greenhouse. That wouldn’t be how this Kurt Cobain lived either. He wondered if it was the original, purchased with the Monsoor family’s bottomless dollars and shipped to the City brick by brick. Maybe it was just a clever copy making the most of its passing resemblance to the original—touched up here and there where it didn’t—just like the Kurt walking barefoot through its kitchen.
“I mean it. They’ll hate me.”
He opened the fridge, but there was nothing in it except a few cans of Mountain Dew. He took one out and offered it to Monsoor, who declined with a raised hand. Kurt put the can back in the fridge and closed the door.
“As long as you continue the gene therapy you will be the closest living thing in the world to the original,” Albrecht Monsoor said with an air of comfort that felt well-practiced. “That is how it has worked for the last two hundred years. As it will for you too.”
Monsoor wasn’t famous as such, but as a member of the Monsoor family, he was practically a god in the City. If he was really a member: maybe he was a remnant too. The Monsoor family stayed out of the limelight, and Albrecht Monsoor could have been born any time during the last two hundred years.
“You have undergone all the testing, all the psychological profiling, not to mention the genetic grafting. There are differences between you and the original, of course. There always are. The current Marilyn Monroe is black, and fans are queueing around the block to see her new films. Your fans will be glad to see you continue to work past your untimely death, I promise you. Sometimes a little difference is desirable, given your predecessors.”
Kurt lit a Camel Light and let the smoke hide his expression.
The others, yeah.
The remnants had been going for over two-hundred years, ever since great-granddaddy Monsoor had decided he wasn’t going to let a little thing like death stop him selling tickets to see Charles Dickens. There had been four more Dickenses since then, as his remnants succumbed to illness or old age or whatever. The Monsoor family never officially announced that a remnant was being replaced, but most people could tell after a while. In the thirty years since it had been announced that Cobain had met the criteria for being recalled, the fans had counted at least fifteen Kurts.
“Yeah, so what did happen to those guys?” Kurt asked as casually as he could.
Monsoor didn’t react, just held out the keys to the house.
“There is only one Kurt Cobain,” Monsoor said.
“I dunno, shouldn’t I, like, memorize his biography or something? What if someone asks something I don’t know?”
“People forget things. They lie, sometimes for no discernible benefit to themselves. If you were more accurate, you would only be less authentic. So, Mr. Cobain …”
He jangled the keys. “Unless you don’t want it?” he added.
Kurt pulled another lungful of smoke out of the cigarette and shrugged like he couldn’t care less.
But he took the keys.
* * *
“So what were you like as a kid?” the DJ on the phone asked.
The interview was live, so Kurt left just long enough to dispel any misgivings on the part of the listener that he might actually want to be there. But not so long that the DJ gave up and threw on a Guns n’ Roses record.
“I grew up with the rednecks in a log cabin out in Aberdeen. They thought I was pretty weird: I got beat up a lot.”
“Do you even know where Aberdeen is?” the DJ asked under his breath.
“Yeah. Do you?”
There was a brief pause.
“My father worked the lumber yards out in Aberdeen,” the DJ didn”t sound happy about it.
“Maybe he used to beat on me,” Kurt said evenly.
“Tell me, “Kurt”: what do you think about the remnants?”
“I don”t know what you mean.”
“Well, a lot of our listeners think it”s an outdated idea. I mean, can any number of impersonators really make up for the loss of an Elvis or a Lennon? And then when these impersonators—”
“Remnants.”
“Forgive me,” he could hear the DJ smile, “remnants. When they make money off the backs of hard-working fans—how many albums has Lennon released now? I mean, none of them were actually written by him, or performed by him, but the marketing machine doesn”t care about that, am I right? It”s just a two hundred-year-old scam. Do you have any thoughts on that, “Kurt’?”
“Sorry, did you say something?”
“Okay, let”s talk about you,” the DJ said. Kurt could hear him smiling. “You must be one of the biggest stars of your generation—I mean who doesn”t own a copy of Nevermind? Do you feel any responsibility to those kids out there who listen to your every word?”
“Sure,” Kurt growled. “Hey kids, don”t do drugs.”
A pause.
“And the suicides?” the DJ asked. “The copycats, I mean.”
Kurt knew he had to say something clever. Instead, he let the phone fall to the floor.
After the interview, Kurt prowled the house, pacing from room to room like an intruder. He found a closet off the master bedroom, crawled in with a large Stella twelve-string, and strummed distractedly. That was when he found the loose board in the wall. Nervously, he lifted it away. There was a little cavity there, right in the wall.
Inside was a Tom Moore cigar box and a battered journal. Inside the cigar box was a lump of tarry blackness, a little cooker, and a clean syringe. He looked at them without a word, until eventually he closed the lid and slid the box back into its hiding place.
The journal was written in a lazy scrawl that could’ve been the original Cobain’s but wasn’t. There were annotations and amendments in a number of different hands, each trying to emulate that first style, each trying to lay claim to the journal.
A few pages in, he found a poem dotted with tablature. A couple of verses and a chorus that was just the word “pain” scratched so hard onto the page that it had torn through onto the next. There was evidence that the other Cobains had found the song, but their amendments were a battleground: words were crossed out and replaced, only to be revived by one of the later hands, and despite all the ink all they had achieved was to keep the song remarkably close to the original.
Next to the song, there was a crude sketch of a figure. A boy, maybe a girl, with long dark hair falling over their face and a Meat Puppets T-Shirt. Their eyes were two dark holes on the page. There was a word at the top of the page, close enough to both the sketch and the song that it might belong to either.
Boddah.
He didn”t know how he should respond to that name. It was part of the history that Mansoor assured him he didn”t need to know—an imaginary childhood friend that the Cobains told their son had been drafted to fight in Vietnam in the hope he would be forgotten. But the first time he had heard it—he, not Kurdt nor Kurt—it had been on Courtney”s lips. She had read out the suicide note to them all, addressed to the fans, to the ones that mattered, en masse. Addressed to them as Boddah, the comfort and friend in hard times. The kid in the drawing seemed to be staring at him, with their dark, black hole eyes.
Kurt closed the journal but sat cradling the guitar for a while longer.
The phone rang: annoying, insistent. Kurt couldn’t escape the feeling that it was the DJ ringing back for round two, so left it well alone. But whoever it was didn’t get the message. It kept ringing for most of the day, never stopping for more than five minutes at a time.
Maybe it was Monsoor. He’d been nagging Kurt about money and how he needed to maybe make some. Kurt had “inherited” the house and a sum of money intended to represent the original’s estate at death, minus a notional divorce settlement from Courtney. The Monsoor family also gave him the equivalent of Cobain’s royalties, although that was just an estimate. The actual royalties went to Courtney, and she didn’t want any involvement. The families of the originals rarely did until a couple of generations had gone by.
The phone kept ringing.
Monsoor’s problem was an inherent conflict of interests. The family financed the remnants on the understanding they would make them more money back. But in order to make money, they needed the remnants to be as convincingly like the originals as they could. The original Cobain was notoriously reluctant to engage with the business part of the show. And, increasingly, the show part. But still the phone rang.
In the end, he gave up and answered it.
“Hello?” the woman sounded like she hadn’t expected to get through. “Is that … I need to speak to my son.”
Kurt’s only response was the rasp of a lighter as he lit another Camel Light.
“Richard?” He could hear the catch in her voice.
He’d heard it when he’d told her he was leaving too.
“It’s Kurt now, Mom.” He rolled his eyes at the empty room. “It’s a thing. There’s people here.”
“Richard, please—”
“Kurt, Mom!” he snapped. They both went silent. “Look, I”m sorry. I have to—”
“Please. I just want to—Please don”t go,” she said. She only pleaded when she knew he was in control. “Kurt. Please, Kurt. I know we did things wrong. I know I did things wrong. But this? This isn”t going to fix things. Come home. We can get better, I promise.”
“Mom, I can”t. I signed a contract.”
“People have come back from the City,” she said firmly. “I”ve checked it all out. You could come back. You wouldn”t be the first.”
“Right, like who? Jimi Hendrix? They might”ve done it in the old days, but there are contracts and lawyers now. I”m not even meant to be speaking to you: Kurt Cobain never knew you, Mom. I don”t know you.”
“Please,” his mother said again. “Just give it a chance.”
“Look, there are people here,” he said again. “I”ve got to go.”
“I”ll call tomorrow. Would that be okay?”
“Sure. I”ll be here,” Kurt stubbed his cigarette out on the sole of his shoe and dropped the butt in an ashtray by the phone. The tray hadn”t been emptied in a while, but there was still room enough. “Bye, Mom.”
“I love you.”
He dropped the receiver back into the cradle and sat for a moment staring blankly into space. He spun the wheel of his lighter a couple times with his thumb but didn”t make a move for another cigarette. When he finally did move, it was to go back to the telephone.
“Albrecht Monsoor,” said the voice on the other end.
“Can you get my number changed?”
“I”ll get it done.”
Kurt hung up without saying goodbye. As he leaned back against the fridge and sighed, his eyes fell on the window. On the greenhouse again. There was something out there. Someone. A small figure with dark hair falling over their face, and a dark Meat Puppets T-shirt. They didn’t move when they saw he had clocked them. Just stood outside the greenhouse, looking over to him, their eyes lost in the shadow of their face.
Kurt opened the door but stayed just inside, cigarette in his mouth, unwilling to get closer to the greenhouse. The kid stayed in the shadows, hair falling over their face, cigarette hanging from their lips in a practiced way that told Kurt they were still doing it more for effect than addiction.
Give them time. Everything becomes an addiction, in the end.
“You know,” Kurt drawled, “if you”re robbing me, I”m pretty sure they gave me the shotgun back.”
“If I was going to rob you,” the kid laughed coldly, walking closer, “I’d’ve done it by now.”
Kurt said nothing to that. Close up, he could tell the sketch in the journal had been of this kid.
“How’d you get in?” he asked instead.
“I’ve been here before,” the kid shrugged.
“I’ve never seen you.”
“Yeah, before you.”
It wasn’t unheard of for associations to be inherited along with the rest of an original’s baggage, but usually it was between remnants. Laurel still worked with Hardy, Morecambe still teased Wise about his little hairy legs, Warhol still attached himself to any celebrity that would let him. But the kid didn’t look like a remnant.
Too young, for a start. Nobody that age had the kind of impact the Monsoors needed. There were people who weren’t remnants in the City, of course. Kurt Cobain wasn’t going to mow his own lawn or unblock his own sink. Sure, they mostly had jobs—there was nothing here that didn’t revolve around the remnants—but they could have kids too.
Why not?
“You shouldn”t talk about the others.”
“Why not?”
“There”s just me, now.”
“Well, yeah, now,” the kid said. “But you”re you as well, right? Like they were them. You got the same job, that”s all. But it”s just a job. I mean, even the Monsoors don”t give a shit who you are when no one”s looking. It”s just the performance they want, right?”
“I don”t care,” Kurt said, testily.
The kid held up their hands.
“You want to go method,” they said, “that”s your thing, sure.”
Kurt just gave them a blank look. Nothing moved out here. He could’ve been anywhere. He could have been home. He could see the greenhouse at the corner of the house, with the steps leading down away from the house running next to it. You could go in the greenhouse, and no one would see you until it was days too late. Kurt closed his eyes and let out a breath.
“You got any pot?” he asked.
* * *
The Boddah song kept picking at him. There was a studio set up in the cellar, and he”d found a few demos and even a full backing from Nirvana”s last session together, where Butterfly had been recorded.
Kurt had a plan to get Dave and Krist back into the studio. No band in history had ever reformed from surviving members and remnants, and Kurt knew it would be just the thing to break another record. No remnant had ever been more popular than their originator either. He”d ring them both about it sometime. No, he”d get Albrecht to ring them maybe.
The riff was easy enough, and the melody could stand for now. The lyrics were less settled: he played every version of it in the journal—sketched original right through to his own rough drafts—and none of them worked. He crossed out lines, threw back in a few the others had rejected, turned and twisted his own words to pull it all into shape. And still …
“It”s about the suicide,” the kid said.
They were draped across a sofa, joint hanging loosely from one hand.
“You can tell, cos he hasn”t written a song since Sliver where you could tell what it was about without knowing him.”
“It’s my song,” Kurt growled.
“Yeah, but it’s not. You’re not there yet.”
The kid looked over at him, and Kurt felt the riptide of panic tugging at him—dragging him under. This was the only thing he’d ever wanted to do, the only thing he’d ever been good at. Now they’d taken him away from everything he knew. Put him in this fucking zoo and told him to do it. Do it good enough so he could stay. And still the words wouldn’t come right.
“I mean, nearly,” the kid drawled. “You want me to cook?”
“I told you; I don’t do that.”
The kid shrugged and laid back on the sofa.
“Neither did they.” They took a long drag on the joint.
* * *
The geography of the City was weird, so Kurt didn’t leave his little corner of it if he could help it.
Take this pub. Only thirty minutes’ drive from the shining sun of his home in “Seattle, Washington” and now here he was in “Manchester, England” turning his collar up at the pouring rain.
The pub was quiet, only the barman and a knot of people in the room at the back. No one looked at him as he stepped in alone. The kid had brought him here but then refused to come inside. The barman glanced up from behind pumps selling a bewildering array of foreign ales and lagers, except he guessed they weren’t foreign here. Then he went back to whatever he had been doing.
Nirvana had been big in England, but maybe they weren”t big in “England.”
“If it ain”t our most famous potential member,” a little guy who must have been seventy called to Kurt from the door of the back room. “Grab a seat. Get you a drink?”
Kurt looked at him blankly.
“It the accent? Could be worse: originally from Somerset, in’t I? My original’s from Macc, so that had to go. You imagine?” The old man’s voice suddenly switched to a fruity accent that Kurt had never heard before. “Love’ll tear us apart now won’t it, moy lover?”
He grinned, and his accent switched back again.
“I’m David. C’mon.”
The old man put his arm around Kurt’s shoulders and steered him into the backroom. There was a little round table there with two more old men nursing their pints. There was a frosty silence between them, and both looked up as if they were glad of the interruption.
“This is …” the old man hesitated. “Sorry, mate. What’s your name?”
Kurt blinked.
“Don”t you know who I am?”
“Oooh, that”s charming, ain”t it?” exclaimed one of the guys with pints. Thin with a big nose. “Not even sat down and he”s already playing the great I am.”
The big-nosed guy dropped an exaggerated wink, and Kurt realized he was joking.
“I”m Kurt,” he said.
“Well, we know who you”re supposed to be,” grumbled the other—a fat old guy in a homburg hat. “He asked who you are.”
The first old guy, David, intervened:
“Real names here, mate,” he said. “Makes thing easier.”
“Oh,” Kurt said. “It”s just … my real name”s Kurt too.”
“Right,” David nodded.
“Named after him,” Kurt added. “My folks were big fans. I guess that”s why I did this. I didn”t really want any of it. They kinda pushed.”
“Stone the crows!” the guy in the homburg shouted. “You”d just let anyone in, wouldn”t you? He can”t join! Everyone knows he was killed by his missus.”
“Oh stop messing about!” big-nosed guy scolded. He made it seem like he was being friendly, but homburg-guy winced. Kurt got pulled into a seat between them, a hand resting on his knee. “He’ll be telling you my original was accidental in a minute, you see if he doesn’t. You sit next to me, and I’ll take care of you.”
He gave a short laugh, nostrils flaring.
“Welcome to the suicide squad,” he said, then laughed again.
“So,” David asked, away from the others. “How you coping?”
Kurt had been sitting quietly, listening to the old men arguing for the best part of an hour. They”d been joined by two more “members,” but it had been big-nose and homburg’s show most of the night. Peter and Thomas. They’d bickered about the men that they remembered.
They’d worked together at some point—actors. Peter thought Thomas had ruined his chances of being taken seriously, and Thomas thought Peter the first in a long line of lesser talents using him for the fame. It had the ring of an old argument that would outlive them both.
“It”s not easy, living someone else”s life,” David continued, understanding despite Kurt’s silence. “’Specially if they didn”t want it themselves. Perhaps it would be easier if people knew what the remnants are for. Maybe not.”
“Sorry,” Kurt said. “I don”t get you.”
“No?” David looked, just for a moment, a little disappointed. Then he smiled gently. “No, maybe you don”t. Take me. My original was a genius, no two ways about it. Now I”m no slouch on a good day, but do you think I can make do for that?”
“I guess not,” Kurt said, after a pause.
“’Course not,” David agreed. “But I weren’t supposed to. It might have been possible, if you looked for the right person, gave them the same life, just about. You know, to get close. But that isn’t what the Monsoors wanted, was it?”
Kurt looked at David for a blank moment.
“I don”t …” he said. “I mean, I didn”t, uh, look into the history of all this, before I, you know. I guess you know a lot about it?”
David smiled—something paternal in it.
“There’s a reason there’s no remnants of Turing or Einstein,” he said, focus somewhere far off. “Monsoor was in the theatre. He wanted the remnants to remember people the way great drama remembers ’em. But that”s all forgot now. They want us to be our originals, not some faded remnant.”
The ale was sitting strangely in Kurt’s stomach, and he wasn”t sure which way was home. Perhaps if he rang Monsoor, he”d send a car.
“We”ve each had to deal with it, in our own way,” David said, something in his voice told Kurt ‘us’ meant many more than those he’d met today. “I came out the other end. Started the meet up. Peter took an overdose two years ago. He won”t mind me telling you. It’s not like you don’t know what it’s like.”
David looked at Kurt.
“I’m glad you came, anyways. The other Cobains weren’t interested, more’s the pity.”
“Oh. You knew the others?”
“No, poor lads. Peter.” David smiled grimly as Kurt failed to hide his surprise. “I know. He comes off like a tired old queen, but he’s still up for debauchery if you give ’im the chance. The others threw their letters away. Glad you didn’t, is all I’m saying.”
“There wasn’t a letter,” Kurt said. “The kid brought me.”
David’s face froze. Something was going on behind his eyes he didn’t want Kurt to see.
“The kid?” he asked casually.
Kurt shrugged and looked around like it was no big deal.
“Kurt,” David asked, pulling him ’round. “Have you met Boddah?”
Kurt didn’t remember what happened next, but when he got home there was blood on his knuckles. The skin had been scraped away, like he’d hit something. He couldn’t think what. It was late, but he didn”t put on any of the lights. Instead, he grabbed the journal and a can of Barq”s.
At the last moment, he grabbed the cigar box from the closet and headed out to the greenhouse. He opened the rear set of French doors and sat, looking out. He smoked his first Camel Light in a few drags and then drank the can of root beer.
He sat and looked at the cigar box.
It was dark outside.
* * *
Kurt sat in the studio. The tapes weren”t rolling. He had his head down, his hair fell over his face, and his voice occasionally moved in the general direction of the mic. He played an acoustic, picking his way through the broken harmonics of the Boddah song. Each time he hit the second verse, his fingers slid to a bum note, and he let out an anguished howl. More than once, he’d thrown the acoustic across the room.
“When did you say this gig was?” Boddah asked from the back of the room. “Like, next week?”
“Why are you even here? Seriously.”
“You suck man. Seriously.”
Kurt picked up the guitar and played again.
* * *
It was ten minutes since Kurt had come off stage. The audience still shouted for an encore. The stamping of their feet threatened to bring the roof down. Monsoor looked at Kurt, who was scowling at his fingers in disgust.
“You”d better get out there,” Monsoor said, “or they might kill somebody.”
“Are you high?” Kurt growled and walked away.
But he was smiling to himself when he reached the dressing room.
“You sucked. You should go out and smash the guitar.”
Boddah sat by the sink in the corner, knees drawn up to their chest, hair covering their face.
Kurt knew they’d be scowling anyway. He didn’t care. He wasn’t going to let them poison it tonight. He’d finished the song. None of the others had managed that. He’d finished it, and he’d played it, and he had not sucked. He could still hear the crowd’s feet reverberating through the fabric of the little club.
Monsoor had suggested keeping the first gig small, gauging the interest. He wouldn’t be the first remnant to start their career in popularity free fall. He shouldn’t have listened. He could still fill a stadium.
“They just want Teen Spirit,” Boddah sneered.
Kurt didn’t respond. It was so rare for him to feel he was doing this right. He didn’t want to admit that part of the reason they wanted him back on stage so desperately was that they thought they were still owed that one damned song.
He looked at himself in the mirror, trying to ignore Boddah’s reflection.
The shouting and stamping of the audience shook his reflection. He tried not to think about how much he missed just being one of them.
“You can”t give them what they want,” Boddah said.
Kurt lit a cigarette with hands that shook just a little, then held it without putting it to his lips.
“They want him. There”s not enough left to keep it going long.”
“I am him,” Kurt said. “Me.”
Boddah smiled like he’d told a joke. “If you were him, you’d have worked it out by now. It can’t last, no way. You can’t be famous for not selling out to get famous. One day you’ll write something not good enough, and they’ll hate you. Or you’ll write something too good, and they’ll hate you. Better to burn out than fade away.”
He looked at himself in the mirror. Just some kid dressed up like a rock star, trying to put a pile of money between him and everything that made his songs anywhere near worth it. He couldn’t tell if it was Kurt or Richard looking back at him.
“You know I’m right.” Boddah shrugged.
From a pocket, they pulled out the cigar box, pushed it across the counter a little towards Kurt. It sat there, pulling in all the light from the room. He looked at it. He knew they were right. There was only one way out.
* * *
Boddah sat on the sofa, watching the rain outside the window.
He could see the greenhouse out there, but nothing inside it. The way it sat, you could be in there for days and nobody would know until they decided to walk in. They”d find a note, and a strange arrangement of banalities, and the beginnings of immortality in the blood spattered over the floor. Only the good die young, they”d say. Only the dead live forever.
Kurt appeared in the doorway, a bag of things over one shoulder and the twelve-string in a case in his hand. He looked down at Boddah, his face a blank page. Boddah looked up at him, something like betrayal on their face. For a moment, they didn”t speak. For a moment, Kurt didn”t move.
“He wouldn’t do this,” Boddah said.
“I passed the tests,” he said firmly. “Whatever I do is probably what he would”ve done. I want to play one gig where I didn”t suck, and then disappear. I want to turn myself into a legend, and get away from his fucking life forever. That sounds like him, yeah?”
“This was all you ever knew,” Boddah complained. Their voice sounded like an insect whine. “You can”t do anything else. What”re you going to do, get a job? You can”t do anything but this, and if you can”t do this you can”t do anything.”
“I”m not stopping. I’m gonna be his remnant,” Kurt explained as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I”m just gonna have my old name, and live in my old home ’til I get somewhere better, or my mom drives me crazy. And I”m going to play, and make art, and I”m going to do it the hell away from here. You know?”
“You”ll be back. I”ll still be here when you do.”
Kurt shrugged and started walking.
“You can stay as long as you like,” he said. “So long as the Monsoors don”t board it up or something. Call yourself Kurt if you like. See how it suits you.”
“I”m not here to be you,” Boddah whined.
“Hey,” Kurt said, halfway out of the house. “I guess I did not suck at this.”
Then he closed the door.
Dale Smith is a writer, critic and reject based in Manchester, England. He has mostly spent the years since his first work was published in 1993 writing short stories, novels, and monographs related to the TV series Doctor Who, but has occasionally been allowed out to write plays, and his short story series Towards the Fjords continues to be published by Interzone. He maintains a website at https://dalesmithonline.com/ where he’ll happily tell you how he did it in the hope that maybe it will help you do it too.
Copyright © 2025 Dale Smith.