Sloughing Off the Rot (29 page)

With his vision fogged from chicha, and his thoughts muddled and befuddled, John shut his eyes to put an end to the double vision. And troubled sleep pounced on him, making him toss and turn on the red brick road. John dreamt that he was walking down a long hall with red brick walls that curved up to meet in a point. At the end a the hall an iron door, much like the front door of Lovethorn’s fortress, waited. No matter how far he walked, the door always loomed the same distance away. John tried to run toward the door but his body felt as if it were running in water. So he slowed his step and focused his eyes on the ever-distant door.

“You’re never going to get there like this,” said John’s voice. But the voice came from John’s fiery doppelganger, whom appeared at his side. “Take your gaze off of the door and turn it inward. That is where your strength lies. That is where you will find your power, not behind some door. Focus on yourself and the doors will come to you.”

“And why should I care about reaching the door?” said John. “Lovethorn wants to kill me.”

“No,” said Fire-John. “Lovethorn wants to hold you captive and suckle at your energy. He does not want you to die and he definitely does not want you to leave. He wants you alive and weak because that makes him stronger. You must meet him face to face and make him send you back. You must make him return you to yourself so that you can be complete. Otherwise, you die there, and you die here, and all is lost.”

“That just doesn’t seem right to me,” John argued. “I’ve grown strong here. I have power. And I don’t see how it is that I could die if I stay here. I don’t care about the other part of me dying. I don’t know that part. I don’t remember that part of me. And, from the little that I can tell, I was an awful person.”

“You were a wretch,” agreed the doppelganger. “And the only way to set things right is the reunion of your two halves. The good and the bad. And your light is now strong and will not be swayed by the dark. That is why you are here. That is why you split, so that you could plant the seed of goodness here and let it grow inside you. And that is what you have done. You are ready. When Lovethorn comes to you, meet with him and force him to send you back. Because you have the power and Lovethorn is the only one that can return you to yourself.”

“I don’t know…” said John.

But before John could finish his argument, the fiery doppelganger boomed, “I do know. And you must do as I say or all will be lost.” And, as if avoid any further argument, the fiery apparition ran toward the end of the hall and crashed into the door, knocking it from its frame with the concussion of his impact.

The blowback from the explosion knocked John to the ground and thumped his dream-head on the dream-bricks. And the flames from the explosion blazed through the door like the light of the red sun and burned John’s eyes closed.

And when John awoke and opened his eyes, he found himself laid out on the red brick road. Above him, two shriveled, shrunken heads looked down at his face, one grinning and one scowling. As his vision focused, he saw that the two tiny heads both sat on the same set of hunched-over shoulders. The shoulders shared the same thick, hunchbacked torso and the torso shared the same two legs. The grinning head on the left looked to the one on the right and, in a high-pitched voice, said, “I don’t know, Magog, I do believe he is the one. He’s the guy.”

“Come now, Gog. He can’t be the guy,” said the scowling head, his voice slurring but also shrill. “Just look at him with his tangled hair and face. Look at his crusted, dull eyes. He is not the one.” The right hand of the shared body lifted the wineskin that John left hanging from the door, and slopped a snootful of chicha into Magog’s mouth.

“Is,” said Gog, his voice clear and his enunciation sharp.

“Is not,” said Magog. The left hand tried to grab the wineskin from the right. But the right hand held it out of reach and the left flailed ineffectually at the air. Magog laughed in Gog’s face, and the hand under Magog’s control kept the wineskin out of Gog’s reach.

“Give me that skin,” said Gog.

“Won’t,” slurred Magog. “It’s mine.”

“Give now,” snapped Gog.

“Can’t,” said Magog, laughing again.

And Gog’s left hand shot out for the wineskin. But the right hand, under control of Magog, pulled away. “Give,” shouted Gog. “Won’t,” replied Magog. Gog’s hand chased Magog’s and their shared body spun, an ungainly flailing top in that spot, until the conjoined twins grew dizzy and fell to the ground. And while Magog tried to clear his head of the titling, swirling vertigo, Gog snatched the wineskin (now mostly drained) and flung it down the side of La Montaña Sagrada.

John rubbed the drunken, crusted sleep from his eyes and watched Gog and Magog argue. The scene intrigued him to the extent that he did not even realize that the door to the fortress hung wide open behind him. He could not tear his eyes away from the altercation happening right in front of him.

“You’re a fool,” screamed Magog. “That was the spit of the gods and I was obtaining enlightenment.”

“Were not,” said Gog. “You were obtaining a state if idiocy.”

“Was not,” said Magog. “‘Twas enlightenment.” And his fist swung up and back, crunching Gog’s mouth.

“You swine,” said Gog through a fattened lip. “You pus-infected cum bubble. You bloodstained undergarment. You pusillanimous pinhead. I’ll rip your head off and fuck it with our dick.” And Gog looped a left hook around and smashed Magog’s nose to the side of his face.

“Will not,” screeched Magog in a warbling falsetto. Blood bubbled from the squished pulpy glob that was his nose. “I will rip your head off and shove it up our ass, you dog-humping, finger-sniffing, microcephalic moron.”

Gog and Magog thrashed about and struck at the small targets of each others’ heads. And they kicked up dust from the road and cast aspersions like stones until John could not tell which head was flinging which insults. The barbs and threats shot out in a random, jumbled mess while fists flew and feet kicked. “You anal-dwelling felch bucket…fanny-diddling queef huffer…I’ll rape your throat and make you eat feces…rotten corpse-loving semen demon…I’ll rip open your face and fill it with diarrhea so that it stinks for ages…I’ll fistfuck your dirty whore mouth…choke on cock, bitch-hole…”

Gog’s fist pulled up short and close and walloped Magog directly on the chin. At the exact same moment, Magog looped around with a full-force swing and smashed Gog in the ear. And for just a second, the shared body dropped to the ground and both heads flopped back. The grey static of disconnect from consciousness buzzed in their apple-sized noggins. Then, Gog and Magog shook their heads, and their body raised up on its elbows. And as if the blows had reset their brains, Gog and Magog looked at each other and smiled.

“It looks like we’ve done it again Brother, doesn’t it?” said Gog, rubbing his hand on his ear.

“Does,” agreed Magog, the unhinged joints of his jaw clicking with his words. His hand gripped his chin and pushed it back into position. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

And when they looked back to the spot where they first discovered John, he was gone. And the door to the fortress was closed behind him.

“How now, Brother?” said Gog, pointing at the closed door. “It looks as if he is on the path. He is the one. He is the guy.”

“How now, yourself, you fool,” said Magog. “He’s gone on by himself and we were supposed to put him to the scales. Lovethorn will put us to the wheel if we don’t catch him.”

“Well, we better intercept him then,” said Gog.

Gog-Magog lunged at the door and found that John did not lock it behind himself. They ran into the dark halls, flung open doors, and scampered through a labyrinth of low-ceilinged, low-lighted, low-level tunnels until they reached the room.

With his pupils constricted to pinpoints from the chicha hangover and unable to adjust to the almost nonexistent light in the tunnels, John fumbled blindly through the dark halls of Abaddon, fleeing the strange two-headed man, and hoping that he was on the path to Android Lovethorn. The walls jumped out at him, scuffing his elbows and sides, and doors unexpectedly blocked his way. John opened the doors and walked on down the hall. He stumbled along, trusting his gut that he was still following the proper path.

And then he came to a door that did not want to open. He kicked at the door and heard the latch that held it on the other side loosely jangling as if it were not securely fastened. He backed up and charged the door, leading with his shoulder. Along with the flare of pain that flooded his shoulder and arm, the door burst open and John crashed into the room, falling to the floor.

Before he could stand, the men were on him, pinning his body to the ground. Gog and Magog hovered over John and looked down at his face.

“That’s him,” said Gog.

“It is,” agreed Magog.

Gog said to the men on top of John, “Strap him to the scale and then be gone.”

The short, muscular guards wore bronze helmets and breastplates and back plates. They lifted John to his feet. They kept a tight hold on each arm and wrist and led John to a seat positioned at the middle of a large beam. And the beam rested on a center-situated triangular fulcrum and held a gold plate at each end. The men quickly bound John’s arms and legs, strapped him snug to the seat on the scale, and fled the room.

“Such is the way of the wanderer,” said Gog, hocking a glutinous loogie into an earthen bowl filled with grit and gunk. Dipping his left hand into the bowl, he rubbed burnt ashes between his fingertips and smiled at John. Smudging the soot and slobber and smoot between his fingers, he said, “This is the way. The way is the truth. And truth is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best.” Gog smeared the ash on John’s face and neck. And from somewhere beyond, the clear, powerful voices of a castrati choir pierced the walls of the room.

Gog-Magog strode around the room, placing candles in sconces on the wall and lighting them. The strains of the castrati swelled and ebbed in time like the respiration of some great beast, and the candles flickered and fluttered as if being blown about by the eunuchs’ song.

Gog-Magog picked up the saddlebags that John dropped when he burst into the room. “Let’s see what we have here,” said Gog, opening the bags and thrusting his hand into them.

“Let’s,” agreed Magog.

And Gog-Magog retrieved the oversized deck of cards that John had collected from bloodwood corpses. The conjoined twins’ hands worked in concert, flipping through the deck and examining the cards with anxious wonder. John said nothing and kept his protests to himself, somehow sensing that whatever happened was something that was meant to be, and something that simply had to be endured. And he felt no fear, merely impatience at the current inconvenience.

“The cards will tell us if he is the guy,” said Gog.

“Or if he isn’t,” countered Magog.

“Let’s do the deal, then,” Gog and Magog said together. And they dropped the deck to the red brick floor and knelt in front of the jumble of cards. In the flickering light of the candles their hands whipped the cards around, like a child sloppily shuffling a deck, mixing the cards in a random order. Still they worked as one, gathering the cards together again and straightening them into a newly shuffled deck. “Let’s do the deal, indeed,” Gog and Magog said together.

Magog pulled the top card and looked at it. “Ah, the two of hearts,” he said. And the image on the card was the face of a woman with her eyes and mouth stitched shut, bloody tears streaming down her cheeks. “And it looks like you were not very nice to somebody somewhere,” Magog said to John, his high voice assuming a sharp prosecutorial tone. “That doesn’t sound to me like somebody who is the guy.” With a flip of his wrist, Magog flicked the card in John’s direction and it landed on the gold plate on the left side of the beam. John felt the level of the beam tilt down to the left very slightly. “Not the guy,” said Magog.