Sloughing Off the Rot (31 page)

“What do you mean, ‘Who are you?’” asked John. “I am me and I am here to see Lovethorn.”

“But who are you?” shouted Toothy in John’s face, the breath as angry as the tone of voice.

“You ask me who I am,” said John. “Perhaps I should be asking the same of you. I am the man that Lovethorn will see. I am the one that must get through. Can you tell me that I am wrong? Who are you?”

“Who are you?” shouted the young guard again. He smashed a balled fist to the side of John’s head. And a shock of pain shot all of the way from John’s ear down to his shoulder. The older guard smirked a moist, gummy smirk, and stood back against the wall, watching.

The red light of dawn throbbed with intensity, and rosy blossoms of pain pulsed in the air before John’s eyes. And he shook the pain from his head like a dog shaking off bathwater. “Who am I?” John snapped. And his face flicked through a range of emotions, just as he had seen Santiago do before. The volume of his voice rose and he shouted, “I am the one that you will see coming down on a wave of fire. I am the one that will cleanse this festering cesspool. I am the one that will crash lightning storms down on your people. You will know my vengeance and my power if you do not let me go and let me through.”

And then both guards were on John, pinning him to the ground and binding his wrists behind his back. They stripped him bare and sat him in a chair. They mocked him and spat in his face and slapped him with open hands.

The toothy guard smacked John hard on the cheek and left a hand-shaped welt. He said to John, “We are giving you the opportunity to turn around. You can do so now. You can leave this place and walk away and we will harm you no further. But if you insist on seeing Lovethorn, there will be a lot more of this to come before we let you through.” And he balled up a fist and slammed it into John’s stomach.

John said, “Ooomph,” and doubled over to recapture the breath that the guard knocked out of him. And he said nothing more than the involuntary grunt of pain. He did not accept the offer to walk away unharmed. He did not answer or acknowledge the guards’ questions other than to repeatedly demand to be taken to Lovethorn. Once again, John knew that this was something to be endured. There was no chance of him turning back. The red bricks led forward and he knew that it would be impossible for him to turn around and try to fight the current of the path.

More guards came into the room and they took turns beating John. They beat him until their knuckles broke and their hands swelled. With each blow, John smiled defiance and said nothing. And his sweat fell from him as it were great drops of blood, raining on the ground and soaking into the red bricks below him. And when the men could strike John with their hands no more, they beat him with rods. And when the rods snapped on his back, they flogged him and scourged him, the scourge producing quivering ribbons of raw, bleeding flesh. Still, John twisted up his battered, pulpy face and cast a serene smile at them. When they spat at John, he gave them a bloody grin in return. And when it finally dawned on them, when the men saw that John would not give in, they stopped striking him. They untied John and opened the next door for him to pass through.

John dragged his forearm across his face and brushed the sticky, blood-soaked hair away from his eyes. He struggled into his fine twisted white linens as the guards looked on and refused to help him. The gashes and lacerations seeped out and stained John’s clothes the color of rust. A brick that stuck up just a trifle more than the others tripped John, sending him sprawling flat on the red bricks as he stepped toward the open door. And the men just laughed and flexed their sore hands. Not one moved to help him up. So John strained to get back to his feet and walked on down the hall.

The hallway slanted upward and culminated in a ball of red radiance. The powerful song of the castrati choir screamed from the door, as if set on fire by the crimson glare. Horrid brutes, with their gargoyle faces twisted in painful knots of hate, stood along the walls. And John walked on down the hall. Each person that he passed spat at him and threw fists and kicks in his direction. Mostly John dodged the blows as he passed. Some caught him in the head and on the neck, making John stumble, but not stopping him.

And when John reached the doorway, a blast of heat and light and ear-crushing sound blew back his hair and beard, nearly lifting him from his feet. But he fought the force and pushed through the threshold. The light of day shone down on him from above through ghastly stained glass images of torture and famine and plague. He stood for some time, looking up at the stained-glass-suffering, marveling at the grotesque scenes above and the beautiful colored light they created. And then a voice called him back to his senses.

“John the Revelator,” said a raw, deep voice that sounded as if it had been soaked in chicha and dragged across a bed of gravel. John’s eyes followed the red brick path that led down the aisle before him. And at the end of the path Android Lovethorn stood on a stage paved with red bricks, holding his arms out wide. Looking just as he had in John’s dreams, Lovethorn waited in black leather pants, black shirt, and clerical collar. His raven hair stayed slicked back to his head. Mirrored sunglasses concealed his eyes. Lovethorn paced on the stage, his bearing like that of a caged lion, and beckoned to John. “Welcome to my home. Welcome to my church. John the Revelator, come on down.”

Without hesitation, John walked toward Lovethorn. Pews lined each side of the aisle. And from the pews, deformed men, scarred from burns and gashes and blunt force trauma, shouted at him. And these men in the great hall had gathered to worship idols made from wood and metal, and to listen to the words of Android Lovethorn. John looked to the crowd and saw that there were those that were possessed by devils and those who were lunatic. Half-men writhed on the pews and shook their truncated stumps at John. And there were those who were lame and stricken with palsies. The glow of pure hatred burned in all of their eyes. They grimaced and glared and spewed hostility from their mouths, shouting over the song of the castrati choir, calling John a pig, a defiler, a murderer, a dream raper, and a hope thief. They spat thick saliva in his face and screamed for him to turn back, to leave, to never show his face in Abaddon again. They threw sticks and dead rats and rotten food at him. But, John did not stop. He shielded his head and face as best as he could and walked on down the red brick path toward Android Lovethorn. And as he reached the end of the aisle, just before he climbed the stairs toward Lovethorn’s stage, a skeevy, piffulous rat of a man shot out from the pews and lunged toward John, piercing his side with a dagger. The point of the knife met with John’s red, irritated, preexisting scar and penetrated the flesh. John doubled over, feeling the same pain that he felt before when his side had begun to bleed.

And with the sting of the dagger burning in John’s gut, he dropped to his knees and pushed his hands on his eyes. The pain nearly sent him into shock and rendered him unconscious. He felt himself fading and pushed harder on his eyes with the palms of his hands. John saw the ten thousand things blasting their light from the backdrop of his eyelids. Inspired by the ten thousand things, John drew on his reservoir of strength. He muttered incoherently and threw his head back. And he screamed a yowl that flew from his mouth in a torrent of flame. The fiery scream crashed through the stained glass above, showering the congregation in a hail of shimmering, multicolored, shards of glass. The force flowed from his mouth and from deep down in his chest and gut and loins. It shot into the sky as a ball of fire, trailing a tail of smoke and sparks behind it. And the ball of fire rose and crashed into the river of clouds, setting the sky on fire and stirring a violent lightning storm. John opened his eyes and gazed toward the sky. When the fire crashed into the sky, a brilliant display of the ten thousand things spread out and fell like glimmering snowflakes. Bolts of lightning gashed the heavens and struck La Montaña Sagrada and the valley below, setting fire to the trees and brush and poppy fields.

The outburst laid John out flat in the middle of the aisle. And while his spirit was not ready to give up, it seemed that his body was. Though John willed himself to action, neither his arms nor legs budged to help him stand again and approach the Man in Black.

The song of the rosy-cheeked, round-faced castrati quieted and then stopped. And from the pulpit, Lovethorn looked down at John and shook his head. Android Lovethorn said, “Now look who has come to me. Look who has come before me to be returned to himself, like the dog who has returned to his own vomit and the washed sow who returns to wallowing in the mud. Look who wants to go back. That is what you want, isn’t it?”

The castrati choir started again with a soft, mournful hum. And John could not raise his head or even speak to answer Lovethorn. Instead, he lay there on the bricks at the foot of the stairs and tried to muster the energy to stand and climb the steps so that he could stand face to face with the Man in Black.

“Look at this weakling who comes before us,” shouted Lovethorn in the frenetic cadence of a revival minister. And he stomped about on the stage and pounded his fists on the pulpit to accentuate his words. Lovethorn ripped his sunglasses from his face and flung them aside. Bloodshot eyes burned in the sockets and threw off mad glares. “He blows his wad on one explosion and expects me to cower before him. He comes to my fair home and treats her as he would a worn out blumpkin, using her only for release. But look at him now, cataplectic and decrepit, feeble and flimsy, worthless and weak.” Lovethorn commanded his crowd of followers, “Bring him before me now.”

One soldier from each side of the great room moved in on John and lifted him from the bricks. His body hung limply in the grasp of Lovethorn’s men and he put up no fight as they dragged him up the stairs, his feet slapping on each step. And when they hauled John onto the stage, Lovethorn cried out, “Strap him to the stake. Tie him there tight.”

A beam stood strong and erect at the center of the stage. One soldier propped John up while the other lashed his limp body to the beam, wrapping the bindings around his legs, torso and throat. And they bound his outstretched arms to a crossbeam. When they finished, the weight of John’s body strained against the bindings, but he stayed in place on the beam with his arms spread and his head flopped over. John mustered just enough strength to lift his head so that the weight of it did not cause him to choke on the rope around his neck. And then he slipped, his head dangling and the weight of it pressing his throat against the ropes. And just before John was about to pass out, one of Lovethorn’s soldiers grabbed him by the hair and lifted his head. John once again gasped for air. And he looked to the crowd and saw that they screamed at him.

“Look at this fool who dares to challenge me,” Lovethorn preached to the crowd. “Is this the man who is supposed to impose his will on me? He comes before us and defiles our place of worship.”

And the crowd erupted with a wave of shouts calling for the punishment and torture and banishment of John. Some cried out for John to be locked in a cell in the bowels of Abaddon. Others screamed for him to be removed to the edges of their world. None called for his death, but many shouted for his blood to be spilt.

When the congregation called out for blood, Lovethorn flashed a pointy-toothed grin. From the pulpit he grabbed a golden cup and a dagger and held them high for his followers to see. “Blood most precious,” said Lovethorn and the crowd exploded with rabid howls and more calls for blood. Lovethorn neared John’s injured side and grabbed cautiously at the linen, making sure not to actually touch him. The Man in Black lifted the blood soaked linen enough to expose the fresh knife-wound. And then he poked at the wound with the tip of his dagger, slowly working the blade in. Thick blood poured from the opening like sap from a tree. Lovethorn pressed the lip of the golden cup against John’s side and filled the cup with blood.

And the pain of it all jolted John and burned in his guts. He summoned enough energy to lift his head and tried to scream toward the sky again. But instead of a torrent of fire, he coughed out a small croak of smoke. As the anemic puff dissipated, John’s energy ebbed and his head fell forward again, straining his neck against the ropes.

“And he cries to the sky again,” laughed Lovethorn, moving in front of John, inches away and face to face, careful still not to touch his adversary. His voice rose in volume as it addressed John, “But there is no Sky God. There is no intervention from above. There is you and there is me. I can be your Sky God if you want. I can be your brother or your father or your savior if you want. But I cannot abide your brazen appearance before me and I cannot allow you to demand my audience whenever you so choose. Your presence before me is repugnant, like a blumpkin’s monthly uncleanness. You have defiled my palace with your appearance and reviled my existence. So I will pour out my wrath on you. I will lay you low and watch you crawl in your own rot in my dungeon. I will not return you to yourself. I will not help you rejoin with your other half. Instead, I will remove your heart of flesh and replace it with a heart of stone, one that pumps your blood but knows not love or joy. I will return your memory so that you can know what you were, and, thus, what you are. And you can wallow in the sick knowledge and the self-loathing that will come of it. You will feel that shame and disgrace for your conduct and realize that none of the good you do can cleanse the blot on your soul.”