Sloughing Off the Rot

by Lance Carbuncle

  The faces of the soldier-Chellovecks beamed with excitement, for the granting of even a night in the blumpkin chambers meant that Chelloveck would be stepping down as head of the village and handing over leadership to a younger Chelloveck. Much whispering hissed around the stands and some spectator-Chellovecks who had high ambitions became angered by the possibility of one of the common soldier-Chellovecks ascending to power. But, mostly, the crowd crackled with excitement at the prospect of seeing the powerful mountain of a man do battle with their brothers.

  Chelloveck sat and motioned to a server-Chelloveck for more drink. The server topped off Chelloveck’s and John’s cups with the strongest of ciders. John passed the pipe back to Chelloveck. The old man sucked nervously at the pipe, firing the bezoar to a blazing lump of donkey muck in the bowl.

  “What,” asked John, “is a blumpkin?”

  But Chelloveck did not have his horn to his ear and could not hear John. Instead, Chelloveck put his finger to his own lips and pointed toward his men and Joad. Chelloveck did not speak any further as the activities in the arena were of great concern to him.

  Joad continued to circle the edges of the pit, backing off when guard-Chellovecks leaned over the edge of the wall and poked their spontoons in his direction. And then the leader of the soldier-Chellovecks whistled three sharp, short tweets, and his men scattered and regrouped in a circle around the giant, making Joad as the nucleus in a ring of soldier-Chellovecks. The smaller men darted in and out of the circle, punching at Joad and kicking at his shins with their hardened boots. The giant swatted at the Chellovecks as if waving away flittering gnats, his massive fists occasionally connecting with the attackers and knocking them to the ground.

  Then the leader of the soldier-Chellovecks rushed at Joad, trying to grab around the elephantine legs and trip the giant to the ground. Joad peeled the man from his legs, grabbed him by the arms, and whanged him around in a circle. Chellovecks rushed Joad in an attempt to free their brother from the swirling goliath but were knocked back as the spinning-Chelloveck’s boots thumped them in the heads and arms. Mid-swing, Joad let go of the Chelloveck’s hands and released him, flinging the man in the air and smashing him into several of his brothers.

  Unsteady and off balance from the spinning-dizzies, Joad stumbled before his attackers and tried to regain his balance. Sensing an opening, one soldier-Chelloveck leapt at Joad and tried to trip him to the ground so that the other Chellovecks could set upon him. But Joad had already recovered. With one hand he grasped the clinging Chelloveck by the head, his enormous hand covering the face and his fingers wrapping around the man’s skull like a normal hand grasping a grapefruit. Joad balled up his other hand into a fist and slammed it into the Chelloveck’s stomach. And the blow battered the man with such force that his liver popped out of his asshole, took a quick breath of fresh air, and then retracted into the relative safety the abdominal cavity. Joad’s victim-Chelloveck crumpled from the blow and he did not move after being flung to the ground like a piece of refuse.

  “Get him!” shouted one of the soldier-Chellovecks, and the entire group charged Joad. They grabbed and punched and kicked and bit at the giant. And the crush of flailing Chellovecks overwhelmed Joad, chopping his legs out from under him and knocking him to the ground. There was much hugging and clutching, much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Joad rolled about and punched and kicked at the flailing mass of arms and legs that battered him. He squeezed balls to a mushy pulp with his strong hands and crushed tracheas with powerful throat chops. But the number of men attacking him still overwhelmed Joad. He rolled about, still punching and squeezing and biting and found himself face to face with his own ass. In the twisting chaos, Joad saw a swollen pair of testicles dangling before his face, offering themselves up for a good squeezing. He grabbed the nutsack and squashed as hard as he could, not realizing that he was twisted in such an awkward position that the balls in his face were his own.

  And the pain in Joad’s groin spread like fire through his gut. A roar of fury blasted from his mouth. He felt like taking a shit. He felt like crying. He felt like dropping. But more than anything, he was livid, and he felt like killing. With the strength born of pure rage, Joad stood. Chellovecks clung to his body like leeches to a host. Joad grabbed one Chelloveck and snapped his back over one knee as if he were breaking a stick. The crack of the man’s spine echoed throughout the arena and it sickened the spectators, quieting them for the first time. And then Joad fought without making a single sound. He did not grunt. He did not yell. He did not cry out. He picked Chellovecks off of him like ticks. He snapped necks and stomped the life out of his attackers. Two Chellovecks clutched at Joad’s afro and scratched and poked at his eyes. Joad reached up, grabbed the men’s throats in each hand, and brought the heads together with such force as to try to make them both occupy the same space at the same time. Joad brought the men’s faces together for a blood-smattered, bone-crunching kiss. He held the limp bodies out in front of himself and dropped them to the ground. He plucked another Chelloveck from his back and tossed the little man into the arena wall, and the crunch of the man’s bones once again sickened the spectators. The sight of the silently fighting giant struck the Chelloveck crowd dumb with fear. This was a man who would not be defeated by twelve of them. Joad: a massive and unconquerable killing machine. And not one of the soldier-Chellovecks was left standing when he was done.

  At the end of the battle, Joad stood silently in the center of smashed, squashed, and splattered Chellovecks. He surveyed the crushed and lifeless bodies strewn about around him and then looked toward Chelloveck and John. Joad crossed his arms in defiance and waited.

  Chelloveck locked eyes with Joad and said nothing for minutes. The two men stared, unblinking, unspeaking. And then Chelloveck broke the stare and shouted to his men, “Take out the giant and lock him up. He will do battle with your brothers once again on the morrow. And I am confident that the results will be different. Now get this abomination from my sight.”

  The arena door opened and spat two rows of soldier-Chellovecks into the pit. The soldiers surrounded Joad. They ducked behind shields and poked spontoons in the giant’s direction. Recognizing the futility of unarmed battle with a phalanx of angry, armed Chellovecks, Joad dropped to his knees and put his hands behind his back. The Chellovecks pushed Joad to the ground, face-first, and bound his arms behind his back with thick leather straps. They shackled his ankles with heavy chains and forced him to stand. And then the soldier Chellovecks jabbed at Joad with their spears to direct him out of the arena.

  The absence of Joad from Chelloveck’s presence. The sight of spent Chellovecks piled on top of each other in a death wagon. The cider and bezoar intoxication. They all mingled in Chelloveck’s thoughts. He threw his hands to his face and wept, looking more like a frail ancient than John had yet seen. “Damn that beast. He single-handedly decimated my ranks.” And he wept inconsolably, his thin body convulsing with the pain of loss, only pausing now and again to chug more cider or toke on the peace pipe.

  Chelloveck wept and screamed at the sky. Sympathy moved John and he patted at Chelloveck’s back, saying “there, there.” He lifted the goblet of cider to Chelloveck’s mouth and helped him to drink his emotions into submission. And while John found himself feeling sorry for Chelloveck and his loss of sons, he likewise felt concern for the lumbering oaf known as Joad. Something about the giant moved John. He did not seem like a mindless killing machine, as Chelloveck suggested. Even in the midst of the battle, John saw a sensitive, thoughtful creature who just so happened to be fighting for his life. Something about Joad felt like family. And the sympathetic notions churned in John’s gut, paining him and giving him a feeling of strength at the same time.

  And that night, while John, Joad, Santiago and all the Chellovecks slept, The Reverend Android Lovethorn, with a bag of soot from the crematorium of his mountain fortress, stood atop the tallest tower of his fort and summoned the winds of a crossfire hurricane. Lashing himself
to the posts of the tower with leather thongs, Lovethorn leaned out over a great drop and felt the storm’s fingers pulling at him, trying to yank him over the side, the blasts of wind ripping his sunglasses from his head and tossing them into the void. The slight jowls on the Man in Black pulled back taut with the wind; the loose skin flapped from the backsides of his head like shredded sails in a storm, but his slicked, black hair remained perfectly combed and unaffected by the storm. Lovethorn scooped the ashes of the dead and tossed handful after handful into the churning funnels of wind that twisted and chased each other around the tower. The leather straps pulled hard against the post as the storm tried to drag Lovethorn away. The thongs stretched to the point of almost snapping. Sensing the imminent peril of being plucked from the tower by a cyclone and tossed into oblivion, Lovethorn heaved the burlap sack into the air and watched it hurtle into the blackness, trailing a cloud of cadaver dust behind it. Android Lovethorn locked his hands on one of the tower posts and spat into the wind. He laughed a scratchy, mad cackle that the winds ripped from his mouth and carried far into the night, waking confused desert creatures in the badlands below. And his yellow eyes reflected into the dark night, gazing over the span of countless days’ journeys. “Double, double, boils and bubbles,” he shouted into the wind.

  And an enormous cloud of dust spread over the land, blocking out the light of the star Wormwood and the two full moons in the sky. The blanket of black death dispersed in the swirling gales and gusts. The four winds rose from their caves and carried the clouds of dusty death forth. And the clouds pissed torrents of acid rain on the land and people, burning flesh and causing running sores, infecting and afflicting all whom the dust came in contact with. And where it did not rain, the soot settled on people’s skin and in their lungs, causing stinging tumors and mucky death rattle coughing.

  The storm passed and calm settled over Android Lovethorn’s domain as quickly as it had erupted. Lovethorn unlashed himself and slid to the ground, seated with his back against the wall. His eyelids closed, snuffing out the yellow fire in his irises, and his lips moved silently. Despite the lack of audible words, Lovethorn spoke. And he was heard.

  Running sores. Infected running sores. Bubbling abscesses, carbuncles and furuncles. Infected pus-bubbles. Monkeypox. Gangrenous open blebs, blains and boils. Pustules, pimples, ulcers and tumors. These are the things that the Chellovecks found all about their faces and bodies as they rose to the humectrus of the gloomy morn.

  The slate sky blocked out the sun. The scant light that did filter through the ash clouds above cast everything in a sinister glow. A purple haze drifted close to the ground, blurring objects in the distance. And the Chellovecks ran from their dwellings and into the open. They stood before each other in gloomy light, inspecting each other’s bruises, blisters, and burbling blood bubbles. And it was as if the Chellovecks were staring into mirrors, seeing exact replicas of themselves with similar skin blights. And all but one in the village suffered from the oozing leprous skin rash.

  The racket outside of his shelter-bus woke John. He felt refreshed from the feast the night before. A night’s sleep on a mattress stuffed with hay was an immense improvement over his nights resting on the hard-packed desert ground. John stepped from the bus door and into the morning. His unblemished skin radiated a rested and healthful warmth. He rubbed his eyes to clear his fuzzy vision, but realized that his eyes were not clouded with sleep. Instead, the haze hanging about the mesa distorted and blurred everything. He momentarily could not tell if it was day or night. John looked to the sky and saw that it was muddled with a cloud of ash. And the ash eclipsed all else in the sky except for the quick flowing river of clouds that ran above the red brick road. The flowing clouds took on a pinkish tinge from the sunlight above and the path below. The soot in the air stung John’s eyes and he rubbed at them again. He pushed his palms against the burn and it comforted him. He left his hands applying gentle pressure over the eye sockets for minutes and focused only on the pleasant sensation. And then he pulled his hands away and allowed his eyes to adjust. And until his vision cleared, John did not notice that a gang of soldier-Chellovecks were accosting him and jabbing the trident points of spontoons in his direction.

  John gasped at the sight of the Chellovecks. With their running sores and festering boils, the men’s appearance shocked John, even more so than the bedraggled lunkheads he had encountered. He looked around at the Chellovecks and saw that all were plagued with horrific pus-dribbling cankers and diseased tissues. He inspected his own arms, put his hands to his face, and found no such blight on himself.

  “Our father has ordered us to bring you to him,” said the leader of the soldier-Chellovecks, poking his spontoon in John’s direction.

  Two other soldier-Chellovecks approached and grabbed ahold of John’s arms, as if to prevent him from resisting. Instinctively, John gripped his hands on the wrists of the men and squeezed. A soothing calm spread over the soldiers’ arms. They released their hold on John and stood slack as he held their wrists. The healing sensation spread up their arms and throughout their systems, washing over them like warm, clean water. The other soldiers looked on in awe as the soldiers’ bulging, throbbing cysts and boils melted away and left fresh, pink skin in their absence. And when they were cured, the men dropped to their knees and thanked John. He belched and farted and waved them away. Behind the newly healed soldiers, the other Chellovecks lined up in a queue that grew and eventually extended all about the mesa, until every single Chelloveck awaited the healing touch of John the Revelator.

  And for three days and three nights, John laid hands on the Chellovecks and relieved each and every one of their suffering. Instead of tiring from the chore, John drew strength each time that he sucked the poison from a man. There were no ill effects from drawing out the sickness, other than the intense build-up of gas, making John fart and burp continuously as he laid hands on the men. Occasionally, John became so bloated that he had to lay on his back on a stone bench and have Chellovecks sit on his stomach to push out the foul stench that collected in his system as he drew out the men’s sickness and took it on himself.

  At the end of the third day, they led John to Father Chelloveck’s bus. The old man lay on a mattress, shaking and leaking bodily fluids from infected, gaping sores, stuck to the sheets with the coagulated and crystallized blood and pus. A crackling sound emitted from the sheets as Chelloveck writhed and peeled his skin away from the bedding. At the sight of John, Chelloveck sat up, propping himself with his arms, and tried to speak, but the cankers on his face and skin had progressed down into his mouth, stripping his throat raw. He croaked at John but words would not come, only a multi-toned, jangling, incomprehensible rattle that hitched in his throat and pained all that heard it.

  “Lay back, old man,” said John. And he put his hand on Chelloveck’s forehead. John sucked out the affliction. And the energy flowing from Chelloveck nearly knocked John off his feet. John drew out the sickness and sorrow and took it on, farting and burping all the while, as if the release of the gas served to purge his system of whatever malady he was taking in. When it was all over, Chelloveck lay unconscious on his bed, covered in sweat, but cured of the blisters and boils. Finally spent from his three straight days of sleep deprivation, John fell to the ground and passed out. His ass bleated sulphuric puffs and his belly vented rotten, bile-stinking belches. Several Chellovecks picked John up, carried his dead weight to his bus, and put him on his mattress. As the men left the bus, the blurps and blarps of flatulence and eructation boomed out like an untrained horn section. John and Chelloveck both slept as if dead to the world.

  And after a full day’s rest and recuperation, John and Chelloveck parleyed in the Tent of Meeting. The Chelloveck guards dunked John in the basin outside of the bright red tabernacle to ensure that he was ceremonially clean and gave him fresh clothes of fine twisted linen. Chelloveck guards – dressed in coats of many colors and wearing pale grey metal helmets topped with blue fadoodle plumag
e – stood sentry on each side of the entryway. The guards crossed their spontoons in a forbidding X that barred any uninvited visitors. From the outside the shelter presented as an optical illusion, looking like little more than a small, single-roomed dwelling. But when the front doors pulled back, John walked into a spacious big top bedecked with plush couches and animal skins. Halls led from the center gathering room to other chambers. Soothing, tuneful hums escaped the chambers and combined in the gathering room in sublime harmonies. Chelloveck sat cross-legged on a puffed cushion, looking rejuvenated. He waved John in to sit with him. John accepted the invitation and sat on a fluffed cushion.

  “The Chellovecks thank you for what you did for us over the past couple of days,” said Chelloveck. “It was a selfless act that I will not forget.” He put his ear trumpet to his ear and waited for John’s response.

  “It was nothing,” said John. He was glad to have helped. With each Chelloveck that he drained of the plague, John felt a stirring within. An awareness. Knowledge. Power. The sickness fed the void in John, threw light on the darkness. It did not so much answer questions about John’s situation as it made him care less about his past and more about his future. He instinctively began to understand things that he had no words to explain. “I would have done it for three more days and nights if needed.”

  “I know that,” said Chelloveck, stroking at his frosty chin curtain and furrowing his wiry eyebrows. “I also know that we were stricken with the skin ulcerations because you are here. The Man in Black came to me as I slept and threw ashes of the dead in my face. The dark spirit plagued this land because he wants you to stay away from him. I am supposed to hold you captive here until his men arrive to take custody of you. He is sending a squad at this very moment to get you.”