Sloughing Off the Rot

by Lance Carbuncle

  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.”

  Lovethorn turned to the crowd, “Can we abide this behavior?”

  “No, Father,” shouted the congregation as one, all starry-eyed and intoxicated on the Man in Black’s vain and profane ramblings.

  Reverend Android Lovethorn stomped about the stage and shouted back, “Does this man hold any power in our house?”

  “No, Father,” responded the congregation.

  “Then what should we do with this pathetic scurve who shows his face before us as if we are to bow down to him and gape in wonder at his splendor?”

  And the clamor of the congregation boiled over in the pews. “Slice him,” some shouted. “Beat him,” screamed others. “Toss him in a cell and throw away the key,” one man shouted.

  And then a piercing soprano scream piped out of one of the castrati, cut through the din, and rose above the uproar. “Let us drink his blood.”

  And the others agreed. “Drink his blood,” they all chanted.

  “Drink his blood it is, then,” agreed Lovethorn, and he held the golden cup above his head, slopping blood on the floor of the stage. And the red bricks drank of the blood and wore its rusty stain. “Come before me, aisle by aisle, man by man, and drink from Copa de Oro. Drink the blood most precious. Drink from the cup full of his abominations and filthiness.”

  The parade of horribles, the deformed and decrepit worshippers, flowed from the pews and appeared one by one before Lovethorn. And they genuflected before Reverend Android Lovethorn and placed their sore-crusted lips on the golden cup. And as they drank, some fell to the floor and twitched and seized and rolled off of the stage. Others shook and lurched all over the church floor. Some screamed out in strange tongues and pressed hands to their faces as if restraining some great power. Others dropped to the floor and gave up the ghost.

  As each of Lovethorn’s worshippers drank of the blood, John felt his spirit draining from his head and his heart. His head flopped to the side and the soldier behind him righted it and held it there so that the ropes did not completely cut of John’s air. And as John drifted toward oblivion, Lovethorn’s body throbbed with raw energy and the potency given over by John’s apparent surrender.

  Lovethorn once again approached John and stood inches away without touching him. And he saw that John had no fight left in him. The Man in Black felt the energy pulsing through his every fiber and every cell. Gripped in the mania of his followers, dizzy with his new power, and drunkenly brazen from his complete and unexpected control of John, Lovethorn lifted the bloodstained linen and ogled the wound in John’s side as if it were the quivering slit of a fresh blumpkin.

  Lovethorn blew his fetid breath in John’s face and they locked eyes. Just as John had pushed through the wall of heat and noise to enter the hall of worship, Lovethorn pushed through the almost overpowering fear he felt of John. He touched John’s side and no bolt of lightning struck him down, no jolt of electricity threw him to the ground, no pillar of fire fell on him. He smiled his pointy-toothed grin and held his hand to John’s side. Working first one finger, then two and three into the cut, Lovethorn tore the flesh on John’s side, jamming the fingers in knuckle-deep.

  The pained grimace on John’s face aroused Android Lovethorn further. And the Man in Black squished his fingers in and out of the open wound as if he were popping a ripe blumpkin. And his rod filled with blood and strained against the leather pants that held it down. So he rubbed at his loins with his free hand and probed at John’s side with the other. And in his fervor, Lovethorn’s eyes turned down toward John’s wound. He did not see John throw his head back from the jolt of energy that shot through him. He did not see the fire reappear in John’s eyes. He did not realize that John now held his head up without the assistance of the soldier. Lovethorn did not realize his fatal error in touching John until it was too late.

  And when Android Lovethorn felt the burning on his hand, like the sting of one thousand scorpions, he pulled his fingers from John’s side and looked down in horror. His hand began to shrivel from a creeping, black, defiling mold. And the necrosis of his flesh rapidly spread, wasting the limb all the way to the shoulder. And the arm crumbled and fell from him, turning to dust as it landed on the red bricks. The weariness that had appeared in John’s eyes now fell hard on Lovethorn and he collapsed on the floor of his own altar. And he realized that John’s touch sapped him of his energy, it drained him of his sickness and blackness. It bled Lovethorn of the very things that gave him his power. And the blight that consumed his arm spread to all parts of his body, graying his skin and withering his substance. The red in his eyes turned yellow and his slick hair fell over his forehead, obscuring his gaze. At the same time, John fed on the sickness and took back all of the energy that Lovethorn’s followers robbed him of when they drank his blood. John took on the sickness, just as he had with others, and it charged him with staggering strength.

  The ropes that bound John to the cross snapped and frayed at the mere flex of his arms and legs. He dropped the ropes to the bricks and slowly stepped down from the stake. Lovethorn cowered on the ground before John and struggled to drag himself away. He pointed his dagger at John. The Man in Black hissed and spat, but lacked the energy to do anything else. Android Lovethorn’s emaciated body trembled at John’s approach.

  John stepped toward Lovethorn and stood over him – looking down at the beast that was, and is and yet is not – feeling no fear of the shuddering husk of a man at his feet. The congregation cringed in their pews and recoiled when John looked out at them. None of Lovethorn’s followers rushed in his direction. Even the soldiers who tied John to the cross had disappeared from the altar. And a voice rang out in John’s head, “Now is the time. You can make him send you back. He will do as you order him. Make him send you back home. Go back to yourself.”

  “I don’t want to go back,” John shouted at the voice in his head. “There is nothing there for me. I don’t remember who I was and I don’t care. I like who I am now and see that only good will come of my sloughing off the rot. I belong here. And Lovethorn deserves to die.”

  The voice in his head trumpeted, “Do not kill him! If you kill him, you will die here, you will die there, and all that you have done and become will be for naught.” And the power of the voice stabbed at John’s head like a dagger, momentarily staggering him.

  John stood stunned on the stage, hovering over Lovethorn and arguing with the voice in his head. Taking advantage of John’s distraction, Lovethorn drew on his remaining energy and lunged forward with the d
agger, just missing John’s injured side by inches. And Lovethorn’s final effort brought John back to the present. And he realized that he was at the end of the red brick road, standing over the man that he sought. John leaned down and took the dagger from Lovethorn’s hand without a fight. And he drew the dagger back and thrust it into Lovethorn’s chest, driving it into his black heart and twisting it deeper.

  And just before he expired, Lovethorn loosed a furious roar like the sounds of one thousand dying men. And the deafening roar took the physical form of a black cloud pouring from his mouth and hovering above the congregation. And the black cloud exploded above their heads. Dark, writhing ribbons of smoke shot out in all directions from the explosion, many of them falling on the congregation, and others falling on the rest of the inhabitants of Abaddon outside of the temple. The black tendrils filled the mouths and nostrils of Lovethorn’s followers. They breathed in the snakes of smoke. They swallowed the black tendrils. And all whom the ribbons of blackness infested, they echoed their master’s scream and took on his madness.

  On the altar, John stood back and watched Lovethorn’s body crumble into a small mound of ashes. And the men before John frothed at the mouths and rushed the stage, seeking to avenge the death of Lovethorn. They clawed at each other in an effort to be the first to reach John. But those possessed by Lovethorn’s demons were no match for John.

  Powerful words, channeled from above, flowed through John’s mouth and he chastised his foes, saying, “And as the storm passes through, the wicked will be washed away and the righteous will remain. Now be gone. Be gone from your nests, you pests.” And, he called to the sky, bringing down bolts of lightning and pillars of fire on the den of thieves. He overturned the tables and chairs in their temple and vented his furious wrath on those who attacked him. And those who were not laid low by John’s fury fled the temple and ran to the far corners of Abaddon for safety.