Sloughing Off the Rot Read online

  John rose unsteadily to his feet and wobbled, almost falling back down. Backing away from Santiago, John said, “You ate my ear. You ate my fucking ear. You’re crazy. Just leave me alone.” He continued to shrink back from Santiago, shaking his head in disbelief. “You ate my fucking ear.”

  Thin, dry lips parted, revealing Santiago’s moldy smile. “Come on, man. It doesn’t matter. Your ear will grow back. And besides, I warned you that I was hungry. I’m always hungry, man. You should have said uncle.”

  “What do you mean my ear will grow back?” John held his hand tightly to the side of his head to stanch the bleeding and felt the thub, thub, thub, thub of the injury throbbing on the palm of his hand.

  “That’s the way things work here.”

  “Where is here?” asked John, waving his free hand about around himself.

  “That’s what you need to find out,” said Santiago as he climbed back atop the balanced rock and sat, Indian style.

  “I need to be anywhere but here,” John said. He turned and started to walk. “I certainly don’t need to be attacked and chewed on.”

  “Wait up, man,” Santiago shouted from the rock as John continued to walk away. “Don’t you want to know what our purposes are before you split?”

  And John paused his retreat, stopping but not turning back. “Why should I believe that you have any answers for me?”

  “Because I’m spiritually allied with the desert, Jack. I’m spiritually allied with the scorpion and the wolf. You live in your physical realm. But, I’m in the spiritual, baby. I walk and talk and do all the physical things. But that’s only because I want to. Dig? If I don’t want to do something, I don’t have to. I’m not stuck on that trip. See?”

  “No, Santiago or whatever your name is, I don’t see,” said John, flapping his arms about spastically as if slapping Santiago’s words from the air before they could reach him. “You don’t make any sense. If you have some answers for me, please just give them.”

  “I have no answers.”

  “Then why did you ask me to stop?”

  “Because I know where your answers can be found.”

  “Well, tell me then,” said John.

  “You must climb the mountain and seek the counsel of the burning thorn bush.”

  “Okay, so you’re just talking nonsense again. I get it. Thanks for nothing.” John turned and began walking again. Almost immediately, Santiago appeared at his side, grabbing his arm to stop him.

  “For real, man,” Santiago said. “Just turn around and look.”

  With the last of his patience, John stopped and turned around. Santiago’s buggy whip arm extended his hand and pointed toward the mountain from which John exited. A stone’s throw above the cave entrance sat a thorn bush, alight with great blue and orange flames, but the bush itself did not burn.

  Flames flicked and swirled about the crucifixion thorn. Flares from the fire licked at John’s face and clothes, cauterized his wounded ear, the intense dry heat applying a natural rouge to his skin but not drawing blisters. “I am the god of hellfire. And I bring you fire,” boomed the voice from the bush. “You are lost, and I am found. You are death and I am life. I am rubber and you are glue. I’ll be your mirror, reflecting your life back at you.”

  The voice and its words gripped John’s throbbing curiosity and rubbed at it in a most stimulating way. With his desire to know now aroused and standing at full attention, John spasmed and spurted his words, “Tell me. Who am I? What is happening? Why am I here?”

  “All in good time, my son. All in good time.” The bush flared and threw off sparks. Then, resuming a low burn, it continued, “For now, you are just John. A blank slate. Tabula rasa. An uncarved block. To tell you too much about your past would condemn you to relive it. To tell you too little would be doing too little. For now, just be. Your history will be revealed to you in due time. For the time being, suffice it to say that in your previous life you were a miserable son of a bitch. An emotional cripple. A user and an abuser. A destroyer of hope and happiness and all that is good. A loser and a wuss and a whiner. But that is not you now. This is your rebirth. You, rising from the ashes and becoming.”

  “Becoming what?”

  “Yes. That is the question, isn’t it?”

  And the flames flared up again and forced John’s eyes shut. He cringed back and away from the bush. The light burned his retinas through the thin, clenched eyelids.

  “What do I do?” John shielded his face from the fire. “How do I get home?”

  “You follow the trail.”

  “What trail?” asked John.

  “Look toward the heavens.”

  A westerly flowing river of bright, white clouds cut through the sky, flowing faster than the other cumulo fracti hanging in the air. Looking from the heavens, and to the ground and back again, John saw that the river of clouds traced the same path as a red brick road on the ground.

  “Follow the red brick road, El Camino de la Muerte. Follow the trail. He who follows the trail is at one with the trail. He who is virtuous experiences virtue. He who loses the way is lost. When you are at one with the trail, the trail welcomes you. Follow the trail.”

  “Where will the trail take me?”

  “To a man who will help you get home.”

  “Where is home?” asked John.

  “That is the question. Isn’t it?”

  The red road swerved and swayed for miles, tapering off to a point at the top of a slight rise. John sat at the mouth of the cave, leaning back on his hands with his legs splayed out before him, tracing the path of the clouds above and then looking back to the crumbling brickwork path. The shift of his eyes from the ground to the sky and back again enhanced the optical illusion that the road was slithering like a snake to its sharp culmination miles in the distance.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Santiago squatted in front of John, arms wrapped around his knees, and wiggled the furry caterpillar above his bulbous eyes. “Your journey can’t start until you take the first step. So let’s do it, pal. Put one foot in front of the other. Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know that I’m going anywhere. This doesn’t make sense to me. I know I must be dreaming, or hallucinating, or something, because none of this makes sense.” John waved his hand, indicating the arid landscape in front of him. Scanning the horizon, John noted two crescent moons in the sky. “Oh boy. None of this makes any sense.”

  “It don’t have to make sense, Johnny,” said Santiago. “If you hadn’t noticed, you ain’t in Kansas anymore. This is your reality. It’s as real as the infection that is already setting in on your ear.”

  John pressed his palm to his ear and winced. “Ow. How the hell can an infection set in so quickly?”

  “Two reasons,” Santiago held two fingers up in a reverse peace sign. “One,” he curled his pointer finger toward his fist, leaving the middle waggling in John’s face, “you were talking to that bush for a hell of a long time. Much longer than you probably realized. And, two,” the middle finger curled in to make a fist that Santiago waved much too close to John’s nose, “bites from humans are far worse than those from other animals. I mean, who knows what the hell kind of diseases I might have. Right?”

  “Great,” snapped John. “What the hell am I supposed to do? I can feel my ear throbbing and getting hot. It really hurts.”

  Santiago said, “There’s only one thing to do about an infection like that.” He pulled the leather sack from around his neck. His thin fingers uncinched the sack’s rawhide tie and dug around. “Alright, open your eyes wide and look toward the sky.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked John, looking upward as he was told. “Why should I trust you?” Directly above him, a blood red sun tossed off great orange flares. The direct glimpse of the burning star heated John’s retinas and caused temporary partial blindness, leaving him with only a glowing halo of peripheral vision.

  John did not see Santiago dangling plump grubs just abo
ve his head. He did not see that the larvae were pale, moist, and wrinkled, or that they had disproportionately large, fierce pincers that reached for his eyes as the maggots wriggled and tried to escape Santiago’s grasp.

  Santiago said, “You should trust me because it doesn’t matter. It’s all a dream, right? So just go with the flow as it washes you along. Follow the trail where it takes you. And, brace yourself, Sonny, because this is going to pinch a little.” Santiago released the grubs from his grasp, dropping them directly into John’s eyes. “It might even be excruciating.”

  And John screamed. He rolled on the ground and clawed at his eyes, but to no avail. He shouted the names of fifty different gods in vain, but the gods paid no attention to his cries. Upon making contact with the sclera, the grubs locked their pincers on the whites of John’s eyes and pulled themselves under the lacrimal sacs and into the sockets. John felt the creatures squirming behind his eyes, into his head, tearing at him and feeding as they explored his skull. And then he felt numb and dumb. Absolute blackness that began to shift again toward light. From the blackness, the ten thousand things reappeared. His vision returned with great clarity, as if a curtain had been lifted from his eyes. A warm, satisfied, and safe feeling caressed him.

  At some point during his ordeal, it rained. John lay on the rock, feeling the natural sauna of sage scented vapor leaving the rock, warming him, opening his pores, cleansing him. As he tried to sit up, Santiago placed a hand on John’s forehead and another over his ear. Santiago said, “Not yet, Johnny. Stay down on the ground and look toward me.”

  John looked in Santiago’s direction. Detachedly, he watched Santiago raise his hand and smack down at his uninfected ear. John remained calm and accepted the slap as if it were expected. With another whack to the side of his head, John felt something stretching and a wiggling in the canal of his infected ear. Santiago cupped his palm to the side of John’s head and left it there until the discomfort in John’s ear ceased.

  “Wow, look at those babies,” said Santiago, pulling his hand away and looking at the engorged, thumb-sized larvae in his hands. Their now-black bodies oozed an oily substance. Their horns tore at Santiago’s palm. Their bodies squirmed and mutated abruptly, sprouting legs. Brown armor and wings, tinged with the virescent hues of death, formed around the previously fleshy bodies, metamorphosizing the creatures into fierce, enormous beetles. Santiago shook the scarabs from his hand and they skittered away along a zigzag path toward the red brick road, the chitinous clinking of their tiny feet tap-tap-tapping out their retreat. “It’s a good thing they cleaned you out because there must have been a lot of mung in there. I’ve never seen them grow so big.”

  “What the hell were those things? What did you do to me?” said John.

  “What the hell were those things? What did you do to me?” Santiago mocked, and then laughed nervously. Twisting at a tangle of hair hanging in his face, and then rubbing his beard, Santiago grinned and said, “Those were lunkworms. A miracle and a curse, depending on your general makeup. The question and the answer. They can cure what ails you. They can be the worst things to ever happen to you. Just depends on how you deal with them. Those two babies I dropped on you, they gorged on your infection. You are clean and not infected with any defiling mold or fungus.”

  Santiago dumped his sack into his palm, shaking out a handful of the lunkworms for John to see. The small mound of larvae wriggled. Maggots unsuccessfully strove to crawl to the edges of Santiago’s cupped hand but ultimately tumbled back into the squirming clump of grubs. John watched in horror as Santiago threw his head back and dropped several worms into his own eyes. As John did before him, Santiago clawed at his eyes when the worms locked onto the sclera and tunneled behind the eyeballs, back into his head. The madman tore at his hair and rolled about on the ground, throwing up a cloud of dust and shrieking at the heavens. There was much weeping and gnashing of the teeth. When it looked as if he could take it no longer, as if his heart or his brain or some other major organ might explode, Santiago stopped and stiffened, his arms locked straight and to his sides, his legs extended and motionless.

  John stood above the thin, petrified form and looked down, wondering if Santiago died. Not a muscle on the little man moved. His chest did not swell and fall with respiration. His body froze in a pose. His eyes remained closed. And then they opened, flipping from side to side. Santiago laughed nervously, tugged at his beard.

  “Holy moly!” said Santiago. “I just flipped my friggin’ wig, Johnny.” His face rapidly contorted and cycled through his range of expressions.

  John sat again, right next to Santiago, looked over the little man, and said, “I get it that the worms ate my infection. I understand why you gave them to me. But you’re not ill. Why did you drop the worms in your eyes?”

  Santiago sprang to his feet and raised his voice, almost yelling, but not in anger, “It’s not all about infection. Those that are whole don’t need no doctor. Yeah? It’s about reflection and introspection, baby. It’s about inflection, detection, rejection, and the house of correction. It’s about injection and the violin section. It’s about my erection.” Santiago grabbed at the swelling in his loincloth. “It’s about perfection.”

  With a startlingly stunning clarity of mind, John understood Santiago’s rant. John noticed everything. He marveled at the shape of the individual grains of sand. He was amazed at the points on the thorns and the spikes on the cacti. He scanned the world around him and noted the slightest of color variations in the rocks and the sky and found novelty in everything he saw. He gawked at the trail in the sky and felt its movement. “Trails,” he murmured. The sounds of insects on the rocks and small desert animals chittering registered in his head and took on new meaning. John studied the dirt-clogged pores on Santiago’s cheeks and forehead, the strands of beard as they intertwined and knotted into an intricate mess.

  “I see you digging on the cut of my jib, Johnny. You’re starting to understand my jive. I can see it in your eyes. Well that’s all just great and groovy. But you still don’t really dig it yet. Do you?”

  “I think I do,” said John, tearing his eyes away from an intriguing clump of discolored skin on the side of Santiago’s nose. “You gave me those worms. They made my ear feel better. Thanks for that. I’m just glad that we’re done with the worms.”

  “You ain’t done with nothing, brother. And those worms ain’t done with you.” Santiago’s voice rose to urgency again and he flailed his arms about wildly. “They’re still a coming at you. It’s a coming at you. A big wave is coming and you better lash yourself to something strong cause we’re gonna be tossed about and it’s gonna be a hell of a night.”

  Santiago flung himself backward toward the ground. His words spat rapid-fire from his mouth in a frothy logorrhea and fluttered about in front of John’s face. He saw the madman’s random utterances taking physical form, spelled out in the air in great bold, thick, capital letters. The word LAPIDATE shot from Santiago’s beard-crusted orifice and pinged off John’s forehead, leaving a welt and a small scrape. Next BLOOD spewed from Santiago’s mouth and soaked John’s face and chest. BIRD flew from his mouth, coasted on the wind currents above John and dropped a SLOPPY SHIT, which bespattered his shoulder. MIGHTY FIST OF RAGE hammered the side of John’s head and knocked him on his back, right next to Santiago.

  John closed his eyes and shielded his head. And though Santiago continued to rave, his words no longer physically assaulted John. Without open eyes to give them power, the words dropped and thudded on the ground, became two-dimensional lower case phrases, and expired. A tugging at his belly, like a hook on the end of a rope pulling at him, yanked John into the air. He dangled there, looking down at his supine, motionless body. His tall, thin form, arms outspread, looked as if it were welcoming the abusive words as they rained down upon him. His eyes clenched. His stubbly face twisted up in a smile. Next to his body, John saw Santiago, still flat on his back, his mouth erupting a gush of unconnected, bolded word
s into the air. Many of the words were emphatic and given great force by gargantuan exclamation marks. Still, with his eyes closed, the words did John no violence. They merely bounced off of him, scattered about his body on the ground.

  And then, John saw both his and Santiago’s bodies lifted from the ground as if they were marionettes on strings. Their bodies jerked and lurched about awkwardly, as if trying to fight off some outside force that was making them move. As they moved, their bodies gradually took on more fluid, lifelike movements. The men jumped and ran and flailed about. John watched on from above, feeling detached from the action. With a powerful whoosh, he felt himself sucked back into his body, felt the strain of his muscles and the compulsion to move forward, to run and jump and dance. No longer a spectator, John felt the frenzy of random emotions and the need to groove.

  Red and gold brick roads, starting at a center point and spinning outward, expanding as they swirled, set out two separate paths, the red opening up to the west and the gold spreading out in the opposite direction. And starting at the center of the two-toned swirl, John and Santiago bounced and jumped and kicked up their heels and allowed themselves to be washed along with the wave that pushed them down the red brick road. They whirled down the road, spinning madly, pulled by the current of the river of clouds above them.

  Along the road, they encountered other men and boys. Santiago plucked an everlasting supply of worms from his bottomless bag and dropped them in the people’s eyes. And the men and boys joined them and danced along the road, spinning and circling around John, as planets orbiting a sun. The dancers, their arms raised to the sky and grooving to some cosmic jam, spun and jumped and kicked up dust, ushering John and Santiago along.

  The road curved and swelled and welcomed the frenetic swarm of dirty, sweaty bodies. Along the way, members of the crowd picked up instruments and began to play. Bouzoukis and baglamas plinked and sang and dueled feverishly, the three-stringed instruments reverberating and complementing each other, driving the pace of the dancers faster. Flutes fluttered frenetically above the din. Those without instruments picked up sticks and clinked them together or beat on drums or jars. Some chanted and moaned in unison. Others clapped their hands until it hurt. Still others just danced.