The god of the holler: or the clown cried also.
He wore his long-nosed mask, that was truly his face and his ragged torn tapestry of colors in boxes that was his costume. Red, black, and green the playing card patterns distracted from the wear an tear of his symbolic armor. All of him glowing like a glow worm, a symptom of the different dimension he was born in.
Zan the Harlequin
"I came to search for lost time,
the tree of reason is no more.
With fruit as sour as a lime.
The act of eating is a chore.
Wherein this lie is a crime,
regret I haven't seen before.
I came to search for lost time,
the tree of reason is no more."
His voice was scratchy and had it's own echo as he spoke. His wild red eyes were staring at the dirt road he walked down. The overwhelming, lack of sympathy in it all. No way to make peace with any of this bad luck.
The shack was surrounded by hills on all sides but only on the horizon. It looked like it was possessed by the wind or whatever controlled the haunted air. Each window is growing yellow with the flickering light of a fire inside of its fireplace. Smoke is rising from the chimney like a blanket on the mass of stars in the sky.
Zan did not know what time it was, but he had long given up to hurrying to his destination. Instead, plodding through the mud towards his master. Towards whatever he summoned Zan for.
He opened the door hearing a screech then a voice saying "Close the damn door!" it was his master thought Zan. "Where the hell have you been?" the angry old man continued. "I was walking the miles it took to get here," said Zan without emotion "which by the way I would like to know what it was you summoned me for?" "Well," said the old man "we are going to kill the god of this god forsaken hell hole!" "Great...." thought Zan "now we have a job to do. now we have a way out of this boring as lust dimension."
His master's name was Fyodor Wagner. Fyodor was not his real name nor Wagner, but no one was certain of the truth around the man I am describing not even me. He had scars on his face and body. Wore shorts and t-shirts and always had a two hundred dollar katana on his hip (never leaving his cabin, for fear of separation) that his mother gave him on his thirteenth birthday. His hair was graying but not falling out. And he once had a noise rock band called transcendent myth which was nothing more than average.
Fyodor was a master of spiritual gambling, and Fyodor was known as the holy roller. He had a fifty-two deck of cards he had drawn himself. Each with a symbol of a playing card in the corner and an illustration in the center of a monster that must be defeated or a magical item for the magician to use. The even numbers were magic items. The odd ones were the spiritual beasts that must be overcome. The face cards or royalty were allies or archetypes that are summoned to assist the player.
On the quest for the fifty-third card (the joker.) which is always the seventh card after the six cards of trials and blessings. The lesser god of a world you are seeking comes forward be it internal or external. And you use your blessings to fight it. Or, die during the trial before you have a chance to confront it. If the player succeeds he is teleported to another dimension forever seeking god's to slay so that he may travel. The name of the game is the trial of the dragon.
Fyodor is said to have sold his soul to the devil. For the chance to play a game with proper stakes. It just so happened that his game sometimes saves souls and breaks spirits.
He shuffled the orange and black cards and laid them down in a row of six. The first was the three of spades and on this card was drawn a skull, and it's long shadow and name beneath it Mu the spirit of loss. Then was the two of hearts and on this was brought a cross with the word mercy. Then came the jack of clover the warrior of the dead. Next was the five of spades O'zic the spirit beast, with the word written beneath his crude portrait: restlessness. Then the queen of spades the goddess of wisdom and war, and the six of spades a sword made from the bones of the snake that tempted Adam and Eve.
Zan looked at Fyodor and said, "Well that was not as bad as it could have been." "No," said Fyodor "but it is still an old man and a clown from hell that must fight two monsters and a demon."
Zan - "Why did you make this stupid game?"
Fyodor - "I did it for fun, confronting my demons and others. What else is there than chain smoking and heroin. Whiskey and tooth decay. Fucking and it's problematic consequences. You were born in Hell, weren't you?"
Zan - "In one of the planes, I lived in the body of a dead god that was thrown into a black hole. His soul is expanding eternally against infinite mass that was trying to crush him. And his spiritual death gave birth to the universe I was born in. I am happy to have been brought away from it to follow you on your chivalric bushido of self-destruction, but I was sleeping comfortably in my bed till you rang my cell, and being tired, I must ask why now?"
Fyodor - "Because we have a few minutes before the first trial and I want to know I am not wasting my last breath as a living man. Becuase I have finally found a spirit in this backwoods reality that qualifies as a god to the entity I sold my soul to. Damn Zan why the god of hell do you make me so angry! I have already used my bangle-glove, and the creature is trapped. we only have two trials before I get to it, so I hope this goes well."
Zan - "Have you fought this one before?"
Fyodor - "Yes, I have to crack death's skull before he touches one of us with one of his three shadows palms."
Zan - "What happens if it does?"
Fyodor - "We cease to exist."
Zan was thinking about the madness of people in the south in the twenty-first century. About, the confusion of people in this world and it's people who try to take their small world and make it into some external cosmology for the rest of creation.
Soon they saw the shadows correlate into a corner of the room where a skull was pulling through the walls. The shadows that touched it were like black cobwebs. There was no voice just the crawling shadow. Fyodor pulled out his sword throwing the sheath at the skull the metal of it bouncing off the white of the head and disappearing into the shadows.
Zan was watching not enthusiastic to help the one who summoned him on this occasion. The idea of ceasing to exist being enough for him to wait for this one out. while in a magnificent leap Fyodor jumped forward to swing his cheap katana at the skull and cracking it. With the card with death's name and number written on it lifting itself off of the table levitating and burning over the table until it was gone.
"Well, that wasn't that bad," said Zan. "He was the second weakest beast in the trial of the dragon." said Fyodor. "besides, we still have two more fight's to go."
The second card on the table lifted itself up levitating and burning. "that was a heal." said Fyodor. "Too bad it was wasted on the healthy," said Zan "shit could be worse," said Fyodor. The third card levitated and burned with a ghost of the jack of clovers entering the room. "Lancelot, you're on the front end," said Fyodor.
Lancelot - "Yes Lord! As it is your will to command"
Zan - "this one is the five of spades, at least they are low-level cards."
Fyodor - "this one is large though... he is going to tear that roof down."
Zan - "O'zic the restless, I have fought this one before about two jumps back."
Fyodor - "Yeah, I am getting to old for this. Zan where ever you are in life stay the fuck away from those damn karmic demons. My fate may be hell, but you could be so much more."
Zan - "what the hell are you talking about?"
Fyodor - "I study the way of death, and it's about time to put into practice what I have learned."
Zan - "don't say that...."
The roof cracked open from the truck-sized hands of O'zic as he ripped off a corner of the house. The three-eyed elephant-like head was leaning into the house with its crab-like legs supporting its body. Its potbellied abdomen lay dragging on the ground as it pushed its head as large as it hands into the house and its third eye glowing below its crown too small for its head.
It screeched through its trunk signaling the shuddering of all in the room but for Fyodor. The windows vibrated and shattered as blood leaked out of Zod's ear's and poured down the side of Fyodor's head.
Lancelot charged jumping up and slashed but was grabbed in the trunk that in a moment would crush the life out of him. Fyodor leaped and used Lancelot as a shield plunged his sword up through the knight and into the head of O'zic.
Another card levitated and burned. Next was the Queen of spades Athena she told them she would reward them if they succeeded in the trial she would give them. "we have waited for this card to come up for years...." thought Zan. "take my friend somewhere he will be happy." said Fyodor. And the wish was made.
The burden of the trial was the loss of Fyodor left hand. The stump still there as the last card levitated and burned. It was a sword made from the bones of the snake that tricked eve.
They would kill the god of this holler. It was a giant frog as big as a hot tub with a woman for a tung. It appeared like a ghost translucent and weird as an early twentieth-century creature described in a pulp magazine.
The frog-god was bloated with black oozing puss swelling and popping as it's wet flesh moved. Warts or pimples the things popped and drizzled the floor with its mess. The frog opened its mouth showing the upper body of a beautiful young woman sown onto the frog's tung at the hips. "I am the god of this world...." spoke the woman. "as you can see, though I created it...now I am but a servant to male debauchery." Fyodor interrupted "I have no desire to hear your pathetic blather. Come at me at once and be free!"
The Frog-god closed its mouth with the same purpose as a pitcher winding up for a throw. It launched its tung towards what it knew to be the only threat in the room. The woman screamed as she moved towards Fyodor but was impaled with the poison blade as she grabbed her target. Caught him and wrapped around pulling him off his feet and into the mouth of the god. Fyodor was cut in the struggle of the poisoned god. Being poisoned he and the god died. Zan cried out ringing his costume with clenched fists at his waist as he saw the demons back that pulled his friend down to hell a black shadow of a hand wrapping around the corpse and pulling the spirit towards its oblivion with his friend and lover scream echoing in the damaged room as he was drug away.
As the game was played and honorably Zan was teleported with the consent of the devil that took his lover to somewhere he did not know of. where he would be most happy. He felt the world dissolving and changing shape. Where once was an old shack was now unapologetically savage salvation.
Zan was in a land that was not what he had expected he was home in the theater of the universe. The wonderfully crazy place he was born where human being were cattle for a macabre assortment of alien life. A world that was unapologetically viscous as his now dead lover.
Zan wondered through the endless staircases in the tapestry of stairs and stages where every dramatist played out their tragedies through a theater of clowns willing to read there maddening dialogue before no one but the other performers. Until one day he died in disappointment from a heart attack while he was being jerked off on stage by a young male actor.
The performance went on with his corpse laying on the stage. The other clowns cannibalized his corpse after the performance eating his raw flesh in stretching stringy bytes that were soon forgotten. But wherever he went Zan was alone.
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