A Pilgrim’s Progress

The cracks in the dry earth fill with water until they reflect the cruel stars like a million pieces of broken mirror. By now, I am far north of that doleful place near the river where the spirits of the dead lick their teeth as I pass by. How they watch my body, fat with blood. My body is tired. It does not feel. My soul almost feels. It craves. It craves the Holy City. It craves like an infant craves beautiful faces without really knowing why. Oh, my soul. I will see the city tomorrow.

My legs spasm again. This time, they do not stop. I fall into the mud. My soul cannot will my body to stand. It drags itself against a tree beside the road. The rain rolls down my chest and my legs. It carries dirt back to the earth. It cannot wash the filth from my soul.

The night dogs watch me in the moonlight with their sad eyes and dripping mouths with human lips. We watch one another until my eyes—like my legs—betray my soul. I fall asleep. I do not dream.

†

The city crouches on its sacred hill. It is a city like many others. I do not even feel disappointment. It is written the dead yearn for disappointment.  

I follow my hungry soul up the road until it is blocked by a row of pointed stakes. The gateman demands my weapons before I may enter. I am unarmed. I tell him this and he takes two steps away from me as if I am plagued.

The hill smells like brimstone. A stream runs down the road to my left; its yellow-green waters boil on their own. I follow the stream into the city proper, to its source, to the stone hall where the Baptizers practice their craft.

I ring a brass bell beside a door carved from porous rock. A Baptizer answers my call and I leave alms in his hands. It is all that I have ever had.

He asks me why I have come.

I tell him, I am unclean.

He asks me if I feel remorse for my trespasses.

I say, I am so unclean that remorse can no longer touch me. In the beginning, I felt it in the space below my stomach, but soon my trespasses filled my mouth with a salty flavor that putrefied my guts from the inside to the outside. There came a time where I did not feel that pain in my offal any more, except for sometimes in my dreams. I often dreamt of my son. He would sit on my sternum and decay over and over again, like a tree changing its leaves, spilling over my heart, reduced to a sour compost from which nothing could ever grow, from which not even the worms could draw sustenance, from which God could derive no parable. Now, I no longer dream. Sometimes I dash coarse stones across my body in the dark of night to test if I am still awake. Even then, I am often unsure.

†

I strip naked and drink water from a carved cranium. My Baptizer tells me it belonged to a saint. The water smells like the stream.

My body drinks the water until it cannot drink any more. Then, my Baptizer tells me to eat a flatbread baked with a sour red fruit. There is little room in my stomach. It curdles in my gut. My body convulses. The food and water pours from each of its holes. He sheds water from a clay vase over my shivering body until I am washed of my fresh filth. The runoff drips through a drain in the floor.

Good, my Baptizer says. Now you are empty.

†

He leads me into the depths of the temple. His shoulder carries my weight and he sings a hymn in the old tongue. Though I have defecated in front of him, his touch makes me more aware of my nakedness. The warm flesh against my own sends electricity through my spine. I perceive the lightning but I cannot feel it. It simply lingers in my lumbar as it once did the first time another’s fingertips ran along my scalp. I consider the atrocities I would commit to make meaning from this sensation, if I had the strength to stand. The passage to the baptism is a longer pilgrimage than the weeks I tread the wilderness. The hall is deeper than it once seemed. Or the bread has deceived my soul. I cannot know. I do not care.

We reach the back of the complex where a bubbling fissure collects in a natural basin. The edge of the pool foams yellow but the water makes the rocks below sick-blue like mold. Around the chasm, three braziers fill the room with a woody smoke. It mingles with the brimstone waters. It is suffocating. My body heaves. Nothing comes out.

My Baptizer holds me near the water’s edge. The steam burns the tip of my nose. He asks again why I have come.

I tell him. I am unclean. The steam cooks the soft meat in my throat.

He asks me if I feel remorse for my trespasses.

I shake my head no. 

My baptiser joins me in nakedness and leads me to the edge of the sulfurous pool.

We step into the water. My skin turns red. The bath shatters the blisters on my feet. My knees capsize but my Baptizer holds my face above the water. If the water boils his body as it does mine, he does not show it.

My body tries to escape from the water. That base and animal abomination. It fails like it always does.

The waters are hotter than madness. The steam. The smoke. Skin flays off my body and floats away. The water boils my brain. I cannot breathe. I cannot think. My body tries to thrash. To clinch its jaw. To squeeze its fingers. To cry.

It cannot stop the baptism. It cannot escape. It feels like a child.

My body. It feels. I feel. Oh, my body. At last, we feel. 

The electricity hiding in my spine releases like the boils on the back of my heels. I no longer have the strength to spasm. I bury my face into the hair on my Baptizer's chest, his flesh much cooler than the inferno that cooks my bowels. With the last impulse in my gelatinizing brainstem, my weak fists tighten around my baptizer’s waist. If I could still smell, I am sure he would smell like safety and home.

At last, my vision melts from their sockets. At last, time and space and light and void give way to sudden oblivion. At last my soul, my body, collide with one another. We are one. At last.

At last.

© 2024 Christopher Luis-Jorge

About the Author

Christopher Luis-Jorge is a Cuban-American amalgam originally from lawless Florida. Currently, he is based in Washington, DC where he plays in a few bands and haunts karaoke bars. He writes spooky, speculative, and arguably literary fiction. His work is featured in The Dread Machine, The Acentos Review, Points in Case, and others. Follow him at JeezLuisJorge.com or @JeezLuisJorge on most platforms.