I know it.
I know, like the earth beneath me is hot and hard, like the dumb sky is godforsaken blue, like the flesh that covers me like a straitjacket, that the counselor and his kinfolk are gods; and if not gods, then demons… I’ve been watching him for days and he has not moved, not to eat, to shit, nothing, only sits on his iron chair, his iron throne! smoking eternally, waiting for someone, for me, to approach him; he would like nothing more than to set upon me and cut me apart and eat my choices meat, my calves, my heart, my brain…. I edge toward the moving shade as the sun tourneys to the west, and for a moment, for a single moment I do not watch him. I can’t remember the last time I slept, but I cannot sleep, not when there is a demon loosed in Nada… everyone tells me that he is not a demon… that he helps… he counsels… but i dot believe them! I’ve seen my share of demons and I know beneath that human facade lies a thing consumed by fire, by wrath and judgement, beneath that human flesh waits the apocalypse! …so I will wait until he sets home, wherever that may be, and I’ll get him. I will strike his crown and tear apart his skull, eat his brain, eat his fucking brain! … then no demon will touch me, for I will stick out, shine! like a malformed star!… He’s still there. I am afraid of blinking, especially as of late… things have been acting up around here… Not an hour ago or maybe it was yesterday or last week, what is time anyway? it’s only a rumor my body tells me, I saw a cricket, an ugly creeping thing, its exoskeleton rough and the color of faded jeans, as it hopped its ass my way I squashed it (I swear I did), I even felt it squish under the weight of my hand, even felt the gunk spread out my palm, the burst of its exoskeleton, and but when I lifted my hands… and but when I lifted my hand, its goo-like innards, its mutilated legs and the exoskeleton smithereens and then, as the demons know, it rose! yes! it did! it rose, no body, no form, only a scattered blob of things awful, rose. I crawled away, away here! next to the old Fotohut… I hid from it, and waited until nighttime before I peeked out from the Fotohut to see it had gone, and to make sure that the counselor had not moved, and he hand’t, and he still hasn’t, even now he remains there as though that seat and that table were his cathedral, and he its gargoyle, I want to yell at him I want to ask him, but I know better than to question a demon… Whenever I feel my eyes turn heavy I stare at the sun til it burns and I turn away… and when I feel like sleep will overcome me like death I raise my pizzo, and burn the globe, and inhale like a dragon, yes, my dragon lungs have never failed me… i am awake, I am very much awake… I still have to keep damned dogs away so every rock I see I put it into my pocket… when they near me I throw it at them… those pariahs would tear me apart to get to my shit…and I used to like dogs, but here, these zombies dogs are fiends for the shit! I see it in their eyes, that subhuman ferocity, the bizarre sagacity of their drooling jaws… Fuck! I can’t stop from turning away, I know the bastard has left and gone and come back while I had my eyes turned, but I can’t for the life of me keep my eyes on him when all these monsters are waiting for me to slip up, but NO! NO ONE will catch me slipping, NOSIR, not today, not any day. Keep your eyes open, Jojo, keep them wide open. The devil knows the time of day that sleep will catch and I need to outsmart him… At night its the worst, at night i want for nothing more than for death to overcome me, and swallow me like a great desert worm, because at night the impertinent, and implacable night takes on forms, I see it clear as the skin of my eyelids, that the night in some parts take shoes, it is a nigh more substantial, denser, thicker, darker, and then the shadows move, and the bastard counselor sees them too, and nods along as though they were his friends, his hellish comrades, and they disperse all over Nada, and sometimes they’ll come right up to me and I’ll look at them, and I’ll close my eyes but worst is that they are even in there, worst, so I’ll open the again, and wait for them to leave, they’ve never touched me, but I know that one day, one damned night, they will touch me and I will be no more. They want me, but they don't want me yet. What are they waiting for? On these nights I’ll usually hear voices and see nobody but the counselor and the end glow of his cigarette, and I don’t know what they say but they speak in a language similar to my own, but not, because I’ll hear words that sound familiar but have different meanings, different syntax , some bizarro English, one taught in hell to discourage eavesdroppers like me… when i open my eyes I’m scared I see only a wall of light as though I were heading toward the sun on a mirror, and I try to open my eyes even further but I can’t, I’m afraid I’m blind, even then the shadows come, as they come near me something happens and I faint… when I come to it’s nighttime, and the beasts of the night are howling and the counselor remains where he has always been and I feel something wet at my side so I turn to see it and its a dog, I grab the dog and it yelps and I struggle to keep it inside of my grip, it bites me and bites me so I bite back, I bite its snout, and it’s hard like bone so I bite harder and I hear something crack, I feel a horrible pain strike my head, my neck and I keep holding on to the dog until I get a good grip on its neck and I squeeze and squeeze the fiend dog until I feel his neck snap, I hold on to it as hard as I can until what seems eternal, and when I know for certain that it is dead I push it away from me and look at it, I’ve never seen this kind of dog, it’s a mutt but it could be a wolf and its snout is crushed and its eyes are the color of the blind, I feel a pain in my mouth, I spit out, all I see is blood and white fragments, and I’m afraid again, I want to go home I want to travel through space and time, but no I cannot, not yet, not until I see the counselor move, until I follow him to wherever the hell he goes… but the bastard hasn’t moved and I’m afraid that he will never move and I will die like this dog and when something finds me it will eat me, I do not want to be eaten, Calixto said it was best to keep one’s body intact for the resurrection so I want to stay in tact, missing teeth regardless… After I quietly eulogize the dog, calling it a noble warrior of the desert a beacon for the living I rest my head on its side and lay there, and I cannot for the life of me get up, so I lay there and watch the blue dome breathe like some monolithic behemoth… I get the sense that if I imagine the counselor I will be able to see him simultaneously in my head and on the desert floor… I turn my head this way and that, breathe in the smoky air of blood and fall asleep… for a moment anyway for soon I wake up to the rumbling of something, I can feel it on my skull, its the dog! it’s the damned dog! it’s hungry! it’s dead and it’s hungry! so I lean deeper into its paunch and listen to the grumbling of its innards as though something were trying its way out of him, the worms, the unknown darlings of the underworld, coming out from the heat of a recently killed dog, so I lean into it even more and listen for a heart beat, and for a second I doubt whether dogs have hearts (but all living things have hearts, no? jellyfish?) I hear no heartbeat only the grumbling of something makings its way out of it, I don’t know what to make of it, I trust that it’s dead, but that I failed to kill what was inside of it so I hit its ribs once twice again and again and the sound lessens, then it grows louder, it’s heavier as though whatever was inside had grown like the Hulk, I’m angry and I grab the plush belly and try to tear it open, but nothing, so I bite down on it and tear at it with my teeth until an opening of flesh, I use my hands and its guts fall out, I scour the organs trying to find the sound… nothing… only the reverent ticktockbzzzzz of this damned dog’s death, I look around and see nothing nobody but the demonic counselor and wonder whether or not he knows that I am here and if he does what is his plan and if he doesn’t then what if he isn’t real, what if he is another of my hallucinations, but no! he’s been here since before I arrived in this godforsaken town, maybe thousands of years before, when I come out of my revelry I feel the slick skin and mush of the organs, I gather the organs into a mound of innards and strange mud, I crawl further into the hut and stow the dog in a cupboard, I crawl out the back door where someone left a crate and sit, bloodied and gored,and turn around the corner to watch him… I don’t know how long long I’ve been watching him but I haven’t seen anyone come to see him til now, I try to make out the strangers face but my eyesight is bad, I don’t make out their chatter but it sounds like the current of an underground river heard through cave walls, I look at his dress, in a maroon shirt and bluejeans with hair which isn’t brown or blonde, his arms, his hands resting on his knees, rubbing them as the counselor watches him without moving his head but smoking his cigarette, then the stranger takes something from his pocket and places it on the table and the counselor does not touch it, the stranger pushes it around and toward him so that the counselor can get a better view… why is the bastard not touching it? why is this bastard always smoking never going anywhere as though he were a projection… yes… yes! a hologram of a man that’s what it is the counselor is a hologram! yes! that is what he is!… I feel relieved that I figured it out and the world makes sense, that the thing I believed to be a demon was only a man hologrammed… finally I can leave… but first I had to make sure.. I wait until the maroon shirted man leaves, he looks like someone I’d known long ago, back when my life involved the lives of other people, and but when I turn to the hologrammed beast he stares at me, the fucker stares at me! I throw myself to the ground and wait longly then raise myself to the window and see that he turned away so I return to the ground and tell myself that I need to sleep if I want to confront him or whatever he is but before I can sleep I see the dogs head in my direction, I don’t know why since I had run out of shit days ago, but the dogs get nearer I get more nervous so I reach into the cupboard and grab organs and throw it at them, they circle, sniff it, then they bite into to it, and they take it away, damned cannibal dogs, after a while I close my eyes again, I am in a cave, a cave, cave, no sound but the buzz of a phantom machine I tell myself that I knew what I was ding, that I had finally found out what was going on, that I don’t have to be scared anymore… I wake up to the moonlight emanating into the hut by the broken window, with my hand I look for the dead dog to lay back on it, but I can't find it so I turn and there it is, I didn’t know whether it was the same dog or a new dog, but a dog was there gnarling at me and I didn’t know what to do so I pulled out a rock from my sweaters pocket and as soon as I did the dog attacked me! lunged at me! so I brought the rock down on its head again and agin, but I couldn’t hurt it, so I stood up and ran away toward the direction of the counselor, I didn’t see him, not that he had moved, my vision was blinded by fear and ambition and the house of darkness, as I got closer I knew that it was time for me to attack him, to reveal the nothing behind the veil, the damned curtain, and the barking of the dog resounded through the nighttime like a massive tachycardia of Yama, and as soon as I got near enough to him and I could see the press in his face I saw him staring up at me, smoking his cigarette. I lunge at him and wrap my arms around him and I went right through him, right fucking through! and as I hit the ground I turned around and saw that the counselor was staring straight into me and he asked What took me so long? and the sound of dopefiend dogs intensified, I looked at him and he laughed and put out his cigarette he looks at me his teeth the same lunarglow as the belly of a shark and I knew that I was wrong, as soon as the dog reached me the counselor’s mouth opens like a serpent’s, wider and wider until it threatened to overcome the night, and inside of him I witness the Nothing that nothing is hiding, I saw the void, I open my mouth in awe til I am overcome.