Beyond the Island

by John W. Steele

Chapter 11

“What’s the matter, punto? Ain’tchu got no nerve? Jump, punto, jump!” Nestor hissed, following with his high-pitched nervous giggle.

In the past, Nestor’s voice had always come from inside, but now I heard him distinctly from the outside. It sounded as if he were pacing behind my left shoulder. The patter of his little feet slapped on the wet slab of rock in back of me. He wheezed, and his breathing sounded labored. The tone of his voice changed and resembled that of Lord Nagual.

“Oh come now, pork chop, just one more step and you’ll be freed from the beast. The Unborn will forgive you. It forgives everything.”

Nestor’s relentless attempts to destroy me had filled me with a smoldering anger that had burned for a long time. I wasn’t afraid to die, but I was not going to let this fat-assed little maggot relish the victory of my demise. If I was going down, he was going with me.

I remained silent and stood motionless at the edge of the cliff. Long ago, Lord Nagual had taught me a series of breathing exercises that could be used to focus the concentration and one-point the awareness. He called it bamboo breathing. The technique consisted of one long sustained breath followed by a series of short quick expirations. I eased into the rhythm of the form, and my anxiety evaporated.

The cadence of Nestor’s pace quickened, and I knew the demonic little pustule was afraid.

“The Nagual says that you are your brother’s son, punto, and that you’re a hypocrite who claims to be enlightened, izzat so?”

My focus grew fixed, and my awareness descended through charkas until it entered the hara where the silver chord connects to the Overself. Inside and outside were one now, and Nestor and I were on a level playing field. I remained immobilized like a statue made of stone, my senses keen and alert.

“You’re used to groveling for a master, slave. I command you to cast your body from the cliff. Now!”

A pressure formed on the roof of my skull, like a cat crouching on my head. The sensation was cool and sticky, and smelled like rotting fish. Nestor’s long golden curls fell and dangled before my eyes. He lowered his head until his face was directly in front of mine. His head was inverted, and his puffy cheeks drooped towards the ground like the bollocks of a goat.

I looked in his bloodshot eyes and locked him with the power of concentration. He grew paralyzed, like a lab rat hypnotized by a python. His plasma-like body stiffened and his claws dug into my scalp. I sensed he wanted to run, but I owned his will, and he remained frozen with fear. We shared a long sustained look. This would be a battle to the death.

I gazed deep into the fiery pools of his eyes. Inside were scorpions, and centipedes, and worms. Leaches and bloodsucking flies crawled on rotting, pus-filled slabs of meat. The decaying mass of filth in him had arms and legs, and a torso. I knew this was the body that awaited him once I closed the gate of Hades behind him forever. His face took on a purple hue and a drop of pale blood trickled from his eye.

Lord Nagual had taught me that a malevolent angel could only be strangled with the left hand. Because allies are immune to the powers of reason that operate in the left side of the brain, only the hand of the will can break them.

I raised my arm slowly, then like the strike of a snake, thrust my hand upward. I jammed my thumb deep in Nestor’s mouth and slid my fingers far into the sockets of his skull. He let out a piercing scream and his eyes popped like two over-ripened grapes. He bit down hard on my thumb and his teeth snapped with a crack of a dried bone.

At last I understood. I was immune to the powers of this pitiful scrap of perversion; he could not harm me. He was nothing but a notion, a lame and broken idea with a potbelly and a big mouth. I shook the ghost with all my might, and his body fluttered in the air like a windsock in a hurricane.

“So this is all you are?” I cried. “A pudgy little ball of slime hiding in the catacombs of my psyche like a snail under a rock!”

I pounded Nestor with my fist, and he trembled in a spasmodic convulsion. When my arm grew tired, I threw him on the ground. He quivered like a tub of jello. He whined like a cat and struggled to stand but I had blinded him, and he was defenseless against me.

I placed my foot on his chest and stared down at this wretched denizen of the dark side. “Do you have any last requests before I flush your sorry ass down the toilet?”

He covered his eyes with his hands, and his voice dripped with honey. “Please, Lord Mudd, I implore you. Allow me one more chance to vindicate myself from the ire of your wrath. I have learned from my mistakes. I admit you are indeed a worthy apprentice.”

In response to his plea for mercy, I raised a thick mucous gob from deep in my throat and hurled it down at his head, where it landed on his face with a splat. The oyster drifted through his ethereal skull like a quarter tumbling in a wishing well and landed softly on the ground. “A miniscule token of my profound esteem for you and your kind,” I said. I laughed long and deep.

He lay defeated, his tongue dangling from his mouth, his eyes squished to muck. With a grunt, I bent down and grabbed his skull. It was soft and slimy like the head of an octopus. Mustering all my strength, I tugged on the appendage and ripped it from his body with a pop.

“Looks like you won’t be needing this where you’re going.” I stepped back a few paces and, with a running drop kick, punted the mass of plasma over the chasm. His skull sailed through the air and collided with the rock face on the other side. The skull shattered into a dozen pieces like an overstuffed watermelon and the fragments drifted like autumn leaves to the torrents below.

The ghost’s torso rose from the ground and floated before me like a cloud of smoke. I wadded the haze into a ball and hurled it into the crevasse. “Don’t forget the toilet paper. You’re going to need it,” I bellowed.

His body sailed downward and settled like a patch of yellow scum on the surface of the water. The bubbling foam floated in the current, and the rapids carried it to the new body that awaited him.

A gentle tug throbbed at the base of my neck, and I understood why the first vertebra in the spine is called the atlas. It seemed as if the weight of the world had been lifted from me.

I sat down cross-legged near the edge of the cliff. For a long time, the world had appeared like a negative, composed of light, shape, and shadow. But now its vibrant colors flooded my eyes with such intensity it caused them to tear. My ears stopped ringing, and the emptiness within escaped like a vacuum exiting a bell jar. The hostile voices were gone.

I savored the sweet and wonderful sound of silence. The world was reborn, and for a brief second in time, I forgot everything. A feeling of peace and serenity swept through me and I realized it is the most sublime state of mind a person can know. I hoped that my trials were over and I’d emerged from my ordeal a free man. But the sky suddenly grew dark... I was wrong.