The monster in the man

BY day, Zenzontli is the Keeper of the House of Darkness of the Aztex, whose future as world-conquering, shameless colonialists and slave sacrificers looks bright. They've long since triumphed over the Spanish and now in the 20th century are using Nazi-inspired techniques to enslave nations around the world. In his nightmares, however, Zenzontli is a worker at a Farmer John plant in Vernon. He works (sometimes double shifts) on the killing floor, slaughtering up to 1,800 hogs a day. Sometimes, he reflects, the animals squeal "that shrill high-pitched porcine shriek, but I can't bother to notice stuff like that any more." Ghosts of fellow Aztek warriors, like his bodyguard, 3Turkey, work around him. In the evenings, he attends union meetings. His marriage is not so good. His once-beautiful wife spends her days drinking Trader Joe's wine. His beloved son has become a punky gang member. "He won't say anything real to me these days," Zenzontli laments, "or when he does, half of whatever he says turns out isn't true. He doesn't want anybody to know what he's up to, his hair cut off his head like a hardboiled egg, running the streets all the time with his so-called homies."

Zenzontli is proud of his heritage. His ancestors are the Tolteka, "who invented the Heart As Engine of Urban Renewal, the revitalization of Reality, while the European savages were scurrying around inventing toylike items such as the Wheel, the Cannon, the Stirrup, etc." His city is Teknotitlan, city of bike paths and canals. But, writes Sesshu Foster in his hallucinogenic novel "Atomic Aztex," Zenzontli has gone too far. As the book begins, Zenzontli is facing, at the insistence of his Clan Elder, "a spot of brain surgery, Kranial Boring to release Xtra spirits" that are causing his excessive violence.

This is when the nightmares begin. The question is: Which reality is worse? In his life as a warrior, Zenzontli has been sent to fight with the Jaguar Unit in Russia, 1942. His suicide mission on a tractor plant in Stalingrad, quetzal feathers flying, is destined for success: "[T]hese Germans don't have a chance here in Stalingrad. Cuz they're just going along, doing their job as they see it, not expecting the unexpected, then some Aztek warriors jump out at them!" Back in the meatpacking plant, he's recruited by a beautiful union organizer, Nita, to get signatures for her petition, which he does, believing that he is fighting the "stupefying consumerism" of his nightmare world. Zenzontli's two universes conflate when he takes his butchering out onto the streets of Los Angeles, achieving notoriety as the "Skidrow Slasher," leaving behind "mutilated victims." The term, he believes, is "insulting, frankly, think about it, considering the religious quality of my work, the Surgical Accuracy, the removal of specific glands & bodily organs of special significance at particular points in time, palpitating them in my hands while the Victim went into shock & shook."