The Wrath of Jeremy (2 page)

Then, as he turned his head away very
timidly, and faced the front of the church, there in front of him,
standing tall, was Jesus himself, so close that Jeremy could feel
his body heat, his sweat, and his blood that dripped off his crown
of thorns, and onto this horrified boy’s lap. The priest yelled
louder, the people listened closer, their bodies sweated harder,
and Jeremy’s thoughts of torment grew grander, filling his infinite
aura, turning green in sickly fright.

“Mom, don’t you see him?” Jeremy questioned,
pulling his mother toward him, trying not to make a scene.

“It’s alright, baby, I know your medicine’s
in here somewhere.” The mother still searched, avoiding upsetting
Jeremy in any way. She never saw him this bad: not comprehending
how bad he would get, she started to move her hands faster,
frantically building up her motion, because she didn’t want to see
how far Jeremy’s mind’s eye would take him.

He didn’t want to look forward, but he did,
and, as he turned his head, his Savior, the man he loved and
worshiped, still stood in front of him, and now he was reaching his
nailed hand toward Jeremy’s head. Heat and a gradually building
momentum of some form of fear wrapped around his mind; Jeremy was
now on the brink of going insane.

In slow motion, Jeremy saw this great man’s
hand coming toward him. He freaked to this rhythm, literally busted
out of the pew at the first form of feeling his legs gave, and
began running down the red-carpeted aisle, past the life-showing
saints, past the people who gawked at his supposed rudeness, and
shot for the doors of the church. The doors seemed so far now, like
every time he ran, they would get farther, like they were running
away from him, not wanting him to exit, to leave and vanish. But
Jeremy still ran, wanting to vanish from this place, and craving to
exit through those doors, like it became his mission. The priest
kept up his sermon, ignoring Jeremy’s scene of eccentricity, being
too embarrassed to stop his words, and Jeremy kept up his run,
ignoring the priest’s words of fright, being too afraid to stop his
motion, blocking out all that was around him, and only seeing those
doors that would lead to freedom from this nightmare.

Once he reached the doors, he began pushing,
pulling, and hitting them, trying to find a way to open their
wooden bodies, but nothing happened: they were sealed shut. He
pounded on them, hitting them, wanting them to open, not wanting to
look at this scene anymore, and his hands started to bleed, showing
his bloody fingerprints everywhere he hit the door of splintered
wood. Feeling the supposed zombies of stone, their gaze pressing on
his terrified back, he heard their heavy footsteps becoming louder.
He recognized that they were walking closer to him, did not know
what they would do once they reached him.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, all the sounds
stopped: the loud roar of the priest, the faint whispers of the
people’s sinister gossip, all the way to titanic-force footsteps
that the statues presented to his ears. Silence. All Jeremy could
hear was the sweat dripping still from his head, his heart pounding
out of rhythm, the blood from his hands dripping to the floor, and
a light song of a single sparrow that flew about outside, on the
other side of this door’s old frame. Yet, there was another sound,
a noise of heated breath, that flew toward his back and neck, as if
someone was standing right behind him, conversing with his fears,
subliminally catering to his terror’s heart, and building up to a
stronger sensation of nerve-breaking power.

Pump…pump…pump….

His heartbeat grew larger, creating noises as
if it was frolicking around trees of wonder and delight, dancing in
the wind of torment, and potentially ready to die out from this
exercise of mass quantities. He knew he had to turn around, not
wanting to, but having to. In slow motion, turning his head,
lingering in the action, Jeremy saw, abruptly, the sight of all the
statues, lined up as if they were ready for battle, and facing him,
right behind him. Jesus stood in the middle of these statues,
gawking at Jeremy’s brown eyes, reaching out his nailed hand toward
his brownish hair, which stood up in fright. Jeremy screamed, no
sound at first, but then a horrible moaning took over this silence,
and he sprinted toward the door before Jesus could touch him. He
was able to break them open, and having the sun to stare over his
head while running down the steps of the church. He knelt down and
began to cry tears of relief that he had escaped this nightmare,
and tears of agony that this fear burned into his eyes. Each drop
that fell from his brown eyes fell to the dusty, receded, grassy
ground, and all he could do was gawk at them as they ran from his
mind, like they were trying to escape his lurid nightmare.

As he stared, Jeremy saw a man’s shadow on
the ground below, and his heart began to pound fast again. When he
looked up slowly, he saw his father out of breath, hovering over
him, showing that he had run out of the church toward Jeremy’s aid.
He knelt down beside Jeremy, and gave him a hug while feeling his
shaking body, crying on his shoulders of stubbornness.

“Come on, Jeremy, let’s go to the doctor.
It’s gonna be okay, son.” His father helped him up, and walked with
him away from the church, while the mother ran toward them and gave
Jeremy a tight hug as well. Not knowing what adventure Jeremy was
about to take on, he just gazed at the cornfields in a straight
trance and wondered what tomorrow would bring. What he didn’t know,
but soon would, was not only that this would be the greatest
adventure ever, but also that it would become a mission that only
God could give.

I

The Evil Opens Its Soul To
Reveal What It Will Behold

CHAPTER ONE

G
abriel, with his
eccentric balance of energy, ran about in his sunshine-filled room,
attempting to track down his other rollerblade, but failing
constantly to do so in every corner of the room he investigated.
Sweat started to build over his black eyes, feeling the heat from
his non-air-conditioned home, baking its own roof shingles in the
scorching Californian sun. He kept up the search, swabbing the
sweat away every second, wanting to find the other rollerblade so
he could go out with his friends. Abruptly, through his thoughts of
not finding the blade, his eyes caught the sight of it, hanging
behind his dusty closet door, behind a dirty shirt that had been
hanging there since God knows how long. A smile broke through on
his young, frustrated face, and quickly he grasped onto it, knowing
that if he didn’t now, he would forget where it was again, showing
that his short-term memory was short indeed.

Grabbing it and walking quickly out of his
room, through junk and papers from old magazines that showed dates
from a year ago, he placed his backpack over his arm and headed
straight for the front door, shouting, “Mom, I’m going to the beach
now, I’ll be back later!”

Without even a chance for his first foot to
reach the outside of the door, and without even a possibility for
his clammy hands to open it by the knob, his mother came rushing
into the front room, her curlers hanging off her hair like snakes,
and her waitress uniform filled with ashes from her lit cigarette,
and placed her hand with force over the door’s body, making it
known to Gabriel that in order to get out, he had to get past her.
“You are not going anywhere, young man, you still have to finish up
your homework!” She pushed away from the door with her hand, and
sat down on an old, plastic-covered couch, trying to tie her white
sneakers with one hand and hold the cigarette with the other.

“Come on, Mom, all the guys are going to the
beach today. Please?”

She just shook her head, shaking the curlers
in the process, inhaling her cigarette with a tremendous drag, and
exhaling it toward him, like the force from the smoke should be a
good enough answer on her part, that she was not changing her mind.
But she still saw him waiting for an answer, his black eyes filled
with rage like an inferno building up behind them. So she fed their
flames.

“No, I don’t care, Gabriel, you still have to
finish your homework: case closed!” She started taking out the
curlers from her hair, yanking them sometimes, and other times just
trying to take her time, but Gabriel was really starting to
irritate her. “Besides, I don’t want you going into one of your
fits on the beach.”

Unfairness lingered over his fragile black
eyes, seeing her place the cigarette down finally in an ashtray
after she realized she was down to the filter. “Mom, I took my
medicine. Besides, the doctor said my problem is harmless.” He then
opened up the front door finally and waited to see her reactions,
sort of like a dare toward her, knowing she didn’t want him leaving
and seeing that he was about to.

She lit up another cigarette while still
tasting the aftermath of the burnt filter in her mouth, and took a
swig of some water on the coffee table, and then went about
finishing up getting ready for work. Suddenly, as her rage built up
from his dare against her grand authority as a mother, she sprinted
toward him, clutched his arm firmly, and shouted, “Harmless? You
call seeing statues moving harmless?” She pulled his young body
away from the door with an imperceptible faint force, and closed
the door with a strong one, inhaling her cigarette like air, and
exhaling. “I don’t want you ending up like your twin brother.”

“Mom, Michael is crazy, I’m not…Michael saw
statues coming at him. They only move to me.”

The word ‘crazy’ went through her thoughts,
entering through her eyes, knocking at her ears, traveling around
her spine, and craving to exit through her mouth, with words of
titanic sound toward Gabriel. She couldn’t believe, couldn’t accept
that Gabriel called his own twin brother that name. But for some
reason, she was able to calm her nerves down a bit, biting down on
her tongue and saying through her grinding teeth, “Well, I still
don’t want you ending up like him. I don’t want to have to visit
you at an insane asylum like I do for your brother—Stop it.” He put
his hand on the doorknob again, attempting to see if he could get
out of this one, this dispute they had every single day the sun
came up.

“Mom, I’m not a child anymore, I’m seventeen
years old, and pretty soon I’ll be eighteen.” Gabriel then opened
the door; anger moved his feet and madness moved his hand.

One of her curlers fell to the white, tiled
floor as she ran toward Gabriel, pulling him away from the door,
and slamming it shut with one push. “Listen to me, Gabriel, you’re
not gonna be eighteen for a while.”

“I’m gonna be December twenty-fifth, that’s
only two months away, or did you forget?” Gabriel shouted, opening
the door again.

“You see, you can’t even count right.
December twenty-fifth is three months away, Gabriel. If you would
go to school more often, you would have known that.” The battle
continued with her slamming the door once more, fighting to keep it
shut, while Gabriel fought to escape it. “If you open that door one
more time, I will punish you till your eighteenth birthday. You got
that?”

He placed his head down in anger, trying not
to show his eyes giving in to her power. He slowly walked away,
over to the front room of his home, pouting.

“You know, Gabriel, while I’m at work, I want
you to study. I do not want you going out!”

“Why do you have to work today anyway?” After
his question, he began to gawk at a wall with the da Vinci painting
of “The Last Supper” hanging gracefully on it, staring heavily at
each figure, Apostle, man of God that sat still, wondering what
they were thinking or saying, trying to enter a spiritual realm and
unfold the true words they spoke, just for the hell of it. He
continued to stare at it, like he always did, as it hung over the
television, and slowly started to feel an urge like he was a part
of it. The special way the figures were formed by paint made his
eyes glow with mystery, yet mostly with excitement.

“Because Burger World needs me today. The new
guy quit Friday. So, they need me to take his place until they find
a new burger flipper,” she explained while Gabriel slowly noticed
Jesus was beginning to move his head back and forth, with his
painted face starting to look like real skin. “I know it’s
embarrassing to have a mother flip burgers, but it’s the only job I
could find, honey.”

Not noticing Gabriel was falling into a
trance, due to her running about the house, attempting to get ready
as fast as possible, Gabriel dropped his rollerblades on the floor
and sat in amazement on the ground as ‘The Last Supper’ painting
opened up its spiritual realm for him, and breathed life before his
wondering eyes.

As his mother’s voice grew louder, the other
figures in the painting started to gain life themselves, and
Gabriel watched as the Apostles rose from their seats, walking
around the painting like a gathering or party. They were talking to
each other, Gabriel could hear their faint, ghostly whispers of
curiosity. He was trying to understand the language, their meaning
of what they were saying and how they were saying it. His nerves
bounced against his flesh, and the room became silent with an
undertone in their shallow voices of terror. Their voices grew
large and louder, with Gabriel still not knowing their
conversations, and only knowing that what he was seeing now
couldn’t possibly be happening.

Gabriel got up and tried to get closer to the
painting, eavesdropping his best, when suddenly he stepped on a
creak in the floor, making a loud noise, and causing them all to
abruptly stop their whispers at once and turn their heads toward
Gabriel, fixing their eyes on his, watching him as he now sat down
again, in fear of their stares. They were speaking to one another,
as if speaking about some important matter that concerned Gabriel.
Suddenly, through the whispers, the silence of the room, and
through his fear-filled eyes, Jesus stepped out from behind the
table in the painting, and jumped out from the canvas. His
paint-filled skin became real flesh, and he grew larger than life,
grander than Gabriel could possibly imagine.