The Wrath of Jeremy (7 page)

“You passed out in the park, and you’re on an
airplane right now,” Mary answered seriously, while Jeremy fell to
the ground in awe.

Jeremy was terrified, even while the
stewardess helped him to his seat; he was distraught at what he saw
and what he was seeing now. “What’s wrong with me?”

Jeremy sat in his seat while Mary replied, “I
gave you some medicine, it kind of makes your muscles relax.
Jeremy, what happened to you in the park?”

Jeremy’s eyes scanned the plane and the
people who gawked at him with whispers of what drug he was on going
past all of their lips. “How long was I passed out for?”

“Well, for about nine hours. I called your
parents and told them what happened. Don’t worry, they packed your
suitcases and made sure to kiss you goodbye.”

After Mary spoke, the stewardess walked
toward them, with Jeremy asking Mary right away, “What about
Jennifer?”

“Well, Jennifer sounded upset when she heard
the news about you going to San Francisco. But she said when you
get back, to just give her a call. Um, what else? Oh, she added
that she loves you,” Mary explained as Jeremy’s mouth grew a large
smile.

The stewardess finally came to their seat,
asking Jeremy in concern, “Would you like me to get you some
water?”

“Yes, please.”

“Jeremy, what happened in the park today?”
Mary questioned again, playing with her long, blonde hair.

“I don’t remember. I mean, all I remember was
seeing six children. Six angel children.”

“Well, go to sleep now, you can tell me more
about it when we reach San Francisco.” Mary then stared at Jeremy’s
eyes as they slowly closed, with his lids shutting like shades on a
dusty window; he knew the reality he saw, and the reality he was
seeing now felt the same, and with his eyes closed, for some
reason, he felt safe. But the flight would be over, and he knew his
eyes had to open again; to what, he was too afraid to think
about.

CHAPTER FOUR

G
abriel noted,
“Mom, I’m scared to go in that place.” He and his mother gawked at
the institution of Grewsal from a car window with trepidation.
Fearing this structure with his eyes, he coughed up pure anxiety
through his saliva in acid-like chunks. He scanned the fortress,
seeing the green vines that hung from its body, and how they curled
around the building in perfect strands, hovering over the black
brick that made up Grewsal. Being so close to it, it seemed as if
the vines were squeezing the bricks, tightening so strongly that
the bricks shouted out in agony. His heartbeat grew faster, his
sweat poured faster, his eyes widened more, and he held his hand
close to the lock on the car door, wanting to pull on it, but
yearning to keep it locked for some reason or another. His stomach
was tangled with moths, flying around his organs and causing his
throat to ache with the acidic vomit that he fought to keep down as
it slowly crept up and escaped through his nervous coughs. He felt
like he was on a cliff, being pushed off by his own sickness, yet
his own instincts allowed Gabriel to fight reality and keep the car
door locked. He felt betrayed by his own thoughts, his own mind’s
eye that saw only terror when he stood alone in a room and stared
at statues and paintings of a religious nature.

He closed his eyes while he faced this
institution, not wanting this memory, this moment, to be forever
engraved in his mind, craving to not have this snapshot be with him
forever. He didn’t deserve this memory. To his mother, it was just
a regular mental hospital—large and black, with green covering from
the vines, and a few statues of gargoyles to mend the exterior and
make it look gothic. Yet, to Gabriel, it was more than that, the
nature and scent it gave out, the aroma and image it produced, made
him believe, for some reason, that this was more than just a
building to help the mentally ill; but that “more” was a mystery to
him for now. He closed his eyes tightly, and sat in the seat of the
car, but his mother caused them to be opened again when she took
over the decision for them to be opened.

The mother kissed Gabriel on the forehead,
reached over him, and opened the car door for him, saying
delicately, “Come on, Gabriel, I already told the doctor you were
coming.”

He tapped his fingers hard against the hot,
red interior of the car. His mother exited and waited for him in
front of the car’s body. She saw his terror, and tried to tell him
through her smile that everything was going to be alright; yet he
knew that was a lie. Gabriel fought with his own fears, knowing
that something wasn’t right about this place, but he still
perceived his mother’s smile. This helped him to know that she only
wanted to help him, and that caused a bit of a smile to grow on his
face, knowing that she was right and that maybe Grewsal wasn’t
going to be bad at all.

He opened the car door more and stepped out,
feeling a breeze of warm air shooting toward his face and drying
the nervous beads of sweat from his shaky flesh. The green grass
that he stood upon made the skin and hair on his ankles itch,
causing him to reach past his shorts and itch vigorously at the
blades, as well as the skin of his ankle. He came closer to his
mother and then both walked together toward Grewsal, with Gabriel
keeping his eyes on the two gargoyles that stood on either side of
the entrance, like guards of a castle, parents to a child, witches
to an evil brew, that had an evil song that both yearned to
play.

Once reaching the staircase, Gabriel stopped
in his tracks and gawked at the twenty stairs that stretched toward
the black brick building and automatically turned his puppy eyes
toward his mother. Once again she smiled, and they both proceeded
up the staircase, his mother slowing down and walking behind him,
like she was afraid he was going to run and she was guiding him.
She held onto his right shoulder as they both came to the big black
door and she reached for what seemed to be a spiked-filled
doorknob, but the spike design was not as sharp as it seemed. He
stopped her from turning the knob, giving her a look that seemed to
mean that he wanted to turn it, that it was his sickness and he
wanted to open the door to the institution that he hoped would heal
him. So she pulled away gently and he grasped hold of the spiked
knob, feeling a brief electric shock from its metal, and then
stared up over the door and gawked at another gargoyle which hung
over their heads. He then closed his eyes, turned the knob and
pushed at the door, opening it, yet keeping his eyes shut, like he
didn’t want to see the inside of Grewsal.

As soon as the door was fully opened, he did
open his eyes, and saw nothing but beauty on the inside. White
walls and beautiful chandeliers that hung from the thirty-foot
ceiling could be seen. He opened his eyes wider as he realized
there were glass statues of saints standing against the walls like
decorations. He said, “This place looks like a fancy mansion or
church.”

“I know, maybe this won’t be so bad,
honey.”

His mother walked up to the front desk of the
building and Gabriel followed, still mesmerized by the sight of
such beauty, especially the flowers that hung everywhere from pots
made out of crystal. The front desk was decorated with white roses
and unusually large green plants with red flowers that stood
straight up in the air, like they were begging to be noticed,
fighting for the sunlight that came in through the circular window
on the ceiling. Gabriel felt a strange relief in his mind; it was
like he felt healed already from its beauty. He turned to face his
mother while a female nurse beyond the front desk came up to
them.

The nurse was gorgeous, young, in her early
thirties, with long, blonde hair that she put up in a bun. She
asked the mother, “May I help you?”

“Yes, hi, I’m here to see Doctor Callahan,”
the mother said as Gabriel stared at the nurse with a look of lust
in his eyes.

The nurse smiled briefly at the mother, and
then changed her smile to a very imperceptible grin as her eyes
changed their gaze from the mother to Gabriel. It was a mysterious
grin, that of a hidden secret, and Gabriel caught that definition,
but still stood there, not letting the definition sink into his
mind deep enough to say something to his mother. The nurse then
turned to face the mother and started tapping her long nails
against the front desk. “Oh, the doctor won’t be in for another
hour: her plane is probably about to land.”

The frustration grew inside the mother,
manifesting itself as rage, as she gave out a large sigh. “Wait a
second, I just spoke to her an hour ago!”

“Well, ma’am, you must have called her
cellphone. What is this regarding?”

“It’s regarding my son, Gabriel,” the mother
replied, pulling out her insurance card from her pink purse,
shifting her hands around everything it held, and then slapping the
card down on the desk.

The nurse gave out a smile of intrigue, like
she had found gold, shifting her eyes toward Gabriel again, and
questioning, “You mean Gabriel Netter?”

A wind, mixed with cold and warmth, shouted
its way through the hallways and entered the vast foyer, striking
Gabriel’s back and causing him to turn around. Behind him stood a
single, large door, with a large, obese male nurse, dressed in
white, standing in it, gaping toward Gabriel’s figure. Gabriel’s
frightened eyes turned away from him and stared at the female
nurse.

“Yes, my son, Gabriel Netter is supposed to
see Doctor Callahan now,” replied his mother. The obese man walked
quickly up to them and stood next to her and Gabriel, not moving or
fidgeting at all, standing straight like a statue of emptiness.

The head nurse looked into the obese man’s
eyes, and then stepped out from behind the desk, walking up to him
and grabbing onto his hand. She guided him away from Gabriel and
the mother, and then stopped, while she whispered something into
his ear. Gabriel saw her lips moving and tried to read them, not
liking that she was so sneaky, not understanding what secret she
had to say to the large man right in front of them. She turned back
to Gabriel and the mother, saying, “Yes, Doctor Callahan told us
about Gabriel. We’ll just take him up to his room now and he’ll see
the doctor when she arrives.”

The mother was confused, unfamiliar with the
nurse’s words, asking, “You mean he’s gonna be admitted today? I
didn’t even bring his suitcase or things with me.”

The obese man walked slowly up to Gabriel and
gave him a rock-hard fake smile, waiting for the head nurse to give
the orders to him to take Gabriel away.

“That’s okay, you can bring them later. For
now, this nurse will take Gabriel up to his room,” the head nurse
explained.

The large man then walked in front of the
woman, blocking Gabriel’s view of her and forcing Gabriel to see
only his large figure. With a gargoyle-like gut, round and plump,
and teeth that gleamed yellow like the sun, Gabriel glared at this
man in disgust, but then stared in a form of nervousness when he
saw the man’s fingernails, and how clumps of dirt and mildew were
embedded under their long, sharp form. The man pulled out a small
wheelchair from the side of the front desk and began to unfold it,
bending over to pull out the wheels. That’s when Gabriel saw lice
jumping around in the large man’s black puffy hair that had streaks
of gray that helped to highlight the lice even more. He scanned the
man’s head, and how his ears almost seemed taped down to his scalp
and bushes of hair surrounded their inner parts, causing Gabriel to
look away in revulsion. He tried to look behind this man’s gut to
see if he could get eye contact with his mother again. After the
chair was ready, the man unnoticeably pushed Gabriel into it and
waited for further instructions, while Gabriel did the same, not
knowing how to react to this man’s lack of hygiene, but realizing
that not everyone is clean. He finally caught sight of his mother
again after the large nurse stood behind the chair, and saw how his
mother was filling out forms and not even reading what she was
filling out.

The mother kissed Gabriel’s face, tapped his
nose and grinned. “Sweetie, I’m gonna be down here waiting for the
doctor. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.” The mother then
turned away and two heavily excited tears fell from Gabriel’s eyes,
pain-filled and with a mixture of fright, not wanting his mother to
go and not wanting to be here. The large man looked intently at
Gabriel and then at the head nurse, and, seeing her head nodding,
knew this was the cue to take Gabriel away.

He pushed the wheelchair to face the large
doorway that entered the stomach of the institution. Gabriel’s
fears worsened and the draft of cold wind grew stronger. As Gabriel
passed through the foyer of the institution, he looked back at his
mother, not realizing this moment would be the last time he would
see her for a very long time, and smiled toward her worried face,
wanting her to know that he was fine, but yet he wasn’t. He didn’t
want her to worry. They strolled through a corridor that led to a
door of metal, and Gabriel saw that it had five large, rusted locks
in its body, that all dripped some form of water. The drops ran
past the rust on the locks that turned the water to brown as
Gabriel followed them, dropping to the floor, where a large puddle
of rusted water stood. Gabriel then looked up at the ceiling in
front of the metal door and saw water dripping from it, knowing now
that that was where the water came from as it seeped down the
doorway.

Gabriel watched as the large man opened each
lock one by one, with a smile on his ugly face growing with each
lock. He finally unlocked the last lock and a form of laugh or
giggle came from the man’s mouth, but Gabriel wasn’t sure what it
was, so he stayed silent in his wheelchair and waited for the man
to open the door. Once opened, he wheeled Gabriel through it. Now
that he was on the other side of the door, Gabriel noticed the
walls weren’t white anymore but gray, sinister gray with cracks at
every end from aging. To Gabriel, the sounds that he felt weren’t
sounds that he liked once entering this new interior.