The Wrath of Jeremy (8 page)

In Gabriel’s mind, his sounds aren’t sounds
but feelings. When entering a garden, for instance, he hears the
sense of fairies or birds, singing and dancing in the clouds of
immense cotton, with angels shooting by the large flowers and
singing a chorus to their beauty. When entering a dark room such as
this, his subconscious felt the sounds of monsters, fiends, or
death scaring the life out of innocence, only catering to his
fright even more.

But this room’s feeling was different; he
never felt the sounds that he experienced now. The gray walls, the
textures of his smells, made him feel the sounds of demons flying
about, laughing toward him, showing themselves to his ears. So
Gabriel shut his eyes for a moment to make his imagination go away;
it didn’t.

Once the large man locked the door behind
them, Gabriel’s confusion grew and the strong aroma of urine that
reached his nose came to him and upset his stomach. Gabriel then
questioned the man, “Why does it smell like piss, and why does it
look so shitty here?”

The man stopped wheeling Gabriel any deeper
into the hallways of Grewsal, and got in front of the chair to have
perfect eye contact with Gabriel’s fears. He stopped the chair
right under a dimmed light bulb, which like the locks on the door
were also leaking water that made a puddle on the ground. The man
smiled at Gabriel, and suddenly his face was filled with rage, and
he shouted, “Shut up!”

Gabriel was appalled at the nurse’s rudeness:
being that he was a patient, he felt that the man should never
raise his voice to him. So Gabriel spoke up in defense, as he
snarled and rolled his eyes toward the man’s fat, sweaty face.
“Excuse me, but I happen to be a patient here! I’m gonna tell my
mother if you—”

The man interrupted him. “Listen, you
sonofabitch, if you speak one more time, I’ll beat the shit out of
you so bad that your sickness will look like a cure compared to the
way your face will look!” The man then slapped Gabriel’s head and
started to push the wheelchair down the hallway again. As Gabriel
sat in the chair with the urine-like smell baking his nostril hairs
due to the high heat that came as they entered deeper into Grewsal,
Gabriel’s bafflement grew as to why this man was acting like this.
He wasn’t afraid of the man, but he felt somewhat inferior to him,
strange in a way that he couldn’t explain. He knew the man was a
nurse, but yet he hit him on the head. It was a mixture of rage,
intimidation and perplexity all rolled into one in his eyes as he
waited for the next ingredient to enter. Gabriel looked up at the
nurse again while they entered an elevator with black, juicy
roaches on the ground, frolicking together as if they were dancing
to a waltz.

Gabriel was sickened by this. Staring at
these disgusting creatures, seeing they were multiplying before his
eyes, caused Gabriel to forget the man’s warning and speak up.
“This is sick, what kind of place are you guys running here
anyway?”

The man immediately pushed the emergency
button on the elevator walls, causing the elevator to stop and
shake, and the man walked in front of Gabriel again. Since it was a
very small and confined elevator, with roaches on the ground and
the smell of mucus and urine filling the air, every deep breath
Gabriel inhaled caused the sweat on his head to worsen and drip
down to his eyeballs, creating a stinging sensation in them as
Gabriel was forced to stare at the man’s face.

“Hey, idiot, I thought I told you to shut the
fuck up?” The obese man slapped Gabriel across the face, causing
blood from Gabriel’s nose to shoot out all over his mouth, dripping
down the wheelchair, past its metal frame and down to the ground
where the roaches fought to get a taste of it. Gabriel’s tears shot
out and all he could do now was raise his eyes toward this bastard
of a nurse and wait for the next blow.

“I’m sorry, but—” Gabriel tried to speak
before the man hit him in the face again with the back of his hand.
The blood from Gabriel’s nose got on the man’s hand and he wiped it
off in Gabriel’s hair, with Gabriel shouting in agony, “Hey, stop
it!” The man started to beat him hard in the face, and all the
roaches danced in the raindrops of blood that became a downpour to
them. More blood fell toward the insects’ bodies, creating a small
puddle on the floor under the wheelchair, and one could almost hear
their echoes as each drop soared to the floor and hit the dirt and
roaches.

“I said shut the fuck of up! I know who you
are, and if you ever try to speak again, I’ll kill you!” The man
stopped his words as he ended the beating of Gabriel.

Not understanding why he was beaten or why
the obese man was shouting, Gabriel, weak and distorted, in pain
and bewilderment, spoke with nervousness and tears. “What are you
talking about?”

The obese man reached down to the floor of
the elevator and picked up a bunch of bloody roaches in the palm of
his hand, stuffing them into Gabriel’s mouth as Gabriel felt them
walking around his gums. He vomited on the man, and Gabriel tried
to catch his breath and block out the fact that roaches were in his
mouth a second ago, in order to keep his vomit down. The large man
then pulled out a syringe from his pocket and stuck the needle into
Gabriel’s arm. That’s when he passed out as the rest of the roaches
that he didn’t spit out fell from his mouth and squealed as they
hit the ground of the elevator, falling to their death.

Later on, Gabriel slowly awakened to the
sight of straps on his ankles and wrists, locking him onto the bed
he lay on. He tried to break free from them by moving about, but
failed. He looked around this small room and saw red wallpaper and
yellow dots at every end of it. Scanning the room more, he noticed
to the left of him a window with twelve thick, black bars on it. He
was trapped like a prisoner. Gabriel rolled his eyes to the front
and saw a single cross hanging on the wall. He asked and begged it,
“Please, God, help me!” Tears fell from Gabriel’s eyes and before
he could close them and pray, a breeze came across his face,
hitting the tears that dripped down to his neck, and he detected
the Jesus on the cross’s eyes suddenly opening. The cross shook,
with the eyes of Jesus opening wider toward Gabriel’s helpless
figure, triggering the young man to pay close attention to the
figure, with fear in his mind.

“Thou don’t need my help yet, the help is
already with you,” the Jesus on the cross echoed, with his voice
traveling through the small room and hovering over Gabriel’s head.
“I shall help when it is suitable for you to be helped!”

Stunned speechless, Gabriel did not
understand that he was hearing his God’s voice, which allowed more
tears to fall from his eyes. “Why can I hear you? What is happening
to me?” Gabriel’s sight was filled with terror and truth, seeing
that Jesus showed a tear that fell from his own right eye. At the
same time, a tear fell from Gabriel’s right eye, too.

“Gabriel, you are the East, you must guide My
army to the east,” echoed Jesus, with his own tears falling to the
green-tiled floor and turning each tile white. It was magical and
mystical to Gabriel’s blurry vision; he didn’t want to close his
eyes. Wanting to see this vision as long as it would last, Gabriel
fought his lids from closing, yearning to remember the moment when
his Lord spoke to him, a moment of his Lord crying.

“I don’t understand!”

Once the last word came from Gabriel’s cut-up
mouth, the straps on his ankles and wrists began to bust loose,
allowing him to wipe the tears away from his eyes to control the
stinging it caused in them, as well as the cuts on his lips and
nose that cried out for the salty tears not to touch them.

“Find the Shroud, that’s where the map shall
lie, and find Veronica’s Kerchief, the other map is within it!”
After the words came from the mouth of Jesus once more, the door to
the small, heat-filled room opened, and in came the obese man who
called himself a nurse. He noticed the straps had been broken from
Gabriel’s wrists and ankles. His green eyes turned to the cross on
the wall and he ran over to it in rage.

Grabbing the cross with one grasp of its
wooden body, he said toward Gabriel’s shadow, as it appeared on the
wall from the light outside the window, “So, Gabriel, you think
this will help you escape from here? I don’t think so.”

The man ran over to him and strapped the
straps to his ankles and wrists again, tightening them more stiffly
than they were, giving his blood only enough room to flow one drop
at a time to them. The large man then took the cross out of the
room and shouted before exiting it, “You’re not going to destroy
me—I won’t allow you to!”

CHAPTER FIVE

J
eremy slowly
followed behind Mary, and as they approached the mental institution
he felt a nervous ache shooting up his throat. The torment of
staring at Grewsal’s ugly façade made a recipe of torture in his
mind. He gawked at Grewsal, seeing the statues of gargoyles
guarding their places of rock, directing their devilish eyes toward
his, and in a way waiting for him to enter—at least that was his
impression. Coming up to its staircase, Jeremy dropped his left
foot on the first step, when suddenly a penetrating bolt of
lightning shot through the sky, causing him to almost lose his
balance, but catching his fall by grabbing onto one of the
gargoyles on the right. Jeremy turned around to look at the flash,
not realizing as he took his hand away from the gargoyle that its
eyes blinked, sort of as if he woke it up by accident. Yet when he
turned and glanced back, his nervous perception of the beast of
stone proved false, its eyes were still rock-hard as they were.

Mary turned to Jeremy and giggled. “It looks
like a storm’s coming. Man, I hate September weather.”

Jeremy grinned at her remark and slowly
proceeded to walk up the stairs. When his right foot touched the
second step, another bolt of lightning shot through the sky that
caused Jeremy to fall from fright. He got up quickly. Mary had her
back to him and did not know that he fell; Jeremy was relieved that
she didn’t see his clumsiness. Every step that he touched sent more
bolts shooting through the heavens, dancing and fighting throughout
the silver and dark blue clouds, as if the gods began their battle,
or else were getting ready for a longed-for fight of wit. Yet, once
Jeremy reached the top of the stairs, the lightning died, melting
the skyline and turning it to rain, with drops of rock-like rain
pounding at Jeremy and Mary’s heads, forcing Mary to quickly open
up the door of Grewsal.

In the foyer of the institution at the front
desk stood the head nurse, breathing deeply and exhaling austerely,
sternly waiting to see the door fully open and who would be filling
the shadows that came in through the cracks of the entrance. The
nurse saw a hand, a woman’s hand, and into her sight came Mary’s
beautiful image, causing the nurse’s breathing to lessen and her
hand against a red button on the side of the front desk, hitting it
over and over again without Mary knowing. Pressing the red button
over and over, the nurse still showed a straight face and a fake
smile to Mary as she slowly walked up to her. That’s when the nurse
caught sight of Jeremy, causing her body to freeze with fear and
allowing her right hand to stay down on the red button, and just
glare at him, with eyes of fright and straight lips of rage. Jeremy
and Mary passed by a woman sitting in a chair, looking
apprehensive; the woman was Gabriel’s mother. Jeremy smiled to her,
and she smiled back, with him noticing tears in her eyes and worry
in her face.

As Mary and Jeremy came up to the front desk,
the head nurse still had her hand on the red button, an alarm that,
once pushed, gave off a loud piercing ring on all of the floors of
Grewsal, every floor except for the foyer.

Meanwhile, on the other floors the alarm was
heard, with nurses and doctors running around the halls in fear,
dropping files and papers to the floor, and some even trampling
other doctors without even a second to see the blood that came from
the severe injuries they caused on those they stepped on. Chaos
came to Grewsal, with a doctor staring at a red, flashing light
that was hanging from the ceiling and roaring, “My God, she’s
here!” The mysterious and sudden panic caused one doctor, who knew
the reason for the fear and panic, to run to the top floor of the
building, battling to get by as workers were running around still
frantically trying to get to their offices and stations before Mary
and her new patient came up. “Where’s Victor?” the doctor asked one
of the staff, trying to catch his breath.

“Victor? Oh, fat Victor, you mean? The last
time I saw him he was carrying a cross,” the older lady answered,
picking up a broom that was lying on the ground and beginning to
sweep the dirt and junk from off the floor in a fury.

The doctor ran all around the top floor,
hunting for Victor, passing by staff person after staff person
wiping beads of sweat away from their faces, fighting the salt that
made his eyes throb and unbearable to keep focused. He wiped the
salty sweat away from his sockets, and abruptly came across Victor.
“Victor, did you unstrap Gabriel?” the doctor asked, seeing Victor
itching his fat face and showing a dumb look on his visage, like he
didn’t recognize the panic around him.

“Um, no, why?”

“Because, you fat slob, Doctor Callahan is
here. I want you to unstrap Gabriel and go check on his brother,
‘Michael.’ I don’t want Doctor Callahan to see anything that she’s
not supposed to see,” the doctor yelled out, seeing Victor running
away from him, and his blubber literally following his trail as he
ran.

Meanwhile, Mary shook hands with Gabriel’s
mother down in the foyer and watched as his mother left Grewsal.
Mary then closed the door and turned around, smiled at Jeremy, and
then facing the head nurse, saw panic in her eyes. “Well, Jeremy,
welcome to Grewsal.” Mary smiled, walking up to him and patting him
on the back.