The Wrath of Jeremy (9 page)

As Mary and Jeremy talked a bit, fat Victor
ran in exhaustion to Gabriel’s room, unstrapping Gabriel’s wrists
and ankles. “What are you doing?” questioned Gabriel in a frantic
way as Victor took out a syringe and began to inject a green liquid
into Gabriel’s arm.

“This is just a little something to help calm
your nerves!” Victor ended his sentence with a laugh, and watched
Gabriel pass out quickly. Victor then turned to leave and noticed
the outline of the cross that he took, and how the dust from the
room made a perfect shape of it. That’s when his eyes glistened in
panic. He knew Mary would notice the missing cross and ask why he
took it down, so Victor realized he had to get it back up before
she saw it missing. He ran out of the room and sprinted down the
hallway for a second, and then he saw Mary and Jeremy down the
hallway. He mumbled, “Shit!”

“Victor, what room is Gabriel in?” asked
Mary, approaching Victor with Jeremy.

He stuck out his hand and pointed to the
room. “Right in there, ma’am.”

She passed by Victor’s frozen, large body,
standing there like a wet statue, due to the thick sweat on his
face and armpits. She turned away from this disgusting sight and
entered the room, seeing Gabriel’s sleeping body on the bed. She
walked up to him and noticed a few bruises on his face. With her
eyes widening in concern, she asked, “What happened to his
face?”

Victor stood by the entrance of the doorway
and walked in, passing Jeremy and giving a sinister stare toward
him. Jeremy stood against the wall, by where the old cross used to
hang, and watched as Victor walked up to Mary and replied in a
disoriented manner, “Um, well, he went into another attack, and he
fell—to, to, to—the ground a lot. He fell so hard that he knocked
himself out cold. He’s been sleeping ever since.” Mary then turned
to Victor, squinted in disbelief and turned back to Gabriel,
noticing the bloody mark on Gabriel’s arm, where the sharp needle
full of unprescribed sleeping medication penetrated. “What did you
give him?” Mary asked in an angry manner.

“Oh, I just gave him a little something so he
would have a good rest.”

Jeremy noticed sweat dripping from Victor’s
forehead: it was a type of sweat that meant he was lying through
his teeth—the one tooth he had left—for reasons still unknown.
Jeremy gaped at his sweat, how the drips seemed as if they were
moaning, falling past his darkened eyes, trembling down his mouth
and jumping to their deaths, soaring to the ground only to hit his
large stomach that broke their fall. Victor gave out a strong scent
of spoiled garbage baking in a summer’s sun. As Jeremy watched a
single drop of sweat falling from Victor’s face, Mary turned around
and looked past Victor and his stench, staring at the wall,
realizing that the dust on it resembled the cross that once hung
there. “Where is the cross that was hanging there?”

“Oh, it fell and broke, so I took it out of
here.”

Mary then scanned the floor with her eyes of
exquisiteness, squinting in confusion, demanding, “Why is the floor
white? Wasn’t it green before?” Victor looked away from her and
began laughing. “What’s so funny?”

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry, it’s just comical to
realize that you don’t remember us painting this floor white. We
did this last week.” Jeremy looked at Gabriel’s pale face while
Victor laughed and answered to her question, seeing how innocent
and uncontaminated he was, how angelic his bruised innocence
seemed. A flush of angry memories roared past Jeremy’s mind,
screaming through his soul, about how he remembered a time when his
father inflicted pain, harsh pain to his body, causing bruises to
develop over his legs, by a tree branch hitting them by his
father’s force, all because he wore shorts when he was eight years
of age, after his father demanded he wore pants instead; it was a
cold day. Tears rushed through Jeremy’s lungs, filling up to his
nose and allowing his eyes to seem as if they were beginning to
melt. He tried to stop the thawing of his pupils by turning away
from Gabriel’s bruises and staring toward the wall where Mary’s
eyes were fixed.

“Oh well, just make sure you get that cross
back up on that wall,” demanded Mary. They exited the room and she
walked with Jeremy to Michael’s room, with Jeremy still having
hidden memories of abuse from his father haunting his inner eyes,
causing Jeremy to close his eyes every so often as they walked, to
try and think of something else, another vision. Walking down the
hallway slowly, they both saw one of the staff members still
running, not realizing that Mary and Jeremy were there yet. The man
suddenly stopped when he saw Mary and Jeremy, and she just looked
at him in confusion, not knowing why he was running to begin with.
For now, it was as if the entire staff of Grewsal ran in panic
because of Mary’s ignorance of Grewsal’s secrets, her unknowing
that the knowing wouldn’t be unlocked just yet. To Jeremy, it was
as if he knew more than Mary did about this place, at least for the
time being; he knew that it was evil. But he kept his emotions for
Grewsal deep inside of him, in the abyss of his mind where many
other secrets lay as well.

Garbage cans, silver and rusted at the
bottom, stood on both sides of the hallway as they passed them, and
Jeremy turned to one and noticed a noise coming from it; a small
rattling. As he turned more to see what the rattling was, the man
who ran walked past Mary and Jeremy, causing Jeremy to look away
from the garbage can and stare at the man. That’s when they both
entered Michael’s room, down the hall, allowing Jeremy to forget
about the rattle in the garbage can, not knowing that soon he will
find out what it was.

For now, as they both entered Michael’s room,
they found that he was nowhere to be found. “Where’s Michael?” she
yelled out, jolting Jeremy. Her voice past through his head and
entered the hallway where the man who was caught by her sight,
running, immediately stopped dead in his tracks and rushed his thin
figure down the hallway, in search of where the loud voice came
from. He realized its orientation started from Michael’s room, so
he ran toward it, begging his feet to run faster. As he rushed,
trying to get to Michael’s room before the question rang out again,
she shouted it inevitably once more, exhaling her worry as it
traveled down the hallway past the man again, and it shook his
brain, rattling it over and over again, like a nail scratching a
chalkboard. Closer and closer he came to Michael’s room, trying to
beg with his eyes for him not to hear her yell out again. Faster
and faster, he kept up his stride, passing fat Victor in the
process, and said, “I thought I told you to check on Michael!”

“I’m sorry, Curtis, but I had to unstrap
Gabriel first,” Victor said, before Curtis began running again. He
came across Michael’s room as he wiped the sweat from off his face
and tried fixing his long, blond hair, entering Michael’s room and
catching the angry eyes of Mary. “Dr. Henderson, where’s Michael?”
Mary asked, pulling Curtis into the room deeper by his long, black
tie.

“Um, who?” Curtis stuttered, with sweat
forming on his palms. The enduring panic that Curtis abided by
strung at his stomach like a harp, stinging his insides like a bee,
and kicking his nerves like a horse’s hooves hitting a burning hot
stone in the heat of a summer sun.

“Don’t play dumb with me, you know who I’m
talking about. I wanted to introduce Jeremy to him. I already tried
to introduce him to Gabriel, but he’s sleeping. So, like I asked
before, where’s Michael?” she asked again, with her eyes scanning
Michael’s room and noticing dust on the wall that resembled a cross
that once hung there. “And where the hell is the cross? What the
hell is going on here? Listen to me, if you don’t tell me where the
cross is and where Michael is at, I’m going to fire you!”

“Um, Michael is—” Curtis tried to retort,
when with astonishment he noticed Victor wheeling Michael in a
wheelchair. “Michael is right here.”

Victor and Michael entered the room, passing
Curtis and Jeremy, and stopped right in front of Mary. She looked
down at Michael and noticed his black hair was tangled. She knelt
down to the floor and began stroking his hair and face, shaking him
once, and noticed that his eyes wouldn’t open. She took her right
hand and opened up his left eyelid to reveal one of his green eyes,
and asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

Jeremy looked at Michael in a distressing,
melancholy-filled way, seeing how innocent his sleeping eyes were,
and contemplating what caused those eyes to become sleeping eyes.
Jeremy knew the bruises on Gabriel had to come from somewhere other
than Victor’s excuse, but where did Michael’s bruises lie, if he
had any?

Will I get bruises like Gabriel…?

Jeremy pondered these thoughts, wondering
about the answer and its possible karma connection, wondering if he
did anything bad in his past to even deserve bad karma and be
inflicted with bruises. Nevertheless, he still pondered over
Michael’s sleeping eyes as he heard Mary yell out to Victor and
Curtis, “I asked, what is wrong with him?”

Curtis and Victor looked at each other in
fright, trying to come up with an answer, with Curtis finally
saying in a faltering stutter, “Well, he had another attack, so I
had to give him an injection to calm him down. That’s also why the
cross is missing, he saw Jesus talking to him through it.”

Mary remembered that Jeremy was with her, and
didn’t want him to see the Grewsal staff’s incompetence. So she got
up from her knees, smiled and turned to face Jeremy, saying with
ease, “Well, I’ll introduce you to him tomorrow, we’re going to
have a session with you, Michael and Gabriel together. That way
you’ll be able to get to know each other.” She turned her eyes away
from Jeremy and looked at Victor. “Now, Victor, I want you to show
Jeremy to his room. We have a long day tomorrow, I want Jeremy to
have as much sleep as possible.”

Victor bowed his large head slightly to her
and then picked up Michael, slowly placing him in his bed, all the
while feeling Mary’s eyes on his back like nails. He knew that she
was watching every move he made toward Michael. Victor even went as
far as kissing his fat, sweaty hand and placing the hand on
Michael’s forehead, to attempt to show his supposedly kind side.
Mary smiled at that but Jeremy didn’t; he read right through
Victor’s obesity, knowing that he had an evil profile to his dim
aura, and kept himself with eyes wide open, preparing his mind for
Victor’s words when Mary wasn’t around. He knew Victor would change
once Mary left, and Jeremy thought he was ready for it. Victor
walked back to the wheelchair and waited for Jeremy to sit in
it.

“That’s okay, I can walk, thank you,” Jeremy
said to Victor, looking at him with ominous eyes.

“No, sir, I insist that you sit in the
chair.”

Jeremy began walking out from the room,
reminding him, “I said I could walk!”

Mary walked out of the room as well, and saw
that Victor was beginning to get upset, even angry toward Jeremy
for not sitting in the wheelchair. Mary then turned to Curtis,
rolling her eyes at the abrupt and short dispute that Victor was
having with a child, and said, “You know what, better yet, I’ll
show Jeremy to his room. Also, I just remembered, I spoke to
Gabriel’s mother about ten minutes ago; she said that she’d bring
his clothes and belongings tomorrow. Make sure that Gabriel gets
them.”

Mary strolled down the hallway with Jeremy,
leaving Curtis and Victor gawking at their shadows, which were
created from the circular fluorescent lights hanging above them,
enlarging and creating their shadow silhouettes as they passed by
each bulb, with Curtis and Victor standing stiff. They watched them
walk slowly, perceiving their bodies getting smaller as they
entered the end of the hallway, allowing Victor and Curtis to
breathe heavily with anger, and causing Victor to question, “Is
that the one?”

Curtis turned slowly to him, chewed a bit on
his bottom lip, then turned back to face Jeremy and Mary, watching
as they entered a room at the end of the hallway.

Still staring where Jeremy and Mary used to
be, Curtis replied in a foreboding tone, “Yep, he’s the one
alright.”

They both ground their teeth together and
looked intently at each other. They had one plan on their minds, a
mysterious idea, one that Jeremy would soon find out the meaning
of.

CHAPTER SIX

D
avid walked into
the jailhouse room with chains on his wrists and ankles. They hit
at his ankles hard, forming bruises on them that promised more
pain. He paced slowly, timidly, fearing the chains would hurt his
ankles even more if he built up his momentum, and the guards knew
it. The guards pushed David, forcing him to walk faster or else
trip over his own two feet, and the pain from the chains knocked
and struck at his newly formed bruises, causing jolts of torturous
agony to bolt from David’s ankles again, causing his teeth to meet
with his tongue, making it bleed out. Tasting the blood that poured
out of his tongue wound quickly, David cooperated, taking it like a
man and penguin-walked down the hallway.

He reached a room and the guards opened the
door, pushing David in, making him tumble to the floor and hit the
side of his head. He got up, without the help of the guards, by
rolling over to a wall and pressing his back against it and
squirming his weight against the wall, literally bringing his own
body weight up by forcing his muscles to defy gravity. Once up, he
saw mirrors on opposite sides of the room with a single brown table
in the center of it. The walls were painted a dirty gray, making
the confined room seem even smaller. Two guards placed him in a
chair, throwing him down to his seat, and pulled his hair for a
second. Laughing at their abuse, they then both walked out of the
room and closed the door, locking it. David gazed into the mirror
in front of him, spitting out blood from his tongue wound, and
perceived that he was really looking at his worst enemy. He gawked
at his long, black hair and freckly face, filling his mind with so
much rage that he spit a large ball of saliva at his reflection,
mixed with chunks of blood. He watched the saliva slowly fall past
his reflection, crawling past his face and onto the gray painted
walls.