The Wrath of Jeremy (3 page)

“Mom, it’s happening again!”

With one curler still hanging limp from her
long, blonde hair, she walked out of the kitchen, knowing what he
meant by that, yet hoping and praying it was some other meaning.
“What?” she questioned. She saw Gabriel staring off in a trance,
with him seeing the Apostles becoming reality as well, jumping out
of the painting, standing full figure in his presence. Smell,
taste, and thought entered as new voices to Gabriel’s senses,
actually smelling these figures, and tasting the air, to him, what
tasted and smelled like sand, as if these figures went on a long
journey through the heated desert, with the sun to intensify their
stench.

They all, including his Savior, stood seven
feet in height, starting to walk to him in a slow motion movement.
Fear ran through his eyes, but he didn’t allow it to go into his
thoughts; he was strong, he didn’t covet, yearn, want to give in to
his supposed sickness. “It’s happening again.” He pointed toward
the painting, but he really was pointing toward the seven-foot
figures walking toward him slowly, allowing his fears to turn to
panic, and causing his shakiness to turn to tears. The fear already
reached his mind, without him being able to control its abrupt
entering.

“You mean the painting?” The mother ran
toward it and touched the painting, shouting, “Are the figures
moving in the painting? Gabriel? Honey—tell me!”

“Well, not exactly…the figures are standing
right next to you,” he replied in a subtle, terrified voice.

The mother tried feeling around in the air
for the figures, actually allowing herself to believe there was
something to feel, and that Gabriel wasn’t sick at all. But reality
took over, his mother shaking her head in disappointment toward the
situation; she shook it again, showing Gabriel that she didn’t see
anything. “Alright, snap out of it, Gabriel,” she yelled, running
up to him and shaking him vigorously. “Snap out of it!” She shook
him more, like she was trying to shake the demon out from his soul,
and even his thoughts. The last curler that hung from her hair hit
Gabriel in the head, falling from her hair, due to excessive
shaking.

“Mom, help me!” The figures started to reach
out for him, attempting to touch his forehead. Noise did not exist,
hope did not show, as Gabriel saw them, their lifelike figures not
presenting any paint on them like they had in the painting. Yet,
they looked exactly like the work of art, the work of art that’s so
famous, and the work of art that was now attacking Gabriel, at
least in his eyes.

His mother sprinted to the phone in a
desperate attempt to help her poor, sick, innocent son, panicking
over his life, and over what his eyes saw and what hers didn’t. As
she dialed Gabriel’s physician’s number, he rose up and began to
back up slowly, starting now to run away from the moving figures in
a desperate attempt to escape this bewildering realm he didn’t
accept. Racing away, he ran upstairs, tripping over every single
wooden step there was, and went to his bedroom, slamming the door
behind him and closing his eyes in stress. Nausea was beginning to
creep up his throat from panic as he was attempting to keep this
door shut, placing his dresser, stereo, and basically anything he
could find in his room in front of this door, knowing he was safe
in his bedroom.

He was trapped. He was scared. The terror of
realizing something not of this world was attacking him allowed
Gabriel to feel the fear he never wanted to sense, the trepidation
his eyes began to see, the terror his eyes only saw. He sat down in
the center of his room, crying out for help. The fright boggled his
mind, watching the door of his room, and praying to himself that it
wouldn’t move a bit. “Please, leave me alone,” he whispered,
gawking at the doorknob, hoping it wouldn’t begin to turn. But his
hopes were lost, the doorknob turned, first moving a bit, and then
turning full, yet stopping at the point where the lock wouldn’t
allow it to go anymore. “Go away,” he screamed. “Go away—Mom,
help!” The doorknob turned past the locked point, showing Gabriel’s
tear-filled eyes that it was unlocked by something. Gabriel ran to
his window and tried opening it to escape from the creatures, to
escape from the terror, to escape from the holiness.

“What are you doing?” a high-pitched voice
questioned.

Gabriel turned around and saw it was his
mother crying out her words.

“Oh, it’s only you.” Gabriel was relieved to
see her, dropping down to his floor in a seating position; he
grabbed onto her hand and held it tightly. The tiredness his fear
brought to him caused his mind to be fatigued, to give up, to close
shut and never possess these memories again.

“Come on, I’m taking you to the hospital
now,” his mother said, shaking her tear-soaked hands and grabbing
onto Gabriel’s arm. She was tired, too, exhausted from the fear
traveling from his mind to hers; it achieved its journey
successfully.

“I’m okay, I don’t want to go, especially to
the hospital.” He pulled away from her grip, not wanting to leave,
after begging to go the beach before, but now craving to put it
behind him, close it in his thoughts and lock it away for good.

“Gabriel, they’re going to help you.” He
looked away from her quickly, not believing her as his eyes
wrinkled over, like he was ready to cry.

“No, they’re not. I’m not stupid, Mom.
They’re gonna put me with Michael. I don’t want to go to a
nuthouse,” he shouted, gazing through his open door at the
hallway.

“It’s better than you having to put up with
seeing statues, and now paintings, coming alive.” Through her
words, shallow yet sincere indeed, Gabriel still aimed his eyes in
his own silence toward the hallway, and widened them rapidly
without hesitation, seeing Jesus standing in the doorway, gaping
toward his eyes. Gabriel’s fear grew once again, the fear of the
figure that he called his ‘Savior’. Ironically he feared this great
man, only because no one else’s eyes could see him but his own.
Gabriel got up from the floor and quickly climbed out the window.
His mother was dumbfounded at his actions, yelling for him to come
back, yet he still moved in the opposite direction. Down the
drainpipes he climbed: being connected to the roof, they were shaky
as his weight hit their delicate, rusty bodies, but he ignored the
weakness of the pipes, and kept on climbing down them. “Where are
you going?” his mother screamed.

“I’m going to the hospital with you,” he
answered, reaching the ground and jumping onto the passenger’s seat
of his mother’s convertible. He stared out at the small town he
lived in, where every house looked alike, and closed his eyes,
knowing he was never going to see them again, and realizing,
feeling deep in his mind, that this was more than a sickness, and
he would soon find out what exactly that “more” was.

CHAPTER TWO

L
ooking around and
staring at the murky, darkened alley, feeling the cold New York
breeze that brushed against his nervously twitching eyes, David
glared at the next alley light in front of him, feeling some form
of relief that the light was going to be in his presence soon.
Holding a brown paper bag close to his broad torso, he ambled very
slowly, turning his frightened head every so often and looking over
his shoulders to see if anyone was following his steps, his motion.
A cold breeze rushed against his flesh once more. Hearing the
sounds of this sinister night, like rats walking past him, and
black, dirty cats, hurtling out in front of him and tipping over
garbage cans, created a thunderous, deafening noise, to which all
David could do was close his eyes tight and wait for the noises to
pass him by and travel out of the present. Nerves built up inside
of his belly, possessing his soul to the point where terror
couldn’t possibly vanish once he fell under the light in the
alley.

He finally passed by the light, and his
predictions of feeling sovereignty over his fears once hitting it
were of course wrong, and, as he passed it, he felt the darkened
alley sinisterly grasping his trepidation, his fear even more,
twofold, but he just kept on walking. He ran his fingers through
his black hair, stopping in the middle of this alley. Seeing an
abrupt figure of a man shuffling toward his own shadow that was
silhouetted in front of him, the figure stopped right on his
shadow’s head, and asked David in a suspicious voice, “You got the
stuff?”

“Yeah, but do you have the cash?” After
David’s words of a snotty nature, he reached his hand into his coat
and rubbed his scar on his chest, because it itched when he was
nervous, and still waited in the shadows of two buildings, casting
one dark shadow over them, wondering if this man had the money that
David wanted.

The cold was too unbearable for David, so he
pulled his black winter coat closer to his body while the man
finally replied, “Yeah, but I want to see the merchandise
first.”

“Here!” David showed the strange-looking man
an ounce of marijuana he held in the paper bag, and saw a smile
growing slowly on the man’s face. He nodded toward David, his eyes
glowing with honest greed toward the bag, or a mysterious twinkle
that David was unsure about, handing him the cash and grabbing the
merchandise from David’s frozen fingers. “Alright, it was a
pleasure doing business with you,” David muttered, turning his
half-frozen body around quickly, and starting to walk away into the
alley’s darkness.

Yet, momentarily, just as David turned away,
the man spoke. “Hold it, I’m not done with you yet!” David’s eyes
grew larger, feeling the cold breeze rushing against his eyes and
pupils, yearning to get a good breath of air, due to the coldness
literally suffocating his lungs. He felt his own blood pumping
through his veins, and frostbite on his fingers felt as if the
blood craved to shoot out of the tips of his nails, to allow some
relief of the pressure. David turned away from the wind’s direction
and faced the man slowly, gawking at him in suspicion through his
frozen eyes of curiosity.

“What else do you want? I don’t have any more
of this stuff. If you want some, then you’re going to have to wait
till next week!”

The man grinned more at David’s words,
finding them amusing, causing David’s eyes to squint and his
suspicion to build even greater toward the man’s smile. The man
then muttered, “No, I don’t want any more. What I do want is to
arrest you.” He pulled out a police badge, having the one single
alley light to reflect the golden glare toward David’s eyes, going
from squinting with mystery to widening with fear. “You’re under
arrest for the selling of marijuana!”

David’s icy legs started running, sprinting
as fast as he could through the cold winds of New York, and chasing
his own silhouette past the alley light and down the alley of
darkness. He could hear the footsteps of the police officer
starting up as well. He saw nothing except darkness on top of
chill, striking at all of his senses, but kept up his fast motion
to avoid falling into the officer’s hands. His face numb with pain,
hands frozen like ice, he heard a gunshot come from behind him,
echoing past him, and now knew that his life was at risk, as well
as his freedom. So David pulled out a gun of his own, holding it
close to his body, when suddenly his eyes caught the end of the
alley, and saw the street lights lighting the alley’s opening,
feeling a sense of relief once again, and then exiting it, just as
the officer shot another bullet toward David’s back, missing him as
he turned and began running on the New York sidewalk. A smoke-like
moisture that came from his mouth and froze on his lips seemed to
be that of train smoke, being that he was running so fast, and
being that he never even bothered to swallow what was left of his
saliva, feeling the dryness of his mouth entering his throat,
allowing a sense of vomiting to enter his thoughts. But he kept up
the run, while the officer kept up the chase, calling for backup as
he ran for David, noticing that David was heading toward a parked
taxicab. David shot his gun toward the officer, hitting him, and
causing him to fall to the cold New York street. A small grin
provoked his numb lips, causing pain, and cracking his lips in
numerous places, sanctioning blood to create a shield over his
mouth. Hearing the officer giving a small moan, while David gave
out a loud “Yes,” like he was shooting clay pigeons, and just hit
one for the first time. He then turned quickly, and jumped in the
taxicab, shouting, “Drive, drive, drive,” demanding the driver not
to think twice about the order.

But the driver turned around, peeled open his
own eyes, showing that he was sleeping a while, and said, “I’m off
duty, kid, sorry.”

David gave out a fast sigh, showed the man
his gun and ordered, “I said drive!”

Strangely, the cab driver developed laughter
toward the gun, allowing confusion, anger and stress to come over
David’s paranoid eyes, seeing now that the driver was not only
laughing at the gun, but also now laughing directly at his
face.

“Boy, you chose the wrong cab to hold up. I’m
sorry, but the reason why I’m off duty is because my cab broke
down.” The driver’s words were honest and to the point, causing
David to give out another sigh, watching this cab driver’s
green-yellow teeth, and now seeing his disgusting gums as he opened
his mouth to laugh harder toward him.

“Damn, I don’t believe this is happening to
me!” shouted David, exiting the cab and seeing two more police
officers running toward him with great speed, while the other one
was still lying on the ground, his hands over the gunshot wound,
which David now saw was near his stomach.

He was confused, understanding that he was
trapped between a broken-down cab and two officers running in the
direction of him. David turned away quickly, and then noticed as he
turned a single church across the street. Seeing the officers
halting and trying to help the wounded officer a bit, David made a
run for it, heading straight for the church, reaching its cold
doors, and entering it, feeling his body going from cold to warm,
but still having his mind staying at fear level.