Purgatorium (24 page)

Gabriel walks away from me in a heated mess. “You got my stomach boiling. Where is there a fast food joint around here when you need one?!”

I follow Gabriel to the door of the tree. I must try and solve what my sin is as Gabriel continues talking, not letting me ponder even a thought of what it could be.

“Now remember, reapers can and will intervene. If a reaper touches you, the trial starts over again and your memory gets sponged. If that were to happen again with you…”

I know, I know. Hell.

“And if you feel
content
….”

I cringe again at the word.

Gabriel looks strongly at me as if he knows what that word does to me.

“If you feel
at peace
on letting your demon take over your human vessel after the race is over, then you are giving it permission to take your body. If it somehow tricks you into saying it, that counts. Do I make myself clear on the matter?”

I follow what Gabriel is saying, but find it all to be unbelievable.
Who have I met in the real world that’s really a demon?
I wonder, flabbergasted. I can’t believe I’ve probably met a demon—maybe even more than one. I think of people who could not conceivably have been demons in the real world, but then I remember that I don’t have my memories to even guess. People can’t be that cruel in real life though, can they?

“Really? People aren’t that cruel in real life?” Gabriel responds to m my thoughts. “I can give you a list of examples.”

Not wanting to believe Gabriel, I look back at the tree. The answers to what sin binds me here is in there. But I remember that I will also have to enter the tree to understand more about my own past, especially about Madi and me.

“If you go now, you won’t see her again,” says Gabriel. “You got lucky last time, but you can’t handle the truth about your past just yet. We must stick to the recipe and continue cooking.”

I see the door right in front of me. I grow eager to get it over with.

Gabriel turns to me. “Your demon is waiting for you in there. He is faster, stronger, and can hear your thoughts like we can! If you let your thoughts slip and it found out that your last day of living is just a few days from now, do you really think it is going to go easy on you? You really don’t want to tick it off this early in the game, do you?”

My watch beeps.

25 Minutes

I turn away from the tree and follow
Gabriel
as I walk further into the park. He yells out, “Twenty-five minutes!”

I walk at a faster rate, not wanting to feel the urge to head back. Gabriel runs up next to me with a smirk on his face.

“Now where were we? Ah yes! You wanted examples! Well you see, demons are everywhere. They’re not as ubiquitous as we might all think, but they are relatively common—like fancy top-of-the-line cars. Like the one you like to drive. Not everyone has one but we’ve all seen a couple.” Gabriel shrugs.

Where is he getting at with all of this? I just can’t believe that demons take over coma victims’ bodies. It sounds too much like science fiction for me.

Gabriel steps in front of me while walking backwards. “A three-year-old boy was hit by a speeding car and fell into a coma. Once awake, he started developing new characteristics. He became addicted to cigarettes and later left home. Parents haven’t heard from him since.” Gabriel stops and pauses a second, looking at me.

I immediately stop in my tracks.

“An 84-year-old granddad fell down a manhole, wound up in a coma for a month, and woke up. He became a sex addict and died of a heart problem at a strip joint.”

I walk around him, not wanting to believe anything he is saying.

Gabriel runs up next to me. “Oh! How about this one? A 20-year-old girl came out of her coma, knocked three nurses out, and broke her doctor’s arm. Ruthless, that demon was, probably was the girl’s Wrath.”

Do demons only think of chaos? What is their end game after all the chaotic destructions inflected on that person’s life is over? What more can they do?

Gabriel turns to me, listening to my thoughts, and concludes, “Death. But not by the host it has taken over, but by the people around it.”

Stunned, I look at Gabriel, confused by his answer.

Gabriel looks back at me, explaining, “The mind can only take so much mayhem until it eventually cracks. A demon’s mind, just like ours, has a breaking point. Their motives are all very different in the beginning, mostly pertaining to the host’s once desires in life. After accomplishing their goals of ruining said hosts life, they begin to surround themselves off the sins of the world. The demons drink it in like water. Eventually they grow even more thirsty, wanting to consume more pain onto others. Listen up, because this is the point were every demon comes full circle. To put the term loosely, they all become blood-thirsty killers. Mass panic killing sprees is at an all-time high this year. All due to souls, like yourself, too scared to face up to their own sins.”

He walks away, like if he had already explained this to me a million times before. I follow him, all the while wondering to myself how a person could even think of killing another human being. Right then and there I make a vow to myself.

I am not a killer, nor will I ever be. My sin will not be the end of me.

We get on the elevator that heads up to my office. I see Gabriel press the number “6.” I can’t believe it, six again. Gabriel stops me once again by continuing on.

“You see, kid, what the Handbook doesn’t teach you is that there is a demon inside of everyone. You are the driver, but he is in the backseat. Some people can fight their demons all their lives and others just let the demons feed on them. It’s not unnatural. Only when you get to a place like this, can you start to see this reality for yourself. But really the same purpose for this place can be found in the real world as well. The people that fight their demons all their lives will be rewarded in heaven. The ones that don’t, burn in hell with the devil holding the pitchfork to their tarted, mutilated bodies. At least in this place you can fight your demon physically,” he says snickering to himself.

I ponder what
Gabriel
is saying. Strange that in all of this talk about demons, angels, and even the devil, there is no mention of God.

“Where’s God in all of this, you ask?” says Gabriel. “He made the board game, but that doesn’t mean he has to play it. Same rules that apply in the real world, apply here as well. Everyone has their own meaning of life speech. Mine is short. ‘Do not waste a single second.’”

I look up and see the doors slide open. Lost in thought and pondering all that Gabriel has said, I step inside my office. Hearing the ticking sound from the grandfather clock makes me feel uneasy.

Tick tock, tick tock, goes the clock, I think, remembering how it felt. The hours spent in this room were dreadfully long.

30 Minutes

“Thirty minutes!” Gabriel yells in my ear. Annoyed, I push him away and look at him fumbling around with the pictures again. He chooses a photo from the stack and walks to the other side of the room.
I see Gabriel
staring across the office to the large window. I look at the window myself but see nothing. He puts the picture on the window and grabs the duct tape on my desk to stick up on it.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Gabriel makes his way to my desk and stares at the grandfather clock resting in front of it.

“Time can play tricks on you,” he says, taking the grandfather clock and tossing it up against the wall. “That was getting a bit annoying to my ears.”

I take out the pictures once again and look through each of them until I find the one that Michael had taken in front of my office window. Still I don’t see anything. Gabriel snatches the photo from my hand and takes a piece of tape from my desk to stick it on the window.

“Did you ever sit here and wonder why five minutes in this office feels more like five hours? That’s time playing tricks on you. For example, an eager student wanting to leave and go home, watches the clock, waiting for it to strike 3:30 for then the school will be let out. But the clock shows 3:25. The student continues to watch as every second to every passing minute goes slowly by. This makes that five minute gap seem more unbearable the longer he keeps his mind focused on it. So now let’s bring it back to here. All that this place really did was take that example and apply it to this time zone. Your mind may let you think that you are having a 24 hour day, but all the while in this reality it is only 60 minutes. Time is a trickster of sorts.”

I walk over closer to the window, looking past the picture taped to it, and out across the park at the sun which is covered by the wintery clouds.

What he is really saying to me is that with time comes pain, not patience. I recall sitting behind that desk, trying to write a book from dawn to dusk. All that time I was trashing marked paperwork, bored out of my mind. It seemed like it took forever. Now he is telling me that it was only five minutes, cruel punishment is all this is. All this time, I’ve been thinking I had it all and suddenly realize I really had nothing to begin with. This place is designed behind one cruel joke and that joke appears to be me.

“You think going inside that door makes you ready? Makes you strong enough? I love this new can-do attitude you’re trying out but you only got seven more days left. What you don’t know is that all you have done has just messed up everything we planned, designed, intended, calculated, prearranged, and prepared for. We have perfected it each time by getting you that much closer to waking up. We are now going on instinct.”

I try to wonder how many times they have done all of this to where they had to go and calculate a set list of things to teach me on each day.

“So, next time you decide to grow some balls, don’t. Because balls don’t exist here. Ask Uriel about that. Very upset, he is.”

Gabriel
walks over to the wall on the left, where the record player is, and starts leafing through the stack of records. He picks one out, takes the vinyl from the sleeve, and places it on the platter. I look across at the stack of albums, but once again, don’t remember ever listening to any of them before.

Gabriel takes out his gum from behind his neck and puts it in his mouth. I watch with disgusted fascination—I never thought angels would be so…human.

“Nap time, class,” Gabriel says, placing the stylus on the record. Though annoyed at Gabriel’s patronization, I suddenly feel very tired, sleepy, and even a little dizzy. I lie down on the couch.

“Let’s try and get you seeing clearly again.” The sound of static comes over the speakers. “Today, class, we will learn about music therapy. It’s based on the principle that to maintain our coherence as beings in the world we must creatively improvise our identity. Creative activity, music for example, allows us to retain coherent organization, which links our soul, body, and mind. Just like what you have been hearing on the subway, for example.”

The first notes of “Running on Empty” by Jackson Browne begin to play.

“Sebastian Coe once said, ‘The mile is just the right length: beginning, middle, end, a story unfolding. Find that mile, your mile—the mile that leads to your story.’ Music is the guide to your soul, just like the subway train. Feel it out. Let it in. Remember what made this song mean something to you. What life change did you come across when you first heard it?”

Half-delirious with sleepiness, I close my eyes and imagine running towards a light.

“That’s it,” says Gabriel.

I feel a stupor come over me, half-awake, half-asleep, as if in a trance induced by the music. I feel me and the music are indistinguishable, as if I were part of it. Everything goes hazy, except for the sight of steam rising up from my mouth.

I look at myself in a window’s reflection. I see that I am six years old. I look behind me to see what appears to be an old elementary school. The same music from my office is playing in my headphones. A thick sheet of snow falls all around me. I blink, my eyelids fluttering to clear the flakes accumulating on my lashes.

Drawing in a deep breath, I search the surrounding scene. The brick wall of my elementary school looms high behind me. There is a steel bike rack in front of me. The flag halyard whips against the pole in the stiffening breeze.

I try to move and reflect, but I feel control of my body and mind slipping away. My six-year-old mind floods in, taking over, obliterating all memory of my soulful prison and anything that has happened beyond that. The six-year-old me blinks, trying to remember what I was just thinking.

I turn to my right, eyes focused down the long driveway. I catch a glimpse of a school bus as it vanishes, turning a corner onto the main road. My stomach tightens with panic. I quickly look to my left, seeing the bus stop sign, half expecting to see the other children waiting.

But no one is there, none of the familiar faces of other kids looking out from parka hoods. I am alone. I listen. Even sound of the bus engine has faded. Realizing I have no other choice, I split out in a dead heat toward the main street in the direction the bus has just turned, hopeful I can catch it at one of the next stops down the hill.

My legs churn through the ankle-deep sidewalk snow. I can feel the cold wet of the snow getting inside my fleece-lined boots as I turn the corner onto the main street. The full force of the wind blasts my uncovered face and I feel it push back against me, slowing my run. My cheeks sting, my nose is soon numb. I feel my throat getting tense and narrow as the harsh, dry air forces me to breathe through my mouth.