Purgatorium (25 page)

I run straight ahead, arriving out of breath just a minute later at the crest of the hill. I can see the bus stopped at the T-junction down the hill ahead of me. The bus’ red lights flash, piercing the gathering gloom. Children step one by one out of the bus onto the icy shoulder of the road, waving to the driver as they disperse into the surrounding neighborhood.

The bus is only sixty yards away, maybe seventy. I start sprinting, thinking I can catch it if I go as hard as I can. Just moments later, my right foot slips out from under me. My knee slams down onto the ice-covered sidewalk. I look up. The bus’ red lights have turned off. It starts slowly accelerating away.

“Stop!” I shout into the frozen air. “Hold on!”

As the sound of the bus shifting its gears fades, I am engulfed by a frozen stillness. I see the twilight sky has turned an eerie periwinkle color above the eastern horizon. Night is quickly overtaking the day. I am still catching my breath as I look up and see the faint yellow of the bus fading into the dark.

Feeling crushed, I force myself to try to get up. Darkness has already fallen as I run toward my house. My feet are sopping wet, numb, and almost frozen through my wool socks.

I slip again, so close to home. I try to catch myself on my hands, but they give out from under my falling weight, and I fall flat onto my chest and face. I feel the burning pain from the scraped palm of my right hand. Rolling onto my side, I see that my jeans are torn at the right knee. There is a dark red trickle of blood running down my shin from my skinned kneecap. I hear a car roaring down the hill toward me. As it passes, it sprays up a sheet of dirty slush all over me.

The front porch light is on over the door. My palm and knee are sore, so sore that over the last few blocks, I have tried to avoid bending it by swinging it stiffly from behind to in front of me. I open the rickety mailbox and reach in, but it is empty. My mom has probably already come out to get it. I look and see her footprints in the newly fallen snow.

I walk to the front storm door and open it quietly. I am about to step inside when I hear a scraping sound up and to my left. I take a step back and lean over to my left, toward the garage. I see over the edge of the roof to where my father is standing catlike on the downward slope of the roof. Though an older, gray-bearded man, he is lithe and possesses a fearless kind of balance no matter what the slope, height, or weather. I remember the awe I have often felt seeing my father carefully setting up his telescope on the rooftop for a better view of the unfolding night sky.

The wind has swept the clouds away and a clear, cold black has replaced the overcast wash that hung over me most of the walk home. It is as though the heavens are opening up for my father, I think. I quietly step a few feet closer. My father, posture rigid, stops moving, as if hearing something. Without interrupting his gaze through his instrument, my father scowls.

“You’re late. Dinner’s in the fridge.”

I pull my pant leg up, exposing the swollen, bloody knee. I wait, anxiously, hesitantly, for my father to turn and see it.

“Get inside, son!” my father says coldly. “You’re going to catch cold and neither of us can afford to stay home.”

I turn and start limping toward the door, my pant leg still hiked up my leg, tears forming in my eyes.

“You going to stand there and cry about it?” my father hisses. “Or, are you going to
do
something about it? Now, get inside!”

The tears welling in my eyes overflow, streaking down my cheeks. My father shakes his head and turns back to the telescope, looking through its finder-scope, adjusting the angle. As I near the door, everything begins to blur. I hear the sound of static in the distance. Then a loud beeping sound. “Thirty-five minutes!” Gabriel yells out. A light flashes over me and I am blinded by it.

35 Minutes

I open my eyes. I am back in my office. I move my head over, looking out the window to see the day has turned into night. The record is skipping. I see thick steam coming off my breath. Gabriel is gone. Suddenly remembering what cold means, I sit up abruptly, panic gripping me.

I look at the time. I am running late! There is another sound, a shrieking, slowly getting louder.
Reapers!
I think, pushing myself up to a standing position. I grab my coat and while I put it on, look at the window once again. I see nothing but my own transparent reflection. I quickly spin towards the door, pull it open, and race down the hallway to the elevator.

Exiting through the front doors, I turn right and run down the street toward the lighthouse restaurant. I sprint across the street without looking for cars. I pull the door open and run up the stairs. As I reach the last stair I can see
Gabriel
sitting at my table, the waitress by his side.

This was not what I was expecting.

“He is safe…again!” Gabriel shouts, smiling widely. I think,
Yeah, barely.

The waitress puts another plate of apple pie in front of
Gabriel
who, surprisingly, looks miserable as he stares at all the dirty plates stacked up on the table in front of him. I walk over to the table.

“How’s the cube going?” he says to me. At this moment, I remember the Rubik’s cube in my coat pocket. I take it out and look at it. The yellow and blue sides are finished. I start rearranging it again as I begin to think about my dad.

What had my father wanted from me anyway? What was I supposed to have done? I wish I had more answers than questions, but that never seemed to be the case.

Gabriel turns to the waitress. “Yuck! Are you serious with this pie right now? Let me tell you what I think the ingredients are. It has this crispy, hair flaky, decayed-looking crust to it and everything else must be dog crap! What do you call that? I dare you to say ‘apple’! I dare you!”

She responds, “Apple?”

“Well now I can start to understand why you became a lost soul. The picture is now clear, darlin’. Because this pie is some kind of off-brand, over-the-border dog crap! That’s what this pie is. I mean it needs a lot of whipped cream to delude the horrific taste in my mouth. Bring me a big tub full of whipped cream.”

The waitress stands there in a panic.

“I’m not joking! Are these joking eyes to you? Do the words that I am saying to you sound anything like a joke? I need something to drown out the flavor of your homemade dookie pie. Thank you, Succubus!”

He kicks the waitress down and throws his pie in her face. Gabriel laughs wildly at her as I stand up to go help her.

“Do not help that lost soul! She did this to herself! Now sit down,” Gabriel says with an angry passion. I sit as the waitress stands back up, wiping the leftover pie from her face.

“Are you just going to stand there? I can’t believe this! I have been talking about your nasty tasting pie for what feels like forever and a day. You’re really still standing here? Really? Go get me some whipped cream now! And while you’re back there, get me another piece of that wonderfully bad tasting pie and another for my friend here. He has had a bad day and nothing would make him happier than trying to choke down your dookie brown pie. Go! Thank you!”

The waitress, looking shocked and scared, turns and walks back toward the kitchen. I look at
Gabriel
, who is wet with sweat. Even if she is a lost soul she doesn’t deserve this. Gabriel turns to face me.

“So you see anything looking back at you yet?”

I look back down at the Rubik’s cube. I see
Gabriel
giving me a disappointed look. The waitress comes back in through the kitchen door, carrying a plate covered with a silver cloche in her right hand and a silver bowl of whipped cream in her left. She puts the covered plate down in front of us. I gaze at the silver and find my reflection in it.

I take out the pictures again and place the one that is of the silver cloche on the table.

Gabriel
looks at the picture and I can tell that he can see what’s in its reflection. He looks over at me to see whether I see it, and then sighs deeply when I do not.

Though I do not understand why, I feel ashamed. I keep my head up to not show him my true thoughts on the matter.

Turning to Gabriel, the waitress asks, “How much do you want, sir?”

“Till I can’t taste this pie, please.” She puts five heaping spoonfuls on top of his pie.
Gabriel
plunges his fork into the pie, lifts up a piece covered in two inches of white cream, bites into it, and while chewing it, smiles gluttonously.

“More, please,” he says, without looking up from the pie. She looks down at the plate, then back up at Gabriel. She adds another heaping spoonful.

I begin to feel sick watching the heaping amounts of whipped cream land on top of Gabriel’s pie. I relate to the pie. I, too, have felt like I have been buried under sugary nothingness and left to suffocate.

“More, please.” She adds two more spoonfuls. The pie can no longer be seen.

I can’t escape my questions, my burning need to know what I did and why, and how to get back home. The pressure of my questions is overwhelming. It makes me wish I had a plate, a table even, that I could spill out onto. It would be easier than staying contained with the pressure building.

“More!”

She takes the bowl, tips it on its side, and scoops out the rest of the cream onto his plate. Some of the cream spills onto Gabriel’s lap as the waitress tries not to chuckle. There is so much cream that the pie is invisible. The cream starts running off the side of the plate and onto the floor.

Gabriel
looks across at me, who has just completed all but one side of the cube. The waitress stands beside Gabriel.
I look at him, smiling for getting his just desserts. He, however, seems distracted, different than usual.

He reaches inside his jacket, takes out a gum wrapper, and unfolds it. It is empty. Gabriel looks panicked. He starts patting down his jacket and his pants pockets. He stands up and looks around his chair on the floor. He sighs loudly and looks up at the waitress.

“Well now, look what you did. You made a mess,” Gabriel says calmly.

I roll my eyes—Gabriel’s the one who demanded she continue to pour the whipped cream over his pie. It reminded me of being forced to learn to flip the butterfly knife. I hadn’t chosen to do it, I was made to, but I was still punished when I failed.

Gabriel
suddenly steps behind the waitress, grabbing her by the neck and forcing her face down into the pie. She screams but her voice is muffled in the thick pile of cream. She kicks and flails her arms for what seems to me like an eternity. I am shocked, but watch passively knowing there is nothing I can do to stop it.

After a few minutes, her flailing weakens and she slumps, her body exhaling and her legs giving out underneath her. Gabriel waits another minute, feels her neck, and then looks up at me, letting go of her head, which slides off the table, pulled down by the weight of her now dead body. She slumps down onto her side on the floor. Gabriel takes his napkin and wipes the cream off his hands.

“You see, if you keep adding all your fears and doubts to your plate, then you won’t have any room left for your piece of the pie. Savvy?”

Still shocked, I look down at the waitress’ dead body on the floor, then back up at
Gabriel
, who is reaching down with his index finger and scooping some cream off her face. He puts the cream in his mouth, swallows, and makes a disgusted expression.

“Hmm. That actually doesn’t taste that bad.”

Gabriel
throws down the napkin and walks toward the exit stairs while yelling, “Forty minutes!”

40 Minutes

I look at the cloche cover and see my own reflection.
How could I just sit there and watch him do that to her?
I think. Something isn’t right. Suddenly, my reflection smirks and lifts the waitress by her hair, shoving her face back into the pie.

Looking away from the cover and back at the table, I am frustrated by the immorality of my reflection and the fact that I didn’t stop Gabriel from killing her. Angrily, I sweep my arms across the table, sending the glasses, plates, and cutlery crashing onto the floor. I turn and walk away toward the exit.

Once out of the restaurant, I make my way across the street, this time looking at where I am stepping. I come across the manhole lid still half open. I walk around it, not daring to find out what evils could be lurking down below.

I take out the cube and begin working on it again, then head down the stairs to the subway station and jump over the gate. Up ahead, the subway car makes its stop and opens the doors. I make my way in and sit myself down in a booth without once turning my gaze away from the cube.

I stare at the cube, trying to figure out my next move. I visualize each of the moves in my head. I turn the cube again and again, flipping it around, examining all sides. One side blue, other side yellow, bottom green, and top red!
Done!,
I think, happy with myself.

I look out the window and take one of my pictures from my stack and stick it to the side. I see no flaw, only my own reflection. I am haunted by it, each time wondering who next am I going to kill? Maybe that is what I am supposed to be seeing in the reflections. Maybe I am some kind of killer in my past life.