Purgatorium (47 page)

I am a writer, I think to myself with pride.

I make my way across the street and into the light house restaurant.

35 Minutes

I walk up the stairs, looking around, hoping the waitress will not show up this time. She is nowhere to be seen which puts me at ease. Though I do need to ask her about this key I found.

Sealtiel
stands behind the bar. I take a seat on a stool midway down the bar. Sealtiel takes out a bottle, “You want to know what heaven is like? This is it, a 50-year-old Macallan whisky. Puts hair on an angel’s chest.” He laughs as he pours two glasses and slides one to me. I look at it. Still not seeing the point in drinking it, I put it to the side.

Sealtiel takes a sip of his drink. “Hmm, it’s missing something.”

He flips open a butterfly knife, takes half an orange, and slices a wedge off of it. He squeezes the wedge over his glass and then stirs it with his finger.

“I should tell you about the time Uriel had to chase your soul down the street, it being 55 minutes and an ice sticker up his butt. I actually thought I heard a reaper chuckle at the sight,” he laughs.

I find the humor in it as I slide the pack of playing cards down towards him. He stops it with his hand. “I might need another drink before I start telling tales.”

Still walking behind the bar, he picks up the deck of cards. He begins shuffling just as good as Jehudial had done before.

“A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways: by a change from light to darkness and from darkness to light. He will recognize the same thing happens to the soul. Plato said that.” Sealtiel holds up his drink. “To things we cannot fully see yet.”

Sealtiel stops and stares at my watch around his wrist for a few seconds. His eyes are gazed out as if a sudden fear has overcome him. He takes a gulp of his drink and looks at me. “Why don’t souls ever ask what Sealtiel desires? I have desires too! I really am jealous of you. I could live through every challenge I come across and it takes the fun right out of it! To put it all on the line, live or die. That is a pure rush. Something I will never get to experience. That is my desire.”

He raises his glass again to me. “To being human.” He takes it back while still shuffling the cards with one hand. “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, it would be just a waste of time. We could be finding out the answers to your logbook.”

I slam my hand on the bar with the paper that I have just written. I stare at him, thinking a deal is a deal. He turns to me and quickly snatches my Jack of hearts card from my vest pocket.

He shows me my card, “Keep your eye on the card. The trick is called mirroring,” he says laying my card face up on the bar. “It may come to a surprise to you but you are mirroring as we speak.” I look at Sealtiel in disbelief as I watch him flip over my card, face down.

He flips my card back over and it’s the King of hearts instead. “You don’t believe me? How do you know that what you see in a mirror is actually you? Perhaps you just believe that what you see is true—it can’t actually really be verified. Astounding, isn’t it?” he says, flipping the King of hearts back into my card.

I touch my face, worrying what Sealtiel says is true. If he’s right, then my appearance could be just a mask, not what I really look like. But then, I wonder, what would I really look like, and how would I know myself if I saw myself?

“If you’re not dead and you’re not alive, then what are you?” Sealtiel asks, facing my card down. “You are the incorporeal essence of a person. The innermost aspect of humans, that which is of greatest value in them, that by which they are made most especially in God’s image—a soul. Seeing a soul is like looking into heaven itself. It has no shape or design. You see what you want to see, but truthfully, you’re not seeing anything at all. You choose to see what you want to see.”

He flips the card back over and it’s the Queen of hearts. “Makes you wonder who the waitress claims she is.” He flips the card around and it changes back into my card.

“Think of a soul as if it were similar to clay. You can mold, shape, and create whatever image you can imagine,” he says while flipping around many of the face cards, turning them into different face cards. He shows me, once again, my card and flips it back over along with three other face cards down. He shuffles them as I keep an eye out for mine.

“If you don’t look carefully you might just miss it,” he says, leaving the cards still. I point to the far left one. Sealtiel flips it over and it turns out to be the Jack of clubs. He flips the far right one over and it’s mine.

“Now class, take angels for example.” I look back to Sealtiel, but instead of Sealtiel’s usual form, I see myself. “Told you to look carefully.” He shuffles the cards back in the deck.

His appearance is uncanny to mine. “Angels to human eyes are like balls of light. To see an angel that didn’t want to be seen would be too much for your little eyeballs to handle. In a place like this, if you saw our true form, it would probably send you into a deeper coma. Ergo why we all decided to disguise ourselves by looking like you, only at first,” he says as he flips over eight Jack of hearts one by one.

Sealtiel mimics my every move, from a silent look across the dining hall to my brooding stares. I get annoyed at his games and stop moving. Sealtiel changes his appearance from me back to himself.

“I’ve been you many times—we all have—before taking on other skins. Right when you first got here we all thought it would be easier if we mirrored your appearance.

“The reapers can be fooled, but only for so long, you see. They observe us very closely because we are in a way disobeying the order of things.

“Now your soul brings out light, just like us. That light inside you transmits enormous amounts of high energy that reapers can pick up on.” Sealtiel licks his finger and turns the eight cards over. “Now the reapers are learning how to pick us out more quickly. If we stay with you any longer than we do, they will find us. Why? Because of our heat signatures, our light. We have got it down to a science. Only one angel can be with you for a certain amount of time. And that is why you will never see more than just one of us with you. Looking like you also created problems with the reapers. The reapers almost got Uriel one time, thinking he was actually you.”

He laughs. “If they ever caught one of us,” he looks at me, “dare I say what would happen. That’s why we undoubtedly changed our image so the reapers would stop thinking we were you.” He flips back over the eight cards and I can see that each one of them is a different suit. He puts each card back in the deck, then flings the cards in the air. While the deck is falling around me, I look down, surprised to see my Jack of hearts card is sticking back out in my vest pocket.

“Thank you! Thank you! I will be here all night!”

I wonder,
But why do all the people in my memories look like you?

Sealtiel hears my thoughts and answers my question immediately after. “The reason we mirrored the same people in your memories was to help you adjust. We thought it would be best—more comforting—if you saw people you somehow knew that you witnessed so much every day while being in the place for so long. Even though some you never really met or got to know, they were still a part of your past and made you feel safe when seeing them.”

Then why not mirror Madi? Wouldn’t she have been a good person to use on me?

“Because you made us promise never to use Madi to mirror! You said to us that the promise of false hopes is a far worse punishment than anything else you could ever face in this place.”

I recollect the night I cheated on Madi and understand what my past self meant by false hopes. I ponder the notion, to think that Madi forgave me and realizing it wasn’t true would be soul crushing to say the least. Besides, it’s taunting just to assume that she would ever forgive me for what I’ve done.

I look at the drink beside me, not caring now that I can’t taste it. Just as long as I can feel the side effects from it would be worth the drink. I take the glass in my hand.

“I know loss, regret, and confusion reign in your mind, however, it is important to leave the past where it belongs. If you can’t, then mirroring will be useless. Controlling who you are and how you see yourself is crucial. By knowing that you want to be a writer shows focus towards yourself. When you look at yourself now, you can see a man that knows who he wants to be. That is a man acceptable to change. All that’s left for you to do is have peaceful mindset and then just picture someone in your head. Your body will then take over from there. That easy.”

I stop myself from drinking it. If it was that easy, then why have I never been able to do it?

Sealtiel continues, “Progress of you learning how to mirror stopped because of your attachment to your pain. You hid yourself in the things you know. You’re still scared to let in the things you don’t want to know. Ergo, why you forced them into the tree. What you don’t know makes you stronger, was your belief. But really, as the saying goes, ‘what you don’t know, makes you stupid.’”

I bottle up my sin in a tree and my fear in my dreams. Can’t say I didn’t try to make it work, I think. I wonder if they all know what I dream too? I stop thinking hard at what I just thought.

Sealtiel gives me a reassuring look. “Oh, we all know. Once those dreams kick in, we’re all watching the show right along with you. We are all one mind in this place. Though, to tell you the truth, what you tried to do with Madi and your child won’t work, but the effort is lovely! Yet that endless fire burning inside the Valkyrie will set things straight in the end. You can’t change the past while she is around. Her fire burns with a passion so much so that when you feel yourself sweating it’s from her heat. Each time a soul tries and tests her, she lets her flames burn into that soul’s outer covering. The flames don’t erase the memories, they do something far worse. They take the soul deeper into its own mind, a darkened place that the soul can never get out of. Though I did hear a few souls made it out. Stories and tall tales soon came after. Some say it was the devil’s unfinished kingdom before he fell into hell, while the other stories claimed it to be an alternate reality where a soul’s demons can run free! But like I said, all gossip.”

The thought of a place that is worse than this brings me a haunting notion that will never make me want to take on the Valkyrie. I nod to him, stating my final assessment on the matter.

He clinks my glass and drinks the rest of his. I become easily distracted by this unknowing gesture, making me question how long I have actually been here.

So when are you going to teach me how to mirror?

Sealtiel stops and looks back at me, “The deal was, I would tell you how it’s done.Which I did. Close your eyes and take a whack at it!”

I close my eyes and try to focus on looking like Sealtiel. I open my eyes and look at the bar mirror. Nothing changed. I notice Sealtiel watching me make the attempt.

“You are thinking of the equation when you should be thinking of the variables,” Sealtiel says. “Mirroring is only math. See the question and simplify it. Work through it.”

He takes another drink and pours another one, staring deeply into his glass.

“Your memories can bring you peaceful feelings, as you well know. It just takes a certain kind of memory to trigger it.

How are you gonna let me attempt that?

Sealtiel takes another swallow of his drink and walks around to my side of the bar before sitting down on the stool beside me.

“Let’s make a deal,” he says with satisfaction.

I step away from him. No more deals! I have nothing left to offer!

“I will tell you how many days you been locked up inside here?”

I begin to see his game now. He knew the thought of how long I was trapped in this place would get to me. This is all part of his sick plan to make me play another game.

The waitress walks in to the dining room from the kitchen, setting tables. I look over at her, wondering why she came. She had to know that she isn’t on the angel’s good side. I watch her move around the room.
Sealtiel
notices me.
What have I done?
I think, knowing what’s next.

“I know!” says Sealtiel. “Would you like me to tell you the name of the person playing the music on the outside? I bet you’re dying to know and what bigger reward is there than knowledge?” He pauses, thinking for a moment, before continuing. “If you can come out of your memory mirroring anyone from it, I will give you the name. If you come out looking like your same old terrible self, then you have to take her life.” Sealtiel nods toward the waitress.

Sealtiel
flips around the butterfly knife and sticks it into the bar, leaving it standing straight up in the woods surface.

“Now, we need a judge to ensure a fair outcome.” Sealtiel looks over at the waitress. “I think I found her!” Sealtiel walks over and asks her to come sit with us at the bar. I see her holding the silver covering with the hourglass glaring at my face. He takes it out of her hand and sets it on the table. “We have our time piece.” He takes out a chair and dusts it off. He looks to me while raising his hand over to the chair. I get up from the stool and walk over. I sit with dismay, as I watch Sealtiel clapping for joy.

“You have twenty seconds to answer this question correctly,” Sealtiel says to me as we take our seats. “And to help you concentrate…” he
grabs the waitress’ shirt and
tears off one of the sleeves, handing it to me. “Tie it over your eyes. People don’t use enough of their minds these days. They don’t concentrate using their full potential anymore. The mind is capable of holding much more information than most people believe.”