Purgatorium (70 page)

“We need to hurry,” I say to Stephanie, “Michael might be a little smarter than we give him credit for,” I conclude, walking faster.

“Do you think he has found out about the token being fake yet?” she says doubling her pace.

I begin to jog, thinking out loud on what my wrath, Michael, would try to do next. “Once he realizes the token is fake, he will go after my gambit.”

She jogs her way next to me and says, “Can you not just un-mute the music in your mind and beam it back into your past memory? Like you already have done it before with your nightmares. You can do it again, right?”

I close my eyes and try to focus back onto the music. I let the rhythm of the beats find my way into my gambit’s conscience. Out of nowhere, I feel something in error and I open back my eyes.

“No, something’s blocking me from getting inside his mind.”

“It’s Michael,” she says with serious judgment. “Michael must have found a way to mimic your technique. Could Michael harm him in any way now?”

“Michael is nothing more than a phantom, a specter, an apparition, an intangible being that only my gambit can see. The only harm he could ever cause is through his words. But the power of persuasion is a nasty habit that Michael has a talent for. If he truly has mastered my technique, then we better hurry and kill his body where it lies before he does something extreme to my gambit.”

Stephanie immediately stops. “But why? Your gambit thinks the token is your name too. There’s nothing else Michael could even say to him that would be of any mkind of gain.”

Before I could speak she starts again, “Unless your greed knew of something.”

I can see her trying to solve it in her head. She looks up at me and says, “Does Greed know what your token is?”

“To be honest with you, I don’t know,” I say remembering how it all went down. “Everything happened so fast, I can’t really know for sure of what it actually heard. We just need to hurry and get to him before Michael opens his eyes to the truth.”

“Let’s split up to cover my ground! You take the high-rise, I will take the roof! He would have to be somewhere in between there.”

Without notice, she runs inside the exit door to the apartment building. I am about to run after her until I see my watch reading 43:50.

Instantly, I run down the road, through the revolving iced-over doors, and across the slippery lobby that has been iced over from the ceiling down. I get to the elevators as the door slides open before me and I get in. I hit the button to Level 6, the doors slide close, and I ride up.

The elevator stops, doors slide open, as I regain my thoughts to the situation at hand. I walk out onto the hallway, taking out my paper cartridge with my last lead ball concealed within it.

As I walk, I remove my pistol from behind my back, loading the ball wrapped in a cloth patch in the muzzle of the gun. I pour some gunpowder inside and ram the ramrod down the barrel. I get to room number six and look to find the door to be frozen over.

I touch the frosted six with my hand, remembering the casino night and the lustful affair I committed in this dreadful room. I put on my mask and cock the pistol tightly as it holds a sharp piece of flint rotating to half-cock, making the sear fall into a safety notch on the tumbler. I kick the iced-over door in and make my way inside.

I look around the living room, noticing that everything has been frozen over. I get to the bedroom to find Michael and my gambit lying on the ground. The full moon casts a light around the living space through the shattered glass wall in the corner. The still snow surrounds the air as I reach my hand up and grab a flake. I look down to see the bailsong knife on the floor, lying right beside Michael’s masked face.

I walk over slowly, lean my body down, and reach my right hand to pick it up. My left hand touches the floor for stability. I then notice the flask near my left hand. It appears to have been tilt over. I pick it up, finding out there isn’t a drop of water left in it. All the water must have accidentally flowed out onto the carpet, I think. Suddenly, I see Michael waking up. I quickly back away and out of the room before he can see me. I stay within the shadows of the hall, gazing in.

Michael stands up and peers out the open view. I watch, thinking of what he could be staring at. He turns around and looks over at the alarm clock, sitting on the nightstand. Without warning, he runs over to it and smashes the time piece to the ground. I can see the anger releasing from him as he starts to curse in every language towards his doomed situation. He tramples the room, breaking anything in his vision. He tears down everything hanging from the walls: the blueprints, the Polaroid pictures, and the frame in which the American flag was displayed.

I look over at the snow globe on the nightstand, knowing that Michael can’t be allowed to break it or everything I have worked so hard for will be for nothing. I am ready to act at a moment’s notice, watching Michael tip the nightstand over, sending the snow globe up in the air. I am about to run in and catch it until I see it falling its way down onto the bed.

I calm my nerves, breathing in and out the cold air as I watch Michael’s rage leave him tired, cold, and out of breath. Michael takes up the torn-up American flag from off the ground and wraps it around himself. Music suddenly begins coming out of the snow globe. He then looks over and grabs it off the bed. The music stops as he stares at it for a few seconds, almost as if he were in a trance.

He falls down onto his knees and leans over my gambit’s outer bodied shell. He takes the blackjack off the ground and holds it tight in his right hand.

Michael whispers from under his breath repeatedly, “In the name….”

I gaze over to the ground, noticing Michael is kneeling down on wet carpet, thinking to myself that this is my only chance.

I rush in behind
Michael,
undetected, and quickly yank his hair down to his neck line, lifting his head up to see me. He stares at the card in my vest pocket. I force off his mask to the ground. He opens his mouth and says, “In the name...of the King.”

I snatch the blackjack out of his hand and thrust it down onto his Adam’s apple, almost crushing it. On impact, Michael opens his mouth in sheer pain.

I swing the blade out of my knife and stick it in his mouth to keep him from closing it.
Immediately after, I
pull out my pistol, rotating the cock from half-cock to full-cock, releasing the safety lock. I hear his teeth grinding up against the edges of the blade.

I jam the pistol into
his
open mouth, slowly pull the cock down, which releases the cock holding the flint. The flint strikes the frizzen, producing a shower of sparks that is directed into the gunpowder where it ignites the combustion chamber making the bullet fire out the muzzle, shooting clean through the back of
Michael
’s head down into the wet carpet.

Michael
grins bitterly, seeing the image of the lamb on the side of the pistol, and turns to look at me. I can see in his soulless green eyes that he finally somehow knows the truth in what has been haunting him for so long. He knows what I am going to do, how I am to do it, and why I will do it. His fingers grip hard onto his baton and sheet of red, white, and blue around his shoulders, knowing in his mind that with war there will always be casualties.

However, he is unwilling to become part of my cause in the collateral damages that I have bestowed on the rest of his kind today. His eyes turn from green, to grey, to white, letting the ice take its course throughout his whole body. I drop the blackjack on the ground.

As
he
freezes over,
I
snatch the King of hearts card from his jacket pocket, and yank the knife out of his frozen mouth. Once the knife releases, it sends a crack down its frozen corpse. His appearance changes again from an image of me to a blood-red colored demon. The crack splits in two, shattering when both halves falls to the floor. The American flag drops gracefully to the floor, covering up any sign of what’s left of Michael. It seems to lay there like a symbol of justice to a fallen evil.

I pick back up his King of hearts mask, breaking it in two. I throw the split pieces on the flag. Looking down at what has now been created, it almost resembles a specific art piece. It calls to me. Sparking my inner thoughts with a revaluation as if it were saying that the world isn’t perfect, a certain evil lies dormant within it, within everyone, and we must fight it every single day or the devil will surely win.

I walk over to the closet, taking a backpack out from the shelf. I put all the items I have on me into the bag, then zip the bag shut. Looking over, I find the handbook lying halfway out from under the bed. I pick it up.

“My armor,” smiling to myself, thinking about Anna. I go and put it inside my upper right side pocket. I double pat it from the outside, letting it rub close against my heart.

I put the bag over my shoulders and look back to my gambit. I hear the music still playing in the background, letting me know he is gonna wake anytime soon.

I look down by my feet to the broken alarm clock lying in pieces as it reads: 44:32.

I stare out the shattered windows, stunned I can finally see what Michael was staring at. The aurora borealis drifts through the light of the full moon with its greenish glow. and faint red colors portrayed across the night sky. I stare at the hint of red, thinking about Michael reacting to it as if he were a mad bull in a bullfight.

I hear the music getting closer to the final chorus as I turn my head to see my gambit still silently lying there. The question still remains, did my wrath open back up my gambit’s greedy self? Or was my gambit strong enough to not succumb to my wrath’s persuasions?

Though if he had, then why hasn’t he woken up?
I think. His greed still must be bottled up inside. I better hurry up the process to get him up and out.

I turn around and pick up my gambit and toss him over my shoulder. I walk out of the bedroom, through the living room, and out the door where I find Stephanie waiting for me.

“Time is too short to stay serious for too long or getting a little mad ever so often,” she says to me like she always used to do when either our anger or sadness got the best of us.

I smile, repeating what I always say back to her, “Do you mean mad as in crazy or mad as in angry?”

“Does it make a difference?” she concludes with a soft-hearted smile.

I nod to her, letting her know that it was time to finish this. We head down the hall in silence towards the elevator. The elevator opens and we walk in. I place my gambit down while Stephanie pushes the button to the roof and the doors slide closed.

A joyful Stephanie points at the exit scanner above the panel. She silently claps in excitement as if she has been waiting for this moment longer than I have.

“I hope you know where the token goes?” she says to me, playfully.

I confidently gesture a nod to her.

The elevator makes its way up to the last level and slides open. I grab my gambit’s arm and pull his body out onto the roof.

I hear Stephanie say behind me, “Whatever you decide to do,” she pauses as I stare back at her, “just don’t miss.”

I look at her, wanting to say something back but the words don’t come out. I watch as the elevator doors begin to enclose her in. She waves to me with a smile, and then she is gone.

I focus myself and begin pulling my gambit’s body further to the middle of the roof. I drop his hand and reach into my bag to take out the snow globe. A feeling of deja vu hits me as I leave the snow globe by his side.

I look up at all the frozen reapers hovering above me and at the snow floating motionless around me. The aurora seems to be moving away, letting me know it’s soon going to be 45 minutes.

I make my way around the elevator to the opposite end of the roof, following the northern lights above me. I peer out at the majestic lights dancing around in the sky, getting lost in it’s beautiful silhouette.

45 minutes

I keep watching till the northern lights have faded off into the distance, leaving me for the last time. The lasting image revolves in my mind for eternity. I gaze up to the stars and try to imagine that each one is of a place like mine. I try guessing the star where Madi could be.

I then hear something coming from the other side of the roof. I turn and open my mind to hear that the music has stopped playing and the sound of a person talking is now all I can hear.
But how long has it stopped for?
I wonder. I walk back following the sounds of now two people speaking to one another instead of just one. I slowly turn the corner and see my gambit talking to Lily.

“What is your choice? Walk?” the little girl says, pointing to the elevator, “or fall,” she continues, now pointing down off the roof.

I hear my gambit respond, “Love and lost sounds better rather than to be lost in love. I have an empire that needs to be built.”

Those words alone make me feel unsure if my gambit is gone and my greed instead has returned. I drop my backpack to the ground.

I take my flintlock pistol out, knowing my only option is plan B. I walk out of the shadows and step in front of the elevator. I pull my mask down to cover my face, hoping I can bluff my way long enough. I raise the pistol and point it toward his back. I block him out, sound and mind, so he won’t get the chance to read my mind. I hold my pistol firm and keep my eyes locked on to his.