The Wrath of Jeremy (4 page)

Meanwhile, the officers helped the wounded
one up, lifting him to his feet, and listening to his words as he
screamed, “He went in that taxi!”

In the meantime, David ran down the vast
aisle of the church, seeing statues of saints and candles by the
altar that stuck out of the sides of it, which would bring a
spiritual smile to anyone who saw it, but forced a large frown to
David’s mouth. He started to look for a way to escape this place.
He ran up to the altar, breathing in a massive aroma of
frankincense, and glaring down at the white clean marble of the
altar. He saw his own reflection in it and noticed sweat was
dripping down over his image. He then looked up, circled his
nervously twitching eyes around this massive realm, and came across
a priest, who was looking at David with sincerity.

The innocent holy man spoke. “I’m sorry,
young man, but today’s service is over with.”

David now was in a desperate trance to
escape, and so, not caring about the holy cloth this man wore, put
his gun up to the priest’s head and shouted, “I don’t care about
missing mass, all I care about is finding another way out of here!
Now!”

He stared closely at the holy man’s pale face
and wrinkly, wise cheeks, seeing them lifting up, noticing that
this man was trying not to cry. “Please, my son, don’t hurt me.”
The priest started to weep his tears louder, falling down on his
hands and knees, and he put his cheekbones down and released the
fear, the holy water that made up his tears.

“Listen, old man, if you don’t want me to
hurt you, tell me another way out of here!”

“The back door.”

Suddenly, David could hear the sounds of
sirens, echoing from the streets outside, flying through the cold
wind and entering the cracks of the church, allowing a stiff sense
of fretfulness and panic to enter his spine, hearing the sirens
getting louder as they built to a higher number. Panic reached his
thoughts, and he shouted toward the holy man, “No, I can’t go
through the back door. Is there any other way out?” The gun started
shaking in his hand, his trauma from the sirens grew larger,
causing his hands to shake vigorously. “Is there any other way out
of here?” The priest didn’t answer, the shock of having a gun to
his head allowed his mouth to be filled with terror. “Is there?”
The question grew louder, but David couldn’t wait anymore for a
simple reply, so without any respect for the robe, he hit the
priest over the head with this gun, allowing his frightened mouth
to finally open with words for David.

“No, the only other way I could think of is
down in the basement. There’s a sewer cap that leads to the sewer
systems!” After those words exited the priest’s mouth, David
groaned toward his reply, and hit him over the head once again with
his gun.

“Are you stupid, old man? I’m not going to go
in no sewer—Shit!” David roamed the church with his eyes,
panicking, when abruptly his eyes fell upon a big cross that hung
over the altar. He itched his black hair for a moment, and then
gazed closer at the cross, concentrating on it, trying at the same
time to figure a way out, a way to escape. Yet, as he gawked closer
at this crucifix of purity, with a silent savior named “Jesus”
hanging stiff with suffering to his eyes, David noticed the cross
was beginning to move.

Silence took over this room. He did not even
hear the sirens or his breath; he only perceived the loud beat of
his heart, pounding through his chest. David struggled to inhale
the hot sensation of the frankincense-filled air, and he felt the
hairs on the back of his neck standing up as straight as the nails
that were pounded into this silent savior’s flesh. He looked up at
it even closer, noticing his hands beginning to shake, his legs
starting to tremble, and his mind finishing its job of conceiving
what was real and what wasn’t. It was like he was alone, hearing
another breath that wasn’t his or the priest’s, but someone else’s,
and then he looked more at the statue of Jesus.

David shouted, “What the hell is going on? I
hope this isn’t another acid flashback!” He saw the room get
colder, and felt this man of greatness on the cross becoming more
real to his senses. Seeing actual breath coming out of the statue,
David froze even more, and kept his own eyes on the blood-filled
ones of a god.

Meanwhile, two policemen ran to the church
and opened the doors slowly, pointing their guns into every section
of the church their eyes pointed to. At the same time, the two
officers fixed their eyes toward David on the altar and saw him
screaming. They ran up to him, then spotting the priest on the
ground, they both helped up the holy man and asked, “What’s wrong
with him??”

“Help me, get him away from me!” screamed
David, seeing Jesus approaching him, noticing the blood from his
nail wounds were dripping to the ground and creating a large
puddle. David’s skin was drenched with the blood of this savior,
and the more he attempted to step off the cross, the more David’s
own lips of chapped blood would bleed. “Please, somebody, help
me!”

“This kid’s crazy, Tom. Arrest him now,” one
of the officers mumbled.

The other officer, better known as “Tom”,
began putting handcuffs on David, trying to get them around his
wrists, but having a hard time of it, being that David was not
exactly standing still; rather, he was shaking like a rattlesnake
in a hot desert.

They dragged David by his hands and legs down
the aisle of holiness, while the red carpet below was causing him
to receive a burn on his back.

A different form of fear hit David for the
first time, presenting the same type of terror that Jeremy,
Gabriel, and Gabriel’s twin brother “Michael” sustained already. As
they placed David in the police car, he ironically felt safe. He
looked out the window and saw the church, but didn’t see Jesus
anywhere in sight. His eyes fell in a discharge of terror, and a
subtle sense of relief took over. He closed and opened them a
second later and his heart stopped. His lips were bleeding again,
and he saw Jesus walking down the stairs of the church and heading
straight for the police car. His fear grew rapidly once more, and
seeing Jesus coming toward him he began to wail in unrestricted
agony. David didn’t know why he was afraid, yet his tears still
fell, tears that fell for the first time in a long time. “Drive,
drive!” he shouted.

Tom started laughing with his partner,
grinning toward David’s frightened eyes, with Tom asking, “Why? Are
you in a big hurry? Don’t you want to see the last moment of
daylight?”

“Yeah, you’re gonna be in the big house for a
very long time, kid. You shot a police officer, our friend, in the
leg, and you’re a drug dealer,” Tom’s partner said, while David
stayed in the trance of seeing Jesus now entering the police car,
by going through it and sitting down next to him.

Blood fell like water onto David, as he
witnessed Jesus slowly placing his nail-punctured hand on David’s
head, and saying, “Remember, David, remember your mission.”

At that instant the car drove away and Jesus
disappeared into the cold night, leaving David’s sight but not his
memory. As the car drove away, David became a whole new being, a
new person, having some form of memory of some other life he lived
appearing in his mind, thoughts, his soul. It came faster than the
car drove.

The first memory came with David saying in a
low voice, “I’m an angel….”

CHAPTER THREE

T
he darkness fell
over Jeremy’s eyes, closing his lids to reveal his mind. He felt
secure, safe, yet vulnerable within its shadowy realm, wanting to
live in it for eternity, and not be put in reality again. He sat
motionless in a cold, leather chair, feeling a single leather
button out of many of this chair’s design nudging him in the leg.
With his eyes still shut, he was trying to believe that upon
opening them he would get to know that everything he had so far
seen and felt, and the nightmare that he didn’t know was about to
begin, would be nothing more than a dream, his mind’s own
landscape, which would cause him to smirk and grasp onto his bed’s
pillow in relief.

Jeremy opened his right eye a bit and didn’t
see his bedroom, didn’t feel his bed’s pillow, didn’t see the
reality he wanted, but saw a psychiatrist’s office, with the office
door open a crack, and it revealing three shadows outside in a vast
hallway—his parents and the doctor. He could hear their faint
whispers, knowing they were talking about his mind, what he sees
every time he goes to the holy house, like waves of echoes, hearing
his mother’s wail of tears echoing off her face, following every
word the doctor spoke. He felt the sharp, leather button poking his
flesh from the chair, but ignored it, feeling that, if he can feel
at this moment, it means that it is real. So Jeremy closed his
right eye and still prayed, hoping that this was a dream in a
dream, and the next time he opened his eyelids the reality of his
bedroom would come into view. Yet, he apprehended a thought that
wishful thinking wasn’t a very good choice to exercise at a time
like this, that the glass was half-empty to him now, and it’s time
to find out what was or still is wrong with his mind’s eye.

“Please, God, whatever is wrong with me, take
it away—please,” he said, still with his eyes shut, muttering those
words over and over again in his mind. Feeling the air-conditioner
kicking on in the office, a faint whimper of cold breeze rushed
against his nervous, sweat-filled face, allowing him to cool down a
bit, and created an infinitesimally small smile to appear on his
face; a smile that wouldn’t show itself again for an exceptionally
long time.

Suddenly, like a piece of breath being
shattered from the tormenting sun, his smile vanished, disappeared
without a trace, when a low, faint deep voice entered the office,
speaking, “Jeremy, I see you, do you see me?” Grasping onto the
leather cold seat, Jeremy’s eyes, flushed with newfound tears,
abruptly opened, and in his sight was a shadow of horns, a
silhouette of the most stereotypical evil known to man, allowing
him to pass out in an instant, faster than his mother could cry,
while in the next room and hearing news of unrecoverable issues,
spoken by a doctor who would be Jeremy’s last hope.

The doctor, still waiting for the mother to
calm her tears, looked briefly through the crack in her door and
saw Jeremy still lying down in the leather sofa, the place where
dreams are uncovered and nightmares are supposedly buried, and saw
Jeremy still with his eyes closed. Thinking that Jeremy would get
upset if he heard his mother’s tears, the doctor closed the door
all the way, and just waited for the mother to catch her breath,
staring at the father, saying she was sorry for his wife
crying.

The mother caught her breath, wiped her
millionth tear away from her wrinkled, stressed-out face, and
spoke. “Okay, doctor, I’m ready, what is wrong with my Jeremy?”

The doctor, blonde and beautiful, brushed
back her hair with her ring-filled hands and replied, “Well,
personally, from reading his file, I don’t believe he is a
schizophrenic.”

New tears of a different motive fell from the
mother’s blue eyes, lingering on her face, showing the doctor that
they were drops of happiness and relief. This made the doctor
concerned, as the next thing she was about to say from her
medically groomed mind would alter those tears once more, and cause
them to be those of sadness and fear. The doctor thought for a
moment if she should even say the next issue, so she waited,
allowing the mother’s prosperous tears to sing a bit more before
the bad news was announced.

The mother embraced her husband tightly,
saying, “Thank God, doctor, he’s not crazy.”

The doctor then smiled, grabbed the mother’s
clammy, nerve-filled hands of wrinkles, and said, “But, Mrs. Daven,
I do know what might help him, and I need the permission from you
both, in order to exercise it. I want it before I speak to
Jeremy.”

“Anything, doctor, what is it?” cried the
mother, with Mr. Daven showing a tear that fell from his fatigued
face onto Mrs. Daven’s shaking back. He embraced her for a moment,
and then waited for the doctor to continue.

“Well, it is a big step, Mr. and Mrs. Daven,
but I feel it will help heal Jeremy, and show him who he really
is.”

Five minutes passed, with Jeremy’s eyes
gradually opening again to reality, squeezing the seat’s leather
arms, digging his nails into them like a knife stabbing butter. As
his eyes grew larger while opening, he saw the beautiful doctor in
his view staring at him with a smile, not knowing that he passed
out, but thinking he was sleeping a bit. The room was already
bitterly cold from the air-conditioner, yet Jeremy felt a different
type of iciness, allowing goose bumps to form, but not
understanding what type of coldness it was. It was like he was
restricting the truth, his own personal conviction and passion
toward the genuineness of his illness, and prying himself not to
try and comprehend it. Yet, this instantaneous moment was the time
that he yearned for the truth and its authenticity. He searched the
room with his eyes, trying to avoid this doctor of beauty’s eyes
gawking at him, but then she spoke, and Jeremy was forced to
listen.

He saw her mouth beginning to open, knowing
that she was ready to speak, so he beat her to the punch and
questioned in defense, “Where’s Doctor Andrews? I want to see
Doctor Andrews!”

“Jeremy, my name is Doctor Callahan, I am
your new psychiatrist. Doctor Andrews passed away two weeks ago
from a sudden heart attack. I know you must have been close to him,
but I will listen just as much as he did, and help heal you.”

A lonely tear lingered on Jeremy’s face and,
in confusion, his eyes searching this new doctor’s own pupils,
wondering if he could trust her, he asked quietly, “I trusted him,
can you help me?” Jeremy’s heart of enormous bewilderment sank to
the depths of his perplexing, unknown soul, floating over the abyss
of depression as the memory of Doctor Andrews filled his mind. He
loved him like a father, and he remembered how he paid heed to
Jeremy’s fears, trepidations, and told him words of anticipation in
his kind voice that would allow Jeremy to want to inhale another
day. But now he was gone, Jeremy’s flashbacks of suicide before he
met Doctor Andrews came back, yet the hope which was still
lingering on the sharp cliff in Jeremy’s mind held on tight, and
the words he spoke to Doctor Callahan were words that only she
could help his faith revive again once more.