CHAPTER ONE
Gabriel, with his eccentric balance of energy, ran about in his sunshine-filled room, attempting to track down his other rollerblade, but failing constantly to do so in every corner of the room he investigated. Sweat started to build over his black eyes, feeling the heat from his non-air-conditioned home, baking its own roof shingles in the scorching Californian sun. He kept up the search, swabbing the sweat away every second, wanting to find the other rollerblade so he could go out with his friends. Abruptly, through his thoughts of not finding the blade, his eyes caught the sight of it, hanging behind his dusty closet door, behind a dirty shirt that had been hanging there since God knows how long. A smile broke through on his young, frustrated face, and quickly he grasped onto it, knowing that if he didn’t now, he would forget where it was again, showing that his short-term memory was short indeed.
Grabbing it and walking quickly out of his room, through junk and papers from old magazines that showed dates from a year ago, he placed his backpack over his arm and headed straight for the front door, shouting, “Mom, I’m going to the beach now, I’ll be back later!”
Without even a chance for his first foot to reach the outside of the door, and without even a possibility for his clammy hands to open it by the knob, his mother came rushing into the front room, her curlers hanging off her hair like snakes, and her waitress uniform filled with ashes from her lit cigarette, and placed her hand with force over the door’s body, making it known to Gabriel that in order to get out, he had to get past her. “You are not going anywhere, young man, you still have to finish up your homework!” She pushed away from the door with her hand, and sat down on an old, plastic-covered couch, trying to tie her white sneakers with one hand and hold the cigarette with the other.
“Come on, Mom, all the guys are going to the beach today. Please?”
She just shook her head, shaking the curlers in the process, inhaling her cigarette with a tremendous drag, and exhaling it toward him, like the force from the smoke should be a good enough answer on her part, that she was not changing her mind. But she still saw him waiting for an answer, his black eyes filled with rage like an inferno building up behind them. So she fed their flames.
“No, I don’t care, Gabriel, you still have to finish your homework: case closed!” She started taking out the curlers from her hair, yanking them sometimes, and other times just trying to take her time, but Gabriel was really starting to irritate her. “Besides, I don’t want you going into one of your fits on the beach.”
Unfairness lingered over his fragile black eyes, seeing her place the cigarette down finally in an ashtray after she realized she was down to the filter. “Mom, I took my medicine. Besides, the doctor said my problem is harmless.” He then opened up the front door finally and waited to see her reactions, sort of like a dare toward her, knowing she didn’t want him leaving and seeing that he was about to.
She lit up another cigarette while still tasting the aftermath of the burnt filter in her mouth, and took a swig of some water on the coffee table, and then went about finishing up getting ready for work. Suddenly, as her rage built up from his dare against her grand authority as a mother, she sprinted toward him, clutched his arm firmly, and shouted, “Harmless? You call seeing statues moving harmless?” She pulled his young body away from the door with an imperceptible faint force, and closed the door with a strong one, inhaling her cigarette like air, and exhaling. “I don’t want you ending up like your twin brother.”
“Mom, Michael is crazy, I’m not…Michael saw statues coming at him. They only move to me.”
The word ‘crazy’ went through her thoughts, entering through her eyes, knocking at her ears, traveling around her spine, and craving to exit through her mouth, with words of titanic sound toward Gabriel. She couldn’t believe, couldn’t accept that Gabriel called his own twin brother that name. But for some reason, she was able to calm her nerves down a bit, biting down on her tongue and saying through her grinding teeth, “Well, I still don’t want you ending up like him. I don’t want to have to visit you at an insane asylum like I do for your brother—Stop it.” He put his hand on the doorknob again, attempting to see if he could get out of this one, this dispute they had every single day the sun came up.
“Mom, I’m not a child anymore, I’m seventeen years old, and pretty soon I’ll be eighteen.” Gabriel then opened the door; anger moved his feet and madness moved his hand.
One of her curlers fell to the white, tiled floor as she ran toward Gabriel, pulling him away from the door, and slamming it shut with one push. “Listen to me, Gabriel, you’re not gonna be eighteen for a while.”
“I’m gonna be December twenty-fifth, that’s only two months away, or did you forget?” Gabriel shouted, opening the door again.
“You see, you can’t even count right. December twenty-fifth is three months away, Gabriel. If you would go to school more often, you would have known that.” The battle continued with her slamming the door once more, fighting to keep it shut, while Gabriel fought to escape it. “If you open that door one more time, I will punish you till your eighteenth birthday. You got that?”
He placed his head down in anger, trying not to show his eyes giving in to her power. He slowly walked away, over to the front room of his home, pouting.
“You know, Gabriel, while I’m at work, I want you to study. I do not want you going out!”
“Why do you have to work today anyway?” After his question, he began to gawk at a wall with the da Vinci painting of “The Last Supper” hanging gracefully on it, staring heavily at each figure, Apostle, man of God that sat still, wondering what they were thinking or saying, trying to enter a spiritual realm and unfold the true words they spoke, just for the hell of it. He continued to stare at it, like he always did, as it hung over the television, and slowly started to feel an urge like he was a part of it. The special way the figures were formed by paint made his eyes glow with mystery, yet mostly with excitement.
“Because Burger World needs me today. The new guy quit Friday. So, they need me to take his place until they find a new burger flipper,” she explained while Gabriel slowly noticed Jesus was beginning to move his head back and forth, with his painted face starting to look like real skin. “I know it’s embarrassing to have a mother flip burgers, but it’s the only job I could find, honey.”
Not noticing Gabriel was falling into a trance, due to her running about the house, attempting to get ready as fast as possible, Gabriel dropped his rollerblades on the floor and sat in amazement on the ground as ‘The Last Supper’ painting opened up its spiritual realm for him, and breathed life before his wondering eyes.
As his mother’s voice grew louder, the other figures in the painting started to gain life themselves, and Gabriel watched as the Apostles rose from their seats, walking around the painting like a gathering or party. They were talking to each other, Gabriel could hear their faint, ghostly whispers of curiosity. He was trying to understand the language, their meaning of what they were saying and how they were saying it. His nerves bounced against his flesh, and the room became silent with an undertone in their shallow voices of terror. Their voices grew large and louder, with Gabriel still not knowing their conversations, and only knowing that what he was seeing now couldn’t possibly be happening.
Gabriel got up and tried to get closer to the painting, eavesdropping his best, when suddenly he stepped on a creak in the floor, making a loud noise, and causing them all to abruptly stop their whispers at once and turn their heads toward Gabriel, fixing their eyes on his, watching him as he now sat down again, in fear of their stares. They were speaking to one another, as if speaking about some important matter that concerned Gabriel. Suddenly, through the whispers, the silence of the room, and through his fear-filled eyes, Jesus stepped out from behind the table in the painting, and jumped out from the canvas. His paint-filled skin became real flesh, and he grew larger than life, grander than Gabriel could possibly imagine.
“Mom
, it’s happening again!”
With one curler still hanging limp from her long, blonde hair, she walked out of the kitchen, knowing what he meant by that, yet hoping and praying it was some other meaning. “What?” she questioned. She saw Gabriel staring off in a trance, with him seeing the Apostles becoming reality as well, jumping out of the painting, standing full figure in his presence. Smell, taste, and thought entered as new voices to Gabriel’s senses, actually smelling these figures, and tasting the air, to him, what tasted and smelled like sand, as if these figures went on a long journey through the heated desert, with the sun to intensify their stench.
They all, including his Savior, stood seven feet in height, starting to walk to him in a slow motion movement. Fear ran through his eyes, but he didn’t allow it to go into his thoughts; he was strong, he didn’t covet, yearn, want to give in to his supposed sickness. “It’s happening again.” He pointed toward the painting, but he really was pointing toward the seven-foot figures walking toward him slowly, allowing his fears to turn to panic, and causing his shakiness to turn to tears. The fear already reached his mind, without him being able to control its abrupt entering.
“You mean the painting?” The mother ran toward it and touched the painting, shouting, “Are the figures moving in the painting? Gabriel? Honey—tell me!”
“Well, not exactly…the figures are standing right next to you,” he replied in a subtle, terrified voice.
The mother tried feeling around in the air for the figures, actually allowing herself to believe there was something to feel, and that Gabriel wasn’t sick at all. But reality took over, his mother shaking her head in disappointment toward the situation; she shook it again, showing Gabriel that she didn’t see anything. “Alright, snap out of it, Gabriel,” she yelled, running up to him and shaking him vigorously. “Snap out of it!” She shook him more, like she was trying to shake the demon out from his soul, and even his thoughts. The last curler that hung from her hair hit Gabriel in the head, falling from her hair, due to excessive shaking.
“Mom, help me!” The figures started to reach out for him, attempting to touch his forehead. Noise did not exist, hope did not show, as Gabriel saw them, their lifelike figures not presenting any paint on them like they had in the painting. Yet, they looked exactly like the work of art, the work of art that’s so famous, and the work of art that was now attacking Gabriel, at least in his eyes.
His mother sprinted to the phone in a desperate attempt to help her poor, sick, innocent son, panicking over his life, and over what his eyes saw and what hers didn’t. As she dialed Gabriel’s physician’s number, he rose up and began to back up slowly, starting now to run away from the moving figures in a desperate attempt to escape this bewildering realm he didn’t accept. Racing away, he ran upstairs, tripping over every single wooden step there was, and went to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him and closing his eyes in stress. Nausea was beginning to creep up his throat from panic as he was attempting to keep this door shut, placing his dresser, stereo, and basically anything he could find in his room in front of this door, knowing he was safe in his bedroom.
He was trapped. He was scared. The terror of realizing something not of this world was attacking him allowed Gabriel to feel the fear he never wanted to sense, the trepidation his eyes began to see, the terror his eyes only saw. He sat down in the center of his room, crying out for help. The fright boggled his mind, watching the door of his room, and praying to himself that it wouldn’t move a bit. “Please, leave me alone,” he whispered, gawking at the doorknob, hoping it wouldn’t begin to turn. But his hopes were lost, the doorknob turned, first moving a bit, and then turning full, yet stopping at the point where the lock wouldn’t allow it to go anymore. “Go away,” he screamed. “Go away—Mom, help!” The doorknob turned past the locked point, showing Gabriel’s tear-filled eyes that it was unlocked by something. Gabriel ran to his window and tried opening it to escape from the creatures, to escape from the terror, to escape from the holiness.
“What are you doing?” a high-pitched voice questioned.
Gabriel turned around and saw it was his mother crying out her words.
“Oh, it’s only you.” Gabriel was relieved to see her, dropping down to his floor in a seating position; he grabbed onto her hand and held it tightly. The tiredness his fear brought to him caused his mind to be fatigued, to give up, to close shut and never possess these memories again.
“Come on, I’m taking you to the hospital now,” his mother said, shaking her tear-soaked hands and grabbing onto Gabriel’s arm. She was tired, too, exhausted from the fear traveling from his mind to hers; it achieved its journey successfully.
“I’m okay, I don’t want to go, especially to the hospital.” He pulled away from her grip, not wanting to leave, after begging to go the beach before, but now craving to put it behind him, close it in his thoughts and lock it away for good.
“Gabriel, they’re going to help you.” He looked away from her quickly, not believing her as his eyes wrinkled over, like he was ready to cry.
“No, they’re not. I’m not stupid, Mom. They’re gonna put me with Michael. I don’t want to go to a nuthouse,” he shouted, gazing through his open door at the hallway.
“It’s better than you having to put up with seeing statues, and now paintings, coming alive.” Through her words, shallow yet sincere indeed, Gabriel still aimed his eyes in his own silence toward the hallway, and widened them rapidly without hesitation, seeing Jesus standing in the doorway, gaping toward his eyes. Gabriel’s fear grew once again, the fear of the figure that he called his ‘Savior’. Ironically he feared this great man, only because no one else’s eyes could see him but his own. Gabriel got up from the floor and quickly climbed out the window. His mother was dumbfounded at his actions, yelling for him to come back, yet he still moved in the opposite direction. Down the drainpipes he climbed: being connected to the roof, they were shaky as his weight hit their delicate, rusty bodies, but he ignored the weakness of the pipes, and kept on climbing down them. “Where are you going?” his mother screamed.
“I’m going to the hospital with you,” he answered, reaching the ground and jumping onto the passenger’s seat of his mother’s convertible. He stared out at the small town he lived in, where every house looked alike, and closed his eyes, knowing he was never going to see them again, and realizing, feeling deep in his mind, that this was more than a sickness, and he would soon find out what exactly that “more” was.
CHAPTER TWO
Looking around and staring at the murky, darkened alley, feeling the cold New York breeze that brushed against his nervously twitching eyes, David glared at the next alley light in front of him, feeling some form of relief that the light was going to be in his presence soon. Holding a brown paper bag close to his broad torso, he ambled very slowly, turning his frightened head every so often and looking over his shoulders to see if anyone was following his steps, his motion. A cold breeze rushed against his flesh once more. Hearing the sounds of this sinister night, like rats walking past him, and black, dirty cats, hurtling out in front of him and tipping over garbage cans, created a thunderous, deafening noise, to which all David could do was close his eyes tight and wait for the noises to pass him by and travel out of the present. Nerves built up inside of his belly, possessing his soul to the point where terror couldn’t possibly vanish once he fell under the light in the alley.
He finally passed by the light, and his predictions of feeling sovereignty over his fears once hitting it were of course wrong, and, as he passed it, he felt the darkened alley sinisterly grasping his trepidation, his fear even more, twofold, but he just kept on walking. He ran his fingers through his black hair, stopping in the middle of this alley. Seeing an abrupt figure of a man shuffling toward his own shadow that was silhouetted in front of him, the figure stopped right on his shadow’s head, and asked David in a suspicious voice, “You got the stuff?”
“Yeah, but do you have the cash?” After David
’s words of a snotty nature, he reached his hand into his coat and rubbed his scar on his chest, because it itched when he was nervous, and still waited in the shadows of two buildings, casting one dark shadow over them, wondering if this man had the money that David wanted.
The cold was too unbearable for David, so he pulled his black winter coat closer to his body while the man finally replied, “Yeah, but I want to see the merchandise first.”
“Here!” David showed the strange-looking man an ounce of marijuana he held in the paper bag, and saw a smile growing slowly on the man’s face. He nodded toward David, his eyes glowing with honest greed toward the bag, or a mysterious twinkle that David was unsure about, handing him the cash and grabbing the merchandise from David’s frozen fingers. “Alright, it was a pleasure doing business with you,” David muttered, turning his half-frozen body around quickly, and starting to walk away into the alley’s darkness.
Yet, momentarily, just as David turned away, the man spoke. “Hold it, I’m not done with you yet!” David’s eyes grew larger, feeling the cold breeze rushing against his eyes and pupils, yearning to get a good breath of air, due to the coldness literally suffocating his lungs. He felt his own blood pumping through his veins, and frostbite on his fingers felt as if the blood craved to shoot out of the tips of his nails, to allow some relief of the pressure. David turned away from the wind’s direction and faced the man slowly, gawking at him in suspicion through his frozen eyes of curiosity.
“What else do you want? I don’t have any more of this stuff. If you want some, then you’re going to have to wait till next week!”
The man grinned more at David’s words, finding them amusing, causing David’s eyes to squint and his suspicion to build even greater toward the man’s smile. The man then muttered, “No, I don’t want any more. What I do want is to arrest you.” He pulled out a police badge, having the one single alley light to reflect the golden glare toward David’s eyes, going from squinting with mystery to widening with fear. “You’re under arrest for the selling of marijuana!”
The Wrath of Jeremy Page 2