The Wrath of Jeremy

by Stephen Andrew Salamon

  David’s icy legs started running, sprinting as fast as he could through the cold winds of New York, and chasing his own silhouette past the alley light and down the alley of darkness. He could hear the footsteps of the police officer starting up as well. He saw nothing except darkness on top of chill, striking at all of his senses, but kept up his fast motion to avoid falling into the officer’s hands. His face numb with pain, hands frozen like ice, he heard a gunshot come from behind him, echoing past him, and now knew that his life was at risk, as well as his freedom. So David pulled out a gun of his own, holding it close to his body, when suddenly his eyes caught the end of the alley, and saw the street lights lighting the alley’s opening, feeling a sense of relief once again, and then exiting it, just as the officer shot another bullet toward David’s back, missing him as he turned and began running on the New York sidewalk. A smoke-like moisture that came from his mouth and froze on his lips seemed to be that of train smoke, being that he was running so fast, and being that he never even bothered to swallow what was left of his saliva, feeling the dryness of his mouth entering his throat, allowing a sense of vomiting to enter his thoughts. But he kept up the run, while the officer kept up the chase, calling for backup as he ran for David, noticing that David was heading toward a parked taxicab. David shot his gun toward the officer, hitting him, and causing him to fall to the cold New York street. A small grin provoked his numb lips, causing pain, and cracking his lips in numerous places, sanctioning blood to create a shield over his mouth. Hearing the officer giving a small moan, while David gave out a loud “Yes,” like he was shooting clay pigeons, and just hit one for the first time. He then turned quickly, and jumped in the taxicab, shouting, “Drive, drive, drive,” demanding the driver not to think twice about the order.

  But the driver turned around, peeled open his own eyes, showing that he was sleeping a while, and said, “I’m off duty, kid, sorry.”

  David gave out a fast sigh, showed the man his gun and ordered, “I said drive!”

  Strangely, the cab driver developed laughter toward the gun, allowing confusion, anger and stress to come over David’s paranoid eyes, seeing now that the driver was not only laughing at the gun, but also now laughing directly at his face.

  “Boy, you chose the wrong cab to hold up. I’m sorry, but the reason why I’m off duty is because my cab broke down.” The driver’s words were honest and to the point, causing David to give out another sigh, watching this cab driver’s green-yellow teeth, and now seeing his disgusting gums as he opened his mouth to laugh harder toward him.

  “Damn, I don’t believe this is happening to me!” shouted David, exiting the cab and seeing two more police officers running toward him with great speed, while the other one was still lying on the ground, his hands over the gunshot wound, which David now saw was near his stomach.

  He was confused, understanding that he was trapped between a broken-down cab and two officers running in the direction of him. David turned away quickly, and then noticed as he turned a single church across the street. Seeing the officers halting and trying to help the wounded officer a bit, David made a run for it, heading straight for the church, reaching its cold doors, and entering it, feeling his body going from cold to warm, but still having his mind staying at fear level.

  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

  The 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.

  She nodded her head timidly, with the Kansas sun shooting in through the red velvet curtains that dangled from the soaring window near Jeremy’s seat, reflecting off Jeremy’s tears and bouncing off of Doctor Callahan’s beauty, showing Jeremy her frankness and that she was going to help him. “Yes, I can, Jeremy. But first, what happened?”

  He glanced out the window, not wanting the doctor to scrutinize his terrified eyes, and replied, “It happened again.”

  “I read your files, Jeremy. Does that mean you saw the statues moving again?”

  He noticed some interest in her question, rather than concern, but shrugged it off his shoulders. “Yes, doctor…but this time it was different. This time, the—” He stopped his words, congesting them in his mouth, started to cry again and then finished with: “The statue of Jesus came out also.”