The giggles worsened, like they were jealous of Lucifer’s gifts, and wanted him to think they didn’t believe he had the powers they all wanted. The giggles showed evil in them all, while Jeremy looked at the sadness on this innocent angel, with a history of evil, in concern, allowing Jeremy’s head to be confused at this oxymoronic sight he saw.
The angel David stuck out his tongue toward Lucifer, pushing him against the other angels and having them pushing him back, creating a circle where the ball was him, and their motive for throwing it was that of jealousy. It was like they were bullies in a schoolyard, with David screaming out, “No you don’t. Our father has the most powers of all!”
A tear fell from Lucifer’s eyes, screaming in defense that allowed Jeremy’s own ears to hurt, “No he doesn’t, he gave me more powers than himself!”
“Oh yeah? Then why don’t you show us? Why don’t you go up to him right now and use your powers on him?” Michael yelled.
Jeremy sat down on the clouds in disbelief, actually feeling sympathy for a creature that his own world has been taught to hate for very good reasons. Evil was being picked on in front of Jeremy’s eyes, and good was being the bully. He felt a gut instinct to stop this charade, or else stop this abuse of the creature called Lucifer. Jeremy felt that if something was good or evil, no one should cause pain or agony by teasing another person. So, without a thought, without any force in himself to hold Jeremy back, he got up and began walking toward the angels, seeing them push the angel Lucifer even more, allowing more tears and pain to shed from Lucifer’s eyes and wings of beauty. Jeremy’s walking turned to running, passing by miniature fairies as they stood on rose petals and sunflower leaves, watching this argument and trying to yell toward Jeremy not to get involved. He did not hear their faint voices, and kept up his stride, wanting this scene to stop, knowing he was here, in this realm, for a reason. His feet began to feel heavy, that of a dream landscape, yet he fought the weight, and kept up his run, finally reaching the circle of angels, and yelling at the top of his lungs, “Leave him alone!” But the children couldn’t hear him.
All Jeremy could do was listen to the next abusive word, and pray that this scene would be over with soon, and he could return to the park with Mary to comfort his new experience. “Hey, Peter, do you think Lucifer is the most powerful of all?” Michael asked in a sarcastic way. Michael then yanked one of Lucifer’s feathers from his silvery white wings of beauty, plucking it out in an instant, causing it to bleed and have the blood running down Lucifer’s back. He held the feather high in the air, like a wand of power, proving to all, especially Lucifer himself, that he was not powerful at all. The feather was a prize, and the blood shed on his back was the entertainment.
The angel named Peter, seeing Michael still holding the bloody feather, laughed out loud toward Lucifer’s crying eyes, and shouted, “Hey, Christopher, how about you, do you think Lucifer is the greatest, the most powerful being ever?”
Christopher giggled. “No, I think he’s the weakest angel of all!”
The five angels of beauty, with souls of disgrace, folded in more toward Lucifer, yelling, taunting, and laughing at him, watching his back bleeding and not caring about the pain he had in him. Jeremy, full of puzzlement and sadness, saw one shining tear out of many falling from this angel Lucifer’s eyes, like his soul was bleeding out with agony. Jeremy tried once again to stop the other angels from picking on him, but they still couldn’t see or hear him. Jeremy turned a bit, and saw millions of fairies standing on millions of flowers in the distance, all crying themselves, and Jeremy just stood there, not knowing what to do. That’s when Jeremy stood silent and watched the scene, saying no more to stop the battle.
Suddenly, Lucifer shouted, “Alright, I’ll show all of you, I’ll prove I’m the most powerful!”
“I got to see this. God isn’t going to like this one bit,” giggled David, with all of them following Lucifer as he walked toward a forest of gold.
Jeremy followed them at the same time as the clouds of white became dark green meadows of wonder, and entered the forest of gold, turning into a forest of pure green on the inside. The animals, fairies and Jeremy followed these six angels as they walked fast, with Jeremy stopping for a second and gazing up through the trees toward the sky, filled with rainbows of colors that he didn’t even know existed. He was in a trance, seeing angels upon angels flying and soaring through the sky like automobiles on a highway. Jeremy was intrigued. But then he heard a loud noise, like a door slamming, and turned away from the heavens, only to see that the angels were gone from his sight, and in his view was the angel Christopher running around a corner and toward Jeremy, like he was being chased from a fear that came abruptly to his angel eyes. Jeremy grabbed Christopher as he passed him and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Christopher’s young and beautiful frightened eyes looked up at him and answered, “Lucifer’s gonna get in trouble if he goes against Father!”
“Wait, you can hear me? Where am I?”
Before Christopher could answer Jeremy, he disappeared into thin air, allowing Jeremy’s eyes to show frustration at this new mystery of appearance. He saw the corner where Christopher came running from before, and ran toward it, following it, only to have his mouth drop once he passed it. Before Jeremy stood a palace, a gigantic palace that had thousands of stairs leading up to it, as it floated in the heavens, with the angels circling around it like a twister of love. His eyes followed the stairs, seeing that they led to two enormous doors. As he looked closer, he saw the palace was on a single cloud, like a magical secret uncovered, and his eyes were the only witness. Without thinking, Jeremy ran toward the first stair and stepped on it, questioning, “How the hell am I gonna walk up all these stairs? It’s gonna take me at least a day!”
Before he began his journey up the staircase, the angel children came soaring down them, shooting past Jeremy, knocking him down. It was all the children, and they were pushing at Lucifer. The angel David shouted, “You see, I knew you couldn’t do it!”
“I could to, I just didn’t want to do it now,” defended Lucifer’s young self, before Peter and David started hitting him on his angelic head.
David yelled toward Lucifer, while pushing him, “Just because you sit on the left-hand side of Father doesn’t mean you’re more powerful than him!” David slapped Lucifer in the face while finishing with, “It just means you are a kiss-up and a chicken!”
“You’re just jealous of me, all of you,” cried Lucifer, with Jeremy falling to the marble staircase in weakness.
This scene confused Jeremy once more, saying in fatigue, “I didn’t know angels talked like this.”
David kicked Lucifer in the leg, shouting, “Oh, yeah, I’m jealous of your bright pulsating self. Listen, I wouldn’t want light coming from me, you look like a firefly that Father just created in one of his works. Lucifer, he just gave you simple powers, not the power to create, like Father does every time he paints a picture. You are nothing but a bright thing.”
Lucifer started to cry more, especially after this realm took over the silence, and the silence took over it, deafening his ears and causing a weakness that he couldn’t understand where it came from. Lucifer whimpered, and cried, “One day I’ll show you—I’ll show all of you.” He took flight and disappeared into the skies of wonder, with pain to his flight.
They laughed again, then the angel Gabriel asked, “When is that going to be?”
Jeremy tried to get up, but his weakness was growing, and David asked, as he spotted Lucifer in the skies, “Yeah, when are you going to do it?”
Lucifer turned around in the sky and was still, waiting to speak, craving to find the right words. They all waited, while this angel of future evil shined his body light more and opened up his mouth.
“It’s going to be in about an hour,” a voice said, with Jeremy opening up his eyes and seeing the words coming from Mary talking to a stewardess, walking away from him and Mary. Finding himself on a plane, his tired
eyes opened more with bewilderment, bouncing up from his seat and yelling, “What the hell happened? Where am I?”
“You passed out in the park, and you’re on an airplane right now,” Mary answered seriously, while Jeremy fell to the ground in awe.
Jeremy was terrified, even while the stewardess helped him to his seat; he was distraught at what he saw and what he was seeing now. “What’s wrong with me?”
Jeremy sat in his seat while Mary replied, “I gave you some medicine, it kind of makes your muscles relax. Jeremy, what happened to you in the park?”
Jeremy’s eyes scanned the plane and the people who gawked at him with whispers of what drug he was on going past all of their lips. “How long was I passed out for?”
“Well, for about nine hours. I called your parents and told them what happened. Don’t worry, they packed your suitcases and made sure to kiss you goodbye.”
After Mary spoke, the stewardess walked toward them, with Jeremy asking Mary right away, “What about Jennifer?”
“Well, Jennifer sounded upset when she heard the news about you going to San Francisco. But she said when you get back, to just give her a call. Um, what else? Oh, she added that she loves you,” Mary explained as Jeremy’s mouth grew a large smile.
The stewardess finally came to their seat, asking Jeremy in concern, “Would you like me to get you some water?”
“Yes, please.”
“Jeremy, what happened in the park today?” Mary questioned again, playing with her long, blonde hair.
“I don’t remember. I mean, all I remember was seeing six children. Six angel children.”
“Well, go to sleep now, you can tell me more about it when we reach San Francisco.” Mary then stared at Jeremy’s eyes as they slowly closed, with his lids shutting like shades on a dusty window; he knew the reality he saw, and the reality he was seeing now felt the same, and with his eyes closed, for some reason, he felt safe. But the flight would be over, and he knew his eyes had to open again; to what, he was too afraid to think about.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gabriel noted, “Mom, I’m scared to go in that place.” He and his mother gawked at the institution of Grewsal from a car window with trepidation. Fearing this structure with his eyes, he coughed up pure anxiety through his saliva in acid-like chunks. He scanned the fortress, seeing the green vines that hung from its body, and how they curled around the building in perfect strands, hovering over the black brick that made up Grewsal. Being so close to it, it seemed as if the vines were squeezing the bricks, tightening so strongly that the bricks shouted out in agony. His heartbeat grew faster, his sweat poured faster, his eyes widened more, and he held his hand close to the lock on the car door, wanting to pull on it, but yearning to keep it locked for some reason or another. His stomach was tangled with moths, flying around his organs and causing his throat to ache with the acidic vomit that he fought to keep down as it slowly crept up and escaped through his nervous coughs. He felt like he was on a cliff, being pushed off by his own sickness, yet his own instincts allowed Gabriel to fight reality and keep the car door locked. He felt betrayed by his own thoughts, his own mind’s eye that saw only terror when he stood alone in a room and stared at statues and paintings of a religious nature.
He closed his eyes while he faced this institution, not wanting this memory, this moment, to be forever engraved in his mind, craving to not have this snapshot be with him forever. He didn’t deserve this memory. To his mother, it was just a regular mental hospital—large and black, with green covering from the vines, and a few statues of gargoyles to mend the exterior and make it look gothic. Yet, to Gabriel, it was more than that, the nature and scent it gave out, the aroma and image it produced, made him believe, for some reason, that this was more than just a building to help the mentally ill; but that “more” was a mystery to him for now. He closed his eyes tightly, and sat in the seat of the car, but his mother caused them to be opened again when she took over the decision for them to be opened.
The mother kissed Gabriel on the forehead, reached over him, and opened the car door for him, saying delicately, “Come on, Gabriel, I already told the doctor you were coming.”
He tapped his fingers hard against the hot, red interior of the car. His mother exited and waited for him in front of the car’s body. She saw his terror, and tried to tell him through her smile that everything was going to be alright; yet he knew that was a lie. Gabriel fought with his own fears, knowing that something wasn’t right about this place, but he still perceived his mother’s smile. This helped him to know that she only wanted to help him, and that caused a bit of a smile to grow on his face, knowing that she was right and that maybe Grewsal wasn’t going to be bad at all.
He opened the car door more and stepped out, feeling a breeze of warm air shooting toward his face and drying the nervous beads of sweat from his shaky flesh. The green grass that he stood upon made the skin and hair on his ankles itch, causing him to reach past his shorts and itch vigorously at the blades, as well as the skin of his ankle. He came closer to his mother and then both walked together toward Grewsal, with Gabriel keeping his eyes on the two gargoyles that stood on either side of the entrance, like guards of a castle, parents to a child, witches to an evil brew, that had an evil song that both yearned to play.
Once reaching the staircase, Gabriel stopped in his tracks and gawked at the twenty stairs that stretched toward the black brick building and automatically turned his puppy eyes toward his mother. Once again she smiled, and they both proceeded up the staircase, his mother slowing down and walking behind him, like she was afraid he was going to run and she was guiding him. She held onto his right shoulder as they both came to the big black door and she reached for what seemed to be a spiked-filled doorknob, but the spike design was not as sharp as it seemed. He stopped her from turning the knob, giving her a look that seemed to mean that he wanted to turn it, that it was his sickness and he wanted to open the door to the institution that he hoped would heal him. So she pulled away gently and he grasped hold of the spiked knob, feeling a brief electric shock from its metal, and then stared up over the door and gawked at another gargoyle which hung over their heads. He then closed his eyes, turned the knob and pushed at the door, opening it, yet keeping his eyes shut, like he didn’t want to see the inside of Grewsal.
As soon as the door was fully opened, he did open his eyes, and saw nothing but beauty on the inside. White walls and beautiful chandeliers that hung from the thirty-foot ceiling could be seen. He opened his eyes wider as he realized there were glass statues of saints standing against the walls like decorations. He said, “This place looks like a fancy mansion or church.”
“I know, maybe this won’t be so bad, honey.”
His mother walked up to the front desk of the building and Gabriel followed, still mesmerized by the sight of such beauty, especially the flowers that hung everywhere from pots made out of crystal. The front desk was decorated with white roses and unusually large green plants with red flowers that stood straight up in the air, like they were begging to be noticed, fighting for the sunlight that came in through the circular window on the ceiling. Gabriel felt a strange relief in his mind; it was like he felt healed already from its beauty. He turned to face his mother while a female nurse beyond the front desk came up to them.
The nurse was gorgeous, young, in her early thirties, with long, blonde hair that she put up in a bun. She asked the mother, “May I help you?”
“Yes, hi, I’m here to see Doctor Callahan,” the mother said as Gabriel stared at the nurse with a look of lust in his eyes.
The nurse smiled briefly at the mother, and then changed her smile to a very imperceptible grin as her eyes changed their gaze from the mother to Gabriel. It was a mysterious grin, that of a hidden secret, and Gabriel caught that definition, but still stood there, not letting the definition sink into his mind deep enough to say something to his mother. The nurse then turned to face the mother and started tapping her long nails again
st the front desk. “Oh, the doctor won’t be in for another hour: her plane is probably about to land.”
The frustration grew inside the mother, manifesting itself as rage, as she gave out a large sigh. “Wait a second, I just spoke to her an hour ago!”
“Well, ma’am, you must have called her cellphone. What is this regarding?”
“It’s regarding my son, Gabriel,” the mother replied, pulling out her insurance card from her pink purse, shifting her hands around everything it held, and then slapping the card down on the desk.
The nurse gave out a smile of intrigue, like she had found gold, shifting her eyes toward Gabriel again, and questioning, “You mean Gabriel Netter?”
A wind, mixed with cold and warmth, shouted its way through the hallways and entered the vast foyer, striking Gabriel’s back and causing him to turn around. Behind him stood a single, large door, with a large, obese male nurse, dressed in white, standing in it, gaping toward Gabriel’s figure. Gabriel’s frightened eyes turned away from him and stared at the female nurse.
“Yes, my son, Gabriel Netter is supposed to see Doctor Callahan now,” replied his mother. The obese man walked quickly up to them and stood next to her and Gabriel, not moving or fidgeting at all, standing straight like a statue of emptiness.
The head nurse looked into the obese man’s eyes, and then stepped out from behind the desk, walking up to him and grabbing onto his hand. She guided him away from Gabriel and the mother, and then stopped, while she whispered something into his ear. Gabriel saw her lips moving and tried to read them, not liking that she was so sneaky, not understanding what secret she had to say to the large man right in front of them. She turned back to Gabriel and the mother, saying, “Yes, Doctor Callahan told us about Gabriel. We’ll just take him up to his room now and he’ll see the doctor when she arrives.”
The mother was confused, unfamiliar with the nurse’s words, asking, “You mean he’s gonna be admitted today? I didn’t even bring his suitcase or things with me.”
The Wrath of Jeremy Page 5