The Wrath of Jeremy

by Stephen Andrew Salamon

  “Because, he said we would be cured,” Gabriel affirmed with importance. “I don’t want to live with seeing statues moving for the rest of my life. If this is all an illusion, and if we are really crazy, then I’m still going to go to Jerusalem. I mean, don’t you see that this is some kind of a miracle? I don’t know why or for what reason Jesus told us to go to Jerusalem, I don’t even know if that was Jesus or not. I mean, he said if we retrieve his Shroud and the Kerchief of Veronica, then we would be cured. I want my normal life back again, and I’ll even travel some great distance to get it again!”

  Michael slowly looked up at Gabriel, while Jeremy looked away from the two brothers and realized that Gabriel was right—he had a point, a point that was so clear, but yet so out there. He looked back at them, still pondering in his mind that the truth might be really something other than a sickness. Finally, he said, “I agree with Gabriel, I want to have a normal life again, too. I’m sick of being sick. You two guys are the only people who know what I’m feeling. I’ve totally ruined my relationship with my father, he thinks I’m a nutcase—and my mother is beginning to feel the same way. I’ve lost my girlfriend to this, and every friend imaginable. It’s been almost one month since I’ve been away from them; it’s been one month that I have been living in Grewsal. For most kids our age, if they’re going to plan a trip to go away for a month, it’s usually to go to some summer camp, or even a beach, but in our cases, it was to come here, to a mental institution. My parents haven’t even called me once since I’ve been here!”

  Voices, silent ones that came from each of their souls, were beginning to form words, seeing that their bonds were growing stronger and the understanding of the pain they had to go through was becoming more apparent, more real. Before, each boy swept their illness under a rug, of course speaking to a shrink about them every so often, but never really talking about it. They talked more, even now, with them all circling around the single cross that lay on the bed. Their bond was simple, a correlation, fellowship that was brought on by a single mission that they didn’t know of yet. Even Michael and Jeremy understood each other more, and Gabriel was beginning to develop a mind of his own. They had one thing in common, and that was this so-called “sickness” that each of them wore, a symbol of pain, scorched into their bodies.

  Sitting on the bed and talking still, Gabriel turned away from them and slowly went to pick up the cross. As he did so, he handed it over to Michael again and said, “Go ahead. Try calling to him again.”

  Michael looked up at Jeremy and Gabriel while grasping onto the brown metal cross, gripping it delicately, trying to avoid the sharp ends of it, especially the tip. He looked at it and breathed a quick breath that lasted forever to him. “Jesus, are you there?”

  Michael understood and sensed that Jeremy and Gabriel were right. He apprehended the realization that he had a chance to be healed, so, instead of waiting for an answer from the cross, he asked again, but in a lower, much quicker voice, “Jesus, are you there?” Nothing happened, so Michael squeezed the cross tighter in his grip and looked up at his ceiling, feeling that Heaven is toward the sky, so his eyes should be upward. After two minutes of waiting, with tears beginning to fill in each of their eyes, Michael threw the cross all the way on the other side of the room, and allowed the cantankerous feeling to take over him. “You see, I told you we were crazy!”

  Before Gabriel and Jeremy could calm Michael down, a bright flash of yellow light shined through the cross, and they turned around and saw it hit the ground. A voice spoke through the cross, warning, “Gabriel, Jeremy, leave this room now.” They looked at each other, confused, then they heard the voice add, “Leave this instant, or else thou shall be caught!”

  The light vanished, with Jeremy’s instincts forcing him to look up at the vent. His incomprehension and bewilderment went away as he threw down the cover that protected him from the coldness of the room and yelled out, “Oh no, shit, that’s what Jesus, or whoever was talking about!” Jeremy scurried over to the vent and pulled Michael’s bed over to be underneath it. He tipped the bed and stood it upward, creating it to be like a ladder. He climbed up the bed, sticking his feet between the rusted springs as Gabriel and Michael looked at him in puzzlement. “Idiots, it meant someone’s coming right now,” shouted Jeremy.

  Gabriel ran over to the bed, observing that Jeremy was battling it, trying to climb up it, while bending the rusted springs. Some springs cut at Jeremy’s ankles, creating gashes, yet Jeremy kept on climbing, while Gabriel and Michael waited for him to reach the vent and climb in it. Panic crammed the air, and a cold fear took over their instincts as they imagined someone coming. Jeremy reached the vent and began to climb through the vent hole, slipping a bit on his own sweat that covered his nervous hands, making them oily. As he fought to get a good grip on the vent and pull himself through the hole in the ceiling, Michael ran up to Gabriel with the cross in his hand and started poking Gabriel’s stomach with it.

  “What are you doing that for?” asked Gabriel, grabbing the cross away from him.

  “Take it with you, just in case they search my room. If that voice was telling the truth, I’m definitely gonna get a beating tonight. I know the camera in my room is broken, but yours isn’t, so they know you escaped, and they know you’re here, if the guards didn’t drink tonight. I’m so stupid, I should have thought about that. Maybe they don’t know. Too late, now go,” Michael explained. Gabriel saw the tears of fear in his eyes. He knew Michael was telling the truth, and seeing Michael’s fear made Gabriel even more afraid.

  Jeremy reached the vent hole and pulled himself through finally. He held out his hand and waited for Gabriel to grab it, noticing that Gabriel hadn’t even started climbing yet. Gabriel stuck the cross into the side of his white sweatpants and climbed quickly, grabbing onto Jeremy’s hand as fast as he could. Jeremy was helping to pull Gabriel’s body up when suddenly a pounding came at the door, a pounding that shook the room. Jeremy pulled Gabriel’s body all the way up into the vent, and Michael threw the vent cover up to him. Jeremy grasped the vent cover with his right hand and tried desperately to put it in place. Suddenly more pounding came at the door, as if someone was trying to break it down. As soon as more pounding started, the cross fell from Gabriel’s pants and began to tumble down the vent tunnel. It went past Jeremy’s body and fell to the ground of Michael’s room. Michael turned around to face the cross and then looked back at the door. Before Jeremy closed the vent lid completely, Michael ran up to the cross, grabbed it, and tossed it back up toward Jeremy, with him catching it before he sealed the vent lid. Michael ripped down the bed and hauled it over to where it was, laying it down and trying to fix the mattress and sheets. That’s when the door opened and in came Victor. Jeremy and Gabriel watched through the thin lines of the vent lid, and tried to see what was happening. Finally they found a good view of Victor’s fat face while Jeremy stuck the cross into his pants, not trusting Gabriel to hold it anymore.

  “So, what are doing up so late?” Victor asked. Michael swallowed his saliva in a loud way.

  “Um, um, I was just, um, I was just praying,” Michael answered with nervousness in his words, perceiving that Victor was moving toward him. Victor looked suspiciously around the room and then placed his eyes back on Michael’s face. “Yeah, I was just praying as all,” Michael said again, this time with a small grin.

  Victor’s eyes scanned the room even more, but glancing over the vent, not seeing that Jeremy and Gabriel were pressed against it, listening and watching. “Well, don’t you need a cross in order to pray?”

  Michael saw Victor’s eyes and followed their path to the vent, fear coming to his mind. He became nervous, trying to get Victor’s green eyes off the vent lid. “No, you don’t need a cross in order to pray.” Michael stopped his words and waited for a reaction from Victor. Meanwhile, Gabriel noticed and felt something rush against his legs. When he reached down to see what it was, he felt fur—it was a fat rat, with poisonous teeth. Gabriel h
eard taps of other rats coming down the tunnel, heading straight for him and Jeremy. His hand covered his mouth, trying not to scream in horror. He tapped Jeremy’s arm lightly, but with a fast rhythm, and Jeremy turned to face him, also feeling a furry object rubbing against his leg as well. Through the darkness, Jeremy also knew what it was. Knowing they couldn’t escape any other way, Jeremy also covered his own mouth, trying not to scream. The big fat rat rubbed on Gabriel, and another rubbed on Jeremy, and they both heard others coming toward them, hearing their reverberations, the echoes, while they stared at the big, fat man, Victor, who still stood soundless.

  “I think you’re lying to me,” Victor said to Michael, looking up at the vent more intimately. He observed the bed was messed up a bit, with the mattress in a crooked, twisted position. Also, he perceived scratch marks on the ground, leading from where the vent hung, all the way to where the bed was now. “Don’t you think it’s a little too late to be rearranging your furniture?” Victor pushed Michael out of his way, and grabbed a hold of the bed’s frame, dragging it over to where the vent hung, and putting it up on its side. He embarked on the mission of climbing it, stepping on the springs, bending them because of his weight, while Jeremy looked directly at him, the vent allowing him to be camouflaged. Jeremy turned to look at Gabriel through the darkness, and then turned to look at Michael and Victor.

  Victor reached a point where his face was up to the vent and gawking at it. Jeremy felt and smelled his rotten-egg breath that filled his mind with torture and consternation. Jeremy saw the image of Victor getting even closer to his face, with Michael seeking to think up something to say. The rat on Jeremy and the one on Gabriel walked past them, as well as the other rats they heard down the tunnel. Five, six, even ten rats passed over their bodies, while they prayed they wouldn’t scream. A small drop of sweat ran down Jeremy’s face, past his lips and plummeted toward the vent, passing through the horizontal lines and exiting into Michael’s room, dropping directly on Victor’s mouth. Victor didn’t notice it, yet as he tasted the salt from Jeremy’s sweat it made him even more curious as to what lay behind the vent cover. Rapidly, Victor began to pull on the vent lid, and that’s when Michael dashed over to the bed and pushed it, allowing Victor to plummet to the ground, pulling off the vent lid with his grip, and collapsing to the floor with the lid on him. The big black rats, seven of them, all fell from the vent, plummeting directly on Victor’s stomach, while the other rats hung from the vent, pulling themselves up by the fear of falling. Jeremy and Gabriel moved down the tunnel a bit and stopped, waiting for words to be said, to know what was happening.

  Victor got up in an angry fashion, shouting, “Boy, I was waiting for you to do something like this, I guess you have to go to the shock room now!” He grabbed Michael’s right hand and slapped him across the face, and Michael’s blood shot through his nostrils and landed on one of the walls of his room. Victor picked up Michael’s body and dragged it out of the room like a rag doll, stretching both Michael’s arms and not caring how much it hurt Michael.

  Jeremy heard Gabriel’s tears through the darkness of the vent, so he turned around, directed his voice at Gabriel and asked, “Where is he taking him?”

  “To the shock room.” Jeremy noticed lights down more on the tunnel’s wall, recognizing that each of them detailed vents from rooms with lights in them. So Jeremy and Gabriel began to travel through the dark tunnel of the vents and tried desperately to get back to their rooms before anyone discovered they were missing. As soon as they both reached Gabriel’s vent, Gabriel looked through it and saw his own room. Still crying from knowing what Victor was about to do to Michael, Gabriel looked back at Jeremy, who saw Gabriel’s tears through the light of his room. Unspoken words were given, both understanding they faced reactions of responsibility. They both knew they couldn’t help Michael, it was too late; only because if they did, Michael would get beaten or shocked even more, and they would also feel the physical pain. That’s when Gabriel turned to face his room’s vent, and before he could climb through it, he heard a shout. Two green eyes gawked at Gabriel through the vent, eyes belonging to Victor’s plump image. Sinister breath was felt by Gabriel, unknown evil was sensed against his flesh, as Victor ripped off the vent cover and saw both Gabriel and Jeremy staring at them with an evil glare, and smiling to them, as if he was going to have fun torturing them. Gabriel screamed, hearing Victor yell out, “Come here, you little bastards!” Gabriel and Jeremy crawled in a rapid motion through the tunnel, not knowing where they were going, not realizing they were trapped.

  Victor jumped down the ladder-like bed that belonged to Gabriel, in order to climb up to the vent in Gabriel’s room. Once he jumped down, there stood Curtis, holding Michael’s limp body, with his nose still gushing blood. “Curtis, take this one to the shock room, I’ll be there in a little bit,” Victor said to Curtis. He slapped Michael across the face again, and then Curtis dragged Michael’s beat-up body out of Gabriel’s room. Victor climbed up the bed again and tore the vent lid off its hinges completely, trying to compress his big body through its hole.

  Curtis dragged Michael’s body back to Gabriel’s room and stared at Victor, watching him attempt to squeeze through the small vent hole. “Listen, there’s no way you’re going to catch them, you’re too big. Since I’m the doctor, I’ll get them. You take Michael to the shock room; I’ll be there in a little bit. Also, turn off all the cameras in the rooms and hallways, and destroy the tapes from today, I don’t want Mary to see any of this,” demanded Curtis. Victor jumped off Gabriel’s bed and Curtis got up into the vent instead, beginning to search for Jeremy and Gabriel, with the only light being sporadic, coming from the rooms in Grewsal.

  Victor dragged Michael out of the room, and Curtis searched, feeling the heat from the vent passageway, as the tunnel turned from hot to hotter, smoldering his naked hands almost every time they touched the hot metal. Curtis realized that someone had turned the heat back on, but instead of going back, he continued his search. He figured out that their ventilation system was like one big, confusing labyrinth, so he was paranoid, not wanting to get lost. Curtis started to crawl faster and faster, listening for Gabriel’s and Jeremy’s breaths as they ricocheted throughout the tunnel. “I know who you are,” yelled Curtis, his voice reaching Jeremy and Gabriel. “I know what your mission is, you little shits!” he added, causing Gabriel to look at Jeremy with fear engraved on his face.

  “What is he talking about?” Gabriel questioned.

  Jeremy looked around the tunnel, in search of a way out or a way in, while he answered Gabriel with, “Listen to me, Gabriel, we have to get out of this place now, we can’t wait till tonight. Do you know where that shock room is from here?”

  “No, I don’t know where anything is!” Gabriel screamed with tears in his eyes, both hearing Curtis’s crawling getting closer and louder. “Is he gonna kill us?” The heat suddenly went on even more, filling the tunnel with swelteringly hot blowing air.

  Through the heat, Jeremy saw Gabriel’s tears even more, and answered, “I don’t know what’s going on, Gabriel, all I know is he didn’t crawl into this tunnel for nothing. Listen, don’t worry, I won’t let him hurt us, it’s gonna be okay, man!” Gabriel’s tears slowed, and Jeremy smiled as he added, “So, let’s get out of here!”

  Gabriel grinned at Jeremy, so he wiped his tears away and laughed out, “Alright, Double-O Nuts!” They commenced crawling through the burrow of the tunnel again, feeling their sweat from the heat dripping from their faces more and more, saturating the tunnel floor, with their flesh on their hands beginning to sizzle. They crawled for ten minutes in search of a way out, panicking through the heat and immense pain that their skin felt. They were desperate, knowing if they didn’t get out soon, they would die from the heat, lying there to die and have no one to come and find them. Not seeing a vent lid for a while now, they wondered what part of Grewsal they were in, not understanding what part wouldn’t have vent lids. Then suddenly they came across a
vent lid that had Michael’s voice within it and they both looked through it, first breathing in the cool air that soothed their lungs for a bit. When they finally paid attention to the image behind the vent, they saw Michael’s sweaty face and nervous body attached to a board, with tears of blood in his eyes. Victor just got finished with attaching six wires to him, one wire on each of his hands, one on each foot and one on both sides of his head.

  “Mary is gonna be back very soon, and she’s going to see what you’ve done to me,” Michael cried out in a desperate attempt to make Victor release him. Victor went up to a box in the middle of the room, that held all the buttons for the electricity to flow into the wires, and laughed at Michael.

  “No she’s not, she’s not coming back till tomorrow. You see, she’s in New York right now getting the other little shit to bring here. But her plane can’t take off because of heavy fog, she called me earlier on and told me!” Victor’s explanation had malevolence to its rhythm, and Michael noticed that Victor’s abuse and actions were much deeper than just hitting Michael and making him bleed. Then Victor turned on the shock machine and watched Michael’s body shudder vigorously, with blood from his nose welling out more. He took his hand off the button and watched Michael’s eyes enlarge with dismay, the fear of Victor pushing the button again.