Silence came to the room with Katie smirking at the both of them. She then put her stack of papers back into her briefcase and put her cigarette out on the floor, speaking in calmness, “Well, Mary is considered a doctor, and I don’t believe her one bit.” Katie then began to walk slowly toward the door. “I can see that this conversation is getting nowhere. If you two want to ruin your reputation as well as your lives, then fine with me. I will tell Curtis and Victor that you still stand by your story, and that the deal is off.”
Mary’s eyes started to form an innocent shield of tears, shattering into a thousand drops that ran down her face of beauty like a river. She watched Katie walk closer to the door, and asked, “Why is it that you believe Curtis and Victor, but you don’t believe me?”
Katie slowly turned around while putting her head of long, black hair down, her eyes falling to the floor. She lifted it up and walked toward the small window, looking out at the rain and the darkness and then down at the people. “Because, Mary, they don’t believe you. I want to believe you, and maybe, just maybe, there’s a piece of me that does believe your story. But my mind says ‘no’ to it, and therefore I don’t believe you,” she replied, taking her eyes off the people in the streets and pivoting them to Mary’s. She slowly walked past Sam and Mary as she came to the door again. “For all its worth, good luck on that talk show, may God be with you,” Katie added in kindness. She then walked out of the room and locked the door behind her.
And there they were left once again, alone and with each other, in silence once more, facing the mirrors, still watching them. Sam’s tears broke again, and she walked back to the window. “You know, this whole time I still don’t know who Katie is. I mean, we’ve been explaining our story to her over and over again, but I don’t know what she does for a living, Mary.”
“Oh, Katie is a doctor like me, she used to work in Grewsal with me. But then she got transferred to the New York institution,” Mary explained, also walking toward the window.
“Where’s that institution located, Mary? The New York one?”
“We’re in it, this is it.”
“I’m scared, Mary, I’m scared to go on that talk show. I mean, I don’t know whether I should deny the story and say it was all a lie or not.”
They both watched and stared closely at the people, praying and hoping that some miracle would blow in the wind and take this horribleness away. Mary’s tears still poured, and Sam saw them. She heard Mary say, “I know, I don’t know either. But whatever we do say on that show, I know personally that it will change our lives.”
“Why are you crying?”
“Because, I think I’m gonna sin.”
“What do you mean ‘sin’?” Sam embraced her with a tight hug, still standing in front of the open window, feeling the wind blowing at their hair of loveliness through the thick black bars.
“The sin of lying,” Mary replied.
Sam let go of the hug and their eyes gawked at the people below; Sam’s voice cried out in lowness, “Me too….”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
One day had passed and Jeremy, having his upper torso locked in a straitjacket, was being dragged down a hallway by two guards, smashing his body up against a large door. The guards were trying to unlock the door while holding Jeremy at the same time, pushing him harder against the door’s hard body so one of the guards could get an even balance with holding him and placing the key in the locked door at the same time. Once unlocked, they hurled Jeremy in the room and slammed the door behind him, locking it again and leaving Jeremy in the room isolated and alone. Yet, he wasn’t alone. Jeremy’s vision scanned the room of mirrored walls, slowly anchoring his eyes down to the floor and then moving them upward toward a single window at the other end. There, below the window, which was open, he saw Mary and Sam, sitting on the floor with their bodies up against the wall, sleeping silently, serenely, as if they hadn’t had a good night’s rest for days.
Before Jeremy could open his mouth, the guards opened the door again, walked in rapidly and took Jeremy out of the straitjacket. They left the room and locked it again, and Jeremy stretched his arms far in the air, cracking his back while stretching side to side. His eyes went to Mary and Sam once more, and instead of speaking out loudly at first, he just stared at them in calmness, silence, examining their breaths and dried up tears, apprehending the truth that he was the cause of their torment. The guilt weighed down his mind and stamina, and his straight glare wound down to a gloomy emotional expression. He rolled his eyes in every direction as each thought of blameworthiness and betrayal toward them showed itself to his mind’s eye. Stopping the rotation, Jeremy gazed at their beauty, and knew they didn’t belong in a place such as this, being treated like prisoners, with a single window that was barred. He was mortified, ashamed of the present, craving so much to change the situation at hand so that Mary and Sam could live without the memory of this ordeal. Yet, he recognized this was happening for a reason, yet the reason wasn’t exposed to him.
Jeremy remembered seeing Sam in the blissful heavenly realm, knowing the significance of their connection to one another, indulgent toward the fact that they used to be lovers, with a strong love of admiration with great intensity; that was why she was present in the room. He knew that God somehow found a way to rebirth Sam’s life again, so she could be with Jeremy during this time of trial and future triumph over Jeremy’s wrath. Yet he was confused as to why Mary was present. His heart occupied the mystifying love he felt for Sam, and the reasoning for that was simple; she was his love in Heaven. But the love he had for Mary, as if she was his mother or sister, was strong enough to prove that he would give his life for her, as well as for Sam. “But why is Mary here?” he asked, being bound in confounded bewilderment as to Mary’s unknown motive for her presence in this mission. “They are both good people, yet Mary has no connection at all to this.”
Suddenly, Sam opened her eyes and saw Jeremy, viewing his body kneeling on the floor and gazing at her as well as Mary, with a strong look of burden to his brown eyes filled with tears. Sam smiled her tired face in his direction and Jeremy shined a grin back to her.
“Jeremy, is that you?”
As soon as Sam’s words came out with a yawn to follow, she got up, with wobbling legs, and darted toward Jeremy, embracing him in a tight hug, feeling his eyes closing in contentment. “They gave us a shot, Jeremy, and it knocked us out. And they gave Mary two of the shots, because she was hysterical,” Sam said. They walked over to Mary and tried waking her up.
Jeremy saw Mary’s chest moving up and down, indicating that she was alive and well and in a very deep sleep. “She’ll be up soon, it’ll wear off.” Then Jeremy looked over at Sam, and gazed at her beauty and glossy, red, swollen eyes, portraying to his guilt that she was crying for days with potential tears in the making. “Are you alright, Sam?”
“Yes, I am. Jeremy? I’m so scared.” Her words, the origin of her tormented voice, her emotion, caused Jeremy to move nearer to her face, feeling her sweat, breath and skin of cleanliness, honoring her beauty with a slight, unnoticeable bow that he gave. To the left of them lay Mary, with Mary’s eyes cracking open steadily, without them knowing. A grin came to her face as she saw Jeremy and Sam, closing in on each other with their eyes staring into each other’s souls. Then their lips met, and Mary’s smile grew larger, breathing in this precious, untold moment, and exhaling benevolently.
Unpredictably, Sam let go of his kiss gradually, saying, “Jeremy. Jeremy, I know what you are. And I know that it’s wrong to be kissing you. Maybe I still don’t accept that you are what Luke said you were. But if there’s any significance, and whatever happens tomorrow, I just want you to know that I love you. Since the instant I saw you, Jeremy, I loved, I loved you. I’m aware that I never showed it, but I’m so afraid of tomorrow that I want you to know it now.”
“Shh,” Jeremy hushed, petting her face tenderly and caressing her lips with the side of his hand. “You don’t have to clarify
anything. But we both know that this can’t ever be,” he added, enduring the understanding deep inside that the love he had for her in the past wasn’t known to her thoughts, only to his. Jeremy knew about their love in Heaven, ecstasy above, except Sam’s eyes were blind to it, and this rooted Jeremy to exceed judgment on them mutually, ordering his soul, his essence of befuddlement, to never kiss her again.
“I know, Jeremy. I just wanted you to know.”
“I, too, adore you, Sam. And I just wanted you to know it, too,” he whispered, embracing her again with an unyielding hug of forgotten virtue and innocence. Jeremy’s eyes grew dark, with desire to have an ordinary life again, and with Sam, to show his craving for her, showing his will for her through his smile.
As Jeremy stared intently at her, Mary moved her head a little, enough to catch their eyes, sucking her movement in their peripheral vision, ordering their senses to look toward her, to see if she really did move. They turned to her, hearing Mary say with a grin, “I’m glad to see some people are having a good time.” Jeremy hugged Mary tightly, along with Sam’s grip, and they both helped her up from the cold ground, holding her there for a moment till she caught her balance. There they stood silently, with the mirrors watching them closely, waiting to see who would talk first.
“Where are the others, Jeremy?” Sam questioned. Jeremy’s eyes turned slowly in the path of the mirror on the right side of the wall. He gawked intimately at the mirror, when abruptly he looked at the reflection more closely, seeing the room’s reflection, and noticing the door’s replica was changing. Jeremy’s eyes rigorously concentrated on the door, when unexpectedly he noticed the change within the reflection. In the mirror, it showed blood seeping, percolating in through the bottom of the door, oozing its frightening color quickly, as if the door itself was holding up a wall of blood on the outside of it. Yet, when Jeremy turned to see the liquid, yanking his eyes away from the mirror and turning to the door’s body, there was nothing coming in; it was only in the mirror, its reflection. Subsequently, Jeremy turned back to the reflection, and saw the walls to the room bleeding red blood, seeing the walls hemorrhaging, with the reflection of the mirrors behind him, cracking and pouring blood as fast as his nerves grew. Yet, when he turned away and inspected the room all around, it was the same, with no blood to be found.
He moved his eyes toward the sinister images again and with shock coming in through his pores, he turned to Mary and Sam and spoke in loudness, “Do you see that?” He pointed to the mirror in front of him, alongside of watching Mary and Sam’s reflection. He waited to see if they gave any facial expressions that proved to him they in fact did and still do see the blood.
He prayed and hoped they were also witnessing this evil. “Yes, Jeremy, I do,” Mary answered, with tears of fright falling down her face.
“I do, too, Jeremy. In the mirror I see blood,” Sam said. Jeremy turned to the room’s reflection.
Side by side they stood, watching the blood, feeling their hearts beating faster with their fear growing rapidly across their eyes, piercing their souls, giving off a feeling of thorns poking them in their innocence. Sam gazed at the blood, crying out without a sound, gulping down her panic, praying that the blood in the mirror would vanish at once. Faster and faster their hearts pumped, and slower and slower their eyes moved, only yearning to stare at the blood, as if their eyes were no longer theirs, but someone else’s, wanting them to stare at this sinister sight, demanding them to witness it without any care of their fears toward it. Mary and Sam’s trepidation and nerves were felt by them strongly, crawling up their spines, turning five strands of their beautiful hair to the color of white. Staring still, seeing the blood in the mirror filling up the room’s reflection, a single tear fell out of their right eyes, while a tear of red fell from Jeremy’s left.
The blood filled the room in the mirror, swirling around each of their reflections, filling up the room more and more, going past the reflection of the opened window, pouring out of it, but filling the room so much that it rose past the window with great force. It sashayed and hugged around their bodies, reaching their torsos, when Sam screamed and turned away from the mirror with great vigor. The reflection showed the blood covering Mary and Sam, drowning their images with Jeremy’s head to be the only replica left. He turned to Mary and Sam, and saw that Mary was still looking at the mirror in awe, while Sam stayed put with her eyes away from the menacing images, crying out in torment, wanting the reflections to go away. Sam turned back and saw that the mirror had more blood within it, filling up the room nearly to the top, and that Jeremy’s head was the only thing left that didn’t go under the blood yet. She turned to the window’s replica and observed that it flowed past the open window, being so great with force and so thick with evil and speed that it poured out the window in drops, and still grew in its size in the room.
Suddenly the blood filled up the room’s reflection so much that it covered Jeremy’s reflection entirely, gulping up his head, as if the blood was a lake, and all of them were drowning within it, but weren’t. “Oh my God!” Mary yelled, turning to Jeremy and seeing him gasping for air. In the room of emptiness, the reflection showed the blood covering them all, but Jeremy was the only one who was feeling like he was drowning, as if he was actually in the mirror, or the mirror’s reflection was in him. Screaming and torture ran through Jeremy’s mind, and Sam and Mary caught the sight of actual blood forming on Jeremy’s face in veracity, reality, with the mirror of blood being filled with nothing but blood in its reflection.
It was coming out of his pores, like an explosion was occurring in his skin. Suddenly, through the red of the mirror, Jeremy collapsed to the ground, and a seizure took over his body. All Mary and Sam could do was kneel beside him and hold him tight, while Mary turned to face the mirror, yelling, “Help him now. We need help!” Mary knew there were doctors on the other side of the mirror, panicking and yet buoyant in her hope that they were still there.
As Jeremy panicked and Mary and Sam held him tight, the doctors on the other side of the mirrors were standing calmly in a darkened room, and to their eyes, all they saw was Mary, Sam and Jeremy, sleeping up against the wall. It was as if the reality was obstructed by an image of blamelessness and that image was the only one being exposed to the doctors.
Back in the room, Mary got up from the ground, picked up a chair, and began beating it against the mirror of blood, hitting it harder as she cried, beating it so fiercely that the wooden chair gave her slivers that caused her hands to bleed. Finally, she broke the mirror in two and blood on top of blood poured out of the mirror, with the reflection of blood in the room, going down quickly, entering the room’s reality and covering them all. It reached the opened window and poured out of it as Jeremy suddenly snapped out of his seizure.
Immediately, they all closed their eyes at once and when they opened them, they found themselves awakening from a sleep, waking up in the room in the same positions they were in when Jeremy first was thrown into the room’s interior. They were confused, not believing or accepting it was a dream at all. Mary and Sam looked at Jeremy who was lying in the middle of the room, and ran over to him, seeing his eyes wide open in shock, and seeing blood on the tips of their fingers and on their shoes as well as his. Mary whimpered, “Jeremy, was it a dream?”
“No, Mary, it was real, and what I saw was real.”
“What we saw, you mean?”
“No, what I saw.”
Sam held Jeremy tight and asked, “What did you see?”
Jeremy’s eyes twisted to Mary, and then back to Sam’s. “Mary, Sam, I received my first memory… of Hell.”
The women glared at each other in bewilderment and then back at Jeremy’s truthful eyes. “Tell us, Jeremy,” Mary begged, with the both of them helping him to his feet. They walked over to the open window and waited for Jeremy to speak, wanting to give him time to piece his experience together.
Next, he looked out the window, still quivering inside and out, and vom
ited on the floor below, coughing and trying to catch his breath while the women still waited for him to speak. “Through the blood, I entered back into the evil world, but it was the part I entered; it was a sinner’s purgatory. It was like I was there. I knew what it was, and I knew what part of Hell I was in,” he stated, stopping for a moment to catch his breath. “It was a new arrival – a woman – and her purgatory was a black forest, to say the least. At first I, I couldn’t see her, but a little girl was chasing her with an axe, and crying out for her, saying, ‘Mommy, I’m here, come and find me.’ The woman ran after this little girl, and when she found her, she would run away, seeing that the little girl was trying to kill her. This was her purgatory, her sentence, to find her daughter and to run away from her forever, being in fear, as well as being in love to find her. You see, when the woman was alive, her little girl was dying of cancer, so she killed her, not wanting her to feel any pain anymore. Then she killed herself. So she went to Hell. Throughout the days, the nights, the woman would talk to me, in her forest I created with her help of a sinful nature. She became the first slave of mine to ever get my attention. She would talk about her little girl, about love, and I would try to shut her up, try to ignore her, but her love for the little girl was too strong to ignore.”
“It reminded me, as I remember from that single memory, of my love for God. So, after she got my attention, I let go of her, opening up my gates, and leaving her there, demanding of God’s angels that she never step foot in my realm again. Heaven then took her, but brought her back to earth to start over again. She was the first one to ever show me what love felt like, after my eyes turned sinister. Heaven’s like a paradise with a clean carpet; they want you to be cleaned when you enter and if you’re not, they send you back, or send you to me.”
The Wrath of Jeremy Page 28