The Wrath of Jeremy

by Stephen Andrew Salamon

  “You’re not Jastian, you’re the Devil!” Jeremy screamed.

  The beast began laughing at him and showed its long, narrow teeth that dripped pus and slime from it. Jastian shouted in laughter, “No, Jeremy, you are seeing your own reflection!”

  Jeremy cried and saw the same tears that he shed falling from the beast’s eyes, and the same reaction of terror he made was made from the beast.

  “My son made a promise to the populace of this earth that he would never dare to destroy this land again. But through his mystification of the evil that you made on this earth, my son wanted to destroy it. And then he sent for you, Michael, David and Gabriel to break the solemn promise, the vow he made. Through it, you all agreed to his covenant, and were reborn to a mortal form, only to eradicate the earth on the eighteenth year of your lives!” Jastian’s anger was great, so mammoth that the skin on Jeremy’s arm began to rip open more as the serpent’s teeth squeezed harder from Jastian’s rage. “I love my son, my slave, your God, and he holds great admiration for me. But I will not allow him to have you deliver his wrath. The fury will come one day, but not now. I am the creator of the angels you see in Heaven, as God, my son, is the creator of humans. I created you angels through my own image, as God has created humans through his, and everything you see. What you see before you is your own image, and I will not allow this image to deliver the wrath!”

  Sam released herself from the statue’s grip and ran up to David, holding him while she cried for Jeremy’s safety. “Whoever you are, whatever you are, and whatever truth you may hold, there is only one God to me, and that is not you. Besides, how are you going to stop us then?” Jeremy screamed; he felt the wind blowing harder in the church of trepidation.

  Jastian’s right serpent hand pointed its slithering body to the face of a clock that hung on the cathedral’s walls, answering, “Such a simple question, and such a very simple reply for it!” Jeremy looked at the clock, focusing on the hands of it circling in a fast motion. “It is now December nineteenth, and every breath you take means another will pass. When the clock strikes twelve, and it strikes it on the twenty-fifth, I will deliver my own wrath!” Sam and David walked gradually down the aisle of the church and headed toward the door. They tried not to move too quickly and take a chance of Jastian or his serpents seeing them.

  “What wrath is that?” retorted Jeremy.

  “The wrath of you, Jeremy. I will send you back to where you fell and the conveyance of Michael, David and Gabriel to where they came from, Heaven. But, Jeremy, or should I say, ‘Lucifer’, you won’t be going to Ecstasy; you’ll be going to your own sinister bliss,” Jastian said.

  David and Sam reached the doors that were still moving from the mob outside, and tried to open them without making a sound, but the wind within the church caused the entrance to stay sealed, lifting its momentum to the speed of a twister. Suddenly the doors formed into fire and burned Sam and David’s hands. But through their screams and pain, they kept on trying to open the doors, panicking, craving to have them open, crying from their scorching hands, begging to God for help in their struggle.

  Finally, the doors released and unfastened, and in poured the protestors, bringing their rhythm of antagonism-like rage to a standstill at Sam and David’s bodies, pausing for a moment to see what they shouldn’t see. There, past Sam and David, down the aisle of moving statues, and burnt-out white candles that lay cracked on the red carpet, they looked inside of the church at Jastian dropping Jeremy to the altar.

  “How dare you expose me to other sinners!” Jastian yelled out.

  Without a moment for the protestors to blink or contemplate what was happening, they all commenced to burn up, combusting inside to the out, with screams in their excruciating throbbing, causing Sam to scream. David grabbed her hand and guided her down the aisle again, away from the smoldering flesh that baked, suppurating in the echoes of the flames. They dodged the statues and came up to Jeremy. Pain was still familiar to their emotions, and they helped him up, not grasping that the clock’s hands stopped spiraling. Jastian, still being in shock from the mob seeing his presence, didn’t notice that David, Sam and Jeremy ran to the back room of the church. All he cared about was pointing his eyes toward the burning protestors, making sure that their eyes burnt as well as their memories of him. Once his eyes noticed the cathedral ruptured into flames, Jastian shot a serpent from his body, as thick as a wise oak tree with infinite height, and it followed Jeremy, Michael and Sam, hunting them, making a growling noise that predominated its echo through the inferno of sin. “You shall not deliver it, you shall not ever deliver it!” shrieked Jastian.

  Through the back of the church they ran, first through a hallway with doors that stretched down its long length, not turning their heads once, only keeping up their stride. Suddenly David came across a door that read “STAIRWELL”.

  “Wait a second, where does this lead to?” Sam panicked while David opened the door.

  “To the basement, and then to the sewer system,” David replied. Then his eyes went past Sam and saw the long serpent approaching them, coiling its body and stretching its slimy length through the hallway.

  “But the sewers are flooded from the rain,” said Jeremy in a frantic fashion. With no time to think, David and Sam entered first, and then Jeremy, but his dirty shoelace got caught on a rusted nail that was just inside the door. Panicking, Jeremy saw the serpent coming nearer to his eyes, breathing in the serpent’s rage, and feeling the serpent’s body heat. He knew he was about to be killed, harmed, tormented or mangled, so Jeremy rushed and tried his hardest to pull his shoelace off of the nail. Inhaling and exhaling, choking from his breaths coming so fast, Jeremy saw that the serpent was right up to his nostrils, or almost. Coming with great force and speed, the serpent caught sight of Jeremy’s eyes, drained his hope and flushed fear into Jeremy’s mind.

  This allowed Jeremy to try harder, so he ripped his shoelace with his own hand, and pulled his body inside the door, closing the door right before the serpent could take a bite out of him. Instead, the serpent bit into the closed door, and Jeremy saw its long teeth, that stuck out six inches through the back of the door, moving about, trying to get a taste of Jeremy’s frightened flesh.

  “No they’re not, trust me, I know this system, they’re not flooded,” David said. They raced down the stairwell, without even a thought to look back, when suddenly the stairs began to turn to salt. Its mysterious grains showed to their horrified eyes, falling into it like dried sand of fine sharpness, as if it was water or quicksand. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” David bellowed out. Sam grabbed onto the banister and pulled herself out of it, struggling to balance herself on the old wood that the banister was made of, stepping carefully without looking down. She walked on the banister, balancing herself to the best of her ability and seeing that the boys were going down fast into the salt. She walked carefully, followed it downward and jumped off it, landing on the cold, wet basement ground that reeked of old sewage baking in a summer’s scorching sun.

  “Come on,” Sam screamed out. She held her right hand out to David, praying that he would grab it before he went under completely. He clutched onto it, pulled his legs free from the salt and reached the basement floor, coughing up salt and trying to catch his breath. Sam then turned around and reached her hand out toward Jeremy’s already wounded body, and prayed at the same time, saying, “Just grab it, Jeremy, please!” Jeremy reached out for her hand, beginning to sink more into the salt that now came up to his stomach; her grip was an inch short.

  “I can’t reach it, just try and call for the miracle again, no one’s looking. It has to work,” yelled Jeremy. Rapidly, in the salt that surrounded and choked at his body, small serpents began to appear, slithering around the salt, biting at Jeremy’s skin. “Hurry,” Jeremy yelled in pain, he felt the small serpents biting into his chest like a chisel.

  Abruptly, eight cameras, detailing video camcorders, appeared in the stairwell and directed their lenses
at their struggle. Sam yelled, “Oh come on, that’s cheating, you bastards.” The cameras turned into eyeballs of blood, staring at them as they hung from the ceiling and stood from the floor. Sam’s terror grew, yet she was so tired and frustrated from seeing this entire trauma that she pushed David aside and walked into the salt of snakes herself, alone, without a hand to pull her out if she started to sink. She came up to Jeremy while holding onto the banister, and pulled his body from the salt-like mixture, causing the serpents to break free from Jeremy’s chest and flesh, as he got onto the banister and jumped down the stairwell along with Sam. They reached the basement floor and Sam rushed, “Alright, where’s this entrance to the sewer?”

  They ran toward a door, thinking it was another entrance that made their escape closer, when they noticed David wasn’t following them. They saw David pointing to the floor at a sewer cap, and heard him say, “There it is, our escape.”

  “Hell no, I am not going in there. It is dark down there, and God knows what will try to kill us,” Sam said. Yet, Jeremy and David knelt down and lifted up the sewer cap, ignoring Sam for a moment. She was losing her mind, tired of the things that lurked in the night, attached to evil and goblin-like monsters that stress couldn’t even handle. All she wanted, with the breath she took in, was an easy way out of this trauma, another way besides a darkened sewer.

  Jeremy went up to Sam, with them all hearing the enormous serpent, up the staircase behind the door, thrashing on it, trying to break it down. Jeremy held her tight and said, “Sam, either we go in there, or we stay here, and wait till that thing breaks down the door.”

  Jeremy knelt down beside David and helped him lift the sewer cap up at the same time as they felt and saw more camera-like eyeballs appearing in the room, giving out a heavy breathing noise that smelled like the dead. Suddenly the door to the stairwell that was already old and wooden broke open, and in came the Jastian’s serpent-like arm. It slithered fast, growing in its rhythm, hunting for them as it raced down the stairway. “Come on, guys, pull,” David said in a frantic manner as he saw the serpent coming toward them. They finally got it off all the way and David jumped first into it. Sam jumped next and as Jeremy was ready to jump, one of the beastly cameras wrapped its cord around his leg, ensnaring him, forcing him to struggle to get loose. As Jeremy pulled, he saw the serpent come closer to him and it stuck out its fangs of pus and blood to scare his eyes that teared up at its presence. Jeremy tried and fought to free his leg, facing the evil in front of him, breathing heavily through the tears of fright that ran down his throat and choked at his air passage. Death. Fury. The thoughts of dying and the rage of it all struck at Jeremy’s mind, trembling his hands and soul, with tears shooting out from his eyes. Through his emotions time stood still as he saw the serpent near him. The serpent took a bite for him, but it didn’t touch his skin. Instead, before the serpent’s teeth of razors could poke through his flesh, Jeremy saw a flash of white light and shut his eyes to it.

  When his eyes opened, instead of seeing the serpent a second away from killing him, Jeremy found himself next to Luke’s cave, back in the Holy Land. He saw Luke helping him up and smiling at him. “Luke?” Jeremy felt his face and saw the same sweat of terror he had when he was in the basement of hellish textures, and saw the same shield of tears he had before the serpent was ready to bite him. This meant to him that his body was the same, but the place was different.

  “Yes, it’s me, Jeremy, or at least, a memory of the conversation we had. I took you away for a moment to show you this memory, a small piece that I removed, and want to give it back to you now.” Jeremy saw Mary, Sam, Michael, David and Gabriel in the distance sleeping, and his eyes widened toward Mary’s presence. Luke saw his happiness, and added, “Jeremy, remember, this is your memory, this is the past, you are the present.” Luke noticed the way Jeremy was looking at Mary with tears building up in his eyes and exploding to oblivion. “She loved you, too, Jeremy, like a son she never had. Don’t worry, she passed the test, and is now at the gates of Heaven, waiting to be judged. I hear that she’s definitely getting in, along with her child.” Then Jeremy looked at him, smiled and closed his eyes for a moment to feel the euphoria of the good news. “Jeremy, you haven’t much time, Jastian’s powers are great, and his serpent will crush my powers of saving you for the moment, in no time at all.”

  “Luke, what memory did you take from me?”

  “The memory of who Jastian really is, and why he was created, and who created him.”

  “Please, Luke, please hurry, tell me everything,” said Jeremy, needing to hear Luke’s next words.

  “My Jeremy, the one soul I vowed to protect, and when the time came, to tell you the real truth about your enemy—Jastian.

  “Who created him, Luke?”

  “You created Jastian, Jeremy. It was you and all you. When you, Lucifer, were younger, you had already developed the arrogance with your supremacy, your powers of almost infinite wisdom, wanting to see if you can be like God and create a human being. Yes, Jeremy, a human being you yearned to create, just to prove to God, and a few others, that you could be a God, were a God. Your intentions, at first, were innocent; you just urged to make a toy, even though it was against God’s words. So, behind God’s back, you created him, this Jastian you fear, making him just like you. But because only a God could create another being, something went wrong, Jeremy. The powers that God gave you were absorbed in Jastian, powers that belonged to God, powers that you didn’t have. Everything went into him. A simple twist of life, unexplainable to a God and its maker, was in fact created. A monster. As time went on, Jastian became evil, a spirit of evil and good in the flesh, absorbing both of these powers by its own merciful wantings and beastly dreams. When the great fight came to be and you were cast to Hell, Jastian stayed, controlling the Universe with his powers, imprisoning God because you never destroyed him. When you were cast down, you lost control of your creation. Jastian is your creation gone wrong, and when God wanted to create the earth, he had to and was forced to ask permission from Jastian, because his powers evolved beyond God’s. He is worse than you will ever be, Jeremy. Truest to evil, non-intimidated by good. He is so narcissistic, that he actually calls God his son. And by God destroying the earth with your help, it will eradicate Jastian forever, destroying him as fast as he was created, for he is not a God, but a mocked God, being in power by the earth existing. Mother earth’s worst enemy. Jastian must be destroyed with your help.”

  “….Jastian is the Universe, Lucifer; he is the pure power that is only in me, and it shall never escape….”

  A memory of God’s words forced itself into Jeremy’s memory, crashing in through Jeremy’s sobbing. “But, Luke, God said that Jastian was the Universe, and that he is the pure power that’s only in God and never will escape,” Jeremy yelled, angered by the news.

  “That’s because God gave you a small portion of his powers, and Jastian absorbed them from you, and evil that God doesn’t have. Thus making him the Universe, a Universe that shouldn’t be the way it is. It is your fault, Jeremy. But he is not a God, though he may be perceived as one. God can’t destroy him, Jeremy, because he didn’t create him; you did. Only its creator can take its life away,” Luke explained with Jeremy’s eyes showing tears of blood, bleeding from his soul of sinister truth.

  “Now, go and carry out the wrath as you should, and Jastian will cease to exist. But beware, Jeremy, the earth is Jastian’s life, and he will fight you hard to keep it. This whole time, you as Lucifer thought that God was your enemy, when every breath you gave, all along, Jastian was your foe and God was your soul! And remember this, Jeremy, take good care of Sam.”

  Unexpectedly, Jeremy saw another blaze of light, and closed his eyes tightly. When he opened them, he found himself back in the Church’s basement, with fangs of blood right up to his eyes. His eyes widened, his heart pounded fiercely, and shock took over his body. Jeremy looked at the Jastian’s serpent’s ugly eyes, with the memory of who he really wa
s, and gave an angry stare at them. Before the fangs could bite him, touching his flesh, Sam and David yanked at his legs, losing the grip of the camera cord. They pulled him down into the sewer and Jeremy’s body landed in a puddle of dismal sewage. He looked up at the sewer hole and his eyes caught the evil of Jastian, the serpent, and gawked at his, pausing for a moment. The way Jastian’s serpent-like eyes were staring at Jeremy, it was as if he knew Jeremy found out the truth of his birth.

  Suddenly, through the darkness of the sewer, Jeremy heard the serpent speak: “Hello, creator.” Embarking on their run down the waste-scented tunnel, the scum mixed within the water got thicker the more distance they covered, making it harder for them to progress, as well as the water getting higher, reaching to their knees and stinging their bloody cuts that decorated their lower legs. As they dashed, seeing rats of all bulk and sizes floating on small pieces of wood, as if that was the scavengers’ means of transportation, Jeremy grabbed onto Sam’s hand without looking back, and helped pull her through the water, seeing that the scum was now up to their thighs. Not looking back, they saw the monster-like video cameras forming from the tunnel’s walls, holding large, bloody eyeballs to their shape, instead of a lens, with the quick evolutionary change causing Sam to scream at their large pupils of black. Fright. Pain. Sounds of laughter were heard within the horrible aroma of the tunnel’s crooked body and Jeremy’s eyes closed from fright, and Sam and David’s hands covered their ears: the sounds were too daunting for them.