Purgatorium

by J. H. Carnathan

  He walks away, like if he had already explained this to me a million times before. I follow him, all the while wondering to myself how a person could even think of killing another human being. Right then and there I make a vow to myself.

  I am not a killer, nor will I ever be. My sin will not be the end of me.

  We get on the elevator that heads up to my office. I see Gabriel press the number “6.” I can’t believe it, six again. Gabriel stops me once again by continuing on.

  “You see, kid, what the Handbook doesn’t teach you is that there is a demon inside of everyone. You are the driver, but he is in the backseat. Some people can fight their demons all their lives and others just let the demons feed on them. It’s not unnatural. Only when you get to a place like this, can you start to see this reality for yourself. But really the same purpose for this place can be found in the real world as well. The people that fight their demons all their lives will be rewarded in heaven. The ones that don’t, burn in hell with the devil holding the pitchfork to their tarted, mutilated bodies. At least in this place you can fight your demon physically,” he says snickering to himself.

  I ponder what Gabriel is saying. Strange that in all of this talk about demons, angels, and even the devil, there is no mention of God.

  “Where’s God in all of this, you ask?” says Gabriel. “He made the board game, but that doesn’t mean he has to play it. Same rules that apply in the real world, apply here as well. Everyone has their own meaning of life speech. Mine is short. ‘Do not waste a single second.’”

  I look up and see the doors slide open. Lost in thought and pondering all that Gabriel has said, I step inside my office. Hearing the ticking sound from the grandfather clock makes me feel uneasy.

  Tick tock, tick tock, goes the clock, I think, remembering how it felt. The hours spent in this room were dreadfully long.

  30 Minutes

  “Thirty minutes!” Gabriel yells in my ear. Annoyed, I push him away and look at him fumbling around with the pictures again. He chooses a photo from the stack and walks to the other side of the room. I see Gabriel staring across the office to the large window. I look at the window myself but see nothing. He puts the picture on the window and grabs the duct tape on my desk to stick up on it.

  Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Gabriel makes his way to my desk and stares at the grandfather clock resting in front of it.

  “Time can play tricks on you,” he says, taking the grandfather clock and tossing it up against the wall. “That was getting a bit annoying to my ears.”

  I take out the pictures once again and look through each of them until I find the one that Michael had taken in front of my office window. Still I don’t see anything. Gabriel snatches the photo from my hand and takes a piece of tape from my desk to stick it on the window.

  “Did you ever sit here and wonder why five minutes in this office feels more like five hours? That’s time playing tricks on you. For example, an eager student wanting to leave and go home, watches the clock, waiting for it to strike 3:30 for then the school will be let out. But the clock shows 3:25. The student continues to watch as every second to every passing minute goes slowly by. This makes that five minute gap seem more unbearable the longer he keeps his mind focused on it. So now let’s bring it back to here. All that this place really did was take that example and apply it to this time zone. Your mind may let you think that you are having a 24 hour day, but all the while in this reality it is only 60 minutes. Time is a trickster of sorts.”

  I walk over closer to the window, looking past the picture taped to it, and out across the park at the sun which is covered by the wintery clouds.

  What he is really saying to me is that with time comes pain, not patience. I recall sitting behind that desk, trying to write a book from dawn to dusk. All that time I was trashing marked paperwork, bored out of my mind. It seemed like it took forever. Now he is telling me that it was only five minutes, cruel punishment is all this is. All this time, I’ve been thinking I had it all and suddenly realize I really had nothing to begin with. This place is designed behind one cruel joke and that joke appears to be me.

  “You think going inside that door makes you ready? Makes you strong enough? I love this new can-do attitude you’re trying out but you only got seven more days left. What you don’t know is that all you have done has just messed up everything we planned, designed, intended, calculated, prearranged, and prepared for. We have perfected it each time by getting you that much closer to waking up. We are now going on instinct.”

  I try to wonder how many times they have done all of this to where they had to go and calculate a set list of things to teach me on each day.

  “So, next time you decide to grow some balls, don’t. Because balls don’t exist here. Ask Uriel about that. Very upset, he is.”

  Gabriel walks over to the wall on the left, where the record player is, and starts leafing through the stack of records. He picks one out, takes the vinyl from the sleeve, and places it on the platter. I look across at the stack of albums, but once again, don’t remember ever listening to any of them before.

  Gabriel takes out his gum from behind his neck and puts it in his mouth. I watch with disgusted fascination—I never thought angels would be so…human.

  “Nap time, class,” Gabriel says, placing the stylus on the record. Though annoyed at Gabriel’s patronization, I suddenly feel very tired, sleepy, and even a little dizzy. I lie down on the couch.

  “Let’s try and get you seeing clearly again.” The sound of static comes over the speakers. “Today, class, we will learn about music therapy. It’s based on the principle that to maintain our coherence as beings in the world we must creatively improvise our identity. Creative activity, music for example, allows us to retain coherent organization, which links our soul, body, and mind. Just like what you have been hearing on the subway, for example.”

  The first notes of “Running on Empty” by Jackson Browne begin to play.

  “Sebastian Coe once said, ‘The mile is just the right length: beginning, middle, end, a story unfolding. Find that mile, your mile—the mile that leads to your story.’ Music is the guide to your soul, just like the subway train. Feel it out. Let it in. Remember what made this song mean something to you. What life change did you come across when you first heard it?”

  Half-delirious with sleepiness, I close my eyes and imagine running towards a light.

  “That’s it,” says Gabriel.

  I feel a stupor come over me, half-awake, half-asleep, as if in a trance induced by the music. I feel me and the music are indistinguishable, as if I were part of it. Everything goes hazy, except for the sight of steam rising up from my mouth.

  I look at myself in a window’s reflection. I see that I am six years old. I look behind me to see what appears to be an old elementary school. The same music from my office is playing in my headphones. A thick sheet of snow falls all around me. I blink, my eyelids fluttering to clear the flakes accumulating on my lashes.

  Drawing in a deep breath, I search the surrounding scene. The brick wall of my elementary school looms high behind me. There is a steel bike rack in front of me. The flag halyard whips against the pole in the stiffening breeze.

  I try to move and reflect, but I feel control of my body and mind slipping away. My six-year-old mind floods in, taking over, obliterating all memory of my soulful prison and anything that has happened beyond that. The six-year-old me blinks, trying to remember what I was just thinking.

  I turn to my right, eyes focused down the long driveway. I catch a glimpse of a school bus as it vanishes, turning a corner onto the main road. My stomach tightens with panic. I quickly look to my left, seeing the bus stop sign, half expecting to see the other children waiting.

  But no one is there, none of the familiar faces of other kids looking out from parka hoods. I am alone. I listen. Even sound of the bus engine has faded
. Realizing I have no other choice, I split out in a dead heat toward the main street in the direction the bus has just turned, hopeful I can catch it at one of the next stops down the hill.

  My legs churn through the ankle-deep sidewalk snow. I can feel the cold wet of the snow getting inside my fleece-lined boots as I turn the corner onto the main street. The full force of the wind blasts my uncovered face and I feel it push back against me, slowing my run. My cheeks sting, my nose is soon numb. I feel my throat getting tense and narrow as the harsh, dry air forces me to breathe through my mouth.

  I run straight ahead, arriving out of breath just a minute later at the crest of the hill. I can see the bus stopped at the T-junction down the hill ahead of me. The bus’ red lights flash, piercing the gathering gloom. Children step one by one out of the bus onto the icy shoulder of the road, waving to the driver as they disperse into the surrounding neighborhood.

  The bus is only sixty yards away, maybe seventy. I start sprinting, thinking I can catch it if I go as hard as I can. Just moments later, my right foot slips out from under me. My knee slams down onto the ice-covered sidewalk. I look up. The bus’ red lights have turned off. It starts slowly accelerating away.

  “Stop!” I shout into the frozen air. “Hold on!”

  As the sound of the bus shifting its gears fades, I am engulfed by a frozen stillness. I see the twilight sky has turned an eerie periwinkle color above the eastern horizon. Night is quickly overtaking the day. I am still catching my breath as I look up and see the faint yellow of the bus fading into the dark.

  Feeling crushed, I force myself to try to get up. Darkness has already fallen as I run toward my house. My feet are sopping wet, numb, and almost frozen through my wool socks.

  I slip again, so close to home. I try to catch myself on my hands, but they give out from under my falling weight, and I fall flat onto my chest and face. I feel the burning pain from the scraped palm of my right hand. Rolling onto my side, I see that my jeans are torn at the right knee. There is a dark red trickle of blood running down my shin from my skinned kneecap. I hear a car roaring down the hill toward me. As it passes, it sprays up a sheet of dirty slush all over me.

  The front porch light is on over the door. My palm and knee are sore, so sore that over the last few blocks, I have tried to avoid bending it by swinging it stiffly from behind to in front of me. I open the rickety mailbox and reach in, but it is empty. My mom has probably already come out to get it. I look and see her footprints in the newly fallen snow.

  I walk to the front storm door and open it quietly. I am about to step inside when I hear a scraping sound up and to my left. I take a step back and lean over to my left, toward the garage. I see over the edge of the roof to where my father is standing catlike on the downward slope of the roof. Though an older, gray-bearded man, he is lithe and possesses a fearless kind of balance no matter what the slope, height, or weather. I remember the awe I have often felt seeing my father carefully setting up his telescope on the rooftop for a better view of the unfolding night sky.

  The wind has swept the clouds away and a clear, cold black has replaced the overcast wash that hung over me most of the walk home. It is as though the heavens are opening up for my father, I think. I quietly step a few feet closer. My father, posture rigid, stops moving, as if hearing something. Without interrupting his gaze through his instrument, my father scowls.

  “You’re late. Dinner’s in the fridge.”

  I pull my pant leg up, exposing the swollen, bloody knee. I wait, anxiously, hesitantly, for my father to turn and see it.

  “Get inside, son!” my father says coldly. “You’re going to catch cold and neither of us can afford to stay home.”

  I turn and start limping toward the door, my pant leg still hiked up my leg, tears forming in my eyes.

  “You going to stand there and cry about it?” my father hisses. “Or, are you going to do something about it? Now, get inside!”

  The tears welling in my eyes overflow, streaking down my cheeks. My father shakes his head and turns back to the telescope, looking through its finder-scope, adjusting the angle. As I near the door, everything begins to blur. I hear the sound of static in the distance. Then a loud beeping sound. “Thirty-five minutes!” Gabriel yells out. A light flashes over me and I am blinded by it.

  35 Minutes

  I open my eyes. I am back in my office. I move my head over, looking out the window to see the day has turned into night. The record is skipping. I see thick steam coming off my breath. Gabriel is gone. Suddenly remembering what cold means, I sit up abruptly, panic gripping me.

  I look at the time. I am running late! There is another sound, a shrieking, slowly getting louder. Reapers! I think, pushing myself up to a standing position. I grab my coat and while I put it on, look at the window once again. I see nothing but my own transparent reflection. I quickly spin towards the door, pull it open, and race down the hallway to the elevator.

  Exiting through the front doors, I turn right and run down the street toward the lighthouse restaurant. I sprint across the street without looking for cars. I pull the door open and run up the stairs. As I reach the last stair I can see Gabriel sitting at my table, the waitress by his side.

  This was not what I was expecting.

  “He is safe…again!” Gabriel shouts, smiling widely. I think, Yeah, barely.

  The waitress puts another plate of apple pie in front of Gabriel who, surprisingly, looks miserable as he stares at all the dirty plates stacked up on the table in front of him. I walk over to the table.

  “How’s the cube going?” he says to me. At this moment, I remember the Rubik’s cube in my coat pocket. I take it out and look at it. The yellow and blue sides are finished. I start rearranging it again as I begin to think about my dad.

  What had my father wanted from me anyway? What was I supposed to have done? I wish I had more answers than questions, but that never seemed to be the case.

  Gabriel turns to the waitress. “Yuck! Are you serious with this pie right now? Let me tell you what I think the ingredients are. It has this crispy, hair flaky, decayed-looking crust to it and everything else must be dog crap! What do you call that? I dare you to say ‘apple’! I dare you!”

  She responds, “Apple?”

  “Well now I can start to understand why you became a lost soul. The picture is now clear, darlin’. Because this pie is some kind of off-brand, over-the-border dog crap! That’s what this pie is. I mean it needs a lot of whipped cream to delude the horrific taste in my mouth. Bring me a big tub full of whipped cream.”

  The waitress stands there in a panic.

  “I’m not joking! Are these joking eyes to you? Do the words that I am saying to you sound anything like a joke? I need something to drown out the flavor of your homemade dookie pie. Thank you, Succubus!”

  He kicks the waitress down and throws his pie in her face. Gabriel laughs wildly at her as I stand up to go help her.

  “Do not help that lost soul! She did this to herself! Now sit down,” Gabriel says with an angry passion. I sit as the waitress stands back up, wiping the leftover pie from her face.

  “Are you just going to stand there? I can’t believe this! I have been talking about your nasty tasting pie for what feels like forever and a day. You’re really still standing here? Really? Go get me some whipped cream now! And while you’re back there, get me another piece of that wonderfully bad tasting pie and another for my friend here. He has had a bad day and nothing would make him happier than trying to choke down your dookie brown pie. Go! Thank you!”

  The waitress, looking shocked and scared, turns and walks back toward the kitchen. I look at Gabriel, who is wet with sweat. Even if she is a lost soul she doesn’t deserve this. Gabriel turns to face me.

  “So you see anything looking back at you yet?”

  I look back down at the Rubik’s cube. I see Gabriel giving me a d
isappointed look. The waitress comes back in through the kitchen door, carrying a plate covered with a silver cloche in her right hand and a silver bowl of whipped cream in her left. She puts the covered plate down in front of us. I gaze at the silver and find my reflection in it.

  I take out the pictures again and place the one that is of the silver cloche on the table.

  Gabriel looks at the picture and I can tell that he can see what’s in its reflection. He looks over at me to see whether I see it, and then sighs deeply when I do not.

  Though I do not understand why, I feel ashamed. I keep my head up to not show him my true thoughts on the matter.

  Turning to Gabriel, the waitress asks, “How much do you want, sir?”

  “Till I can’t taste this pie, please.” She puts five heaping spoonfuls on top of his pie. Gabriel plunges his fork into the pie, lifts up a piece covered in two inches of white cream, bites into it, and while chewing it, smiles gluttonously.

  “More, please,” he says, without looking up from the pie. She looks down at the plate, then back up at Gabriel. She adds another heaping spoonful.

  I begin to feel sick watching the heaping amounts of whipped cream land on top of Gabriel’s pie. I relate to the pie. I, too, have felt like I have been buried under sugary nothingness and left to suffocate.

  “More, please.” She adds two more spoonfuls. The pie can no longer be seen.

  I can’t escape my questions, my burning need to know what I did and why, and how to get back home. The pressure of my questions is overwhelming. It makes me wish I had a plate, a table even, that I could spill out onto. It would be easier than staying contained with the pressure building.

  “More!”

  She takes the bowl, tips it on its side, and scoops out the rest of the cream onto his plate. Some of the cream spills onto Gabriel’s lap as the waitress tries not to chuckle. There is so much cream that the pie is invisible. The cream starts running off the side of the plate and onto the floor.