Purgatorium

by J. H. Carnathan

  Gabriel looks across at me, who has just completed all but one side of the cube. The waitress stands beside Gabriel. I look at him, smiling for getting his just desserts. He, however, seems distracted, different than usual.

  He reaches inside his jacket, takes out a gum wrapper, and unfolds it. It is empty. Gabriel looks panicked. He starts patting down his jacket and his pants pockets. He stands up and looks around his chair on the floor. He sighs loudly and looks up at the waitress.

  “Well now, look what you did. You made a mess,” Gabriel says calmly.

  I roll my eyes—Gabriel’s the one who demanded she continue to pour the whipped cream over his pie. It reminded me of being forced to learn to flip the butterfly knife. I hadn’t chosen to do it, I was made to, but I was still punished when I failed.

  Gabriel suddenly steps behind the waitress, grabbing her by the neck and forcing her face down into the pie. She screams but her voice is muffled in the thick pile of cream. She kicks and flails her arms for what seems to me like an eternity. I am shocked, but watch passively knowing there is nothing I can do to stop it.

  After a few minutes, her flailing weakens and she slumps, her body exhaling and her legs giving out underneath her. Gabriel waits another minute, feels her neck, and then looks up at me, letting go of her head, which slides off the table, pulled down by the weight of her now dead body. She slumps down onto her side on the floor. Gabriel takes his napkin and wipes the cream off his hands.

  “You see, if you keep adding all your fears and doubts to your plate, then you won’t have any room left for your piece of the pie. Savvy?”

  Still shocked, I look down at the waitress’ dead body on the floor, then back up at Gabriel, who is reaching down with his index finger and scooping some cream off her face. He puts the cream in his mouth, swallows, and makes a disgusted expression.

  “Hmm. That actually doesn’t taste that bad.”

  Gabriel throws down the napkin and walks toward the exit stairs while yelling, “Forty minutes!”

  40 Minutes

  I look at the cloche cover and see my own reflection. How could I just sit there and watch him do that to her? I think. Something isn’t right. Suddenly, my reflection smirks and lifts the waitress by her hair, shoving her face back into the pie.

  Looking away from the cover and back at the table, I am frustrated by the immorality of my reflection and the fact that I didn’t stop Gabriel from killing her. Angrily, I sweep my arms across the table, sending the glasses, plates, and cutlery crashing onto the floor. I turn and walk away toward the exit.

  Once out of the restaurant, I make my way across the street, this time looking at where I am stepping. I come across the manhole lid still half open. I walk around it, not daring to find out what evils could be lurking down below.

  I take out the cube and begin working on it again, then head down the stairs to the subway station and jump over the gate. Up ahead, the subway car makes its stop and opens the doors. I make my way in and sit myself down in a booth without once turning my gaze away from the cube.

  I stare at the cube, trying to figure out my next move. I visualize each of the moves in my head. I turn the cube again and again, flipping it around, examining all sides. One side blue, other side yellow, bottom green, and top red! Done!, I think, happy with myself.

  I look out the window and take one of my pictures from my stack and stick it to the side. I see no flaw, only my own reflection. I am haunted by it, each time wondering who next am I going to kill? Maybe that is what I am supposed to be seeing in the reflections. Maybe I am some kind of killer in my past life.

  Gabriel appears behind me, almost spooking me half to death. I turn around and look at him. My self-image reflects in the cornea of Gabriel’s half-crazed eyes.! He looks down at my accomplishment.

  “Good job!” says Gabriel. “That’s using your brain! You think you just solved a kid’s toy, but really it’s much more complicated than that. It’s about getting your brain muscles going so you can memorize where you need to be and at what time. Learning the reaper’s mind-set on everything they can throw at you. Knowing your demon and finding out its weakness. All these things you need to accomplish if you are ever going to breathe the fresh air again. We need to start you at the hardest part first. That is learning how to take control of your memories. You see, when you first enter your memories, you have control of your thought process for a short amount of time, correct? You see, that’s your brain adjusting for control. Your thoughts get outweighed by your intentional thoughts, and there’s only room for one. It’s like your thoughts are fighting themselves. In one corner, you have what you’re feeling and thinking right at that moment. In the other corner, you have what’s real, what actually happened, what you’re supposed to be feeling and thinking at that moment in your life. You’ll need to learn how to fight those controlled feelings if you’re ever going to survive this place. After figuring that challenge out, then you’re going to have to stop and not listen to the music. Get me?”

  I listen closely but get agitated at all the things I have to do in such little time. Why do I need to stop listening to the music? It’s the only thing that is actually giving me answers to my life! I can’t just stop now! Everything starts to pile up in my brain as Gabriel slaps me out of it!

  “Now listen to me very closely! I shouldn’t be saying this but I feel you need some help in this department. On the day of your Sabbath, the song that reminds you of the coffee shop and the first meeting with Madi will be replaying. You have to study and remember every move you made in that memory. If you already know what’s going to happen, it makes it easier for your thoughts to take control of the situation. Once in control, you can force yourself to stop listening to the music. It will require pushing your brain to the limit while being timed in the process. Let’s say you get on this subway car at 30 minutes from your apartment. The music starts to play, what do you do? If you let the music take you, then your mind may be gone, but your soulful body stays right here. The reapers will come and snatch you up in a heartbeat. When you learn how to take back control of yourself in your memories, then you will have more control over being sent back into those memories. We need all the control and time we can get if you are going to win this thing. But we have to play it safe, because it doesn’t like change. And I don’t mean the reapers.”

  Gabriel, his face grown serious, looks directly at my face. I gulp, wondering whether Gabriel means the creature in my nightmares.

  “There is a catch. When you do start learning how to take control, you can’t change your actions that you are supposed to make in that memory. Your memories are your memories for a reason. It’s already done and over with. You’re not supposed to change them. You’re only supposed to watch them unfold as they play out. The same goes for this place. It’s all about control. The more you change yourself in this place, the more you can change from in there.”

  As Gabriel says this, he reaches out and touches my forehead. “Your memories, I mean.” Gabriel pauses, letting his hand drop back down to his side.

  But why? I wonder. What will happen if I do?

  “Listen well and listen good. The point is not to change the outcome of your memories. The point is to be strong enough that you don’t have to relive them, strong enough to stop listening to the music so that you can have the extra time needed to use for the race. Changing your past is very different than changing yourself here. The reapers have no control in your memories. What has control in your memories is something far worse, and I think you know what I mean. Have any good nightmares lately?”

  I think back to the dark figure in my dreams at night. If that isn’t a reaper then who is it?

  “The Valkyrie is always watching, always waiting, and it doesn’t respond well to changes. So don’t even think about changing anything while you’re inside there, or it will come for you.”

  I feel overwhelmed
. The Valkyrie? What is that? I wonder. If I change something, that dark figure shows up? What will it do to me?

  Not only do I not fully understand what Gabriel is saying, what I do understand seems impossible. Gaining control over my memories, my thoughts? Impossible! I think. Or way too difficult! I drop my head.

  Seeing the Rubik’s cube in my hand, I throw it down onto the floor, realizing it was just as pointless as the knife trick. Everything is just pointless. If they really wanted to help me then why did they even teach me how to listen to the record playing to begin with? I would have had a better chance at not listening to it if I didn’t know what I was listening to in the first place! I scream this to myself hoping Gabriel is listening.

  “Don’t you think we already did that once? Twice? Twenty times?! It doesn’t work out for you! Without showing you your humanity first you never go along with anything else we tell you! You just keep blacking out once the music starts to play. Don’t you get it? There are no easy roads here. No shortcuts. That’s why each time you get reaped, we perfect it. We must learn from our mistakes.”

  If they already failed doing this method many times before, why does it even matter? I have one shot left and all I have accomplished is playing knife tricks and child games. I need answers about me!

  “You don’t believe in yourself much, do you? Well, we can fix that!” Gabriel laughs.

  I look at my watch to find that it is a few seconds till 42:02. After gathering everything I have learned today about time, I still don’t understand how my mind leaves here at 42:02 and comes back around 45:00. The memory seems twenty times longer than that.

  Gabriel, swinging around the pole, says, “I can hear you!” He stops, and looking at me sings, “I can hear you thinking.” Seeming to be dizzy, he looks over at my window. “Time can play tricks on you, remember? Time here never stops. It keeps on tick, tick, ticking because that’s its purpose.”

  He turns his head to me. “You needing to be at a certain spot at a certain time is your specific purpose.” He then leans his head up. “However the music that rains from the heavens above is not a part of any purpose and not time constructed into the full layout of this unholy design. It’s like a virus in the system that can’t be wiped clean. I like to call it a flaw.”

  Gabriel brings his head down and looks at my watch. “The flaw being not really the music but your own mind. You see, your mind is the one picking up the airwaves, turning itself to that right channel. The music that is playing on the outside has triggered an emotional response inside your brain. You may not remember how you know the sweet little tune, but somewhere deep down the melody has already left a scar inside your head. So all that the music is really doing is opening up that old wound, that specific moment in which that certain song has come together to form a rememberable memory. Once you are in that state of remembrance, time runs a lot slower because your mind is only feeding you the memory. It’s like taking your first bite into a casserole. You instantly judge that one taste to all the other casseroles you’ve ever had. Your mind begins to feed you memories of past dishes until you remember that your grandma’s homemade casserole, which she made when you were young, was your all-time favorite! Your memories took you all the way back to when you were young and all it took was a few seconds. However, if the memory is harder to remember, it may take a few minutes or more instead. Thus, why when you wake up, the time may have passed an hour in your memory, but merrily minutes in this reality.”

  My head hurts trying to gain insight to what I just heard.

  “All this talk about casseroles has got me starving,” Gabriel says, feeling his stomach.

  The pain in my head starts to hurt even worse, knowing that this has nothing to do with Gabriel’s casserole theory. I hear the shrieking noise coming from above me again.

  Gabriel screams out, “I am really starting to hate this music!”

  Who is on the other side playing this for me?!

  “You know the rules! I can’t say. What you should be thinking is why does the music generate past memories in you?!”

  I stop. Thinking about what he just said makes my head hurt worse.

  “When you return, we’ll see how well you listened. Count on it,” Gabriel says to me, turning and walking away.

  I can hear the music playing, then the sounds of the subway, at first loud, and then fading away rapidly. Everything starts breaking into puzzle pieces. I drop to the floor as I see Gabriel reaching for my legs, dragging me, until everything fades to black.

  THE LIGHTHOUSE RESTAURANT

  I open my eyes. I am sitting at a table with a notebook in front of me, chewing on the end of a pencil I hold. Taking the pencil end out of my mouth, I look down at the notebook and see my own writing. It’s a book I have been working on. I look up from it and notice that I am in the coffee shop again. I look back over to my book and find at the top right-hand corner a date.

  The year reads: 1993.

  That makes me 22 years old right now, and means it has been another year. I find myself lifting the pencil to my mouth and, though I will myself not to, I start chewing on it uncontrollably.

  I must fight it, I think, remembering what Gabriel said. But I cannot stop the chewing. Though it infuriates me, I feel like I am inside a shell, just observing myself again.

  I hear a phone ring by the cashier stand. An employee picks it up and looks to me. He screams out, “I got a Madi on the phone for you.” My heart beats a little faster as I quickly walk over and lift the the receiver to my ear.

  “Hey!” I say, enthusiastically.

  “I caught you! And don’t try to deny it!” Madi says, half-laughing.

  “Okay,” I respond, “and what, may I ask, did you catch me doing?”

  “I know you too well,” Madi giggles. “You’re sitting there looking devilishly handsome and biting your pencil while writing what may be the greatest novel in the whole wide world! Right?”

  I reply in a sarcastic tone, “No…you are mistaken, ma’am.” I take the pencil out of my mouth, looking around to see if she is there. Scanning across from right to left, I see no one.

  “An open mind leaves a chance for someone to drop a worthwhile thought in it. Wouldn’t you agree?” she says.

  “I do agree,” I respond.

  “Now if one would ask you if you had an open mind about me then I would oblige you of a worthwhile thought. Would you accept this gratuity?” she says back.

  “I will,” as I look at someone in the phone booth outside. It’s her. Madi looks over to me, smiling.

  “Then of this worthwhile opportunity that is placed before us would indubitably make for a great time if I were to say…tonight?” she says looking at me with those sexy eyes.

  “Sounds intriguing,” I say as I continue looking at her, curious to what follows next.

  “What say you at seven o’clock, good sir?” she responds in an English accent.

  I look at the time as it reads right at seven. “Ha, how convenient. I seem to be free. What’s with the accent?”

  “I am trying to act like a scholar. Let me be a freakin’ scholar! Geez,” she says, acting sarcastic. “So where was I?” She continues with her accent. “Ah yes, then seven it will be. I will pick you up in my chariot and whisk you away for a worthwhile time, dahling. ma-ha!”

  “Sounds quite devine, my secret mistress.” We laugh at our foolishness.

  “Get over here, stalker!” I say to her, still laughing over the phone. She hangs up the phone and walks quickly inside the store. She leaps the last step to me and throws her arms around me.

  “Well, we’ve both been busy lately. It’s almost Christmas and we’ve been stuck inside that apartment and—”

  “Hey! I like being stuck inside that apartment, I’ll have you know,” I respond, smiling up at her.

  “Well, not tonight. Tonight’s special! Let�
�s go eat somewhere nice tonight, I will pay!” she says, smiling.

  I look down at my watch and then down at my notebook. “I don’t think we have enough time to go—” I start saying.

  Madi cuts me off. “We have all the time in the world! Come on!” she says, taking my hand. With some reluctance, I shut my notebook, reach into my right inner breast pocket, pull out my wallet, and drop a couple cents on the table. I put my wallet back inside my pocket. Madi starts walking to the door, pulling me behind her. Once outside, she turns right and we walk just twenty feet before stopping in front of an expensive boutique clothing store.

  “You’re a goofball. We can’t afford this. We aren’t rich, remember?” I object.

  “Tonight we are,” Madi replies, pushing the door of the store open and walking in, still pulling me behind her.

  “Now, pick out which ones you like on me, and I’ll pick out what looks best on you. Let’s see how well you know me, mister,” she smiles kiddingly.

  I look around at all the expensive designer clothes and think Madi must be joking. “Stop playing around,” I say.

  “Now, once you’re done picking them out, leave mine in one of the dressing rooms, and I’ll leave the ones I pick for you in another. The dressing room attendant will direct each of us to the right room. We’ll try on each other’s choices, and then pick what we think is best, put them on, and go out to eat. We’ll live like celebrities for the night! Yassssss!”

  I respond, “Why are we—”

  Madi puts her finger on my lips. “Shh, it will be fun. Besides,” she says, whispering in my ear, “we will take it back tomorrow. Come on! Let the games begin!” She giggles, turning towards the radio by the dressing room. She cuts it on as a song begins to play. It’s the same song that was playing from the record player a few minutes ago, I think. She dances to the upbeat tempo and heads to the men’s racks. I smile, enjoying her enthusiasm.