Purgatorium

by J. H. Carnathan

  The ride starts back up, spooking Madi in the process. She looks at me, terrified by my story. She responds, “That he wasn’t brave enough to go get the ring himself.”

  “The boy stands there because he sees the ring right beside the tree. He saw it there all along. He had the opportunity to save her, but he was too scared to speak up. Why? Because she was moving away and he was jealous that another guy in her new town would take her away. He was scared she would find more happiness with this new guy than she ever had with him. He couldn’t let that happen. After that day, when she went down the hole, he was haunted. Every night he would hear her speaking to him in his thoughts. Except she would just scream at and curse him—like demons playing in his head. Eventually, he was so affected that his behavior became erratic and unpredictable. Sometimes he would fall into a stupor that lasted whole days. His parents sent him away to get help.”

  We head back up on our second loop as Madi is in a trance-like state. “And?” she says, eager to know what happened next.

  “After a few years passed, he came back. He went straight to the park and lit the tree on fire, hoping that if he burnt it down, the demons in his head would stop. He watched the tree burn and burn, losing all its leaves. Eventually, when it seemed like the tree wouldn’t burn anymore, the fire went out. But the tree remained standing. Its blackened limbs seemed to mock him. His pain only increased. The boy concluded that his pain would never diminish, never be cleansed. The despair was too much for him to bear. His parents, expecting him back at home that evening, worry when he doesn’t return by midnight. They go out and look for him, eventually ending up at the park. As they get closer, they are horrified to see that he has hung himself on one of the dead tree branches.”

  Madi looks back to me, a sad look on her face. “Well, that’s a sad, horrible story. Next time you get a gift, just say ‘thanks.’” She smiles, weakly. The ride goes on its last loop.

  “Thanks,” I say, despaired that I feel alone. Madi hadn’t understood. I sigh and look up at the sky, reaching inside my jacket pocket, taking out a cigarette and a matchbook. I strike a match, lighting the smoke. I take a long drag, hopeful that I will soon feel the calming effect of the nicotine.

  I exhale. “The moral of the story is that you should be brave enough to tell the truth to someone you love, no matter how terrifying it is.” I reach for Madi’s flask. She hands it to me. I unscrew the cap.

  “I am pretty sure the moral is that a scared little boy who refuses to save a helpless little girl whom he claims is the love of his life is stupid!” Madi laughs, trying to lighten the mood. She stops when she sees me not smiling.

  I look at the flask, wondering why it is so familiar. Suddenly, I remember that it is the same one I found in my coat pocket in the other world. I look down at the steel surface of the flask.

  An inscription says, “Après moi, le déluge.”

  Madi waves the smoke out of her face. “I thought you were quitting?” she asks, concerned.

  Taking another drag from the cigarette, I exhale thoughtfully. “Not everyone can be like you, Madi.”

  “What does that mean?” she says as the ride stops at the top again. Music begins to play through the park. It is very familiar to me. I try to understand where I know it from.

  I frown, turning my attention back to the sky. “Have you ever seen the northern lights? I’ve only seen them once, when I was a child.”

  “I think so,” Madi says.

  “They’re beautiful. All of the different colors engulfing the night sky,” I say. “Everything becomes one still canvas with many shades of green.”

  “Maybe we will see them together someday?” she says optimistically. She nuzzles in beside me. “That is, if you make it past the age of thirty with this terrible smoking habit. I am not going to help you kill yourself anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, I guess I love you too much.”

  “Nobody told you to save me,” I say, unhappily feeling the weight of Madi’s expectations and ideals.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Forget it.”

  “This is all because I said I love you again, isn’t it?”

  I throw my cigarette out into the night. “Your dreams are so big, Madi, and I’ve been in a rut with my writing.”

  “That’s okay,” she says, putting her hand on my sleeve.

  “I can’t think! You’re suffocating me!” I think about Madi’s neediness, her continued fear of her childhood assailant, Jacob. I feel confused, frustrated with Madi, but at the same time envious of Madi. I am afraid of exposing the incoherence of my thoughts and feelings. I decide to follow a familiar conversational path.

  “Where did this come from?” Madi asks, frustrated and feeling helpless.

  “You have to understand this, Madi. Jacob is not coming after you!” I yell. “You changed your name. You even changed states. You hide away from your past, trying to better yourself. You changed your whole life because of this man!”

  “What has that got to do with your smoking, or the tree story, or your writing, or what you’re feeling right now?” Madi asks. “I’m doing my best to deal with my past, which was really painful. Why are you talking about it like this?”

  “You’re letting him win! He is still beating you and you can’t see it!”

  “Don’t make this about me.”

  “What am I supposed to make this about, Madi?”

  “You know I’m getting help,” she says.

  “For the past four years you have been getting help!” I roar. “When is all that time going to pay off?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because I can tell you right now if I was paying for those sessions—”

  “But you’re not! I am!” Madi hisses, stilling my fury. Our raised voices attract the attention of everyone still inside the ride. They turn and look at us.

  She looks down at them and yells, “Hey! Nothing to see here! Enjoy the ride why don’t you!” She looks back at me. “You have no idea how it feels to have something like that in the back of your mind. I’m sorry that it bothers you! But that’s not what this is about, is it? You are afraid of what we have once again.”

  “That’s not true!” I object.

  “It’s not?” Madi says, composing herself. “Well, just because your father couldn’t manage the words, ‘I love you’ doesn’t mean you can’t.” I look down as she quickly says, “I am so sorry! I didn’t mean to say that. I just want you to talk to me. Say what you are feeling and stop closing me in all the time.”

  I shake my head, looking down, reciting to myself softly, “Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.”

  “And who is that?”

  “Marcus Aurelius,” I say, looking back up.

  “That’s great! Hide behind your quotes and books.”

  “I’m not hiding,” I say, knowing that she is probably right.

  “You cover your feelings by abstracting from them by quoting books!” she says. “Maybe if you spent more time writing and less memorizing quotes you would learn to make one up for yourself, to speak for yourself for once!”

  I say nothing as the ride begins to finally go down. The announcer comes on apologizing for the delay.

  “What do you want? You want to be that man up there in his $100,000 a month suite? You want to wear tailored suits, drive sport cars and be served five course meals every day?”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I ask.

  “You know where that life gets you?” Madi screams, unconcerned with the spectacle she is creating. “A whole lot of money in solitude. Is that what you want?”

  “I lost my job today!” I shout, unable to face her.

  “Wait! What happened?” Madi asks. I keep my face turned away. “You were late
again, weren’t you?”

  “Does it matter?” I say dejectedly.

  “How do you think you can be somebody if you can’t even be on time for important things like work?”

  “And who are you to judge?” I say. “You sit back and avoid the opportunities laid out before you.”

  “What are you talking about now?”

  I place Peter’s card in her hand.

  “What is this?” she asks. “Peter Cameron? A record producer from Los Angeles?”

  “He is the guy I can never be. He says he’s interested in working with you for a tour. He thinks you can be a star,” I say despondently, looking away, angry and jealous.

  “Don’t give me that!” Madi replies, throwing the card back at me.

  “Someone like you deserves a guy like that,” I say, feeling sorry for myself.

  “I don’t know where all this self-pity comes from!” she says defiantly. “But don’t tell me what or who I deserve! I think I know what and who I deserve!”

  “Oh yeah?” I ask. “What do you deserve?”

  “I deserve to know if you love me or not,” she says, her voice suddenly calm. “We’ve been together for almost a year, and sometimes I feel like you are never going to say what you feel.”

  “This again?” I say, looking at her angrily.

  “Maybe you just don’t feel it with me,” she says, tears beginning to form. “If you think I’m holding you back from being a better you, then I’ll leave. I would do that…because I love you.”

  Hunched over, seething, I feel trapped. The ride comes to an end and we get off. We walk along the park. After almost a minute of silence, Madi wipes the tears from her eyes and looks back at the stage.

  “I guess I should say goodbye to the producer and musicians,” she says, composing herself. She looks at me again, and then turns and says, “I guess I will see you later.” She hugs me and walks toward the stage.

  I sit back down on the bench. I look at the business card, then take out my wallet and reluctantly slide it inside. I watch painfully as Madi shakes hands and hugs people on stage.

  She is going to change the world some day and she doesn’t even know it, I think. I remember the gift box that I am still holding in my left hand. Half excitedly, half despairingly, I pull on the red bow, undoing it. I lift off the lid. There is a silver cloth bag folded on top of whatever is underneath.

  I lift it off, revealing a beautiful platinum watch, the most exquisite watch I have ever seen. I carefully lift it out of the plastic molding below. Looking at it more closely, I turn it over. There is an inscription on the back.

  “I believe in you.”

  I feel my stomach lift up towards my heart. I swallow uncomfortably and feel tears welling up. I sniffle and cough to keep myself from crying.

  I look up at the stage. Madi is just finishing talking to two people. I wonder if she is trying to keep herself from looking back at me. Without thinking, I suddenly feel the urge to run to her. Without stopping to analyze, I run straight down the aisle and towards the stage.

  Getting close to the stage, I blurt out, “I love you, too!”

  Madi and the other two people turn toward me. “What?” Madi says startled and surprised. The other two people are smiling and whisper to each other. She walks over to the edge of the stage and crouches down to hop off. Right in front of me now, she repeats, “What? What did you say?” she whispers, smiling as tears well up in her eyes.

  “I want to be that someone who makes you feel like you are the most important person in the world, because in my world….” All inhibition has left me, raw and honest, perhaps for the first time in my life. “…because in my world, you already are and I love you for that.”

  Madi smiles. Tears of heartfelt joy stream down her red cheeks.

  She embraces me tightly. We hold each other, closer than we have ever held each other before. But as I embrace her, I see the old burnt tree far behind her. As I look at it, I feel ominously haunted and suddenly cold. I let her go and bring out the flask. I unscrew its top and raise my flask to her. “Now let’s get drunk and ride the Ferris wheel again,” I say to her, smiling through my teeth. I raise the flask up to my lips.

  “That is so good to hear. So good,” Madi says through her tears. “But I can’t drink tonight...”

  I invite in the liquid and begin to taste no alcohol. It’s water. Why would she put water in here, I wonder. I look back to her, confused.

  “…or any night for the next six months.” I drop the flask as she looks to me and says, “I have been trying to find a way to tell you…I’m pregnant.”

  Hearing the word “pregnant,” I blankly stare straight into the dark center of the tree, feeling cold and hollow, as if in that moment my life and soul were just taken from me. Everything goes black.

  I am blinded by fluorescent lights. I close my eyes for a moment and open them again, only to find I am back on the subway train beside Raphael. Feeling to make sure my head is still there, I am overcome with rage. Looking directly into Raphael’s eyes, I quickly throw open his coat, see the hatchet, and snatch it. With my other hand, I grab Raphael by the jacket and slam him down onto the subway car floor, holding the hatchet above him, ready to strike.

  “No cigs? Really? What good are you?” Raphael says calmly, looking up at me from below on the floor.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re dead wrong! You think I’m twisted enough to just go and chop off your head? Are you nuts? You know what? I’m tired of looking at your face. I think Rosa Parks had it wrong. Staying as far away from the crazy white heads was the more sane thing to do.”

  Frustrated and taken back by Raphael’s response, I close my eyes to gather my thoughts for a second. When I open them, I see that Raphael has already jumped up from underneath me and started walking to the back of the subway car.

  I look up at the hatchet in my right hand, relax my arm, and stand up. When I look back again, Raphael is gone. The light from the next station floods into the car. The brakes start squealing and the train decelerates to a stop. I feel a chill run through me and find this odd. I wave off the sensation when the doors open and I walk out.

  45 Minutes

  Still in the subway station, I walk slowly, pondering what has just happened. I turn onto the bridge, thinking about how I am a father. Feeling a sudden surge of pride and well-being, I’m determined to be a much better father than my father was. I will be successful, a leader, respected.

  I ascend the stairs. Once I make it to the top, I see that I am back at the lighthouse restaurant. In complete shock I begin to think, Raphael must have taken my body, when I was in my memory state, onto another subway car heading back here. For what purpose, though? Gabriel already pulled this stunt with me before and I passed.

  I begin to feel a chill as I look across the park over the interstate to where my apartment building is located. This is even farther away than when Gabriel did this to me. I begin running toward the park, not wasting any more time thinking about it. I hear the screeching sounds coming from all sides of me. I could try and get in my car like last time. But who am I kidding? The reapers would have already gotten me by the time I would even reach it. I need to stop and think but I can’t stop.

  I remember Gabriel’s words to me. ‘You have to think on your feet. That is the only way you will survive.’

  I look in front of me at all the things I have to work with. I see the Ferris wheel on my right, but what good will that do me? I look over at the dead tree and realize that is my only solution. Suddenly, three reapers fly down in front of me and I adjust my direction back towards the subway. It looks like I am going to test my luck on the train being there.

  Three more reapers fly down and stand near the subway entrance. I turn back and head towards the Ferris wheel. At least I get to enjoy a nice little ride before they go and erase my memori
es.

  I make my way onto one of the passenger-carrying components. I rise upward feeling the cold wind brush through my hair,” snow falling all around me, letting me know one thing—I am not where I need to be. I ride up to the top and the machine suddenly stops.

  The reapers probably froze the engine.

  I look up at the sky and see the northern lights swimming around through the stars. I think back to watching it with Madi and how good it would have been to watch it with her one last time. I start to hear a voice in my head, “Looks to me like you are giving up. I guess, once a quitter always a quitter.” The voice stops as I think, I am not a quitter. I am not a quitter!

  I jolt myself up and look down to see six reapers are standing at the bottom of the Ferris wheel. I am not going to be able to make it back to my apartment simply by making a run for it. I watch the reapers extend their legs out from under their cloaks. The whole park soon begins to slowly freeze over, making it one big ice skating rink.

  The reapers climb up and slowly begin to ice over the 36 cars. The 40 revolving chairs inside of each of the cars freezes. As it gets to mine, I get an idea. I start to sing in my head, The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. The wheel must be rotating on probably a 71-ton, 45.5-foot axle that is now getting frozen over as I continue to think. The only way I can make it back to the apartment is if an extreme amount of force breaks that axle which would hopefully roll me back home. Hopefully.

  The cast-iron spider that makes up the core of the Ferris wheel begins to turn to ice. I quickly leave my seat just before it gets frosty, then make my way inside the core of the wheel before it gets frozen over. Once the reapers see that I am trapped in the center, they will come for me, I like to think.

  The reapers force their skeletal bodies towards the wheel making their way up to me. With every push, they break away the wheels axle. The whole structure starts to feel off balance. That’s it, keep making your way towards me, I think. The reapers keep pushing themselves through the frozen walls towards me. The forceful pushing breaks off the axle’s hinges. The Ferris wheel detaches and slowly begins to roll out.