Purgatorium

by J. H. Carnathan

  I begin to see his game now. He knew the thought of how long I was trapped in this place would get to me. This is all part of his sick plan to make me play another game.

  The waitress walks in to the dining room from the kitchen, setting tables. I look over at her, wondering why she came. She had to know that she isn’t on the angel’s good side. I watch her move around the room. Sealtiel notices me. What have I done? I think, knowing what’s next.

  “I know!” says Sealtiel. “Would you like me to tell you the name of the person playing the music on the outside? I bet you’re dying to know and what bigger reward is there than knowledge?” He pauses, thinking for a moment, before continuing. “If you can come out of your memory mirroring anyone from it, I will give you the name. If you come out looking like your same old terrible self, then you have to take her life.” Sealtiel nods toward the waitress.

  Sealtiel flips around the butterfly knife and sticks it into the bar, leaving it standing straight up in the woods surface.

  “Now, we need a judge to ensure a fair outcome.” Sealtiel looks over at the waitress. “I think I found her!” Sealtiel walks over and asks her to come sit with us at the bar. I see her holding the silver covering with the hourglass glaring at my face. He takes it out of her hand and sets it on the table. “We have our time piece.” He takes out a chair and dusts it off. He looks to me while raising his hand over to the chair. I get up from the stool and walk over. I sit with dismay, as I watch Sealtiel clapping for joy.

  “You have twenty seconds to answer this question correctly,” Sealtiel says to me as we take our seats. “And to help you concentrate…” he grabs the waitress’ shirt and tears off one of the sleeves, handing it to me. “Tie it over your eyes. People don’t use enough of their minds these days. They don’t concentrate using their full potential anymore. The mind is capable of holding much more information than most people believe.”

  I wait, expecting the worst would happen by leaving the waitress alone with him. I look over to her and notice that she seems scared for me.

  “Don’t you worry. It’s like I am going to put you through a trance but instead of music, I will use only my words. What fun!”

  She nods to me, letting me know she will be safe. I tie the blindfold over my eyes. Everything is black.

  “Now, listen very carefully,” Sealtiel continues. “When you see the person you want to mirror. Focus on that specific person. You should already feel at peace with you being inside your dream so all you really have to do is open your mind to the possibility of looking like someone else. Alrighty?! Good luck!”

  “You are training for a marathon. Currently, you can run 12 miles. You increase the distance you run on your long-run day by 7/10 mile each week. In how many more weeks will you be able to run 26 miles?

  I concentrate intensely. I hope I will be able to find the answer to the seemingly impossible question Sealtiel asked if I can just think hard enough. After waiting about 30 seconds, Sealtiel repeats the question. After another 30 seconds, he repeats it again.

  Everything is dark. It is nighttime. I look up to the mirror and realize I must be around 8-years-old. I look down to see that I am sitting on my bed. My thoughts and body all of a sudden become numb. I feel myself just being a spectator to my surroundings. I can hear only the sounds of my father in the hallway outside my bedroom. His footsteps are heavy, boots still on. He paces back and forth like a restless animal. I hear him getting closer to my door. Then, the door opens.

  “Son?” my father asks. He comes in and sits at the end of my bed. My legs twitch, knowing he must have found out what I did.

  “Yes?” I reply, steadying my voice to make sure my father can hear no fear in it. He values strength, steadfastness. Only appearing to be these things will forestall my father’s rage.

  “Are you ready?” I nod as my father sits closer, beside me. He still smells like the outdoors, like a man in the midst of his daily routine. He takes a black rag from his pocket and covers my eyes with it. He tightens it to the back of my head.

  “Give your answer,” my father says, voice gruff. “In years and round them to the thousandth place.” Sometimes, I would buckle under the pressure.

  “I don’t understand,” I stammer, suddenly overcome with claustrophobia. “Why am I wearing the blindfold?”

  “Got to block everything out, son. Focus on the problem at hand.”

  I have heard this explanation before. My great-grandfather had learned the technique of sensory deprivation during the Second World War, while out on a mission to uncover prisoners from war camps. The old man had been through hell, fighting off the Japanese, as well as a case of malaria in the Philippines.

  He had studied the map of the entire island chain day and night until he could picture it in his head blindfolded. The situation was dire, and the only way he could manifest clarity of vision was to cover his eyes and memorize every inch of it. This way, no matter what happened to him, he could find his way out.

  “You know what happened to him?” my father asks.

  I know the story well. I have heard it a hundred times, perhaps more. My great-grandfather had been captured three weeks into his mission, but managed to get free after a month by stealing an old revolutionary war flintlock pistol from inside one of the enemy’s bunkers and making a bullet out of a lead spoon he also would snag.

  On the day of his escape, he was so weak from lack of food and sleep that he had to tape his pistol around his hand so to not accidentally drop it. Also, he taped a self-made sharp poker stick around his other hand for defense against any close up attacks.

  Waiting in his cell one night, a guard comes walking out, getting every prisoner ready for shift duty. Once his gate was unlocked, my great-grandfather aimed his pistol towards the guard and fired. Without hesitation he used his sharp poker to jab at the guard’s throat, killing him instantly. He then fled quickly out of the bunker. After that, he roamed the dank, dark rainforest for miles upon miles and suddenly he came across a waterfall.”

  My father gets closer to me.

  “And because he knew that map so well,” my father repeats to me, “he could find his way from the waterfall back to the holding site. After a few days passed, he went back to that holding site and he did not come home alone. He brought back forty U.S. marines with him. Saved over one hundred and fifty-three soldiers.”

  I had seen my great-grandfather in photos, holding his flintlock pistol in the air. My father looked like my great-grandfather. That photo is all I can see in my mind’s eye.

  “He got a five star Medal of Honor,” my father continues. I know my father has the medal in his pocket and is probably touching it as we speak; it is always there.

  “What is all this about?” I say, pulling the blindfold off my head. My father has picked up my math test from beside the bed. He slams it onto the ground. I hear my mother stop washing dishes in the kitchen. Everything in the house is still.

  “Your teacher called me today,” my father says. “Said you’d been cheating on your math test today.” I can hear my mother resume cleaning the dishes.

  “I didn’t,” I insist. “I swear.”

  “I told your teacher my son is not a cheater,” my father says, standing beside me, looming over me. “Told him my son studies every single night and that he would come to me if he needed extra help. Then you know what happened?”

  I shake my head.

  “Called me in, wanted to show me the test. Wanted to let me compare for myself two different exams: yours and the boy’s beside you. Know what I saw?”

  I hear the water turn off downstairs. “No,” I say.

  “On his test, all the questions showed his work, the formulas. While on yours? Well, yours had nothing but the answers.” My father folds his brawny arms, lips turned up. “No work!”

  I can hear my mother lightly tiptoeing down the hallway towar
ds my door.

  “I told him you were an honest kid, so he gave me a chance to prove as much. I took one of them questions, brought it home, and asked you just now.”

  “Is everything all right?” My mother’s voice is tender but frightened.

  “You could tell me if you ever needed anything, son!” my father roars. “But you chose to steal the answers instead!”

  “Are you okay in there?” my mother says, gently but slightly louder.

  “You made a liar out of me, son. A liar.”

  “Hello?” my mother shouts. “Can you please tell me if everything is going all right in there?”

  I swallow hard. I can picture my father’s unforgiving glare, the sort of look one gives a mortal enemy.

  “Everything is fine!” my father yells back.

  “Really? Because I hear shouting,” she says. She knows something is wrong, I think.

  “Yes, it is!” My father shouts back. I hear him walk over to my door and slam it shut.

  40 Minutes

  Feeling the chill, I open my eyes.

  I hear Sealtiel speak through the darkness, “Now what is your desire?”

  I remove my blindfold, look in the bar mirror, and see I look only like myself and not at all like my father. I look over at Sealtiel standing beside the waitress, looking disappointed at me. He shakes his head and sighs, seeing his breath in the cooling air. Reapers shriek in the distance.

  “Times up!” Sealtiel says, looking at the waitress. “And so close, too! It’s a shame you couldn’t manage it this time. I rather thought you might, despite all of your abysmal failures in previous trials.”

  I look at the knife sticking up from the bar. He picks it up and hands it to me. I look at the terrified waitress.

  “To make things easier for you, you should know that she,” Sealtiel points at the waitress, “was there when you got reaped the last time. Kind of odd how she made it out with her memories intact and you didn’t.” Sealtiel turns to the waitress. “Tell him!”

  I look at her. Scared, she blurts out, “It’s true, but I can explain!” Sealtiel slaps her across the face. She sobs.

  “Explain what? How you led him to the roof and, just when he was close to getting out, with just one hourglass left to break, you gave him up to the reapers?” Sealtiel looks at me, then back at the waitress. “He trusted you before, it’s true. But can you really trust a lost soul? Or better yet a demon in disguise?”

  The mere shock of this new development turns my emotions inside out. Thoughts of her being my demon hadn’t crossed me until now. Who really is this woman to me?

  I look at Sealtiel and suddenly see my father staring back at me. I feel like a failure again. I can’t stand that I am never good enough.

  “What’s it going to be?” Sealtiel asks in my father’s voice. “Live or die?”

  I look to her and my mind begins to race. Suddenly, as if something just clicked inside of me, I think, I don’t want to end up like her. I look at Sealtiel defiantly. I drop the knife on the floor next to my stool. Sealtiel pets the waitress’ head, smiling at her now. She looks at me as if she was surprised.

  “Are you suggesting she deserves a second chance?”

  I nod.

  “Do you not think it’s a coincidence that her room number is 5? Just like the five lettered word you need to find? Maybe she is your answer. Maybe she is your demon in disguise. Or maybe you can’t see the truth because you desire her? Is that it?”

  I am stunned by the question.

  Sealtiel walks over and picks up the knife, putting it away. He then sits back down next to the waitress, still smiling. “Lost souls don’t get second chances!” He pulls the waitress by her hair around the end of the bar, pulls her head back, and then smashes it into the bar mirror. She falls to the floor, her eyes rolled back. Blood drips down the mirror.

  Though horrified, I am jealous of her—not feeling the pain I feel in my heart. Almost as if she were free from this place.

  “I promise you this and only this, anytime between now and the last day, you will have to pull the trigger on her. If you don’t, she will turn the crosshairs around and unlike you, she will fire,” he says.

  Sealtiel turns to me, his smile never having left his face. He whistles and skips gleefully past me, down the stairs, and outside.

  I look back to the girl, wanting to know what she is. If she did give me up then I want answers. Tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow I will get to the bottom of it. I hurry to look at the hourglass reflecting off the silver cover. The hourglass seems to be almost at forty-two minutes. I can’t miss the train!

  I run out, down the stairs, out the door, and into the subway.

  I run through the subway station and slip in inside the subway car. I sit, watching the hourglass reflection in the subway window. I try to not think about what just happened, but can’t. The fact that the waitress will be alive again tomorrow doesn’t calm me. I look up and see Sealtiel standing there.

  He takes off my watch from his wrist and shows me the back engraving.

  It reads: “I believe in you.”

  “That was Madi’s desire for you. What are you worth? It was a statement of love and understanding. An understanding that through all your hardships and abuse, she was gonna be there for you. That is courage and strength beyond compare. She shows you her value! So what are you worth?! From what I just witnessed, nothing.”

  What am I worth? What are you worth?! How have you even helped me?!

  “Help yourself!” He throws out money from his pockets to my face. “My worth isn’t shown on green paper; my worth is how I choose to see myself. That is my self-worth. That is belief in myself. I also believe in you. Now why don’t you?!”

  How can I believe in myself if I don’t even know who I am?!

  “That’s a crutch. That’s a lie unto yourself to make you feel helpless. Another word for that is lazy. You doing nothing is lazy. You giving up in the middle of a race is lazy. You cheating on your wife is lazy! You being too afraid to do what you love is lazy! If you make yourself out to be worthless, then that is all you will ever be. Worthless!”

  He takes out a bottle of Macallan, which he had placed on a seat. “Let’s have another toast.” He twists the cork out, pours a glass, and raises it to me

  “To the man with no self-worth.”

  I get angry, brushing the glass out of his hands, almost hitting the hourglass window. This brings a shock to Sealtiel’s face. As he is distracted, I raise my hands and grab on to his nicely pressed dress suit.

  “When will you realize that your life is perfect? Anyone would be grateful to have it! Do you not understand your own value? Your self-worth is something to desire. To my dissatisfaction, you plainly don’t see it!”

  Suddenly I hear something…music…coming from above me. I see the hourglass reflection in the subway window and know that the time is 42:02.

  Sealtiel screams, “Try to block the music out! Or just give up like what you do best!”

  I cover my ears with my hands, shutting my eyes tightly, trying to concentrate. The music brings with it lyrics, as I hear the sound of Madi’s voice singing, “You are that December morning…”

  The music gets louder and louder. Panicking, I look up and see the emergency exit at the end of the subway car. I jump up, run to it, pull it open, and leap out. Midair—the music now deafening—in the darkness, with only the tracks below me, everything breaks into puzzle pieces.

  THE OFFICE

  I open my eyes and see a calendar posted on the wall in my cubical. The year says 1999. This is the year I last remember. Everyone has left the office except for me, who is sitting in an ergonomic chair behind a very large oak desk.

  Looking around, I notice it is the same as the office in the other world. There is a Christmas tree in the corner, decorated and lit with red, green
, and white lights. I look over at the wall full of framed publishing awards. I work for a publishing company? I think. Maybe I finally did achieve my goal.

  Scanning the desk, I see the back of a nameplate. Excited to finally find out who I am, I reach over, turn it around, and read:

  President Mike Donald.

  I am perplexed. That can’t be my name, I think. It doesn’t sound familiar at all. I look around the top of the desk again and open a drawer on the right. Inside is an unopened bottle of 50-year-old Macallan whisky. This is the bottle Sealtiel was drinking from. I look over at a coffee cup on the desk. Grabbing it, I read: #1 Dad.

  Emotions of anger run through me. I just want to throw this cup out of the window. I accidentally let it slip out of my hand and watch it fall. It shatters on the ground. Quickly, I pick up all the pieces and throw them away in the trash can next to the desk. The door opens. I jump up and close the drawer. A man steps in, looking surprised. He looks like Michael, I think.

  “What are you doing in my chair?” the man asks. I find myself unable to move.

  “The printer is broken. I had to use yours, Mr. Donald,” I find myself saying. I stand up and pick up some sheets of paper out of the print tray on the desk.

  Mr. Donald gives me a strange look. “All right, make sure you’re at the meeting tomorrow—bright and early this time! I can’t always cover for your lateness. You did finish the outline I asked for, right?”

  I feel my anxiety mounting. “I was going to, but you see—”

  Mr. Donald interrupts, “There is always an excuse with you!” I look down at the ground. Mr. Donald shakes his head, obviously disappointed, and takes his coat off the coat rack. He stops. “You know something?”

  I look up.

  “I see greatness in you, and it’s just sad that you don’t take the time to realize it in yourself. And we’ve talked about this many times before. So don’t bother coming in tomorrow or the day after.”

  Scared my boss is saying what I think he is, I ask, “Sir? Mr. Donald?”