Purgatorium (21 page)

MONDAY

Gabriel

I jolt straight up, my eyes wide. The alarm clock is still beeping. I turn it off and look up at the walls. I see that the photos are gone as if they were never put up in the first place. I wipe sweat off my forehead, then notice my right hand has somehow completely healed. Not even a scratch. My alarm clock starts counting up.

I turn my head to see the Handbook back on the nightstand. I wonder how it got back here? I take it and stick it in my drawer again. Picking up my snow
globe, I
hold it out in front of me and walk to the window. I gaze out and see the whole city is covered in snow.

Wasn’t it just fall?
I think to myself. I scratch my head while looking out my window at the wintery landscape. Gathering my thoughts, I make my way through the living room to my bathroom. I smile to myself in my reflection, thinking that it was all one big nightmare. I pick up my straight razor.

Looking back up into the mirror, I am startled and horrified to see Madi, looking angry, holding the razor up to my neck. Seeing my terror, she breaks into a smile and laughs. She puts the razor down, gets the shaving cream, and brushes it onto my face. She picks up the razor again and brings it to my face, then hesitates and puts her hand down again, looking worried.

I laugh, reach down, and take her hand, putting the razor in it. I lift her hand back up to my face and slowly guide the razor over my right cheek. On the next pass, I drop my hand, letting Madi take over.

I relax into her sure touch. I love when she does this, sure that she’s done it before, even if I can’t quite remember it.

Madi takes the towel and wipes off the little leftover streaks of shaving cream. I look back up at the mirror and notice that, even though I feel myself smiling, my reflection is smirking. I watch in horror as my reflection reaches down for the razor, picks it up, and slits Madi’s throat.

I try to scream. I turn to try to help Madi, but she is gone. I look back at the mirror and see myself in it, reflecting everything I feel myself doing again.

I look down at my hand and see the razor in it. I drop it into the sink and take a step back. Reminding myself that I have not killed Madi, I begin to feel petrified, thinking something is happening to me. I am going crazy, I think.

I walk over to my closet door. Opening it, I am spooked to find Polaroid pictures scattered across the room. Bending down, I pick them up, looking at each picture. Every one portrays nothing more than random shots of ordinary things.

I notice one was the shot Michael took at my bathroom mirror. I walk out and bring the picture to the mirror, trying to understand its purpose. Maybe he is giving me a clue to something, I wonder.

I look deep into the bathroom mirror, not understanding what he wants me to find. After not thinking of any possibilities, I question if maybe he has just lost his freakin’ mind. I look at the next picture as it is a picture of my bedroom window. I hear “The Light in the Piazza” start to play in the living room.

I look down at my
watch
: 3:10. Always at 3:10, I think.

I start to feel angry as my mind begins to battle between actions and reasoning towards the way the music is making me feel. I can’t feel anything but pain and anger, making my actions win out in the end.

I walk out of the bathroom, looking across at the piano, and lay the photos on the kitchen table. I take the hatchet out of the glass case and, without hesitating, walk to the piano, raising the hatchet above my head, and bring it down with all my strength on the lid.

The lid slams down onto the body of the piano. I continue hacking away at the keys. Some of them fly into the air as the sound of the song mixes with the cacophony of splintering wood and ivory, and off-tune notes ring out with each impact. My rage feels uncontrollable. I slam the hatchet into the player mechanism and the song stops. Amidst the ruckus, I notice an intermittent slurping sound behind me.

I stop chopping at the piano and turn around. Surprised and shocked, I see
Gabriel
, holding a bowl up to his mouth, sitting at the table.
Gabriel
continues slurping, seeming not to notice me.

After a couple of seconds, Gabriel finally looks up, puts his bowl down, picks his piece of already chewed gum out of his napkin, and puts it in his mouth. He wipes the napkin around his mouth and then puts it back on the table. Grabbing the cereal box beside him, he dumps the rest of it in his big bowl and goes to the refrigerator to take out a bottle of milk. He pours the rest in the bowl and without looking, throws the empty bottle back inside the refrigerator.

I hear it smash as I see him spooning his bowl. He takes out his gum again and places it back on the napkin. Leaning in, he looks at the photos on the table.

“I see you’ve met
Michael
,” Gabriel says as he spoons cereal into his mouth. “That must mean you can think clearly now. Good for you! Took us many attempts to get you past that second hurdle. Putting the fear of God in you was always the easy part, but getting you to find your humanity was a real pickle. Which reminds me, do you have any pickles in the fridge by chance? I am felling pretty hangry (Angry-hungry) for some food right now.”

I look into those deep green eyes of his and can already tell that he is nothing like Michael. I watch him get up and walk over to the fridge. He opens the door and makes a loud giddy sounding squill as he grabs a jar of pickles. His excitement over a simple pickle is more than enough to warn me that today is going to be one long day.

Gabriel sits back down while taking a bite of a pickle. Still chewing he says, “Another riddle for you: It may only be given, not taken or bought, what the sinner desires, but the saint does not. The answer to this riddle is one of your key solutions for getting out of here. Only when you understand the answer will you find what you seek.”

Gabriel
takes another bite, stands up, walks past the bathroom entrance, looks in, and stands in front of the mirror.

“Until I am measured, I am not known,” he continues, looking into my bathroom mirror. “Yet how you miss me, when I have flown. Today is the day we open your eyes, sunny Jim.” He takes the bathroom picture, licks its back, and stamps it with his hand on the mirror.

I am tired of playing these games. I try to ignore Gabriel. I walk past him to the closet, pick out my suit, and begin dressing in my bedroom. Gabriel comes in and snatches my pictures that Michael took off my wall.

“8 pictures. 8 flaws,” he whispers to himself. He puts them in his pocket.

“Albert Einstein once said the only reason for time’s existence is so everything doesn’t happen at once. Some would also say time is only a mental construct that has no existence in real space outside of human perception. It just goes to show how far the human mind can evolve past a certain idea to a more realistic one.”

I walk out of my bedroom, now fully dressed.

Gabriel turns to me and looks closely at my face. “Time. What is time to you? A dimension in which events can be ordered? A measure of durations of sequences? The Greek language denotes a distinct principle in the meaning. To them, time was the right or opportune moment.”

I continue fixing my tie.
Gabriel
looks over at the Rubik’s cube sitting on the bookshelf near the window. He doesn’t seem bothered by my dismissive attitude.

What does any of this have to do with my race in six days?

Gabriel gets up in my face.“Your race isn’t just a normal everyday jog in the park kind of race. There are rules you need to learn. Rules that can make or break you. It isn’t all one foot over the other. Got it cupcake?”

I can tell by the way he said cupcake that his mind is wandering towards food again. I fix my tie.

“Today is that opportune moment. Today, you will learn how the game is played with time as your only enemy. Whatever you know about time, forget it. The time here keeps order so chaos can be controlled. Whatever you might think or know, time doesn’t just make the rules; it enforces them. You may have gotten to choose the scenery and this lovely wallpaper,” Gabriel continues, staring at the Rubik’s cube, “but a prison is still just a prison no matter how much money you have in your closet. I am here to help you escape by showing you the blueprints to your soul-made reality.”

I feel annoyed at Gabriel’s continuing nonchalance.
What’s so special about the Rubik’s cube anyway?
I wonder, watching Gabriel stare at it.

“You know, I was the one who came up with this genius invention. It was supposed to test the mind, but people started cheating by calculating mathematically how to reach the end result. The fastest time was 6.77 seconds by a kid named Feliks Zemdegs. He literally spent every day twisting and turning this little toy until completing it became simple. How fast he could do it then became the main challenge.”

Gabriel
jumbles up the cube. He looks at the time: 4:30. He quickly starts working on solving it. Just as the time reads 4:31, he completes it. His face remains calm, unmoved.
Gabriel
tosses the cube to me. The colors are scattered once again.

“Let’s see if you can beat his own record,” Gabriel says. “Michael helped you to release your locked away emotions, which makes it now possible to unlock that brain power of yours. Ever since you switched that light on inside that noggin of yours, you have been experiencing minor percussions. Being in a one track mind for so long will do that to a person. It’s hard to control those thoughts and feelings all piling in at once. Eventually, it causes a big pile up! To some people that is called being bipolar.”

Did he just call me bipolar?

“It can be a little overwhelming, I’m sure. The traffic flow inside your central nervous system is getting bogged down. Ergo, the reasons behind your short temper and dismissive moods. One of my jobs for today is to be your crossing guard. Meaning getting that heavy flow of traffic inside your fragile little mind in order. That’s where the Rubik cube comes in. It will center your focus on to one object, making it easier for your thoughts and feelings to sort themselves out quicker from all the concentration your putting forth. Simple science.”

He mostly just told me that he is trying to fix my bipolar disorder. That is what he just said to me. I think I want to strangle him, though that would just prove his point even further.

“I know what you’re thinking, Pinocchio, but clipping your strings doesn’t mean you can walk on your own just yet. It’s a slow, painful, and at times, a boring process to get you fully up to speed. That’s why we have this system in place. So let me do my job before we have another bipolar outburst on our hands. Okay? Great. Let’s get that traffic a moving, starting with you working on that Rubik’s cube.”

Gabriel goes back to his cereal bowl while jabbering on to himself about the food industry and complaining about Big Mac prices rising ten cents.

I look at the cube and then up at Gabriel. He’s toying with me, just like the other angels. I just stare at him, unmoved. Gabriel slurps away the last remaining milk in the bowl, taking his sweet time. I sit back, annoyed at the questions that still aren’t answered.

“So...What’s for breakfast?” Gabriel says, throwing away his empty bowl.

I reach into the bowl on the living room table, pick up an apple, and throw it hard to
Gabriel
, who simply catches it and puts it in his coat pocket. “I will save that for later.”

I look down at the cube still in my hand and begin to rearrange it.

“As you already know, we can only help you to a certain point. I cannot tell you anything about your past life or the secret to getting you out of here. But I can help you open your eyes enough to see the flaws this world hides,” Gabriel says, nodding his head toward the mirror. “You saw me where I never was and where I could not be. And yet, within that very place, my face you often see.”

He takes out the 8 pictures that Michael took yesterday and hands them to me. I look at the first one being a picture of my bathroom.

“8 pictures. 8 flaws.”

Confused, I look back at the bathroom mirror, repeating over the riddle in my head.
My face you often see….reflection?
I think.

Gabriel
looks at the mirror and back at me. I look over at the mirror as well, but all I see is my reflection. He takes the picture from my hand and forces it in my face.