The Great Cleansing Fire

-“There are two kinds of people in this world, the ones who ate the paste in grade school, and the ones who didn’t.”-

You wake up every morning at 6:45am.

You hit the snooze button and have those nine glorious minutes of reflection.

Those nine minutes of fake sleep where you decide if today is the day where you put a gun to your head and end the madness.

You think you’re going crazy.

You think you’re losing your mind.

You think you've been seeing ghosts.

Today is Monday.

You tell yourself today will be like every other day before the insanity.

Before finding the not so cryptic message scrawled in the remains of a broken jar of mustard on the cheap cracked vinyl of your kitchen floor.

Before the two words appeared, every morning, in the steam from your shower on your bathroom mirror.

Before the vandalism of your personal possessions.

Before the nightmares started.

Today is Monday.

Today everything will be different.

You rise to the incessant bleating of the alarm clock. The piercing ring drilling its way through your skull into the fleshy grey matter below, finding it’s way to the centre where all your secrets lay.

You consider smashing the alarm clock to pieces.

You consider bashing the alarm clock off of your head.

But today is Monday, and it’s already 6:54am, and you still haven’t showered.

**********

This is where you do your best thinking, the hot water splashes in your face, wiping away the nightmarish visions, not unlike the sleep that sticks in the corners of your eyes, and you begin to feel better.

Your best thinking is done in the shower, that enclosed space, that warm water, that lack of clothing.

Feelings of comfort.

Feelings of safety.

Memories of the womb.

And this is where you begin to think that everything will turn out okay.

This is where your lost hopes of sanity begin to rebuild once again.

As you rinse the shampoo from your hair, this is where you decide that you can continue on for one more day.

You begin to feel more alert. You feel refreshed. It’s 7:19am, and it’s time to brush your teeth.

You exit the shower; the cold air caresses you, causing goose bumps to form on your exposed skin.

Memories of birth.

It is time to brush your teeth and the mirror is completely fogged up.

Not one letter marring its surface.

Not one word exposing your image.

You begin the process of brushing your teeth.

You’ve done this so many times that a mirror is no longer required.

You raise your head from the sink; cold water dripping from your face, and this is where you once again see the two words painstakingly traced in the steam on your mirror.

The two words, which look to be written with a shaky hand, they appear to scream at you.

And this is where you begin to scream back.

**********

You arrive forty-five minutes early for work. After the scene in the bathroom you needed to get out of that house. You threw on some clothes, ran your fingers through your wet hair and jumped in your gas guzzling SUV, leaving behind the mess, the fright, and your ID badge.

The security guard gave you a hard time this morning. He’s new. He’s just doing his job.

“Can I see your ID pass please?”

You tell him you forgot it at home.

You tell him you’ve worked here for three years.

You tell him you think your house is possessed by some evil spirit that leaves threatening messages and there is no way you’re going to go back to get your ID badge.

“I’ll need your full name, department number and two pieces of photo identification.”

As you hand the security guard your license and health card, you tell him your name.

You tell him your department number is thirteen six sixty-six.

You tell him to keep the change.

As he disengages the electronic locks on the main door, you tell him to have a nice day, and into the building you go.

With thirty-nine minutes to spare you decide to take full advantage of the empty building and sit down for some high quality business Internet access.

You search for witches.

You search for ghosts.

You search for poltergeists, phantoms and spooks.

You search for exorcists.

You’re breaking the code of conduct.

You’re using business equipment for personal use.

Time seems to disappear and before you know it the clock strikes 9am and it is time to begin your day.

**********

Sitting in front of your computer, losing yourself in your work, it’s easy to believe that you never really saw those dreadful words marked into the steam on your mirror.

It’s easy to deny yourself the knowledge that the glass frames that encase your diplomas, awards and acknowledgements have been shattered.

You can tell yourself that you did not really see your name hastily scratched out on your diplomas.

You can pretend that your name was not replaced by another name written in a third graders determined printing.

With a job like this it is easy to lie to yourself about anything.

Working hard, barely thinking, you are almost one with Zen when the fire alarm shatters that euphoric state and you begin to understand that today your life as you know it will change forever.

The overhead sprinklers open up and millions of dollars of office equipment becomes useless paperweights.

You’re clothes stick to your skin like used chewing gum to the bottom of a shoe.

You’re hair is matted to your head not unlike that of a wet dog.

The building evacuates as you continue to stare at the computer screen.

Today has definitely not been the best of days.

**********

As you climb dripping wet into your gas guzzling SUV, the fire chief wants to speak with you.

A police detective asks you not to leave town for a couple of days.

Your boss tells you to take the next two weeks off.

As you drive away from your now previous place of employment, the burning building reflects in your rear-view mirror, and you can’t help but think that somehow this is your entire fault.

You had decided to move into a nice little house by the lake. A little house with an unreasonably cheap sticker price, and now whatever poltergeist has taken residence there seems to be following you around and causing destruction wherever you go.

This isn’t the first time a building has been burned that you frequented.

There was that café last week.

The café that burned to the ground in the middle of the afternoon while you were on your lunch break.

The café where you went to unwind.

Where your stress melted away.

Where you were able to feel at piece with yourself.

Now nothing remains but cinders and ash.

And they used to make such a great cup o’ Joe.

**********

You find yourself with the rest of the day to loaf around.

You don’t want to go back to that house.

You don’t want to stop for any extended period of time anywhere.

You want to keep driving, but the phone number scratched down onto the back of a slightly charged office memo weighs heavily in your pocket.

You find yourself, not under your own accord, swinging your SUV over four lanes of traffic and parking it illegally next to a pay telephone booth.

The angry sounds of motorists pass by as you drop a quarter into the slot.

Horns honk and curses fly through the air like a stone skipping across a lake as you dial the ten digits printed on the memo. A memo that is slightly curled around the edges from the intense heat of the fire that consumed what once was your place of employment.

On the seventh ring a police cruiser with lights flashing stops behind your SUV.

On the eleventh ring the officer exits the vehicle.

On the twenty-first ring the officer is taping on the Plexiglas covering of the phone booth.

On the twenty-ninth ring two extra cruisers surround your vehicle.

On the thirty-second ring you are being pulled from the phone booth with the receiver tightly gripped in your right hand.

On the thirty-fifth ring you hear Madam Zelda’s voice as the phone is forcefully disengaged from your hand.

“Hello Madam Zelda Speaking how may I assist you?”

As you struggle to get back to the phone you yell out to Madam Zelda.

“Hello?”

As the pepper spray blinds your vision and clots in your throat you cry out to the phone that you need help.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

As the officers wrestle you to the ground you hear Madam Zelda curse in Russian as she hangs up the phone.

**********

In the movies you see the person that gets hauled in by the police requesting their one phone call.

In real life this never happens

In real life the police badger you for hours.

In real life the only time you get your one phone call is after they throw the book at you.

In your case you’ve been charged with obstructing traffic.

You’ve been charged with driving too fast.

You’ve been charge for an expired sticker.

Resisting arrest.

Striking an officer.

None of this will stick.

Your burning red eyes are still watering from the pepper spray the officer so generously applied to your face.

What they want to pin you with is Arson.

**********

You sit on a cold steel bed staring at your shoeless feet in a three-by-six room.

Next to the blue painted cold steel bed, a bed with numerous half inch in diameter holes punched through it, stands a stainless steel sink and toilet combination.

You begin to think if you ever get out of here you might have an idea how you would like to redecorate your bedroom at home.

“Hey number twelve, what are ya in for?”

You pretend not to hear the whispering creepy voice.

You look out through the Plexiglas covering; a covering streaked with unknown substances, through the barred door to the empty cell across form yours.

“ I know your in there Twelve, I can hear ya talking to yourself”

You look at your shoelace less shoes outside the cell door.

The voice echoes down the halls, through the cells, in your head.

A resemblance of a voice of someone you once knew.

"What ‘cha in for Twelve"

You mutter quietly to the voice that you didn’t do anything.

Laughter bursts from all around you, like the horn of a passing transport truck on the highway.

"Keep it quite!” yells an unseen guard, bringing silence once again to the entire lower level of the Police Station.

You turn in your cell facing the cold steel you'll be sleeping on.

“I know what secrets you hold Twelve” the whispering voice calls out to you as you lower your head and close your burning eyes.

**********

You’re awakened by intense heat coming threw the walls of your cell like cheese through a grater.

Opening your eyes you feel them stick; much heavier than normal, light flickers and dances off of the glistening slick cell walls behind you.

You turn your head to look into the hallway: fire consumes everything. The Plexiglas covering slowly drips down the bars of the cell door. The toilet water boils and steam pours out of the taps on the sink.

Suddenly a gigantic face looms up out of the fire, made of fire, burning with hatred, those eyes seem to pierce your soul.

A voice like the sound of snakes and screams of death and fire penetrates your mind, creating an intense searing white-hot blinding pain behind your eyes.

“GET OUT!”

As the capillaries in your nose burst and bright red blood flows over your lips and down your chin, the face made of flames reaches out to you. The heat licks at your face singeing away your eyelashes as darkness overtakes you. Falling through darkness the voice continues to sneer at you.

“GET OUT!”

You’re spinning and falling and it’s dark, so dark.

“GET OUT!”

**********

“GET UP!”

Startled awake you roll off of the cold steel bed and your chin comes to rest on the side of the stainless steel toilet, as the guard is yelling at you from cell door while rapping a stick across the bars.

Your jaws snap shut, blood oozes out of your mouth and drips into the toilet water, and you stare in disbelief as a small pink section of meat bobs up to mix with the blood.

“You better not make me come in there sweetheart, cause it won’t be pretty if I do.”

Using the edge of the toilet as support you get to your shaky knees and turn towards the guard.

“Bumped your chin did yah sweetheart, oh well, it’s time for your phone call.”

Straightening your wrinkled clothes, still damp from yesterday’s fire alarm, you let the guard lead you down the corridor. Looking around at the empty cells you ask the guard where the other prisoners are.

“Nobody in here but you and me sweetheart, now hurry up you got ten minutes.” The guard shoves you into a closet like room, a room containing only a small scarred wooden table and an old rotary phone encased in cracked black plastic, and slams the door in your face.

**********

The table you sit at is covered in names of those who were here before you.

Cigarette burns are intermingled with obscenities scratched into the wooden table.

‘Tim was here 4:7 1999’

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

‘So was Matt 6:3 1999’

…do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

Ezekiel says – the time is now 22:19

Yes, I will gather you and blow on you with the fire of my wrath, and you shall be melted in its midst.

Matt was here again 6:34 (am)

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

You carve your name absently minded into the table with your fingernail.

Never sign your name anywhere, for you shall always return to read it again.

You pick up the cheap plastic phone and dial the first number that comes to mind.

The phone crackles in your ear.

On the fourth ring you are about to hang up when a voice, sounding freshly woken up, and non too happy about it answers.

“Madame Zelda, how may I serve you”?

You tell her you have a problem.

You tell her you are being haunted.

You tell her you are being framed.

You tell her right now your sitting in a jail cell and you need her help.

The sound of the phone being heavily slammed in its cradle rings in your ear and the phone goes dead.

**********