SPIRALING DOWN TOWARDS BLACK BY MARGARET O'NEAL
March, 2005
Leviticus paints houses on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the money’s good, but he may have to give it up soon. He pours a glass of rum for his girl Doris and starts in on the day‘s discovery. “Do… Do… Doris…. I uh, I well… damned fumes… they’re killing… killing people.” His voice trails off, and Doris leans in to hear. Perched on the edge of the sofa with the glass in her hand, she downs it in one gulp and teeters back and forth, smiling. She giggles, and it makes him so goddamned mad. She isn’t listening, goddamn it, so he says louder, “Killing Dor-- it’s killing.” He shakes his finger, her eyes are closing, and nausea rises in his throat, takes a left turn and he clutches his stomach. “Me,” he roars. He feels of his head.
Goddamned nail being pushed through his brain. He holds his left ear, tries to push any important brain lint back in, to the back of his head where it might do some good. Leviticus, born under a black star, he needs something good to happen. He turns his hands over and over, touching icy palms and his sweat-soaked skin.
Doris hiccups. She falls backwards, and her head runs red from being smacked against the hardwood floor, and Leviticus wants to help her up, but he is leaning against the sofa and his legs hurts, his heart is cartwheeling, and he just can’t be the gentleman tonight. Otherwise he would open a door for her. Any door, anywhere, anytime. He looks down, loving this girl even with piss streaming out of her, staining his newly cleaned floor. He shouldn’t have mopped so early in the day, normally didn’t, not before the mess of their daily pint, but what with this decision to quit the paint business, he has seen the need to soften up Doris. He mumbles to himself, “Dor, she’ll piss again when she finds out.” The rent’s due tomorrow, and he spent his last dollar on the liquor today, and fuck, why did she have to quit her job just yesterday?
Her arms flayed at an odd angle makes him wonder how, but the rest of the sentence falls out his ear, goddamn it, so he just blows her a kiss. “Tomorrow, baby, tomorr.” It hurts to close his eyes, but he makes the effort.
Goddamned conspiracy, these paint companies making it so… honest men can’t make a living… He wants to take care of his girl, to treat her like a queen, the same way the clean living men do in the houses he paints, but all Leviticus can do these days is find his way to the liquor store and pour straight down to the arrow going down his gullet.
He opens his eyes and looks at her. “Dor,“ he rasps. She doesn’t turn her head, and he wonders if she’s uncomfortable at that angle. He tries to get up, but falls back. Every action is work. Too much effort. Something thumps against the hardwood floor and he looks at Doris again who’s jerking and flailing against the floor, and then he puts it all together. “God damn it, he’s going to sue that beauty parlor where Doris works, poisoning her with all those goddamned hair coloring fumes and poisons.”
He burps up the last of the rum, and watches Dor’s blood spread out across the floor. He tries to call out to her, to get her to stir, but not in time, not before a door closes which steals the light -- his own dwindling light. Wrapped in black, Leviticus loses sight of the way back. “Too much… damn trouble…”
His eyes close, and his chest rises and falls with each rasping breath.
Margaret O'Neal lives in Georgia. She is to to be published in an upcoming issue of Monday Night magazine and has work in various Internet zines such as Polyphony, Bluemag.com, Story Garden, and The Dead Mule. A sometime playwright, she has had two performances of "The Letter L," in Buffalo, New York by the Colloquial Theatre and by an adult education class in Rome Italy.