Black Neon

by Tony O'Neill

  Sonny looked over to Genesis, his brow knotting as he took in her pale skin and the hand wrapped in bloody bandages. “I know all about this one, too,” he said darkly. “You better come in. Mama’s entertaining in the main room.”

  Mama Z’s place was small and the smell of garlic, cumin and incense permeated the air. Genesis followed Lupita inside. They found themselves in a sitting room that was as cramped and dimly lit as the rest of the house. There were two couches, and an ancient TV/VHS combo tucked away in a corner. Genesis looked around the room. Images of Death were everywhere: grinning skeletons glared at her from all corners, draped in white or red robes, large and small, scythes in hand. Some of them stood on globes, and others held hourglasses or owls in their hands. Some had dollar bills and cigarettes crammed in between their fingers and toes, forming the centrepieces of ramshackle altars where offerings and petitions were made to these strange deities. The statues, flickering votive candles, and framed pictures that filled this tiny living room all carried this same foreboding image.

  Sitting on one of the couches was an old white man, skeletal and deathly pale. In the flickering candlelight he looked like a corpse – his cheeks sucked in so that there were just hollows underneath his slit eyes. His toothless mouth was shriveled up underneath a hooknose. He was slowly lurching forward, deep into a smack nod. When his head almost touched his knees he jerked up again, muttering sleepily to himself. After a few seconds he began the slow process of collapsing in on himself again. On the other couch was a man who was so badly disfigured that at first glance you couldn’t even tell his race. Underneath the scars his skin may have been black, white or anything in between. The flesh of his face had been pulped so badly by some terrible accident that the skin was the colour and texture of raw chuck steak. Next to him was a little old lady. Her thick white dreadlocks stuck out from her skull at crazy angles, making her head seem too big for her tiny body. Her back was turned to them, revealing a hopelessly curved spine. She was bending over the disfigured man, fixing a shot into his arm, muttering to herself in Spanish.

  Nobody said a word to interrupt this grim ritual. They just stood there observing, until the old lady slowly reached over to deposit the spent syringe into a mason jar full of pink, bloody bleach-water that sat on top of the TV set. Several other needles were in there, bobbing around in the solution. The disfigured man’s eyes glazed over and he smiled – or at least it looked as it he were trying to smile, but his facial wounds made it hard to tell. His lips looked like two hamburger patties trying to curl upwards in synchronization. Without turning around, the old lady croaked, “Lupita. It’s been a long time. I wondered when you’d get here.”

  Slowly, painfully the little woman got to her feet. She turned, and walked over to Lupita. Mama Z’s skin was dark and wrinkled. Her left eye was green and the right a milky-white, like there was a thin, translucent veil over it. She wore large hoop earrings, a gold crucifix around her neck and a loud, printed blouse with a multi-coloured leaf pattern all over it. She had several gold teeth that flashed when she spoke. She reached her hand out to Lupita. Genesis watched as Mama Z clasped her small claw-like fingers over Lupita’s hand. On each of the tiny fingers was a gold ring. The skin of the hands was parchment thin and scarred with ancient needle tracks, stretched tight over a delicate frame of bone and tendon.

  “It’s good to see you, Mama Z. This is my girl, Genesis.”

  Still light-headed from blood loss, Genesis stared at this strange old woman. Her wild, untamed hair, mismatched eyes and claw-like hands reminded Genesis of something Jim Henson might have created in one of his wilder moments. Dazed, she managed to mutter a hello. The old lady looked at her and smiled coldly.

  “Looks like you got yourself a little boo-boo, young lady. My granddaughter Duchess is a nurse. She can take a look at that for you.”

  Mama Z turned her attention back to Lupita. “You look hungry, child. Come on through to the kitchen.”

  *

  At the kitchen table, Lupita was eating a bowl of mondongo – tripe stew – that Sonny had heated up for her. Mama Z was telling Lupita about the disfigured man in the other room. It turned out that his name was Raphael, and that Lupita had known him years ago.

  “Poor Raphael,” Mama Z cooed. “He used to be such a pretty junkie. All the girls useta go crazy for him, don’t you remember, Lupe? He had that pencil moustache and those pretty eyes, almost like a girl’s. Used to have the most gorgeous caramel skin, too. Looked like Clarke Gable. But now, boy… he just a mess.”

  Lupita ate a forkful of food and nodded. Mama Z’s granddaughter, Duchess, knelt at Genesis’s feet. She was a stern young woman with an inked tear on one cheek. After fixing Genesis up with a shot of morphine Duchess wordlessly cleaned the wound out with iodine, and proceeded to sew it up expertly.

  “I can’t believe that’s the same guy. He looks… so different. I’d never have recognized him.”

  Mama Z’s face stiffened. In the half-light it created a disturbing effect, like the old woman was turning to stone in front of Genesis’s eyes. “That’s what happens when you start to leave your debts unpaid… bad luck and trouble. Poor Raphael was running up debts all over the damn neighbourhood, ever since he started hitting that pipe. Took a few beatings over it from some of the Shoreline Crips boys, but they didn’t knock no sense into him. See, until recently he’d always had enough sense to play straight with Mama Z. Then that stupid boy started gettin’ lazy. Got to the point that boy owed me almost six hundred dollars. Can you believe? The story I heard, he was holed up in some damn crack house, hitting on that crack pipe, and suddenly boom! That motherfucking pipe exploded. Just like that. Showered his face with hot glass, fucked him up good. His lighter hit the carpet, and the shit just went up. When the firefighters drag his ass out of there his face was burned up. Soon as he got out of that hospital, the first place he stops – the very first place – is Mama Z’s house to pay what he owes. He tells me he don’t want that bad luck and trouble following him no more.” Mama Z closed her eyes for a moment, and rocked back on her seat. When she opened them, the flickering votive candle on the table cast a sinister aspect on her face. Genesis could not take her eyes off of her, and forgot momentarily about Duchess’s needle as it closed up the hole in her flesh.

  “Someone like Raphael should know damn well that the dope game is controlled by spells and incantations,” Mama Z whispered. “There’s ain’t no such thing as luck. Not in a magical universe.”

  “Amen,” Lupita muttered.

  Genesis glanced over at Lupita. Her lover’s eyes were gleaming with the fanatical zeal of a true believer. The ominous feeling in her gut deepened further. A sudden, sickly thought occurred to Genesis – the old woman was mad. She was totally fucking insane. Suddenly, she sensed Mama Z’s steely gaze upon her. She made eye contact with the old woman for a fraction of a second and then felt a sudden burst of pain, as Duchess’ needle caused a jolt of electricity to race up her arm. Genesis yelped and Duchess muttered an apology before continuing to sew up the wound. Mama Z laughed a little. She rested her elbow on the table, and touched Lupita’s face with her tiny curled hand. “But enough about that foolishness. Tell me, child… what kind of trouble you two in?”

  Genesis moaned softly as Duchess finished off the stitching job. “You’re all done honey,” Duchess said. “Lemmie wrap that bad boy up for you…”

  Lupita took a deep breath. “We had a run in with someone down in Laughlin. A bruja. She took a real dislike to us, I mean we tried to keep things cool, but the night before we left she put some kinda hex on us. I saw the evidence with my own eyes. Ever since we ran across her our luck has been running cold. Genesis got herself shot. We killed some lady. By accident… ”

  Mama Z nodded.

  “I see. Duchess hon, you mind getting me my things?”

  Without a word, Duchess left the kitchen and returned moments later with a heavy
, leather-bound King James Bible. She placed it in front of Mama Z then resumed kneeling silently at her grandmother’s feet. Genesis watched in silence as the old lady opened the book, and for a moment she thought Mama Z was about to lead them in prayer or some other hokey shit.

  What came next threw Genesis off completely.

  The pages of the bible had been glued together, and sections had been cut out of them, to form a stash box. Inside was a carbon-scarred dessert spoon, a leather tourniquet, an ancient looking glass and steel syringe, and a baggie of white powder. Mama Z handed Duchess the syringe. Without saying a word she took it over to the wall, where a holy water dispenser with an image of the sacred heart of Jesus was affixed. She drew a measure of the holy water into the syringe and returned to the table. Meanwhile Mama Z dumped a generous amount of the white powder into the spoon. She took the syringe, squirted out the holy water, and used the long nail of her pinkie finger to stir the solution until the powder had completely dissolved. As she did this she muttered a prayer in Spanish.

  “Lupe, what is she–?”

  Lupita elbowed Genesis hard in the ribs. Genesis quieted down, and looked balefully at Lupita. Lupita was oblivious to her, staring at Mama Z with an intensity that unnerved Genesis greatly. She reluctantly turned her attention back to the old woman who was now drawing the solution up into the syringe. The old woman turned her eyes up to the ceiling and tilted her head back, exposing her leathery, wrinkled neck.

  “Dios te salve, Maria….” The old woman muttered as she slid the needle into her neck, “Llena eres de gracia: El Señor es contigo….”

  Here she paused, drawing the plunger back a little with her weird, claw-like fingers. In the half-light, Genesis saw the clear solution turn crimson as blood flooded the barrel. “Bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres…. Y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre…” The old woman slowly pushed the solution home and hissed, “Jesús!”

  She stiffened. Duchess reached up and gently removed the syringe from the old woman’s neck. She quickly mopped up the dark blood that trickled from the puncture wound with a paper towel. Genesis watched in silent horror as the old woman’s eyes turned up in her skull and her whole body began to twitch and convulse. Genesis tried to stand but both Duchess and Lupita reached out at once, placing their hands on her shoulders, holding her in place.

  “Shhh… it’s okay,” Lupita whispered, “Just be quiet.”

  They stayed like that for what felt like an eternity, watching the old woman tremble and twitch at the table, drool hanging from her puckered asshole of a mouth, until the convusions slowed, her shrivelled-up old body giving the occasional jolt and shudder before finally relaxing into stillness. When it was over, Mama Z was slumped over in her seat. Genesis was convinced the old woman was dead.

  Duchess cooed, and gently ran her fingers through the old woman’s hair. She turned to Lupita and said, “It’s good. I can take care of Mama now. Sonny has a room fixed up for you.” The old woman just slumped there; chin lying on her chest, not moving at all. “Mama left some stuff for you on the bedside cabinet. There’s some clean works, too…”

  Once they were safely squared away in Sonny’s room, they fixed the dope Mama Z had left for them and lay back on the bed.

  “Howzat hand feeling?”

  “The hand? Fuck the hand. You wanna tell me exactly what the fuck that whole performance was about? I just watched a ninety-year-old woman shoot a bunch of fucking coke, have a seizure, and everybody just sat around staring at her like she was doing a fucking magic trick. What the fuck was that?”

  Lupita smiled dreamily. “You make it sound so… seedy. She wasn’t shooting coke. Mama Z ain’t no junkie. She’s has a gift. That’s how she communicates with the spirit world. She’s gotta put herself in a trance. It’s the only way she can help us, hun.”

  “And you believe that?”

  “Yeah. I do.” Anger had started to creep into Lupita’s voice so Genesis changed tack.

  “But, I mean… are you sure she’s okay? She looked like she might need help. Like a doctor or something?”

  “Mama Z’s fine. I seen her do this a million times. Don’t worry.” Lupita leaned over and kissed Genesis’ neck, lightly.

  “Lupe, you gotta see it from my point of view. This is some pretty weird shit.”

  “I guess. I don’t see how it’s any weirder than people turning water into wine, or lining up in church to eat the blood and flesh of Jesus, though.”

  “I find that shit weird too. But at least nobody’s having convulsions.”

  “I told you. It wasn’t a convulsion. Think of it like… meditating, okay?”

  Genesis nodded sourly, but decided to keep her mouth shut. All she really wanted to do, now that her hand was sewn up, was get the hell out of this nuthouse as quickly as possible.

  Looking again at the grinning skulls all around her, Genesis sat up gingerly and said, “And another thing… what’s with all these fuckin’ skeletons everywhere? This place looks like a spook house.”

  “Keep your voice down, the walls are thin in here.” Lupita whispered, “Mama Z belongs to the church of Santa Muerte, La Señora de las Sombras. She’s a very powerful Saint, patron saint of night people… musicians, prostitutes, bar workers, drug dealers…”

  “You said she?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So Death is a woman?”

  “Of course. She can protect against violent death, she can also intercede in matters of the heart… and she can even bring about death so long as it’s in the name of righteousness. She’s worshipped mostly by the powerless. The poor.” Lupita smiled cynically. “Of course she’s not recognized by the Church. Not officially. But Santa Muerte is real… she’s kind of an outlaw Saint.”

  Genesis examined the professional bandage job on her hand. Sleepy from the effect of the shot, she nuzzled into Lupita’s neck and muttered faintly: “A female, outlaw Saint. I guess that’s appropriate, at least.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  As he turned down Wilcox toward the Gilbert Hotel Randal felt a twinge of apprehension. It had been a long time since he had been face-to-face with his old friend, Jeffrey. He felt edgy and irritable and – although he refused to admit it to himself – Randal knew damn well that mild amphetamine withdrawal was partly to blame for his raw nerves. He had resolved to cut down on his Adderall intake, following his discovery that he had burned through almost sixty pills in the last couple of weeks. If he couldn’t control his intake of prescription stimulants then he realized that that whole AA philosophy of having to admit powerlessness over your addiction had more merit than he had previously allowed. This was a possibility that Randal truly could not tolerate. Better to suffer through his cold turkey, refusing all the while to admit what it was, than to submit to that most dangerous concept of all: powerlessness.

  He took a gulp of his diet Dr Pepper as he drifted past the Mark Twain Hotel, a hangover gnawing at the base of his skull. He’d tried to compensate for the lack of pills by drinking a half-litre of cheap vodka last night, and now he felt shaky and ill. The flat soda rested uneasily in his gurgling stomach. Craning his neck for an empty meter, he silently reflected on just how far – or not – he and his old partner in crime had come in the past twelve months. For Jeffrey, the distance could be visualized as less than a city block. He had moved out from the dump with the deceptively literary name and straight into the no-more-palatial environment of the Gilbert. This virtually identical fleabag hotel was within crawling distance of the first. Although Randal had never set foot inside the Gilbert, from the outside at least it looked like a sister to the Mark Twain: a sun-bleached slab of ugly concrete with crumbling signage. A den for drug addicts on the skids, trick-turning whores, and lost souls near the bottom of society’s ladder.

  To go along with his geographic stasis, it seemed that the rest of Jeffrey’s life was in a similar state of limbo. H
e was obviously still strung out. Judging from the condition of the spectre that Randal had spotted shuffling down Hollywood Boulevard a few months ago, he was in worse physical shape than ever.

  Pulling up behind an idling pick-up truck, Randal reluctantly allowed himself to ponder his own journey these past twelve months. It was an uncomfortable thought. Another stint in rehab, pitiful finances, miserable months of boredom and sobriety, an expanding waistline and a receding hairline… night after night spent gorging on take-out Mexican in his shitty apartment, his only respite jerking off like a crazed baboon to internet porn. When he wasn’t eating or masturbating he was working a soul-destroying day gig, attending AA meetings and hating his own guts for what he had become. He was drinking out of necessity, depending on booze as a crutch to support him through the mind-numbing tedium of his day-to-day routine. It was perfectly obvious to Randal that he had morphed into One Of Them: a schmo. A regular Joe. A real asshole. Even his drugs of choice these days hammered home the extent of his downward spiral. He here was, Randal P. Earnest, a man who thought of himself as the outlaw black sheep of the Earnest clan, abusing prescription pills and alcohol like every other dull, lifeless, unimaginative Hollywood asshole out there.

  In treatment he had always held a special kind of distain for those who found themselves strung out on doctors’ prescriptions. He felt it showed a lack of moxie. When he was in treatment he’d noticed that the people who’d found themselves taking dozens of Oxycontin a day usually looked down upon the heroin addicts and the speedfreaks as being junkie scum. It was a baffling and disgusting example of drug-snobbery. Randal disparagingly thought of the pill freaks as the kind of weak, coddled junkies who were just too soft to make it out on the street. He didn’t even want to dwell on how he’d once looked down on the drinkers, a group he could never relate to in all his years of ping-ponging in and out of rehab. Although Randal came from the kind of privilege that could have easily ensured he’d never once have to leave Beverly Hills, it gave him a special feeling of pride to know that he could make it among the whores, gang bangers and street-crazies that populated the city’s underbelly.