The Smell of Sulfur

A monologue

 

When Scott Sullivan did a visualization exercise the first week of the NWAWP, he started us out in a dark place and led us out into the sunlight.  I never got out of that dark place, which was my grandmother’s basement.  While this monologue is fiction, much of the setting is not.  I have vivid memories of my grandmother’s “collections” and eccentric behavior.  After the quick write, I went home and obsessed over this piece.  It should be read aloud with a southern drawl.

 

 

I can’t see nothin. I hate it when she makes me come down here. Melissa only gets a whoopin and I gots to go to the basement. She always liked my Aunt Jimmie better than my momma, and that’s why I reckon she does that.  I’d rather go cut my own switch and let her hit me with it. It would be fast. It wouldn’t be so scary. I dig around in my hidin place, and find a match. I strike it on the bricks and light the candle, the smell of sulfur fills my nose and makes my eyes water. Flickerin in the yellow light I see a pair of eyes staring at me.

 

Don’t look.

 

I looked.

 

There’s an arm, a leg, a green plastic eyeball. I hate that box so much. I dream about it. One of these days, I’m gonna set it on fire and watch em melt. I know it’s there, I know to reckon it, but every time she puts me in here, I feel the terror wellin up inside me and I know the doll parts are going to come alive like they do in my dreams, they are gonna turn back into whole babies, and they are gonna kill me. They’re gonna wrap their plastic hands around my neck and zap my eyeballs like that alien did in that TV show.

 

Melissa made me do it. It wasn’t my fault. She told me to go into grandma’s purse and get the five dollars out of it. If I did it, she would buy me gum, she said. If I didn’t, she was going to lock me in the other scary room, the attic at the top of the stairs. She’ll do it too. She’s done it before, and she leaves me there longer than grandma leaves me down here.

 

After I snuck in grandmas room and past her snorin with her Bible open to the Book of Revelation, and stole that five dollar bill, we walked down the dusty road to the corner store, swattin the flies, and Melissa bought cigarettes, a coke, and a candy bar. She said since she was 14 and I was nine, she got to spend most of the money, even though I stole it. She let me buy one piece of gum. It was sweet and felt sorta chalky in my mouth and it made me feel strong cause my mouth was busy and the devil couldn’t get in. But grandma caught us. We were sittin on the rusty old porch swing that creaked every time you moved. Melissa was swingin back and forth back and forth back and forth real fast like she always does, and I was scared that swing was gonna crash, and wake up grandma. Melissa was smoking her cigarette, and grandma stormed outside, her whole tiny body takin up all the air on the porch.  For one whole minute, nothin moved.  “Where’s my money you little devils?” She screamed in her husky voice.  She saw our treasure, smelled Melissa’s cigarette that was thrown in the pile of tin cans and told Melissa to go get a switch. She turned with her black hair and black eyes flashing with fury, grabbed my arm, brought me here and locked the door.

 

I hate her.

I hate this place.

I want to burn those babies.

 

At the beginnin of the summer when she started puttin me in the “naughty place” I started collectin things to put in here when she wasn’t lookin. I would go out to feed the chickens, terrified of their squawks and gross heads and their evil zombie eyes, and I would well up all the courage I had in me to put my diary and my Bible down here.  I also brought my Hello Kitty pencil that Debbie gave me on the last day of school, the matches, and the candles.

 

I try not to look at the box of baby doll limbs, but it is almost scarier, cause if I don’t keep an eye on them, they will form together and come to eat me. I know they will.  Stupid ripped up babies. Why are they here? Who needs baby dolls that are all ripped up? That one doll head with the green eye had better stop lookin at me, or I’m gonna have to take its other eye out. Maybe I’ll burn em. If I burn em, maybe she will spank me, or maybe she will think Melissa did it. She’s always settin things on fire.

 

At least the China dolls are gone now. She made em with her own hands, and her momma made some of em too. I’m pretty sure if you stuck a pin in'm, someone would scream somewhere. I used to like em until that time we were at the Girls Club and they turned off all the lights and told that story about how the China Dolls came to life and grew dagger fingernails and scratched the wall to tell you they were comin and then they killed you.

 

What’s that sound?

 

I hate it here.

I hate her.

 

One time when it was hot as a witch’s tit outside, she put me in here and I started yellin at them China Dolls. I hate you, you monsters! Get out Devil! You ain’t welcome here! In the name of Jesus be gone!  And I sucked all my scared inside of me and I picked up the china doll that looked like the pictures of my grandma when she was little. Her clothes fell apart in my hands and suddenly I didn’t have no fear, and I smashed its head against the pipes, and I laughed so hard. Then it all washed back over me- all my scared, and I picked up all those pieces of her head and I cried. I hid her head pieces all over the dank dim room. I put some of her head in the pile of mattresses. Some of it in the pile of aluminum cans. Some of it in the musty bag of blue jeans grandma was collectin. I found a shovel and dug a hole in the cool dirt floor and buried her body. I put her tiny hand in my pocket so that when Satan came down here and called her up she couldn’t grow her fingernails into knives and slice me up the way grandma cuts those chicken heads off.  Not long after I killed that China Doll, Grandma took the others into her room.

 

Last year when momma left me here so she could go on a trip with my new daddy, Melissa made me stay up late one night and watch this movie about aliens from space who came down to America. They grew themselves in these pods that looked like pine cones, but they were slimy. It was in black and white but I knew that slime was green like that stuff I put my lick-um sticks into. Well, those aliens took the place of real people. The real people just disappeared, and then there was an alien who looked like them instead. I know that’s what happened to my grandma. That’s when she started goin to garage sales and buyin mattresses and lunchboxes and records and tea sets and all kinds of other junk she didn’t have no use for and decorating her yard and her basement with it in big piles that the snakes like to slither through on hot August days. That’s when her eyes got all blank inside and she started screamin about all the sinnin we were doin and how the devil was in us and we was gonna burn in hell unless we begged God for forgiveness.  If grandpa was still alive, she wouldn’ta gotten switched cause he woulda whipped those aliens with his leather belt the way he whipped Melissa when her breath smelled like beer.

 

I wanna burn those babies.

Where is the baby with the green eye?

Where did she go?

 

The fear is takin me agin.  It starts where my heart is and rolls through me like a pickup truck till it gets to my toes.  I start to shake like that old lady at church with the Bible in her hand.

 

That baby with the green eye was just here. I saw her. I been watchin her. Where is she? I start lookin around the room for her floatin head, my mouth feels like a desert, and then…

 

Its black as night.

 

For one whole second, I think I’m gonna explode before I realize it was just my candle that went out.  Then, I remember that there is a baby head floatin around this room! I reach my shaky hand into my hidin place and strike the match against the brick. The smell of sulfur makes my eyes water and makes me feel safer, and I walk over to those baby dolls, and drop the match into the box.