the Rabbit Hole (The Queen)

The doctors could never figure out what had brought on Doloris's coma. Every couple of months, one of them would visit her for a re-diagnosis, but her file, each time, always said the same thing: "inconclusive".1

Christopher knew what was wrong. He told the doctors each time, but they never wrote it down. They always just said "inconclusive" and never "driven mad by housework", because that's what it was.2

Of course.3

Christopher could see it happening. Doloris was a good wife; in fact she was too good. Ever since her collapse, he had tried to keep up with all the chores she'd used to do, and he was, each day, amazed by the capacity that his woman had had. When she was awake, the house was always clean. He wasn't sure how she'd managed; there was just so much to do. In the kitchen, all he saw any more was cooking, and dishes, and a refridgerator to stock, and new tiled floor to mop and scrub. In the living room there was carpet to vacuum, and shades to dust, and furniture to polish, and couch cushions to shampoo and fluff. In the bedroom there were clothes to wash, and a floor to sweep, and rugs to beat, and a lonely bed to make one side of each and every morning.4

Christopher missed her. God, how he missed her. Sometimes he'd think he was done with everything and collapse, exhausted and weeping, onto the floor next to the bed she occupied. He'd beg her to wake up, but she never did.5

The doctors said she never would. Inconclusively, of course.6

And so he began bargaining with her.7

Doloris had always liked gifts. Christopher would come home from work with little presents for her, sometimes; just little trinkets to delight his darling wife. It was never much; perhaps a flower or two, or a cheap paperback, or something pretty and brightly colored to wear in her hair. He remembered that she particularly liked red roses, so he bought a dozen, set them at her bedside, and waited.8

He waited for hours, just staring at her, only moving to occasionally stretch his aching back, only speaking in soft, barely perceptible whispers: 9

".....Please...."10

He fell asleep there that night, sitting at her bedside, until the brilliant red light of morning invaded the room, and the chimes of the grandfather clock called Christopher to work.11

When he returned that day, he was carrying a painting. Doloris had always been a fan of art; particularly large illustrations of fruit or, her favorite, flowers. This was a oil rendition of a garden, all awash in the crimson of the velvet canvas. He put it on the wall of her room, centered directly in front of her bed, and he sat in the little blue chair he always sat in, and he waited.12

"......Please..."13

Hours passed. Christopher knew he should have been doing housework, but what if Doloris were to wake up while he was working? Even if it were only for a moment, he was terrified he'd miss it. There was something he wanted to tell her, and if she heard it, he was sure she'd wake up. They were words he'd hardly ever uttered in the past, but whenever he did they'd always brought a smile to her face, and smoothed over the rough edges of any situation.14

".......Please...." he said again, and "I love you."15

Doloris's eyes fluttered briefly and then, suddenly, opened. "Red," she said. She smiled as she drifted off again.16

Two months later, the room was filled with fresh roses. Christopher had painted the walls red, but only glimpses of his work were visible under the multitude of paintings. The one he'd bought first, with the garden and all the scarlet flowers, he moved to the left side of the room. In its place, directly in front of Doloris's bed, was the custom velvet painting he'd had made at the little corner store he walked past on his way to work.17

It was red on black; big scarlet letters splashed across the background like the scene of a crime.18

"I love you," they said.19

And Christopher did.20

".....Please...."21

Outside the melancholy red room of Doloris, the house was filthy. Mold crept along the kitchen floor, stemming from a puddle of water that pooled around the sink from a broken pipe. The living room was thick with dust and covered with miscellaneous litter and scattered papers. The bedroom was a wasteland of dirty clothing and spiders, the lonely bed now only a mattress sporting a single pillow. Christopher felt hopeless to stop the encroaching entropy of filth he was wallowing in, but he knew she'd clean it up. If only she'd awake, all aglow with a new perm and a smile instead of bedsores and flaky patches of dead skin.22

"Please...." he said again. The word had become Christopher's mantra, lately; a chant he'd invoke during the ritual of waking Doloris. He'd get home from work, throw his tie on the couch, bring his wife whatever gift he'd bought her that day, clean her room (and her room alone), and then whisper his single lamenting syllable to her until the next morning, punctuated only by the occasional "I love you".23

It was a sunny day in July when she finally awoke.24

Christopher had stopped going to work, by then. The telephone occasionally rang, and it annoyed him, so he unplugged it. He hadn't showered since he found several dead mice in the bathtub, and he now got up only to trudge across a clear path to the toilet, or to eat ice cubes and whatever else he could find in the freezer. 25

He was eating frozen peas out of a dirty bowl when her eyes opened, and she muttered his name.26

"....Christopher?" Her voice creaked from her dry throat. She'd been eating the same things as her husband, for the most part, and the malnutrition coupled with being bed-ridden for so long had taken its toll on her.27

Christopher jumped to his feet and spit icey, green chunks of pea across the room. For a few moments he could only gasp, and, feeling feint, he slowly sat down again.28

"I was a Queen, Christopher. My land was eternal, and everything was lovely red." She looked about the room.29

"You are a Queen. And I love you."30

She smiled softly, but her eyes were sad. "Then why did you hit me?"31

Christopher cried then, his tears washing rivelets of dirt down his face. "I didn't mean to... Not so hard. I didn't think you'd leave me."32

"Don't cry, sweetey," Doloris said. "Sssh.. It's alright." Then, painfully and inch by inch, she sat up, her head reeling as she did. 33

Christopher continued to cry as she got herself dressed, and picked her way across the littered bedroom to pack a suitcase. He sat and wept as she walked out the door, hailed a cab, and was gone. He cried until the sun set, shining through the red window shade he'd bought for her and turning the entire room, and his hands, and his dirty clothes, and his tears, the same uniform shade of beautiful, bright, scarlet.34

"But that's impossible," the doctors told him, and "that makes no sense.35

"She was bed ridden for too long to just up and walk out. Her muscles would have atrophied."36

The policeman who'd come with them looked around at the putrescent house and shook his head. The doctors had their noses covered by hankerchiefs.37

"Well she did, doctor. She left me." Christopher was still crying. "She never even said goodbye."38

The doctors wrote things in their notebooks, probably "inconclusive", or something like that. Then they left, too, and that was the end of that.39

It was some time later, though he was not sure how long, that Christopher ran out of food. He'd have bought more, but he was fairly sure he'd run out of money. The water had been turned off, and so had the electricity. Unsure of what to do, Christopher could only sit in that same, rickety little chair he'd spent so many a night in, and stare at the empty bed that his wife had once occupied as if he'd never seen it before.40

".....Please...." he'd sometimes say, but more often would he say "I love you." He repeated it, over and over, until his throat grew raw and he could no longer make out his own words over the sound of buzzing flies.41