Light Switch

Levi released his hands from the sides of the door and swung an accurate elbow around, catching Frank on the chin. It sent Frank stumbling back and the silenced .44 magnum that was pressing onto Levi's lower back was relieved. The long black barrel had already left a mark that would become a terrible bruise.

Frank grunted and spit teeth into his hand as Levi stood there, wide-eyed, shocked that he had hit him. The moment was suspended in the air.

“I’m sorry Frankie.”

Frank cut his eyes at Levi. He let off an inaccurate round near his head and it zipped by Levi's ear. Levi fell backward in shock, the suppressor had done very little to silence the gun.

Levi went squirming frantically into the doorway of his apartment and got up trying to shut the door quickly until Frank sent his wide body pummeling into it. At this, the open-swinging door knocked Levi's nose and sent him tumbling backwards, almost falling onto the kitchen tiles near the small sink in the studio. Frank's full-bodied bombardment through the door had caused him to fall forward onto the nearby carpet, as his head was still rattled from the brutal elbowing he received. He hit the floor and the gun stumbled off somewhere into the darkness.

The broken-nosed Levi quickly grabbed the nearest knife from the cutting board and went on stabbing the air wildly near where he thought Frank had fallen. His nose was bleeding profusely and eyes were teary. He held his face with his other hand as he swung the knife around wildly, yelling out viscerally. Neither of them had turned the light on and both of them had been blurry-eyed from their hits.

Frank heard the knife cutting the air in the dark a few feet from where he fell. He started to desperately feel around for the gun along the thin, cheap carpet.

Frank saw his silhouetted frame from the thin film of moonlight that was cast into the apartment from the door once he had stopped seeing double in the dark. He went for the light switch by the door but Levi wrapped his legs before he could get to it, hearing him try and run by, and wrestled him to the floor. They fell to the ground, Frank still reaching for the light switch but Levi holding him down and preparing to stab him from behind. Frank turned and grabbed his wrist before he could stab down the knife and they wrestled there for minutes, pitting their strength against the other.

Frank kicked up a knee to Levi's groin, sent him rolling to the side moaning in pain, and again tried to scramble to his feet to reach the light switch. Levi stuck him in the thigh before he could get up. Frank screamed out in agony and fell to the ground. The knife stuck out from his leg.

Levi was still blinded, but he tried reaching for the light switch in the darkness as Frank lay writhing on the floor still. Levi had much trouble with finding the light switch. His head was swimming, his ears were ringing, his eyes were blinded with tears, and he was on the verge of passing out with every sudden movement.

Levi took too long there pawing the walls for the light switch and Frank grabbed his legs from behind and sent him stumbling down. He shut the door, locked it, dismissed the light and gun, and proceeded to drive his fist repeatedly into Levi's throat. Rage, pain, and meth drove him madly.

Levi’s flailing attempts at knocking his hands away grew increasingly fragile with each driving fist into his throat. His eyes began to roll back and he felt the blood conjuring up near the back of his tongue. The blackness that his eyes could see was becoming sporadically interrupted by vivid memories of life; the memories flashing before him at the rhythm of Frank’s increasingly quick fists.

He first saw April’s hazel eyes wide, the morning light bathing her skin softly in the back of his hatchback by the lake. He saw her again, laughing with pieces of cake all over her face when they got a little drunk at her birthday party the previous year. He saw his father beaming with pride at his graduation ceremony, and then again on his deathbed smiling warmly three nights before he didn’t wake up. He saw his mother gardening in the back by the rose patch in her big straw hat and then his sister dancing hula at the county fair. He saw his brother on horseback in the woods on vacation in Alaska, and his niece jumping around in front of the television when her favorite cartoon was playing. Then he saw Frank when he was a young boy and they were wrestling in his aunt’s backyard. Frank started crying when Levi got a little too rough, so Levi hugged him and told him that he loved him, that he only wanted to make him tougher.

The faint blurry image that he could see of Frank above him was growing darker--not more blurry, but darker. The last thing he could remember feeling was the blood sputtering out from violent coughs in between the hits.