Shane Jones - Crystal Eaters

Lying under his sheet, he lifts his pelvis and builds a tent with his knees. He’s coming down from peaking on black crystal and the beating he took at the health meeting. They hit his legs with sticks until he fell. He thinks about the letters from Mom and with his right hand rubs his stomach and shoots a beam of light from his bellybutton. Through the sheet and around the prison bars and into the village the light travels until it rests in triangular form on her bedroom floor. She dips the black crystal into the light. Twin horses rise on their back legs and kick holes in the ceiling.

As they struggle to position the table Z. stands on it and shouts at the sun. His face is dark with shadows and sweat. His green robe is strapped tight by his arms. Everyone is excited by this new project. Once the table is in proper place, according to Z., they sit down.

Trucks, wagons, bicycles, the few cars in the village, become a fat U shape of traffic forced to flow around them. A man driving a truck who is shirtless and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette lays on the horn. He reverses his truck and accelerates before stopping inches from the table. Arnold tells Skip easy, says to keep his cool. He reverses and accelerates again and again. It’s a tactic to psyche the Brothers out that doesn’t work. Skip is drenched from the rainstorm, his eyes crazed, his hair matted to his forehead in the shape of a bird’s gray wing.

“Easy, Skip, easy,” says Arnold. “Look like you’ve seen Royal Bob!” Arnold waits for someone to laugh but no one laughs.

Red globs stretch then drip from the rim of the sun.

“Skip, come on now,” says Ricky. “No need, no need.”

“I got this,” says Z.

Everyone stops and looks at Z. who somehow appears more natural standing on a table as opposed to sitting. He runs the length of it, huffing dramatically, moving his arms robotically, legs like pistons, and everyone leans back as he leaps from the edge of the table and lands in a crouched position on the truck’s hood. His feet crumple metal. He screams at Skip with a pointed finger and says he’s trying to enjoy his dinner and Skip, head down, head filled with images of a dog-child, and not really looking at Z., he hates Brothers Feast, but still looking up slightly just enough to see him, dislike him, holds up a hand and mouths okay . When Z. walks back across the table he glances in Bobby T.’s direction, shrugs his shoulders, and smirks like a child reaching into a drawer.

“S-s-s-sorry, Bobby T.,” he says. “I’m s-s-s-stressed.”

He dance-walks, hips humping in the direction of the sun, and the Brothers, not knowing what to do exactly from this new behavior, drum the table.

“Hey,” says Bobby T., “it’s been hard.”

Which is true. Z. has wrecked his mind trying to define the jailbreak in reverse. He’s close. They’re close. The time spent defining the jailbreak doesn’t matter because once it’s completed no one will ask how long they spent working. You’re remembered for your actions not your planning. People who are remembered are remembered forever because they travel in memories, from old to young, and what’s greater than that. What’s greater than living forever and not being alive to see the consequences.

“I’m this close,” says Z. and holds his thumb and pointer finger a quarter inch apart before sitting back down. “That means really close,” he adds.

A bag of hot air in the sky moves like an ameba. The Brothers have dinner by candlelight at the table in the street. Inside the bag, the ameba, thousands of tiny things are moving and it’s only Z. who looks up, smiling and admiring the strangeness of this sky creature.

“SMART ASSES,” someone says. It’s one of the mine workers. “We should sell and be done with this nonsense. They will take over no matter what, just look at the buildings, you dolts.” A crowd of Brothers Feast supporters including Ken Horgan shoves the mine worker away, down the street, as he continues to shout backward over his shoulder about the end of times, their imminent destruction resulting in nothing but city.

Another mine worker says, “Nice… reeeeaaal nice. They are laughing at us every day and this, what does this do to help?”

The Brothers have no reaction. They enjoy their dinner in the street.

A man outside a bar reaches into a rusty barrel and extracts a turkey leg. With a big swinging arm he launches the leg skyward, toward the stretching bag, the ameba in the sky. The turkey leg lands on the table and wobbles their plates. They thank the man and portion off the gristle-rot. Men and women in their traditional robes, their backs hunched from mandatory years working in the mine boo the Brothers with spittle.

“Just working on our public image,” Bobby T. tells the crowd.

“Quiet and obedient is what we need,” says Ricky.

“It makes sense to be disciplined,” says Z. “Don’t act weird, right, right.”

They all smile and nod and eat. They drink coffee from a metal urn kept hot by the air. The sweat on their skin thickens to a clear goo that traps lightweight bugs. Z. takes a long drink from his mug. He notices one bug has a sucking mouth and he leaves it there, sucking, on his wrist.

A woman in an orange robe runs up and slaps the cup from Z.’s hand. The coffee paint-splatters Ricky’s sleeve. The cup rolls across the table and falls to the ground while Z. sits frozen, mouth open, pretending to still hold the cup until the woman walks away mumbling, calling him a lost child.

“The s-s-s-service here is awful ,” says Z. and everyone laughs. He heard the “lost child” comment and it hurt. He just needs to define the jailbreak in reverse and his life will work out. Everything that has become before will be nothing.

Daylight wastes to dark. Residents retreat to their homes. The Brothers stay at the table in the street, candles flickering, the bag of hot air in the sky, the moving ameba, pops and pours millions of locusts, black bugs, bugs with sucking mouths, invisible tiny things with just wings. The Brothers barely notice, they look at the city. Another building is on fire. Village radicals known as Black Mask are trying to stop the city’s growth by burning sections. This has happened several times and no one in the village is sure who is doing it exactly, but it’s most likely two or three mine workers. Some think it’s Royal Bob, running in his blue shorts, his long gray hair burning and swatting the base of the buildings. But no one believes burning buildings will stop the city. For every building burned to the ground, three more rise in its place.

Full dark from above. They stay up with the heat figuring out what the jailbreak in reverse is. Z. reads over the letters received from the prison. There’s a new one that he somehow missed and Z. blames Arnold for the letter being placed in the old, already read piles. Arnold’s skin burns so bad from the heat he thinks he’s covered in biting bugs and he slaps his arm. There are bugs, tons of them, on him. He apologizes. Z. reads the letter once, twice, then three more times, holding it up with two hands. He cross-checks it with several letters and notes, then goes back to this new letter. Arnold notices, his nose practically touching his arm, that little bugs, barely visible, are burrowing into him.

Z. shouts, “I GOT IT,” and startles Arnold and the others.

He’s covered in glistening sweat.

He’s shaking and smiling and holding the paper with two hands like he’s looking through it and into the sky and he screams again, “I–I-I DID IT I GOT IT I ACTUALLY DID IT Y-Y-Y-YOU FOOLS DID YOU HEAR ME I–I-I GOT IT.”

They finalize the plan that will free The Sky Father Gang and make Z. forever known. It’s all he’s ever wanted. As a child he spent eight days looking for a turtle because he heard they existed, came from the city. He never wanted something so bad. His mom ended up getting one from Mob of Mary’s and it died three days later. When he stands on the table again it’s not with anger, but joy. He carves circles in the air with his fingers and gyrates his hips. Streams of burning turquoise rain down a curve in the sky. Arnold slaps the table and Ricky and Scotty and Bobby T. mouth-fart a beat and shout, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” They dance and celebrate and swat bugs from their faces until the sun comes up, the temperature rising, the future as them in it, forever.