Shane Jones - Crystal Eaters

In a plastic bucket she collects a dozen black crystals. They exist. Dug up by a truck’s tires during the rainstorm. They’ve been here all this time, beneath everyone’s noses who never looked close enough and just needed the perfect combination of temperature and rainfall to unlock the mud. Her bare feet helped, the workers with their thick boots are useless. Black crystals slide around the plastic bucket Remy holds. The sun is a bully on her shoulders, pushing her head down, face to chest. The sun highlights the black crystals and she fills the bucket and runs home.

In her bedroom she breaks them into shards with a hammer taken from Dad’s toolbox. On the floor she forms a black box. She steps in barefoot and marches. It don’t hurt . She shouldn’t be doing this, but ever since running in the mine with Hundred and cutting her feet, sitting in the tub and getting sky-high, she’s been craving the sensation. Remy believes she’s discovered a way to live longer. Each crystal inside me births a twin . The broken crystals slice her feet until her legs end at the ankles.

She jumps up on the bed and pulls her left foot up to her mouth and picks each crystal out then puts them back in. She does this foot, then the other, and goes back and forth in a blur until she can’t do it once more, her arms sore like lifting buckets of YCL, helping Dad and Brother. Under her bed it smells like vomit. She stretches out and goes giddy with anticipation. Her body hums. When she places her hands on her stomach she ascends and the black crystal drawn on the ceiling inflates with light. Mom says something from her bedroom. Her body is kept together by disease. Her wrists are the diameter of a broom handle. Remy has had a repeating nightmare for a week of a game show where Mom is a table made of slush she has to carry down a staircase. The surrounding audience, wearing raincoats and green casino visors, hold signs that read ZERO MAMMA. Remy always trips and launches table-Mom skyward to the audience leaning away.

Remy remembers those who came from the city — meaner looking compared to the soft faces of Mob of Mary’s — selling stolen televisions, the white price tags still on, dangling in the dark. They had heard of these machines before and the box of light in person was real seductive. Dad said okay, wanting to do something special for the family but hating having to engage in these kinds of forced interactions. They bought one with a long metal antennae the sellers seemed to mock. They tried to get him to buy a more expensive one. But it worked just fine — Dad adjusting the wire V into a position so you couldn’t leave the room without knocking it over. The shows they watched didn’t relate to them at all but the colors were pretty and the actors’ voices always loud and stories engaging. For a full year, once a week, they watched a show about a family living on a beach near a forest. The family used their stove as a boat to catch fish. Remy and Adam couldn’t stop asking Mom and Dad what an ocean was, why couldn’t they have one, what’s a turtle, why does the moon pull the ocean, what’s a jellyfish, does sand burn.

Black crystal doesn’t last long in teenagers. It’s leaving her system but she’s still seeing the new.

Sensation reenters her feet as Remy floats down from the ceiling draped in dogs. Hundred is wrapped around her neck like a scarf. Harvak, sinking into her chest, tells her no one will live much longer, this life is constantly ending, it’s her job to save Mom. Remy says she knows, it’s what she’s going to do, stop choking me, if this life is constantly ending, then it’s constantly beginning.

Driving in his truck at night, thinking about treating Remy with more kindness, don’t be so short with her, she’s just a girl, you understand how hard she has it, she can name her dog whatever he hits something that crumples the hood into a pile of tents.

The sound of the accident can be heard in the city and some run to The Bend with their binoculars.

His body hugs the steering wheel. His head touches the windshield which is the hood. Smoke rises from the headlights and the engine hisses. The tires on the left side go flat and Dad leans. When his arms slide off the steering wheel he jolts up with a loud gasp.

Hands on his chest, he exhales and coughs blue slush. Dad inspects his arms, chest, stomach, and thighs. No sign of blood or crystals leaking out from these parts, but from inside, yes, some organ split open. On the rearview mirror is a honeycomb hexagon in thin black marker with the words THIS IS WHAT OUR FAMILY IS LIKE written across it. Remy how dare you what’s the matter with you . She’s been acting strange, someone not Remy moving inside Remy, someone not the same daughter he sat with wearing floppy robes, talking his heart out.

He rolls his neck and practices breathing. His ribs are sore at each inhale and he’s reminded of the last time the wind was knocked out of him — in the only fight of his life — by a kid in The Sky Father Gang. Dad wanted to talk to his son before he went into the city. Dad wanted to tell him not to go, maybe it was his fault he was acting this way, how about we try talking this out. The kid with the black crystallized facial scar in the shape of a key said his son didn’t want to talk and aimed his fist for the backside of Dad’s heart and landed.

When he opens the door, his knees and hands hit the ground. He crawls to the front of the truck. What he drove into is a table with dinner plates, melted candles, and a turkey leg with little meat. Dad massages his calves. His jeans are covered in dirt and some YCL from a mason jar that was to be added to the home generator. They’ve been running low lately and Dad is worried they will run out. It takes him ten minutes to stand.

“Hey, you. What you doing out here?” says a girl, a runaway, in purple spiked shoes. She smokes a cigarette awkwardly, her T-shirt looks shredded, and she stands in the glow of a break light.

“What am I doing out here?” says Dad. “What are YOU doing out here?” He spits up more blue slush and the girl steps back. “GET. NOW. OUT OF HERE.”

The girl runs toward the fence, back to the city.

“NO ONE FROM THE CITY BELONGS IN THE VILLAGE,” shouts Dad. “STAY AWAY.” Then, even though he knows it’s impossible, “I’M TELLING YOUR PARENTS ABOUT THIS.” His chest hurts from the words coming out and he imagines a jagged crystal now lodged across his lungs.

He leans inside the truck and turns the key, his breathing sharp and painful. Nothing. Key frozen. His hand slips in blue slush covering the key. The mason jar with the YCL is empty and shattered and he notices another patch of blue slush where he sat. He calculates he probably lost several. For a few minutes he sits sideways in the truck, his legs dangling out, not sure what to do, how to explain this, how to lie. Maybe just be honest with her. What was he thinking. He could run into the city, it’s so close, but the accident is a red flag indicator of worse things to come. Besides, now he’s remembering the history of those who have entered the city, all those consequences, that prison. What was he thinking. That he could seriously drive in, sleep in his truck, eventually sell it, and start over as a man who wore a suit? He stands up and slams the door closed but it doesn’t fit anymore, appears to be the door to a much smaller vehicle, and bounces right back into his hand.

Dad looks for the moon as he walks home but sees only a massive black circle with a thin white border.

You can’t help someone who is too sick for help. There is no meaning in the offer when you should have done something before. You should worry about yourself and Remy now .

He walks into his wife’s room. She sits on the floor holding a red box.