Shane Jones - Crystal Eaters

Z.’s shoulders feel like they are arching around his head. The hand is still on him. “I don’t think I can do that.”

“We don’t trust anyone here.”

“I think we should just forget all this.”

Prison noise and silence in the cell, Jug just staring through Z.

“I could list everything that would happen to your friends,” says Jug. “Listen, I’ve read the letters multiple times, they’re fascinating. You want to be someone important, that’s fine, I understand that urge. But it’s greed. Don’t pretend it’s something more or something different. I’m here to help though, because my greed is black crystal and being the guy who gets it. Bring it back here and you’ll be remembered, that’s what you want, I know that and you know that. Win-win. See?”

Another hand from behind runs up the inside of Z.’s leg.

“But what you’re asking me to do is impossible,” says Z. “This feels like a t-t-t-trick.”

“What you’ll learn,” says Jug, “is that everything is a trick. Only thing that isn’t is the universe. I’m talking about outer space, the sun, the moon, planets, stuff we don’t know about. No humor out there. Serious business among those stars. The universe does whatever it wants while we’re forced to play games. We’ve all thought about our lives compared to what’s above, right? Think about it, the universe is going to live forever. No counting days or crystals. No last breaths with loved ones. The universe will just keep expanding. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s important that we just do what it is we do and we keep doing it for as long as possible.”

Z. imagines an entire network of black crystals underground. It has to be a fantasy. But he saw it, Jug held it up for that quick moment, and he’s never seen a crystal like that before. Was it just a red, this messed jail lighting, his exhaustion, his mind dimming the color? Why would someone like Jug make up such a story if it wasn’t real?

“What I’m saying is, you had your own idea of a game to keep you occupied. A jailbreak in reverse. I mean, fuck , stupid and somehow brilliant. That’s why you can do this. And we have a game in here where guards take black crystal, and when they don’t they act like idiots. They hurt more. What are we suppose to do — fire them and let them tell the media what’s going on? PR disaster. I feel like I’m talking to myself here. This is the game we want to keep playing and there isn’t anything wrong with that. The game is what keeps you distracted from the universe bearing down on you.”

“I understand,” says Z., “but I don’t know what’s happening.”

“I’ll give you a few days. I’m not sure your friends can last more. Come back with it and they walk. Pants too. As a matter of fact, all the villagers in here, everyone goes, why not. You’ll be remembered as the man who sprung your people free. They’ll build you a statue and you’ll be remembered forever. Don’t let me keep you longer. The guards get wild without it. No telling what they might do to your friends while you’re away. And no telling what they may do if we can’t control them, maybe run rabid to his home and find the one his mom has in that box. Only so much I can do here. Come on, let’s go.”

Z. runs under the sun-clogged sky. He makes eye contact with a man wearing a dress sitting on the stoop of a brick building. The man raises his arm slowly, the sleeve of his blue dress gathering around his elbow, and while coughing, he gives Z. the middle finger. Z. runs faster. He puts the city on his back. The man holds his middle finger as high as his arm will stretch, leans forward in the direction of Z. who slides down the cliff, creating long dusty tunnels in the air above.

The sky is laced with turquoise worms, and where the sun normally is there’s two red lips, a parting mouth with clouds for teeth. Her bed contains 24 stacked pillows that form a wall. She gets into bed and looks up at the black crystal drawn on the ceiling. She closes her eyes, steadies her breathing, and touches the pillows. The mouth in the sky fills with red and the teeth vanish and it’s the sun. The worms wail and turquoise cascades down an arc in the sky.

The first pillow Remy places on her feet. The next, her legs. The next, her stomach. Finally, her chest. She builds layers until she has to balance the pillows on her body with her breathing. She puts the last three pillows on her head and hugs her face until she passes out. Her arms flop off the sides of the bed and her fingertips dangle near the floor.

She’s a baby. She takes wide, unsteady steps, and on a few occasions, tips backward, arms extended as her diaper thumps the floor. She wears a blue shirt with a hand-drawn black crystal (Brother). Her face is blond hair. She stumbles from her bedroom and into the hallway where she falls down the stairs, blond hair blown open and her body awkwardly sliding down the stairs as Mom shouts from below. Afterward, Remy cried for fourteen hours. Mom stayed awake the entire time, tapping her back in sets of ten, feeding her sips of tea, telling her it would be okay, they will come back on again.

Remy twitches in the wobbly picture and her eyelids flicker. Her arm as baby arm snaps like a bird’s spine beneath a boot. The pillows fall. One hits her arm. Mom moans from her bedroom. Her negative weight floats upward from her refusal of food. Her falling numbers hurt everything around her, even the carpet looks depressed. Dad skips between loving companion to distant husband to angry father. He spends his days alone. Each day this week he’s been sitting gargoyle-perched on the roof. Recently, Remy’s thought the problem of Mom’s sickness isn’t Mom’s sickness exactly, but Dad’s reaction to Mom’s sickness.

Remy writes in a notebook:

FELL DOWNSTAIRS AS A BABY -5 CRYSTALS.

SUBTRACT -1 FOR EVERY YEAR AFTER FROM AGING.

She puts three pillows on her face and grips tight until she passes out again, her hands falling off the bed, eyes now moving over a dark road. She’s riding her bike with the blue and yellow tassels tied to the handlebar. She wanted red and green, to be special, but Dad bought the commons. This vision like the last is broken from reality but more severe — Remy riding her bike on the road to the mine, blue and yellow tassels blowing endlessly backward and touching her home. Her hair is also endlessly long and it touches the house. She’s followed by a spotlight. Her feet blur on the pedals. She’s trying to escape the light. Skin three inches above her right ankle catches on the rear derailleur and the bike breaks into a severe slide. Water sprays from where the tires skid. The road becomes a beach and Brother is standing there covered in glistening sweat, jogging in place, with Harvak at his side who is also jogging in place. Sea crystals the shape of hexagons colored white foam then harden to black stone on the sand. An octopus is flung by the sun across the sky. The spotlight disappears and the man, who looks just like Dad, who held the spotlight, twirls his hand goodbye, bows, then jumps off the cliff at the top of The Bend.

— 8 CRYSTALS FROM BIKE ACCIDENT.

She creeps down the staircase and sees only legs in the kitchen. She can’t understand how they can stand so close to each other and yell so loud, how can their faces not split and bruise. Mom is doing almost all the shouting and her legs are following Dad’s legs around the kitchen. He’s cooking something and trying to avoid her. The thrill of watching her parents in this raw, private moment makes Remy’s heart race and hands grip the wooden banister. They have always been so troubled, so doomed. They have always talked around each other. The pillows tumble again and the black crystal drawing on her ceiling comes into focus.