Shane Jones - Crystal Eaters

Beneath the roof Remy stands in Mom’s room. On the bed her body and face are covered in a sheet. Where her mouth is, a black oval. Dad has placed a green crystal on her chest and a red on her stomach. With each breath the wet oval of her mouth expands then collapses. Remy stands motionless, watching the sheet move up and down. There’s a silence. The room is surprisingly cool. Remy can’t understand why Dad won’t do anything, she’s at the end, it’s gone on too long, they can’t keep watching this. She thinks about lifting her up right there and running to the city, saving her. She thinks about entering the hospital and being bathed in green light. But this is it, they will watch her become zero because of tradition. Remy runs away.

Under the blanket Mom’s hands move up her body. It takes minutes to pull the sheet from her face, but Remy is already outside as dog-child — her and Hundred running into the mine where a man digging never-ending tunnels swears at walls of dirt. The air outside the sheet feels cool and new. Her mouth is broken. She tries to say something, the letters are bobbing inside her head like jellyfish, but she can’t arrange them correctly.

He screams into the wall. He kicks the wall. Inmates think the noise is the heat wave howling against the prison and moving them closer to the village. There’s a general uneasiness with Pants in isolation, a vibe amongst inmates that something holy is about to be destroyed. Their orange jumpers and blue shirts are damp and wrinkled. They listen to the howling and wait.

The guards take turns looking at the road for Z. to come back with his hands weighted to his thighs with black crystal. Jug imagines Z. carrying a crystal so massive he has to walk sideways through the door. A crystal so big Little Karl will fall off his chair, his book of | sent flying. More than half the guards don’t show for work anymore, they are crazies running through the streets, painting their bodies with black crystals and black crosses. Those who do show up hate themselves for being themselves, but they keep it together, they gather their paychecks. They believe, in a religiously devoted sense, that Z. will come back to them, that Jug has done the right thing. The idea of Z. never returning is a cruel joke, and those who make it are ignored.

Pants asks passing footsteps if they’re going to let him die in here and the silence means yes. His imagination is turning at an uncontrollable and sickening pace. What distracted him before was black crystal. He has to define his life some other way now. And with each thought comes layers of thoughts over that thought. How exhilarating to be a child. He never wondered then when his body would register zero and all color would leave his body, mouth, eyes. No need to acquire things. The days were an endless blur of games played in water and grass. The days, like what was inside, were never counted.

He mumble-sings Gimme gimme crystal (pop pop) gimme gimme bark bark (woof woof ) and feels insane. He imagines baby Remy walking through the house. She fell down the stairs and broke her arm and he wonders what damage that must have done (-5). He remembers showing baby Remy the crystal mine, and how she sat in the black dirt molding clumps that soon rained from her spread fingers, and later, how she licked the glittering dust off her arms. He remembers killing a wounded bird because he wanted to experience, what he said to Mom, a little death, not too much, but enough to feel it. He wanted to try and move, with his shoe, the body of something once living.

He told Remy The Sky Father Gang would perform a demonstration like never before. She made a motion with her hands that symbolized city fireworks and he said no, not exactly, but just as thrilling, just you wait. They sat on his bed and when she saw the duffel bag packed with crystals she went Ew yucky . But he wasn’t present in the moment, he didn’t make eye contact. And there wasn’t glowing light coming from the bag, spotlighting baby Remy’s face. And there weren’t loving words said by him because he would miss her. And there wasn’t any true emotion conveyed at all because he had Dad inside him. When he kissed her on the head it felt choreographed, something he saw on television, which was true.

He vomits into his hands and looks for forty. His mind narrows in on the moment with Remy in his bedroom that at the time was so meaningless to him because he was young, and foolish, and he doesn’t go sad with emotion, but it’s anger with no place to go but from a pit in his chest and down to his stomach and through his legs and out his feet that kick the wall.

Z. climbs into a yellow machine that digs 10,000 times faster than the short-handled shovel. He creates so many tunnels he becomes lost. His head moves left to right and back again. He reverses the digging machine, climbs out, and inspects the walls with his hands. He’s covered in dirt and sweat. He jumps back into the machine, begins working again, and every time he reverses the ceiling rains rocks. He drives and digs, drives and digs, his mind a wet hornet on the fact that he needs to find the black crystal to not only save the Brothers, but to accomplish something that every child has dreamed about since the beginning of time. All his energy is placed in forward movement.

The machine, which is old and rattles with loose parts, is equipped with a shield-shaped light on the top that blazes the path Z. digs. The light misses corners. Z. stops, leaps from the machine, and uses a flashlight to closely inspect shadows. He can’t afford to be sloppy and miss what he needs. Beneath his feet he cracks yellow, blue, and green. He’s surprised by a red. His body is a field of gravel. He crosses his arms and rubs his forearms together until a mound of gunk falls off.

He leans against the machine. He moves the flashlight over his body and up and down the tunnel walls. The air is hot, heavy, and where the flashlight misses it’s dark with an occasional mist of gnats. Dust engulfs all space and the engine is at a low and rumbling growl. His concentration loosens, and for the first time since he began digging, he’s forced to reflect on who he is, what he’s doing, and his body deflates. He doesn’t feel like a solid person anymore. His arms ache and his hair is matted with sweat. His fingernails are black with work. He’s a person.

He aims the flashlight in the opposite direction of the machine. The light ends ghost-like where the tunnel splits into three different directions. He presses his head into the tunnel wall until rocks pierce his skin. He turns his back to the wall and sits on the ground where the air is so full of shit that when he opens his mouth to drink from a canteen his tongue is blanketed. He pulls his legs in and cleans his eyes with his knees. He tries to calm his shaking legs by massage. What horrible things are happening to them? With his tongue he cleans his front teeth. He swallows dirt and grips his calves. He’s digging a tunnel to nowhere and in the thought, the clichéd metaphor for life of digging a tunnel nowhere , he laughs.

What does it all mean , and the thoughts go more sentimental: wonder when I’ll die, a body as husk, a body as zero. Will anyone remember me? HAHAHAHA .

He once prided himself as someone who didn’t think these thoughts. He mocked people who expressed feelings. But here, in this dark tunnel exposed by flashlight and machine light ( what happens when these lights burn out? ) his thoughts are inescapable. You have to keep moving because it’s the only thing a person can do . He pulls himself up and into the machine and extends the tunnel.

Dig .

Breaks a new layer of wall.