Shane Jones: Crystal Eaters

“And now,” said Mom, pulling Remy’s hand from her face, “they’re gone.”

She thinks about her parents, and Brother in prison, and wonders who is closest to exhaling their final crystal. Who will become a husk? Who will become zero? She thinks Definitely Mom . She thinks Then Dad . She thinks Then just me filling up their space .

Mom’s illness diminishes Dad because he is helpless against it and is forced to fall back on vague coping mechanisms of, “She is sick and losing, and it’s natural. Let the process be the process.” He crushes everything inside. Emotion comes in outbursts, the occasional closed eyes and biting-his-bottom-lip while standing over the kitchen sink, washing dishes with the sun seeping in hot and ugly. Remy hates the way he moves through the house — slowly and with caution — as if he knows, selfishly, egotistically, that he’s the one who will hear her last breath.

Dad shouted about count through every wall, floor, and ceiling in the house last night. “Doesn’t she understand you start with a hundred and then you lose them,” he said. Mom sat in bed, covered in dandelion-print sheets and used the spitting cloth to expel the color red. “It’s simple,” he said.

He keeps a box in the closet. The bottoms of hanging shirts cover the box like a hiding child. The box is white. Inside is a crystal with eight smooth sides, a sharp point, and a rough fire-burned looking end.

Gripping a sharpened spoon he uncurls a fingernail-sized piece from the black crystal. Tapping the edge with his thumb he makes sure there is a sharp edge to cut his mouth. More dangerous if the edge is dull.

He sits on his bed with the crystal floating in a pool of saliva beneath his tongue. His legs are splayed in a wide V. He throws himself back, aiming for the pillow, but bangs his head against the headboard. Moving the piece of crystal around the bottom of his mouth he inhales and exhales, feels a surge of expecting blood widening its cells. Sliding down on the bed he positions the pillow behind his head and gets ready.

Before the prison was erected there was a ribbon-cutting ceremony. There were pink-skinned politicians and a crowd of shoulder-shruggers and a pair of giant scissors an intern held for two hours. A politician named Sanders stood at a podium too short for his height and struggling to speak into the microphone said: “Ellsworth Correctional… we will treat inmates with respect and compassion here. They will live with minimal supervision. Cells will be similar to our own bedrooms at home. The idea is simple — those who break the law should be kept away from the general population, but in the community that lawbreakers create inside Ellsworth Correctional they should feel free and normal no matter if they are uneducated people with poor social skills.” And then later, near the end of his speech: “Inmates are not animals!” The crowd cheered but they weren’t sure what they were cheering for other than the sweaty enthusiasm of Sanders. Construction began immediately with men in orange hats and yellow machines zigzagging the grounds. Sanders pressed his suit jacket to his heart when a backhoe struck rock. For months the villagers watched the prison rise slowly, dangerously, blinking and craning their necks, wondering how something so large could be so real.

Head on pillow, box resting on his stomach, Pants McDonovan presses his tongue on the crystal until it’s angled against his gums, aimed at the roots of his bottom front teeth. He grinds it in. Ringing his head, the tearing of cheesecloth. He sees himself as a child kissing Mom goodnight, Harvak barking, when the family was a family. He played spit-tag with Remy in the mine and jogged with Dad through the streets and the family glowed, discussed their day over plates of pork and carrots. Before bed, Dad poured YCL into the generator and he helped with little nervous hands because Dad always corrected him, always told him he was either pouring too fast or too slow, he wanted to get it right, he wanted to pour smoothly, and sometimes, he did, but Dad never noticed with Pants holding the bucket just so with his arms trembling. This was a time of worship and prayer. The sun didn’t scream and spit a heat wave. The city was faraway and could be laughed at, could be mocked by thrusting your hips at it or turning and lowering your pants. He collected bugs in mason jars and hid them in his closet. He asked Mom for potted plants to be placed near his crystals. He wanted living things to always be in his room. At night he would listen to the bugs and position the plants in the moonlight.

Fire pools across his chest and drips from his ribs as he swallows. He sits up and inhales — eyes trying to escape from their sockets looking cartoonish — chest puffed in rash, arms stiff at his sides with fists punched into the mattress. His feet are numb with needles, but it’s worth it. Going to come alive, going to balance out now. He leans over the bed and spits a stretched glob of sparkling blood on the cement floor.

A dirt cloud from clapped together shoes (Friday, Tony’s job) floats by and a transparent Younger Mom hovers in the debris. She says hello then disappears, her gown becoming her then all becoming the dirt cloud becoming the air. Without moving his arm, hand at his side, he does a little wave.

More spit. The glob is a thick stream with no end. This is a reaction from eating black crystal that happens once every two hundred times. A cleansing. When the stream detaches from his mouth he falls to the floor and does 50 pushups — his ponytail wrapped around his neck hitting the floor before his chest. Turning his head, he spit-sprays the wall in the shape of Mom.

He stands. He touches the heat inside his forearms by way of his lips. His shirt, a ridiculously huge hand-me-down from Mom with a duck drawing that Dad once wore and made fun of, is saturated in sweat and he pulls the shirt off and whips it around his head before helicoptering it across the room. His right foot twists and slips left in blood.

He hits the peak.

Jogging in place, he imagines a sunset at his back and Harvak at his side. The black crystal is collapsing his veins. He runs his hand through the top of his buzz-cut before grabbing the rubber band holding his ponytail. Once pulled through he shakes his head and a flap of blond hair bounces off his upper back. He looks ridiculous and insane. He’s on a beach telling the tide to wait. He’s running from the smell of salt. The village is in the distance and there’s a forest to enter. He shouts that Mom will live forever. She stands under an oak tree with her mouth open, her lips highlighted in red crystals. His eyes rocket into clouds raining sparks. His right foot slides out from beneath him. Heel on sky, his left leg upright, he floats across the sky with the village and beach and forest below.

Then the prison gets real quiet. The PA announces lights out. A voice from the upper level, might be Jeremy, screams to be taken back to the village where things are simple and quiet, people love each other there, and someone says People might love you there but here you’re just annoying .

Pants McDonovan jumps into bed and is soon asleep and back on the beach. Mine workers dressed in mud wearing clear masks ask if he wants to die and he answers I’m ready . Harvak runs at his side. He says to him No illness that’s my fault will take Mom away, come on, we’re breaking out of here . The prison is quiet with only the night-shift steps of guards as Mom opens a door in the oak tree.

The heat wave continues. The elderly don’t wear their traditional robes anymore. Few possess air conditioners donated by the city charity group, Mob of Mary’s, who make bi-monthly runs into the village with clothing and canned meat. Those who do have Relief Gatherings where people take five minute turns in an air conditioned room where they smile in splayed out naked forms across a marble slab. At night they pray to their crystal collections for snow. Green crystals melt in direct sunlight. The leader of Brothers Feast, Z., finger-painted the green across his forehead in three bug-smeared lines. From the way he’s dressed, the heat doesn’t seem to bother him. The elders question his mental health.