Shane Jones - Crystal Eaters

They run in a nightmare of heat and dust. Everything looks red. The sun pierced by buildings wrapped in tornadic filth. Flames as kites are being pulled endlessly from the windows of several burning buildings and men below in red and gold helmets aim their hoses skyward where the water’s arc disappears just as it begins. Newspapers, umbrellas, plastic bags, fast food cartons, black flies, clumps of hair, dirty diapers, spaghetti, magazines, a million types of colored garbage, all blow across the sky. There’s a howling. It’s so loud because in the city everything makes a noise. Their eyes sting with sweat. They squint as they run.

Into the city streets scattered with people they run. Cabs, motorcycles, sidewalk corners crowded with men who stand in the sweltering heat wearing suits — their faces expressionless shining with sweat in the sun. There is a store that sells just coffee. There is a store that sells just cheese. There is a store that sells just pie. A man holding a plastic plate holding a slice of pie takes a bite and his eyes widen. He turns to his wife and says, “Fresh apples,” while pointing to the pie with his fork. She tries the pie and nods while chewing. After she swallows she says, “Really fresh.”

Remy overhears someone say that the city is moving, it’s crawling over the village now because it’s destiny, it’s what god wants, hooray! The man stops people by placing his hands on their shoulders. He asks if they’ve seen his gold cross necklace. Everyone shrugs him off and the man keeps running, starts tackling people. City people hate touching so the man is their worst enemy. Eventually three cops stop him, the man saying he’s a cop too, hey, stop that, until he goes quiet in the mush.

City people wear fancy t-shirts. City people don’t show their fear. Babies are pushed in carts by parents in sunglasses so you can’t guess their count. City people run for fun and call it jogging. The howling sound dips lower and pummels legs with wind. Again, the ground moves.

“Hurry,” Remy says, and they cross a street, dodging cars and bicycles.

City people scream with blood-red faces and slap the air with their fists. “You wait for the man to glow in the box to tell you when to walk,” says a small angry woman to Remy and Dad as they cross, the woman’s facial expression stoic in the blowing filth. “That’s what you do.”

“You tell ’em, Mom,” says a man standing next to her.

A car tire comes an inch from running over Remy’s heel and she leaps onto the sidewalk, tilting Mom a little, but not dropping her. Dad says to be careful and puts his hand on her back, pulling her further from the street, but not really doing anything, Remy already jumped. They have no idea where they are going but the hospital is somewhere and there’s an end point they are working toward. The small angry woman begins crossing the street while walking bent forward at a severe angle, the wind pushing her back, her will stronger and pushing her forward, facial expression not changing even as she peels, with finger and thumb, a plastic bag with a red smiling face with pigtails, from her own face, her other hand holding the grown man’s hand and seemingly pulling him along to an undesirable appointment.

Remy bounces Mom in her arms as she runs. Hundred barks at the end of a street lined with trucks that sell food to long lines of impatient people. A man with a chrome cart sells a product called hot dogs that float in bins of hot water, little puffs of steam rising each time the lid is taken off. The chrome cart has a glossy red hot dog with legs and the hot dog is smiling as a salivating mouth from the right chomps away at the hot dog’s bun-clad body. Remy thinks They put that in their mouths .

Another rumbling is felt through the soles of their feet, this one larger, this one knocking people to the ground who curse the sky while trying to stand back up. They look to see what new buildings are rising. They scream and laugh and cry. Everyone in the city is insane. Everyone is touching technology. Free space in the city doesn’t exist. Every inch is filled, and from a cloud’s view, it’s all moving like a tidal wave of concrete and blinking lights toward the village.

“Moms should never be allowed to die because Moms are forever,” says Remy, seemingly to no one, only concentrating on finding the hospital, her eyes trying to read the letters painted on windows. There’s a store that sells just dog food.

“What?” says Dad.

“Moms are a void never to be filled.”

“What are you saying? Slow down.”

“We can’t.”

“Are we close?”

“Just come on.”

The hospital is a towering white building of glass windows with a glowing +. It’s so white it blinds through the red sky, the blowing filth of the city. Hoards of people stand outside the entrance. It’s hurricane windy but many don’t care. A woman in a wheelchair smokes a cigarette with her hair flying around her head like a baby’s handwriting. She stares blankly ahead until she sneezes blood and smoke and loses her cigarette. A man dressed in green lights another and places it between her lips.

The earth shakes and blurs and Remy fights back tears as she runs holding her dying mom.

A half-naked man with his face covered in black crosses stands on a wooden box and yells, “THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL, HALLELUJAH, THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL,” and the man selling hot dogs slaps the air. The half-naked man grins and drawn on each tooth is a black cross and the hot dog vendor looks scared. He continues to yell, “THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL, HALLELUJAH, THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL.”

They run down street after street and Remy bleeds as people take pictures and upload videos.

Another ground trembling, another slight tilting of the universe, another inch the sun pushes in.

A collective moan as the sky vines with cracks.

“The sun is to blame,” says a woman named Sharon or Carol or Tammy or Julie or Amy or Mom or Cathy or Kelly. “But you know something, I don’t really know.”

“Everyone is a falling number,” says Remy. “Get inside, protect yourself.”

A boy named Joey, the son of Sanders who has recently begun airing political ads claiming victory over the village says, “What’s that?” and points.

In the center of an intersection a fountain of dirt sprays the sky with a rush like a stream grown after a storm. Men and women scatter away and clog up doorways. A man drops his phone, starts to go back for it, but is pulled away by his wife. Roads split and the earth tilts and those still standing don’t wait to fall. From inside the fountain a giant yellow insect crawls upward.

“COME ON!” says Remy. “PLEASE COME ON!”

They sprint down a final area of sidewalk and reach the hospital, the fountain in the intersection still in partial view from the hospital entrance. Mom is going to be saved . There’s a hotel attached to the hospital and there’s a church attached to the hotel and all three are in a race to consume the most sky. Two men dressed in green standing at the sliding glass doors take the blanket and pull the fabric down to reveal her face. Mom will be Mom forever . They call, without emotion, for a stretcher. The woman in the wheelchair smoking, hair in the wind a fighting nest of odd angles, laughs at the sky and then coughs in a way that makes Remy think she’s near zero. The two men look at Remy, ask if she’s okay, and she nods. She hasn’t seen what her feet look like. Mom is safe now, don’t worry about me . One of the men looks Dad up and down, Dad trying to catch his breath, he’s so out of shape, his stomach hurts, his back throbbing. But he also feels a strange kind of opening, something like success because they’ve made it.