Shane Jones: Crystal Eaters

He looks forward to her letters. Remy’s been asking about count, his involvement in The Sky Father Gang, if a black crystal exists or not, does touching your body in sets of ten do anything or does it just feel good. He tells Mom the only black left is the one in her possession. His gift to her when he was scared and didn’t know what it was. When he first found the black crystals during the endless rainstorm he made sure to hide them from everyone, even himself, because he didn’t believe what he held. The rumors of it spread. People just need something to believe in . It turned out he was no different. He wanted Mom to live forever so he gave it to her.

He opens his mouth and stabs a sliver of black crystal inside his cheek. In the window a blue honeycomb-hexagon frames his mouth, eyes, every joint, tooth, fissure, nerve, and canal. The human skull stripped to bone is smiling. A fire rises from his stomach and when he coughs is blown across his chest. Ears hurt. Throat constricts. Hair echoes Mother. He stands looking at his head, his big ugly head that is even bigger today on his narrowing, via the black crystal, shoulders. When he stomps his feet the boom rattles his teeth. He grins and sees not the reality of the blood in his mouth but a thousand red crystals. Then, he sees something new. Mom’s patting a cut on his knee with his own shirt, the injury from falling off his bike, his motorcycle, after the game of spit-tag with Remy. She’s discussing the concept of pain. It’s when the crystals inside your body go out . She explains by touching the cut with a press of the shirt. They are trying to turn back on, that’s why it hurts . She stops pressing. Trust me, they’ll come back on, here . She pushes the shirt deep into the cut and he wants to be strong for her so he holds back tears and grins while grabbing fistfuls of grass. Your body is getting brighter, I see it . He smiles and a cry escapes. She presses again, this time lighter, and he shuts his eyes. You’re at a hundred again .

When a guard passes his cell McDonovan reaches into his pocket and drops a mini plastic bag filled with black dust through the bars. The guard says, “Thank ya, business man Pants,” and skips off to tell four more guards that the bags are ready.

Back in the reflection he tilts his head to the left and the hexagon doesn’t follow. He moves more, then a little more, and then a little more, until he’s standing to the side of the window, slightly below, crouching. He craves it but knows it’s not true — the black crystal increasing his count. When he reaches up and places his palm on the hexagon it morphs to fit the twenty-seven bones in his hand. Pants laughs, his head turtling into his shoulders. Inmates are yelling from above.

Tony throws a sharpened spoon and it bounces off the window. Everyone goes AHHHHHHHNOOOOOOOOOOO . The noise snaps McDonovan to the right. The hexagon is gone. The prison gets quiet. Pete, from the upper level says Next time instead of a spoon use, like, your own body or some shit and he realizes that doesn’t make any sense at all so he follows up with a vague just use a really sharp spoon, okay . The heat wave is killing them with sleep deprivation. They can’t think straight. Pete rubs his face with both hands and goes dizzy. Someone coughs and Pants turns again. His head feels like a microwave heating spoons. Four guards stand in a row with their right arms extended through his cell bars, hands open.

It’s time for a crystal mine search.

They find yellow nuggets and blue shale. The sun fell hours ago but left its heat pinned like a dress in the sky and everyone moves slow beneath it. Remy wears dirty red shorts and her blond hair hangs over the front of her shoulders. Her dog, whom she calls Dog Man because she can’t settle on a name — seems impossible to move on from Harvak — digs up a green crystal and she grabs it and slides it into her pocket.

“Keep looking. We’ll find it. Keep going, Dog Man.”

Brothers Feast walk past discussing a jailbreak in reverse. A hairless man slows and smirks at Remy as the others walk ahead shoving each other and laughing on the road out. The man smells like dead dogs and Remy instinctively begins tapping her finger on her thigh. Moonlight filtered through trees forms a birdcage around his head. Remy throws dirt into the air and he ducks, not sure where it will land until it’s heard raining on a truck’s hood and he stands back up with a jump.

He says, “Freak-o,” and walks backward three steps before turning and catching up to the group, tripping once and falling to his knees before picking himself up and running again even though he’s hurt and badly limping.

“Smell you later,” she says, remembering the saying from a city show she once heard from the family radio while sitting in Brother’s lap. He had new hair on his arms and she had no idea what the phrase meant but she loved it and wrote the words several dozen times in her school notebook around and inside of previous drawings of crystals.

Remy tells Dog Man that if she can increase her count she will possess the power to reverse Mothers. She pictures Mom gathering crystals by the valley-full with flowered fingers, light radiating in tunnels from her mouth and eyes, green looping inside her body from throat to stomach in an endless U. A tunnel of light from her left eye connects to Brother and guides him across a bridge built from prison to her. Just for her. Brother comes back to the house and into a seated position with Remy in his lap pulling his hairy arms over the front of her body. The radio shouting cartoons. The family at full count forever. Mom says, making eye contact with Remy inside the dream, cartoons blaring rain and cars and speech bubbles We have one person to thank and it’s Remy!

“Come on, dig more.”

He looks up at her before churning the ground with alternating paws, nose down.

“I know they exist.”

Yesterday Mom spent the afternoon in her room. She dropped something heavy on the floor that moved the house. Inside the drawing on the wall of the red crystal, the baby moved, and suddenly, Remy hated the drawing and wanted it gone. Dad was with her, and they both looked up before looking at each other, no idea what causes a thudding sound like that — dense, sharp, centered. Remy asked for paint. Later, Dad walked out of the room and ran to the bathroom to see if Mom was okay. Remy waited and waited, nothing to do with her fingers but tap her knees until falling asleep, only to be told when she woke from the weirdest dream ever, a new dog on her lap, that yes, Mom was fine, nothing to worry about.

But she took forever to descend the stairs that night for dinner which was pork chops seared gold with garlic potatoes prepared by Dad who was wearing the same stained clothes. When Remy asked what was wrong he spoke with food mashed in his mouth, said she was sick, an illness, old age, How about we don’t talk about it right now, we went over this before, okay? Play with your new dog . Several times during dinner Mom was given the spitting cloth for the red drizzling her chin and throat. Her face looked scared, almost childish, and pained in a way that made Remy tell herself she would do anything to help, even sacrifice herself.

A loud bang and Remy says, “Buildings coming from the city? Dig around more, hurry.”

Dog Man doesn’t look up, his nose buried inside a cone of dirt.

Remy has had nights where she can’t sleep, thinking about her parents, Brother, the family pulled like puppets away from each other, strings severed by stars. Disease cuts all. Remy wonders when she too will catch an illness and rush toward zero. She wonders what it feels like to have nothing inside. What will she see in those final seconds? Will there be colors?