Crystal Eaters (16 page)

“And how, exactly, is that supposed to make sense?” says Sanders.

“What? The sun, or the city? Or both?”

“Let’s start with the city.”

“It doesn’t,” says the same inspector. His black mustache is saturated with sweat. “It doesn’t make any sense at all, that’s what we’re trying to tell you. Not sure if the land is retracting or these buildings are new buildings. I know what that sounds like. We orange-tag them and the tags disappear. Is someone, maybe a villager, taking the tags off? I doubt it. Could be the guy who keeps lighting our buildings on fire. What I’m saying is that one of us sleeps in a building only to wake up with a building in front of that building.”

“Ghosts are working the night shift?” asks Sanders.

The inspector without a helmet says, “I touched the sky where the sun is and burned my fingers.”

“No, well, not exactly,” says the sweaty black mustache. “We can’t prove that. We can’t prove that because we have no physical proof of seeing the buildings going up. Yes, we see, we understand,
there is less land between the village and here. Yes, there seems to be more random buildings, but, I, we, just don’t know.”

“Did you ever think,” says Sanders, rubbing his face with both hands, “to have one, maybe two people, stay up for a few days and just watch, or, I don’t know, take a few pictures? We have so much technology, use it.”

“But we did,” says the sweaty black mustache. “And we didn’t see anything. There’s no proof of construction, only what our eyes see, which is new buildings, fully constructed.”

“That sounds,” says Sanders, “insane.”

“We know.”

“Last question,” says Sanders, sighing and looking frustrated at a maroon-draped window. He wants to take over the village, he wants it more than anything, but he also wants to control it, to understand it. He has speeches to give. He has an election to win. “In your inspectors’ opinions, is the city, however impossible that it can grow on its own accord, actually
growing
?”

The sweaty black mustache takes a deep breath and his protective suit crinkles. “Yes,” he exhales.

Half of Dad’s body hangs over the edge of the roof. He asks a group of nightwalkers below dressed in dark robes with droopy hoods if they’ve noticed the city changing shape. Dad wonders if they’re Black Mask, the ones burning the buildings.

With faces turned up they whisper-yell, “OF COURSE WE HAVE YOU FOOL FACE. THEY WILL MOVE RIGHT IN. HA! HA! HA! DID YOU HEAR US? WE SAID, HA! HA! HA!”

“Are you Black Mask?”

“NO!”

“Are you sure?”

“POSITIVE!”

The air is so hot he doesn’t want to breath. He lies back on the roof, studies the sky, and sees a woman in a constellation
whose elbows are stars. Circling his finger he spins a crystal balanced on her lips. He whispers her name. He wants to cry, the idea is there, but he doesn’t because his emotions kept inside have cemented him, have hurt him over the years, and to let it out now would be impossible. He imagines his count attacked with sun-red knives. But whatever he’s at is nothing compared to Mom because she could be at one. She could be an ant. She could be a flower. He didn’t help her. Dad doesn’t have relationships, he has obligations, like making dinner and keeping the generator going. He spins the crystal until it burns a hole through her mouth.

When he stops spinning she vanishes and white lines that connected stars, created legs, arms, her face, become birds, rats, deer. He thinks he sees a rabbit, her favorite animal, fall from the sky and land on the roof of a building being set on fire by a man without a shirt.

I need sleep, I’m losing it, help me
.

Below him his family is trying to sleep. He imagines the house is transparent, a dollhouse, and he’s a hand crawling the floors, pulling a blanket to Remy’s chin, moving the hair from his wife’s eyes. He moves into the city, glides over the prison where his son sits on the roof… just… like… him… and Dad’s hand pats him on the back then tugs his ponytail.

Standing on the roof, Dad admires the homes that are falling apart. Through a home’s window, he sees water pouring from the ceiling. An old woman holds a bucket in her right hand and with her other hand she shakes her fist at the water. Skip Callahan runs into the room waving his arms, telling the woman to get away, he’s here, he can help. He stands under the water with arms raised and the water gets stronger. He keeps screaming that he wants to help, he’s a born helper, until the old woman pushes him out of the way with surprising force, nearly knocking Skip to the floor. She fills the bucket and signals him to get
another. Dad looks back up at the buildings then back down and over the shacks.

As a child what you see is creation. As an adult what you see is destruction
.

Dad leaves the roof by jumping into a pile of hay built in the backyard for such a stunt. One of the nightwalkers jerks his head around and whisper-yells, “BIRD MAN, CAREFUL, YOU’RE GOING TO HURT YOURSELF.”

15

I
’m going to bed,” says Mom.

Remy reaches for words with her arms. When Mom peeks her head further into the room and sees her lying on her back in bed, knitting the air with her hands, Mom thinks Remy’s dreaming so she closes the door.

Remy’s taken the remainder of the found black crystals by tongue cutting. She hoped the black crystal contained powers. Total desperation to try and reverse what’s always lowering. Remy scared and failing to save Mom. Ingesting black crystal is an effect similar to a flooding of poisonous berries in the bloodstream. But it does make you feel better, so she should just take it. Why should she watch Mom be pulled from her life without trying the one thing that contains movement? Most people are content to be squashed by city and sun.
Like Dad
.

Remy falls asleep and sees herself as a toddler. She’s recently learned how to walk and Brother is running circles around her. They’re playing spit-tag in the crystal mine. Brother runs, shouts, “You got crystal fungus ON YOUR FACE. IT’S ON YOU,” and she can’t keep up. Her spit is drool and bubble. Most kids would cry, but Remy laughs, she loves any game played with him, and she slaps her arms in the air as her spit and his spit mix on her face. Even when he rides his bike right in front of her, lands a glob across her eyes, she giggles, stomps her feet, and
tries to open her eyes by blinking through the froth. The idea to run after him results in her falling.

When she wakes she asks for Mom to come back, she wants to say goodnight, she wants to say sorry for acting the way she did before. What does it feel like to have two left?

The black crystal drawing on the ceiling tells her in flashes of light that Mom will be taken. She understands the cruelty of the universe. She doesn’t move and she doesn’t speak. The black crystal inside her dissolves and cleans her blood black. She feels so alone. There’s never anyone to talk to even when there’s someone to talk to. You put your words onto a body and hope for an equal return. Tonight she’ll stand naked at the bathroom mirror, and touching her stomach, wonder what’s left.

14

A
guard wearing a gold cross on a gold necklace picks at the donuts. One leans back to admire, he’s actually smiling, the flow of coffee into his cup. Another sits on an invisible chair, his back against the wall, his face pained. His hands are on his thighs and every few seconds he adjusts his body, rubbing his ass against the wall, until he falls and the guard from the table touching all the donuts says, “You owe me ten.”

Voices echo off metal and concrete. The door opens and then closes.

“Are you lazy now?” says Jug, sitting in a chair, legs spread wide, his torso leaning to the left, finger running back and forth between ankle and knee. “Used to iron in these creases so sharp I’d get goose-bumps. Seriously, goose-bumps.”

When Pants rolls his neck he can’t feel his head. His teeth hurt. His hair is uncombed and filthy, a hard mat of blond that has grown to the middle of his back. He still requests the top shaved and the look is disarming and absurd and the inmates aren’t sure what to think but most decide to stay away.

“I’m doing the same job I’ve always done,” Pants says, entering the circle of chairs.

The guards at the table take notice except the one on the floor fingering through his wallet.

“Sit,” says Jug.

Pants pulls a chair away from the others, as far away as possible without being told to move closer.

“What,” says Pants, sitting down, smiling, looking around the room. “This about laundry, really? I’ll be more aware. I’ll double check, but, you have to give me a break because, I’m just going through some stuff right now.”

“You have it easy here,” says Jug. “Everyone does. You do what you want, have a nice room –”

“Are told when to eat, sleep, shower, exercise. It’s not like before. It’s not like the beginning when we decorated our cells. What happened? Power and corruption. City values. This place is rotting from the inside. A guard told me there’s moldy streaks running down the outside walls.”

Jug smiles. In a way, he respects him for being disrespectful, and what Pants says is true. “Okay, some structure. A prison is a place to hold people who didn’t follow the law and to help those people recover. The word is re-ha-bil-i-ta-tion. Nothing wrong with that I don’t think. The way I see it, I’m part of helping people. Hey, you feeling all right?”

Pants hasn’t had crystal in days. Besides, he’s leaving this place soon. He’s heard a rumor about the failure of the jailbreak in reverse, that some of the men are now in the prison for good. But he hasn’t seen anyone and his closest gossipers – Tony and Pete – haven’t said anything. He scratches his head and the sound is amplified and migraine producing. His forearms have blue-black veins like tangled wires. He imagines his count – 74, 55, 39, 28, 16, 10 – as actual numbers, three dimensional, falling in rain.

“Mom?”

Jug looks around the room and so does a guard. “Huh?” says Jug, leaning forward. From where Pants is sitting, combined with how Jug is sitting, Jug is two spread legs and just a head, a confused face in the middle, and Pants smiles, looks haunted.

“I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“I’ve had enough too. Got in a lot of trouble for what you did before. What I want to tell you is that we read your letters from Brothers Feast and the ones to and from your mother.”

It’s hard to say who is more shocked by his reaction – the guards who have their hands on their clubs, their fingers tracing the metal rings in the wood, or Pants himself, who feels the few muscles left in his body tighten like anchored rope. Even Jug is uncomfortable, his eyes zigzagging around the room as he ignores Pants who is crying the type of crying where the eyes are bloodshot and filled with water and the upper body shakes.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” says Jug, regaining his role as the one in control, his voice getting deep and serious, professional Jug acting quickly now, the guards wondering how he’s going to handle this situation (a man crying!) after the last health meeting mishap. “Your friend will bring back the crystal or you’re never going to leave this prison, never going to see your mom, never going to do a
thing
. Do you understand what I’m saying, a
thing
.” He leans back and sneers, then leans forward again. The guards smile at each other and one tries to hold back his laughter by biting his bottom lip but exhales an odd half-hiss half-fart sound.

“I can’t control what he does and doesn’t do. If he comes back with it?”

“Everyone released,” says Jug, proud of himself, relaxing back into the chair with his arms crossed over his chest. He’s been able to handle Z. and the Brothers and now Pants. He’s on top. He’s in control. “Your poor mom.”

Pants stands and jumps up on his chair. He grabs the back for balance before standing tall, arms outward.

“Hey,” says Jug.

Everyone watches, not moving, not sure what to do.

Shuffling his feet, Pants turns so his back faces the guards. The plastic seat of the chair blows a bubble at the floor. He says he’s going to fall backward. “Your choice to catch me.”

Jug looks at the guards and shakes his head no.

But from instinct, maybe it was the trust-fall they did months ago, the guards begin to form two lines behind Pants. They disband when Jug says to them, “Stop, stop it. We can’t let him tell us what to do. We’re the ones in control.”

Pants says to the wall, his feet a little shaky on the small surface of the chair, “Mom is slush.”