Free Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones

driving the dog and the girl blur past.
    “Stop it or I’ll –” says Skip, momentarily looking into the side mirror to see them vanishing into the rain. Then he concentrates back on the road and says, “Holy mother wow was that what,” before driving the final section of the road down.
    He reaches the bottom of the mine. The drivers circle aroundhis truck. Crisscrossing headlights illuminate mine workers who wear black shorts, no shirts, and jog with wheelbarrows dirt-brimmed with crystals. Tonight’s late-night undocumented batch will be sold to the city and used for engagement rings, special occasion earrings, displayed in New Age yoga studios, given to the hospital-sick for positive energy. They have their own crystals, but they don’t have these crystals. Some will be sold to parents for their children who play a game called Lyfer, trade the crystals back and forth in a test of who can maintain closest to a hundred, the brightest colors worth extra. They hurry between the ringing bells of classes to lie about what they hold behind their backs and to trade furiously as teachers watch. Skip listens to the roar of truck engines shifting gears as he tries to comprehend what he just saw.
    Ken Horgan, a rat-like man whom Skip has seen several times bleeding from the head after work shifts, rolls his window down. His neck turned back and up, eyes squinting in the rain, he says, “Whole-e-shit. Was that a werewolf?”
    Skip drives a loop around the trucks. Gas pedal floored, the truck buckles through shifting gears. He heads back up and out of the mine on the road he just descended. Ugly is the sky coming over the wall. Skip wants to help because he is a person hardwired to help. He couldn’t help his mom. Tires roll over the hand-prints over paw-prints. Ken Horgan says from the pit of the mine, standing in the rain with eyes like a rat being flicked with water, “COME BACK AND TELL ME WHAT THAT WAS SKIP I’VE NEVER KNOWN A HALF DOG PERSON BEFORE LET’S HAVE DINNER AND TALK ABOUT IT BUDDY.”
    Halfway to the house they stop because Hundred has something in his paw. He’s been running on three legs. Remy, covered in mud, sits in the road and cradles him in her lap. The rain lets up to a spit. Steam places the village in a cloud and the lowerhalf of the city disappears. She pulls out a triangle of dark crystal from his paw. Blood splatters across her fingers in a Z. His eyes break as his spine twists. Remy tries to say something like, “stop” but it comes out as “hop.” He runs from her arms with impossible strength and Remy follows until they both enter the house.
    “Hey, hop it.”
    “…”
    “Hop it now.”
    They run up the stairs and down the hall, doors slamming shut behind. They jump into the tub. Remy turns the water on as Hundred play-bites her forearms. She laughs and can’t believe he wants to be in the tub, he hates baths, but he seems to be loving it, barking and leaping and smiling the way dogs sometimes appear to be smiling. She slaps his body with both hands. More blood from his paw, a stream of numbers entering the water. He acts wild, his eyes bigger than all dog eyes combined.
    Thud thud thud on the front door with a three second pause before another thud thud thud . They ignore it.
    As the water splashes over her legs, rises above her stomach, the mud from Remy’s skin and Hundred’s hair washes off in black goops that she finger-paints on the tub’s walls. Hundred eases into a calm state, but something is off. Remy has witnessed a transformation. Good, bad, she doesn’t know yet, but something has happened. He’s not acting happy anymore. She can’t stop staring at the way he’s moving, not like a dog, but like a bug on its back, trying to flip over and right itself. It’s like he’s trying to move inside himself or leave his own body.
    “You okay?”
    Hundred barks twice and turns his head to the thudding.
    “Who’s that?”
    Before the water reaches her chest, Hundred leaps