Free Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones Page A

from the tub and leaves a wet slide of mud and dark goo extending outthe bathroom, down the stairs, and to the front door where the thudding just won’t stop.
    “Hey, open up.”
    Hundred stretches his front legs up on the door and barks.
    “I don’t care what it is you’re doing. I’ve known crystal heads before and it doesn’t bother me, I just want to know if you are all right. Name is Skip and I work in the mine. I said, HELLO?”
    Remy stays in the tub. Blood hangs from her feet. She sits back with the water at her chin and crosses her left foot over her right knee and inspects her foot. The air wobbles. She doesn’t feel like herself anymore and that’s a good thing. It’s her birthday and later tonight Dad will shoot a single firework into the sky. Pressed into her skin are dark crystals. Thud thud thud . She picks one out and blood pours down her leg. They look black. Scared, where is Mom and Dad? What is this? She squeezes the crystal back in. A flash of heat travels from her foot to her head followed by a desire to run. The liquid retracts back inside her. Lifts her. She breaths in bursts and closes her eyes where she sees a body being carried to the mine where burned. Mom cried at the kitchen table this morning because when you guess how many are inside, you guess how many days you have left. Remy doesn’t think about her lowering count because now she’s at the opposite end of that thought. Here in the pink tub, the discovery of black crystal is an escalating number widening her veins, making her believe, making her become everything – plant, bird, horse, dirt, sun, Mom – alive.
    There’s one last series of knocks at the front door and then just Hundred barking, proud of himself for fighting off the knocks.
    Skip Callahan stands shirtless in steam and rain. He only wanted to help. He turns and checks his idling truck. What was that? He walks back to his truck and looks at the fence. The city, like the sun, is way closer than yesterday. What’s happening? The buildings are fanning out around them like cards. I don’t wantto die . People are walking the edge of the city. Some are using binoculars. Skip turns his back, lowers his pants, and jiggles his big body.

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    L ying under his sheet, he lifts his pelvis and builds a tent with his knees. He’s coming down from peaking on black crystal and the beating he took at the health meeting. They hit his legs with sticks until he fell. He thinks about the letters from Mom and with his right hand rubs his stomach and shoots a beam of light from his bellybutton. Through the sheet and around the prison bars and into the village the light travels until it rests in triangular form on her bedroom floor. She dips the black crystal into the light. Twin horses rise on their back legs and kick holes in the ceiling.

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    A s they struggle to position the table Z. stands on it and shouts at the sun. His face is dark with shadows and sweat. His green robe is strapped tight by his arms. Everyone is excited by this new project. Once the table is in proper place, according to Z., they sit down.
    Trucks, wagons, bicycles, the few cars in the village, become a fat U shape of traffic forced to flow around them. A man driving a truck who is shirtless and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette lays on the horn. He reverses his truck and accelerates before stopping inches from the table. Arnold tells Skip easy, says to keep his cool. He reverses and accelerates again and again. It’s a tactic to psyche the Brothers out that doesn’t work. Skip is drenched from the rainstorm, his eyes crazed, his hair matted to his forehead in the shape of a bird’s gray wing.
    “Easy, Skip, easy,” says Arnold. “Look like you’ve seen Royal Bob!” Arnold waits for someone to laugh but no one laughs.
    Red globs stretch then drip from the rim of the sun.
    “Skip, come on now,” says Ricky. “No need, no need.”
    “I got this,” says Z.
    Everyone stops and looks at Z. who