He can’t turn his head off. When his neck can’t be pressed further, his legs fully extended, his body goes limp and he rolls onto his back. For a moment, he sees nothing, and that feels good. Hands on his chest he breaths in bursts that raise and lower his chest in such a dramatic fashion that he screams for help even though he knows the guards can’t hear him or don’t care to. He thinks he should have been a better son, and should have been a better brother, but he did the best he could, and it’s only in this present moment, looking back, can he think such a non-helpful thought as I should have done better. In the past you can change yourself into someone better, or worse, but not in the present moment, no, that’s impossible because the memory can’t be molded yet into what you want it to be, and Pants thinks this, and laughs, and he moves his hand across the always cool prison floor imagining the dirt from the crystal mine as he breaks apart a layer of static.
3
After he hits something hard, the machine abruptly stopping, the back two wheels bouncing up a few inches and jarring Z., he jumps out. A cloud of dust and debris takes a moment to clear. He looks under the machine for broken machine parts. He’s a mud mask with white eyes. He swallows another bug, a lightweight thing consisting of only wings, and waits for visibility to return inside the tunnel he’s created. He stares at the wall.
In front of the machine he crouches at the wall and uses the flashlight to form a head-sized white circle around a protruding spike. Tilting the flashlight up, down, left to right, the spike gleams. One side appears mirrored, and Z. doesn’t even recognize himself. He licks his lips and tastes dirt. A triangular section of the spike is smooth as glass. Using his fingers, he digs a little deeper into the wall, around the base of the spike, and dirt pours around what becomes a crystal. The more dirt that falls away the wider it becomes. He can’t believe what he’s seeing. He wonders what it tastes like, what it can do to a person, how is this possible.
He grabs tools from the machine. He moves faster now, trembling with excitement. Here he is, someone who has discovered something thought never to have existed. He picks and digs. The crystal is double the size of his torso and it’s an unmistakable solid black. The light from the machine flickers, makes a terrible short-circuiting sound, and Z. turns to the change in light like it’s a bottle breaking. He checks the flashlight propped up on a rock that he has aimed in his direction. It’s already going to be impossible to find his way out of here, he can’t have the lights go. He imagines driving aimlessly through the tunnels, a flashlight held in his mouth, the machine full of black crystal rumbling through darkness, dirt swells, bug colonies.
He raises the hammer.
He breaks off fist-sized chunks. Clanging echoes reverberate through his arms. There’s gunk in his nose and he blows it out on his right arm, then raises the arm, aims, comes down and breaks off another chunk. He only needs so much to bring back but the more he gets, the bigger the hero he is or something, or so he thinks in the moment, so he cracks off more ham-sized pieces and leaves the remaining black crystal protruding from the wall. He can’t stop smiling. He wonders how far the crystal extends, maybe a network of black roots covering miles.
He places the chunks in the back of the machine where the toolbox is. Then the light on the machine burns out in a burst. Everything goes dark. Z. makes a noise he’s never heard before.
He sits in the idling machine with a narrow path of light filled with dust extending from his mouth where he holds the flashlight. How deep am I? He hears footsteps. Why has no one come? He jumps from the machine again and walks to where the remaining black crystal is and puts his ear against the wall, one hand flat against a cool side of the crystal. Through the wall gritty and cutting against his ear there’s water rushing through sewers, cars accelerating under yellow lights.
2
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.