Filaria - Brent Hayward [72]
After a long pause, in what he hoped was a thoughtful manner — since parts of the story had drifted through him, like the mists — Mereziah said, “Thank you, Joseph,” and he turned to Crystal Max. He wanted to tear her hand from Joseph’s leg. “Did, did they look into your eyes too? To see if you belonged here? You didn’t tell me anything about that.”
Crystal batted her lashless lids, smiling coyly, and showed blackened gums. “My eyes? How could they not peer into them? Actually, old man, I did try my charm on the soldiers. But it didn’t work. I thought I could sleep my way to freedom.” She laughed. “Really, the soldiers didn’t say much to me . . . I was taken long before Joseph here. For three days they kept me in that thing, tossing food down at first, then tossing people down. I was the first one in there . . . Except for two little freaks joined at the shoulder. I forget their names. Jan and Dean? Stan and Jim? I don’t know. Anyways, me, I was walking down a hallway, down home, minding my own business. Having a good cry, actually, when they took me. From behind.”
Feeling a twinge of arousal at the unfortunate turn of phrase in Crystal’s story, Mereziah stammered, “I want you to know that we’re going up. Towards the sky. Where the suns are. Have you heard of them? Where warmth and light and health is. We’re going up.” He felt his limbs quivering. “Do you hear me? We’re going up.”
Crystal said, “But I wanna go down. That’s the other way. The soldiers told me I was from the bottom of the world, so I wanna go down.”
“To where the dead fall? That’s your home?” Mereziah was about to ask Crystal if she had ever seen his parents, waiting for him down there, waiting for him to join them, but he held his tongue.
Crystal said, “The dead? What the fuck? I don’t know anything about the dead. There’s no more corpses down there than there are up here. I only ever seen one my whole life, and that was some poor kid who died of the Red Plague when I was seven.”
“Why were you, why were you crying?” Mereziah asked, as quietly as he could in the din.
“What? When?”
“You said you were crying when they found you. Why?”
“Why do you care?”
Mereziah glanced surreptitiously at Joseph, who had apparently lost all interest in the conversation. If he had ever had any. The man had regained his meditative pose. Crystal’s hand, thankfully, was gone from his knee. “Why were you sad?”
“Shit, I was high. Like I am now. And I’d had a fight with my boyfriend.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
“You’re surprised?” Crystal’s grin showed those dark gums again. “That’s a little insulting. But I really don’t see the point of this.”
“Of course,” Mereziah muttered. “I knew you would have a boyfriend. Of course you would.” But daggers, once more, stabbed at his heart. He clenched his fists, best he could, picturing the boy: young — a mere teenager, perhaps — attractive, muscular. Vapid. How he hated that youth. How he wished the boy were dead, mangled. Had he kissed Crystal on the mouth? Put his hands inside her shirt? Been warmed by her flesh? Had he touched her? “Uh, what, what was the fight about? The fight between you and your lover?”
“Lover?” Now Crystal Max was no longer smiling. Her eyes had hardened. “You’re getting a little nosy, aren’t you, pops? I thought these questions were supposed to be about survival. The fight, if you must know, concerned another guy. It was about this little twerp called Phister who was always trailing after me, bugging me. We used to go out, me and him. But he probably doesn’t remember that. Simpson Lang thought I still liked him. And I do. I do still like Young Phister. What do you think of that?”
Mereziah was unaware of the precise moment that he had decided to lean in and kiss Crystal himself. All he knew was that he had finally transgressed everything he held dear, broken through that last barrier. Her open hand stung hard against