As the uncomfortably humid time of year would insist—even if financial conditions did not—a vacation was in order, and I decided that my destination would be within state boundaries—for budget’s sake. I hadn’t seen my family in almost a decade, and despite a sort of “falling out” with my parents, I still enjoyed the company of familiar—and familial—faces. While I was more accustomed to the repurposed farmland in which my local suburban area had been reared, my family lived in a wilder locale; those regions of Missouri which bear geographical aspects more reminiscent of its once Southern consideration, than its present Midwestern modernity.
Places where insect life is not exterminated wholesale, and where clouds of gnats may hover freely about one’s meal—often taken outside—without more disruption than a flick of a hand. Where one can find entire hosts of casual partiers at creeks—or rather, the colloquial crick—on any given night; a steel carpet of pulverized beer cans paving the way for the bare or just ill-footed.
I’m sure the idea of the area has been made apparent—moving on.
The four hour drive out there—unannounced, of course—went by without incident, and I pulled into that uphill, gravely driveway and parked behind my father’s perpetually dusty pickup. My mother’s Chevy Cobalt sat beside it, looking as if it hadn’t gone a single mile since my hasty departure nine years prior. The house, nothing remarkable beyond the expanse of well-cultivated land on which it sat, stood as grim as I remembered it. The application of paint to its surfaces was something only thought of in dreams, and the sun-bleached paneling made the building appear sick—just as its inhabitants were, I’d soon come to find out.
I crossed the yard—something my father surprisingly had never been pissy about—and knocked on the front door; a once vibrant crimson, now a pale pink—not dissimilar to the tongue of an old, dying dog; a sight my childhood had made me unfortunately accustomed to. My father answered, dressed in his usual getup of plaid and jeans—despite the weather—though looking markedly aged. He recognized me at once, and I say this because he usually greeted strangers kindly, but the face before me then was one of unmistakable contempt; as if the man had accepted that face as standard when he’d first wore it a decade ago, in tireless anticipation of my return.
In a gesture of cordiality owed entirely to the region and not willful hospitality, he took my luggage from me and nodded towards the inside—indicating that I should enter. I did, and came upon a well-preserved house. The chairs, couches, entertainment stands, and other typical furniture were all stationed and conditioned just as I remembered them, and only the detectable difference was that subtle atmosphere of age about everything. The living room connected directly to the dining room, and from here two other pathways branched: one towards a hall, on the left side of which the bedrooms could be accessed; and towards the other end, the kitchen, through which the backyard could be accessed, and from which the gloomy basement descended.
The layout of the house is unimportant, as the events I must describe mostly took place within the dining room, although it helps to set down the details of the environment to substantiate my claims. My father—hated being called “dad”, if you can believe it—took my things to my room; the sole thing that had changed about the house’s interior. Wordlessly, he motioned for me to go about my unpacking. He left me there, and soon after my mother peeked her head in, not exactly scowling, but not expressing anything identifiable as a warm welcome, either. She looked around the room, as if my mere presence might’ve altered some sacred aspect of it, then told me that dinner would be ready in an hour, and that the yard had grown, “unpleasant”.
I was, in the first five minutes of being home—and on a vacation, might I add—being put to work.
I mowed the lawn, tolerating with mature poise the full force of my father’s stink-eye as he scrutinized my work. I finished, cleaned up, and sat at table with my parents as if I’d never left; and by this I only mean that they talked to each other and regarded me only so far as to grunt in my direction when offering food. After dinner I helped my mother clean up, while my father sat in his easy chair in the living room and dozed off—the ritual persisted.
My mother—didn’t mind mom, but I like to be consistent—asked the compulsory questions: work, social life, prospects, and chided or complimented where she believed was appropriate. When the dishes were finished and surfaces wiped clean, I went into the living room, sat in a chair beside my father, and turned on the TV that had been off all day.
Father came in and out of his staggered “nap” to briefly and brutishly comment on whatever show I happened to be watching—locally broadcast, of course—and that constituted the bulk of our conversation for the day. When night came, he dismissed himself with a, “you’re home.” and a hand wave, suggesting that I was in fact free to move about the house as if I had once, long ago, lived there. My mother left the kitchen—where she read the bible—and kissed me on the forehead, and they went to sleep.
It was 8:45PM.
I texted an old friend of the area and told him of my return, and he strongly suggested that I meet him at a bar not too far away. I considered showering, but decided not to; doubted the local dive would care at all about a t-shirt and jeans that had once been steeped in the sweat of yardwork. I figured it would probably even be expected. I afforded myself a spritz of body spray, though.
The bar was crowded, but something told me the occupants were not there on any special occasion. I found my friend almost immediately, recognized by his liveliness and sobriety in relation to the rest of the sodden and sullen crowd. There was something of a “city-dweller” about him, even though he’d never left our small town. He had always been a bit different, culturally, which is probably why I had been friends with him for so long. He stood, we hugged, then we both sat and ordered drinks. I had my first, he admitted to his third, being closer to the bar than my parents were.
We caught up quickly. I told him about the lukewarm reception I’d received at home, which surprised him—he even accused me of being “spoiled” by the excessive socialization of the city, but when I recounted the exact behavior of my parents, he seemed oddly puzzled. I asked him what was wrong, and he explained that ever since I left town, my parents had tirelessly worked to improve their standing among its people—something that had been soured following my departure. Apparently, I was liked among the townsfolk more than I’d thought, and my parents had been faulted with my self-ejection.
Jeff—my old friend—told me that they’d done outreaches at church, hosted all manner of fundraisers, and generally bent backwards to not only undo their vilification, but to do real good for the town in all the times he’d come across them around town, they hadn’t once expressed any sentiments one could argue as being hostile—and it was known that he had stoked the flames of my angst-compelled departure—even though he’d ultimately remained behind.
After a few drinks and some lighter conversation, we said our goodbyes, and I found myself stepping through the front door of my old home a little after midnight. Despite my age, I found myself drunkenly creeping to my old room, as I’d done so many times as a teen. I practically collapsed onto my bed, not even bothering to slip beneath the sheets, and dozed off immediately.
I woke up very early, before the sun had taken its rise, and found myself wondering why I had. I scanned the room but saw nothing which could’ve obviously explained my premature awakening. Seconds ticked by, and I became a bit more aware of myself and the house, until finally I realized the guilty element for my arousal: a soft yet consistent tapping, occurring somewhere above me. The ceiling was empty, the fan affixed there was shut-off as it always had been—something about the motor, I think. The only explanation was that it was raining, which wasn’t unusual for the dwindling summer, but the downpour sounded much heavier than water. Hail, on the other hand, was all but impossible this time of year, but I couldn’t guess at another explanation.
With the effects of the alcohol having only recently begun to diminish, I sluggishly rolled off my bed, rested for a moment on my knees, then stood and walked to the one window of my room. I parted the drapes, peered through the freshly bug-splattered window—suiciding in the heat, no doubt—and saw the heavy-sounding precipitation which had awakened me. It was certainly not rain, but it wasn’t hail, either. The tiny objects that fell torrentially were, in a word, crystals; tiny, ice-like formations which left no streaks, wetted no surfaces, but landed in heaps and clumps atop everything; never pooling, but stacking on and on.
Not wanting to wake my parents, I texted Jeff about the crystals, who I imagined would still be awake at the early hour; never knew him to be one to retire “early” while he still had a working liver. Keeping to character, he responded promptly, saying that he saw them too—and that they were a somewhat new occurrence, but nothing harmful or weird. I left it at that, apparently satisfied for the moment with his meteorological determination, and went back to sleep.
Later in the morning, I shambled into the dining room to find a bowl of lump-laden oatmeal waiting for me. My parents weren’t present at the table, though eating together was a formality we only upheld at dinner, so I indulged myself freely. The oatmeal was plain in flavor, but unusual in consistency; expectedly sloppish, but amidst the slop was a sort of diminishing crunchiness, as if something had been mixed within it. Gazing at it in that uncertain twilight before the inevitable hangover, I saw only the usual oats, fluffed by the admixture of hot water. Chalking the strange texture up to the brand itself, I cleaned my bowl, and brought it to the sink.
Returning to my room, I undressed, showered, and luckily found a bottle of aspirin on the vanity in my parents’ room—their presences absent here as well. Having medically combated my self-inflicted headache, I explored the house, but found neither parent anywhere. Assuming they had gone to one of the events or functions Jeff had mentioned, I sat in my father’s favorite easy chair, flicked on the TV, and let myself dissolve into a post-drunk stupor.
The noise of boots upon the floorboards stirred me from my dreamless rest, and I opened my eyes to find my father trudging past me, holding a bulging burlap sack. My mother followed, and both looked oddly elated—as if coming home bearing some prosperous haul. Neither spoke to me, although at some point a blanket had been thrown over my body—the rough wool clinging to the threads of my clothing as I scrambled out of the chair.
I asked what was going on, what was in the bag, and my father replied, saying that the sky had “provided”, and that the “element” had come heavily, last night. I followed them into the dining room, and watched as my father unceremoniously dumped the contents of the sack onto the table. Out came dozens of roughly hewn crystals—the same I’d seen collecting everywhere outside earlier in the day.
They were about the size of marbles, and similar in structure—their crystalline forms almost exact replicas of each other, which seemed unusual; although I hadn’t any knowledge of crystallization processes. Their color was a faint hue of blue, as if the sky itself had ejected its constituent atomic elements. My parents stared at the heap as if mesmerized by it. To me, it was probably the most boring collection of crystals I’d seen; lacking the beauty of snowflakes, and the luster of gems—and even the brilliance of ice. Just dull rocks, more like.
Finding the glorification of the crystals a bit weird, I stepped away and headed back to the living room, but was called back by my mother. She wanted me to prepare a soup, while she and my father cleaned up. I did as she asked, despite soup being the last thing I wanted for dinner. When they had freshened up and the soup (chicken noodle) was finished, she shooed me out of the kitchen, and I sat beside my father in the living room. We did not talk, although he seemed happier and livelier than he’d been the day before. When my mother called us over to the dining room for dinner, he sprang up with a celerity I wouldn’t have thought possible at his age.
We entered the dining room and sat at our usual places where bowls full of soup had been set. My mother returned from the kitchen carrying a large serving bowl and set it on the table. I stared at it for a while, perplexed by its presence at the table. It was full of a faint blue powder, which I immediately recognized as the ground remains of the crystals. Without preamble or explanation, my mother scooped a heaping of the stuff and dropped it in her soup, and my father did the same for his. The spoon was then passed to me, and they waited in gleeful anticipation for me to similarly season my own soup. I asked why they had done that, and they responded, in unison, “To enrich ourselves, of course.”
Not yet frightened by the strangeness—but certainly creeped out—I declined the additional topping, and placed the ladle in the serving bowl. My father’s smile shifted to the beginnings of a scowl for an almost imperceptible instant, but his pleasant demeanor persisted, as did my mother’s. We ate in near total silence, the noiselessness broken only by the soft yet discernible—and eerily familiar—sound of “crunching” as they chewed.
I complained of a stomach problem and returned to my room after finishing my meal, not wanting to be around the crystals while tidying up the table and dishes. When there, I texted Jeff about what had happened, and he responded only with jokes and emojis; offering no insight or advice. It was barely 7PM, and I wasn’t at all tired in the usual sense, but I fell a strange pull draw me to my bed, and before I could consciously understand why, my eyes were closing and I drifted off to sleep.
It wasn’t a noise that awoke me this time, but the inability to breathe.
My eyes snapped open, met those of my father, and then lowered to find a funnel being driven into my throat. My mother sat on the side of the bed, fastening thick leather straps to my left wrist—the right one already secured—and shushing me, even though I hadn’t been making noise. I felt the tube attached to the funnel snake its way down my throat, the end of it painfully scraping the inner walls as it went. Once satisfied with the depth of its entry, my father slackened his grip and reached for something behind him. I struggled, meekly, ineffectually; the sheer shock of the circumstances enfeebling my efforts.
Having finished binding my hands to the bed, my mother stepped away, and watched from the behind my father—a disconcertingly manic twinkle in her eye. Without offering an explanation, my father produced a bag—the same burlap sack they’d brought in earlier—and began dumping crystals into the funnel. These were not those that had been reduced to power for consumption at dinner, but entire crystal formations. I heard them rattle and clink as they collided with the funnel, felt the pressure of them as they were pushed through the tubing, and at last felt them cut into my insides; tear at my esophagus, and bulge my gut. I tried to struggle against my bondage but the restraints were immovable.
The pain, the sense of violation, it was incognizable; I couldn’t psychologically handle it; neither the insertion of the crystals nor the sinister actions of my parents, so my mind simply blanked—I blacked out as my father scooped and forced another handful into the funnel…his eyes alight with lunacy.
The scent of bacon pulled me out of my sleep. It was almost intoxicating, and I couldn’t help but rise in some half-sensate state. When the rest of my mind eventually awakened, and I had already begun wiping the sleep debris from my eyes, I finally remembered the incident in the night. I turned to my bed, but found that it was devoid of restraints, or any signs that a struggle had occurred. Checking my wrists, I found them free of redness and any traces that I’d been bound. My throat felt fine as well, and coughing brought no droplets of blood into my hand. Not a single crystal could be found anywhere in the sheets nor embedded in the mattress.
I started trying to rationalize the memories as those of some hyper-real nightmare, but some aspect, some unidentifiable element prevented me from accepting that possibility. I knew, undeniably, that the incident had not been mere nightmare—but had actually happened, and the evidence of it persisted in some ineffable way. Despite the allure of the bacon’s aroma, I made up my mind then not to consume another thing from the house, and would confront my parents regardless of if I saw any signs of the crystals.
There are old adages and tired platitudes that we say or think about things when they arise—sentiments expressed autonomously, stamped upon our psyches through habitual use or experience. Honor thy mother and thy father, respect your elders, blood is thicker than water, etc. I have generally felt these despite my self-initiated exile from home, hence my return to it. But when I came into the dining room and beheld the two figures therein, all notions of familial sanctity, and the inherent value of that bond were cast away; for I saw things so abominable, so beyond the scope of human normalcy, that I could not look upon those people as something worthy of anything but disgust.
They were no longer my parents.
Sitting at the table, in their usual places, were two figures who in general aspect resembled humans, but which were studded and spiked with crystalline projections; their limbs pierced through by sharp protrusions, while other areas were encased in crystalline coverings. Their eyes were like murky diamonds, and their teeth were lightless stalactites. Their hair had fallen out completely at some point, and they’d been coronated with icy crowns that jutted from beneath their scalps to rise sickeningly above their heads.
They turned to me when I entered, and those icy smiles sent a black chill through my heart.
“Now that you’re here again, we can finally be a family! We’ve been blessed with the enriching crystal; you’ve been blessed as well. And when your time comes, we’ll all grow together, and be a happy, whole, singular family again.” My mother spoke these words calmly, happily, and her stony teeth scrapped her tongue—but she expressed nothing that would suggest discomfort. My father simply nodded, and chewed scraps of bacon—that crystalline powder coating the slightly burnt meat.
I didn’t bother returning to my room, or asking questions, or confronting them, or remaining in the house for more than the brief second it took me to snap out of my shock. I grabbed my keys from the bowl on a shelf near the front door, sprinted to my car, and drove away. I had made it to the highway when I received a text from Jeff, who asked if I was alright. I hadn’t texted him at all that day, so was curious as to how he knew something was amiss. I was typing out my reply whilst trying to concentrate on the road when I received another one from him. I read it several times, then blocked his number and continued the drive home. Thankfully, I hadn’t told any of them my exact address, and cell numbers are easily changed.
This is what his message said:
“You should really give them a chance, man. Your parents, and the gifts they have for you. Remember how I said they help out the town whenever they can? Well the gifts are how they do it: bake sales, providing snacks for town and church meetings, helping with school lunches, they’re always helping out. They’ve really enriched this community.”
When I finally arrived home, tired out from the fright and anxiety, I crawled into bed—ready to sleep for what seemed like the millionth time in the last few days. Just as I was going to settle into my preferred position of comfort, I felt a resistance in my side—preventing me from rolling over. Looking down, I saw something sticking out of my shirt.
It was a crystalline projection, newly-emergent. In a panic I seized it and yanked it out, which did not elicit any pain whatsoever. The “wound” sealed almost instantly, and the crystal—about the size of a hairbrush—did not disintegrate to nothingness or sizzle away. It kept its solidity, and was only broken by its collision with the wall when I hurled it away. Its fragments remained on the floor, and after regaining my composure I swept them up and flushed them down the toilet.
The actual, meteorological origin of the crystals is entirely unknown to me, and a quick google search cross-referencing my town with the occurrence has yielded nothing. It would seem that their appearance was totally random, or the work of some unknowable entity—human or otherwise. If Jeff is to be believed, it’s a relatively new phenomenon—but one that has irrevocably altered my family and the town.
I’ve since been standing in front of a mirror, monitoring myself for more crystal projections. Four more arose shortly after the first, and I’ve dealt with them similarly. My phone occasionally rings, each time with a new number bearing the same area code as that of my town. It would seem the entire town is trying to contact me.
I’ll see about changing my number later in the night, if I’m still human enough to do so.