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pulled like puppets away from each other, strings severed by stars. Disease cuts all. Remy wonders when she too will catch an illness and rush toward zero. She wonders what it feels like to have nothing inside. What will she see in those final seconds? Will there be colors?
    “Last try.”
    Something is happening in the city: sky-stretched screams, ambulance howls, rising smoke, breaking glass. The Brothers leave the mine by way of the dirt road and run to watch. The moon weakens from clouds. In a final attempt to find a black crystal Remy picks a random spot on the ground and makes a hole by kicking her heel downward. Dog Man barks. Nothing. Not even yellow. Remy hears the noises too, sees the trails of smoke above, wonders what it could be.
    They run up the road and out of the mine and watch the fire in the city. Night-framed bodies leap from a burning building before ladders can fall against the roof. The moon pulls flames from the windows in ribbons of yellow and red. Six arcs of water extend from flashing lights positioned below. At this distance, in this moonlight, when a helicopter turns and slantsitself when pouring dirt from above and onto the burning building the helicopter disappears and what Remy sees is a slit in the sky spewing dirt. She looks and wonders where the hospital is. Dog Man moans.
    “It’s okay,” she says, holding him in her arms, his nose wet and covered in dirt. “That’s city fire.”
    “You’ll let me die like Harvak.”
    “I won’t,” says Remy.
    “I’m not really talking,” says Dog Man. “I eat my own shit.”
    “Will Mom die?”
    A large temple-shaped flame spurts skyward from the roof and more people scream.
    “That is exactly what will happen.”
    “Then what’s the point?”
    Trucks driving toward the fire drown buildings in flashing lights. Curious faces hang from apartment windows. Someone drops their phone ten stories and shouts, “My phone!”
    Dog Man says, “They consume because they want to live forever.”
    “I don’t know what that means.”
    The chopping of the helicopter narrows to a distant and silent dot.
    “I sleep under your bed and puke there. There’s an entire floor of puke and you don’t know about it.”
    “Why are you telling me that?”
    He laugh-barks. “A lake of puke.”
    “Stop it.”
    “Puke ocean.”
    “Let’s go.”
    “Puke city.”
    “Come on.”
    “Puke kingdom.”
    “We’re going now.”
    “You know what you are?”
    “What?”
    “The princess of castle puke.”
    They run home with the smoke and clouds and heat a union above, following.
    Remy wakes in her bed. She sneezes black gunk into her palm and wipes her hand on the flower-print bedspread. When she stands, she steps on her sleeping dog and immediately jumps to the side, raising her foot.
    “Sorry,” she says.
    “…”
    “Hey, said I was sorry.”
    Dog Man sits up, head angled.
    “I’m not looking under the bed.”
    “…”
    “How is Mom?”
    “…”
    After washing her hands in the bathroom Remy walks downstairs. Smell of bacon. She trips on a bucket of YCL placed on the floor just around the corner to the kitchen entrance. Some of it sloshes out and spills on the floor and Dad yells because they need every drop. Remy cleans the spill up with a wet cloth from the sink and Dad watches her every move.
    Dad attempts to get Mom to eat a sliced apple with honey. She eats with hesitation, little interest, her mouth caged with saliva. Her eyes say she wants the bacon on the stove, Remy sees this, but Dad doesn’t notice. He holds the apple to her lips. Dad prepares meal after meal to show he cares. He spends countless hours cooking only to rush through eating and then moving on to the next meal. He thinks time spent together at the table is important, family time, a duty and obligation that must be filled, but you wouldn’t guess it by watching his rushed movements that he cared, never asking what they would actually like to eat.
    Sunlight sprays the