Collaboration 1
By Ruslan Garrey & Elena Malkov
A swarm descended on the square. Meaty arms stretched up, photographing the blossoming trees and jostling one another. A simpering sonata spilled out of an open café window, and a graying man crumpling onto a bench at the corner went completely unnoticed.
Only four people tripped over him. A shutterbug in a blue shawl, a lame orange street dog, a child chasing a red balloon, and a pigeon that picked a crumb from his beard.
The dog, in fact, knew the man well, though the pigeon had never seen him before.
The man stared at the branches of the tree above his head and murmured to himself, dogwoods and cattails, cattails and dogwoods, over and over again. But the square kept filling with people and he could no longer hear himself pray, so he heaved himself up off the bench and began wobbling down the street.
“That statue is moving again,” whispered Andre to Emily. “I think it’s out for blood.”
“That’s my dad,” replied Emily.
The graying man hobbled to the hot dog stand and began mouthing words to the vendor.
“Dogwoods and cattails,” he said, and the vendor nodded, poured a glob of mustard onto a fresh hot dog, and handed it to the gray man.
“See you later, Hank,” he said, waving away the man’s attempts to pay for his meal.
“That’s your dad?” Andre half-yelled. “Didn’t you say he was dead?”
“Well it feels like he is,” came Emily’s reply.
Andre shivered as he glanced at the man while he meandered to a curb and began eating.
“It’s a really ghastly thing to see him like that. I remember him being so full of life. Was it really a gypsy’s curse that did it, or was that just a rumor?”
The vagrant threw crumbs to a pigeon, picking them off the bun absently. Suddenly he raised his eyes to look directly at Emily and his eyes sparkled green.
“Not exactly gypsies,” she replied, pulling her gaze away. Grabbing Andre’s sleeve, she led him toward a side street and ducked out of the square. “He was cursed though. I don’t really understand it, but it’s got something to do with ball lightning and an old riddle.”
Hank saw, of course, that his daughter wouldn’t even look at him. He finished his hot dog, threw away the wrapper, and began ambling the way Emily had taken Andre.
Just as Hank was about to enter the alley to follow his daughter and her fiancé, Dr. Perefrin got a hold of him by his coattails.
“Where do you think you’re going, old hound?” he laughed, “Don’t you know it’s time for another injection?”
Meanwhile Emily and Andre slipped through an alley door, ushered in by a man with an overwhelming twitch.
The twitching man, gray but not old, reached into his pocket and handed each of them a white, round pill. They placed them under their tongues and walked through a long, dark corridor, then down a flight of stairs (their feet echoing damply on the stone steps), finally entering a small square room, already cramped with several other people. Music played, and two large vents on the ceiling piped in cool air.
Dr. Perefrin extracted a vial of bright yellow light from his lab coat pocket. “Do you want to keep seeing the dogwoods and cattails, old hound? Do you want to keep feeling like a fresh June day?” he tittered with a grin. Hank wiped his nose on his dirty sleeve and nodded, kicking with indecision at a pigeon.
At the same moment, Emily turned to Andre, the pill under her tongue turning into a sweet pocket in her gum. “I don't want to keep seeing him. He must be a ghost. He must be some hallucination. Andre, will you...”
And then there they were. All three of them in the same place, all looking at each other. Everyone else did their best to fade into the walls while Emily finally stared at her father.
She saw sharp creases in his sunburnt skin, and his hair was shiny with oil and sweat.
“This is Andre,” she said, barely audible over the music, gesturing vaguely in her fiancé’s direction.
Her father stared, uncomprehending. Then smiled. Then started to laugh, almost screeching—an echo of Dr. Perefrin.
The breath emptied out of Emily’s lungs and her brain grew dim. There wasn’t enough air, she wanted desperately to run back upstairs, but her limbs seemed unhitched from her nervous system.
She fell to her knees. Dogwoods and cattails erupted all around her, blocking out her vision.