Collaboration 2
By Ruslan Garrey & Elena Malkov
A grape rolls across the table, like an eye, not blinking. The empty water glass waits for more. Hands tremble. Summer hovers, curious with buzzing bounty from its ruby throat.
Gazes flicker in the window—a cluster of ragged faces staring at a world bloodied with sunset. They have been mostly silent, hovering in each others’ thoughts. Until one of them, a young man with a heavy beard, coughs quietly and speaks:
“Like, hey man, this is some super colorful shit, huh? Like, I wish I had a camera.” To his left a fat woman sneezes. The bearded man laughs at nothing in particular.
“Would anyone like coffee?” asks Iris.
The faces mutter quietly for a few moments.
“Okay, I’ll just bring gin.”
She waddles away, skirt swaying in the summer breeze.
“Like hey Iris, could I have a sprig of lavender and some hot cocoa in mine?”
A bony elbow hits the youth in a fluffy hat in the ribs. “Don't over-task her,” Sylvia mutters, “Don’t you know what she’s been through?”
Iris’s eyes began to swell with visions of the future and the past. Visions of children floating in the water, white dresses clinging to blue skin, mired in the wet weeds of the river’s edge.
She goes to the kitchen and gets a bottle of gin and five cups, which she brings back to the main room on a tray shaking with her memories. Sylvia pours out the drinks. For a while no one says anything, but the bearded youth feels compelled to break up the silence again, “I, um, I think my parents knew you back in the day Iris. Do you remember them? They were like huge assholes but...”
Iris screams and throws her cup down. “No no no! You mustn’t!” she howls, flailing her arms.
Sylvia rushes to grasp her, but Iris bursts into sobs and pushes her away. The bearded man’s mouth writhes as he looks on, stunned.
Finally, Jonathan speaks. His voice is quiet and deep, but quivering ever so slightly.
“They weren’t assholes Charlie,” he says, measuring out each word. “They just had very strong ideals. And that makes people angry and tough.”
His watery eyes glance at Iris’s crying form, and right away her shoulders relax and her face softens, though the tears keep rolling down her cheeks.
“Your father was here when it happened,” Jonathan adds quietly, now looking back at the bearded boy, who has shrunk in his chair, deflated and lost.
“Like hey man, it was all okay, right? They found those kids...” and he trailed off.
Iris emanated a soft yellow light. “I had to do what I did. I fished them from the stream and set them right. They were more fish than children at that point, but I set them right.”
They all drank deeply from their cups.
The moon landed into the tree tops and shone blindingly red.