Yasnost

“Fuck, cyka...I need a dart.”

Yasuo slipped his cigar into a dying bush, branches slapping against the ruff of his overcoat. Leaves crunched beneath him as he stumbled to it: a circus tent, wrapped in the thicket of the woods. Set up in a sort of clearing where the trees met with the undergrowth. Four children were tacked to its walls. Rostylav had asked them to collect the bodies, as a favor to the families. Searching through the mess, gathering the parts...that would be the unfortunate bit of their agreement. Still, it was a favor. Yasuo dug his free hand into his breast pocket, leveling a briefcase on the other.

“Yeah, yeah....you want Winston or Salem?”

“Winston. Jesus, what the fuck is Salem?” Noah worked his fingers under the chipping paint. Like the tent, like the trees, everything in the woods buckled to a water tower settled further into the forest. Half of it had worn down to a bare skeleton.

“Life’s a full circle, you know?” Noah said, holding a lit match to his Winston. He grabbed a box of vinyl gloves from the trunk of his sister’s beloved Volga. “You do shit, you get shit, you become shit. Either shit or an urn. Or....ah, shit.” The match died, the cigarette slipped from his fingers and landed on a bed of leaves. Yasou trampled out the flame. The men looked back to the tent. A packrat had burrowed into one of the kid’s chests.

“Home is where the heart is.”

“Noah...take another dart, Noah. Just hold the fucking match this time.” Noah beamed, unloading a tripod from the Volga’s tailgate. The morning sun was at its richest, hanging at the skyline’s peak. Yasou’s shoulders eased. They could take their time. He looped his fingers through a gold pendant strung over his neck, a gift from his brother. The cross bobbed with the pounding of his heart.

“Alright, I’ll...Jesus Christ, cyka. Stop.”

“What?”

“The dead kid. You can’t poke the dead kid with a stick. That’s intercession or whatever the fucking term is.” A second rat weaved between Noah’s feet as he pitched back to the car. Unpleasant work was ahead of them. Yasou, the wind pushing back onto his matted hair, set his briefcase against the base of a pine tree, strung out his equipment. Felt out the gash running from his shoulder blades to the back of his scalp. Burning...Yasuo turned back to Noah. He had the trunk held to an opening.

“We’re bringing these to Pyaterochka, aren’t we? You’re sister’s going to...” The hedges surrounding the clearing shuffled. A twig snapped. “What the fuck?”

“What? What?”

Yasou went for his sidearm, a light PSM buried in his tunic. Loose bullet shells spilled out onto the forest floor.

“Watch out for yourself. Something’s kicking around in the hedges.”

Mika squared his shoulders. Looking into the plank archway, a parting of trees where the forest began. Light patches of life, joined together by deserted canopies - the Shallows. A sort of virginity patch surrounding the heart and spirit of the woods. The Shallows would weed out the hikers, the game-wardens, the tourists...letting only the determined pass through, into the Chaparral.

Further in, where the river joined with the trees, was a little mash of bricks and barbwire. The Grid. There, he could catch his breath. Mika sighed, marking out his path on the flattened back of a Stimorol wrapper.

Only the determined pass through.

If he was fortunate, she would be there, in the Shallows, where only the rats could snap at them. He would meet his curfew. Mika stepped into the archway. Overwhelmed by a raw blanket of green.

The bullet landed. Something, just hardly masked by the undergrowth, cried. Diving back into the hedge. Yasuo waited a moment before circling back to the car. He threw the pistol onto the awning.

“We have to follow it, you know,” Noah mumbled between drags. A light rain pattered against the budding treetops.

“What?”

“It could’ve been a kid. A hiker. A...fuck, my match burned out. You know what I mean though. It saw us. That’s a breach of responsibility.” Yasou groaned, falling back onto the Volga’s hood. He’d wanted to take a skiff out to the Kama River, to fish until far into the evening. Fucking Rostylav.

“We have to?”

“I wouldn’t dawdle anything through half the fucking woods if we could work around it. God forbid this comes up later.” Noah looked back to Yasou, tossing back his Winstons. His lips arched into a smile. “Come on, zhopa. The whole forest only goes out a couple of miles. We’ll find it.”

“I was gonna fish over Kama today,” Yasou sighed, tucking the matchbox into his overcoat. Noah helped him to his feet.

“Another time, zhopa. Another time.”