He flips a switch and the projector flickers, scarred film twitching on the wall, and she appears, untouchable, a wicked smile scythed across her face, then he drops the needle, and the dark record spins. A voice like old leather sings about those who never returned from the war. He has laid out a dress like a deflated ghost, small cities of antique perfumes, as if to trick back time, as if to bring her back warm and breathing to this room. He watches her move across the wall, this woman he still loves, the pivot and roll of her shoulders, like she’s sharpening herself against the world, the promise of her hips beneath the dress, and he remembers the day he shot this film, on the bank of the Neva, how they drank red wine and vodka and champagne and ate salted cucumbers and garlic and thick slabs of Ukrainian pork fat. They were very drunk and laughing hard and decided to strip and swim in the river where they floated naked and silent. At the end of the day she danced barefoot and he shot a short film on his camera: a long train was crossing the bridge and in the background you could hear him talking, his hand gliding like a bird in and out of the frame. On screen now the light is fading, night blooming in her eyes, and he reaches for her hand but she pulls away, her hair undone and falling, dark and wild as time, and the film is dying, nitrate breaking as the reel runs out, then she pirouettes and is gone.
Ryan Griffith’s work has appeared in The Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions and Best Microfiction. He runs a multimedia narrative installation in San Diego called Relics of the Hypnotist War.