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We stayed together but didn’t really talk to each other. Sometimes we’d climb up the hill I’m standing on now, or other quiet places in the village. Viktor would read and I’d tumble in the grass, picking wildflowers or singing songs I’d learned in school. He started calling mezaychik.
I knew the only way I felt safe enough to be myself was by staying close to him.
My memory fades off, leaving me alone at the top of the same cold hill. The skin on my knuckles burn when I close my hands into fists. Wind singes my cheeks as it blows past. I turn away from the chill and head back to my car, taking care to avoid the muddy ditch I’d stumbled into on the way up.
After a few choking fits of the car engine, it sputters back to life, exhaling puffs of exhaust I see rising through the rear window. I shift into drive and head where the paved road ends and turns into the dirt trail leading to the village where Viktor and I grew up.
* * *
There’s notmuch time left before the sun sets, but I had to come out here. Seeing Viktor made me realize something: I have to face the past.
My car lurches ahead, traversing over a neglected road. As I come closer to the village, the devastation from the day of the attack comes into my view. The towers where the families lived continue to stand because of their solid build, but everything inside the cement high rises is broken and decaying. Virtually all the windows have little more than random shards remaining and are ringed with soot from fires. The majority of the fires were from the day of the attack, but some were from looters who raided the village after it was abandoned.
Viktor and I were on the outskirts of the village that day, isolating ourselves as usual, but from what I’ve heard, the first thing the attackers did was aim their rifles into the windows and begin shooting, announcing their presence by destroying as many windows as they could. People looking outside their homes when the attacks began were shot without hesitation.
My eyes clamp shut as I think of my first memory from that day: a din of gunfire, cries of terror and destruction. Viktor startled upright, peeked his head around the corner of a barn to investigate. Even in those days, he was fearless. When I saw the shock come over his face, I knew something terrible was happening. He ran to me, scooped me into his arms, and ran to a tower that was mostly vacant. We tumbled our way up a few flights of stairs before finding a room with an unlocked door. He ordered me to stay in a far corner, away from the windows. Viktor crawled low to the ground as gunfire continued to echo throughout the village, reaching the side of a window in the living room. In a moment of deafening silence between rounds of shooting, he lifted his head to look outside. Torrents of gunfire immediately resumed, shattering the glass he was looking out from.
He tucked himself back behind the cement as the attackers unleashed an open assault on the building we were hiding in. First it was outside, bullets breaking through glass and bouncing off the cement. Then we started hearing attacks on the floors below. The further up the stairs the gunmen ascended, the more detailed the sounds of the attacks became. First, we could only hear gunfire, then we heard shrieks and pleas of mercy before the gunfire. When they reached our floor, we could hear a loud boom of a door being kicked open with shouting if they found anyone inside, and then more gunfire.
I creeped my way along a wall, wanting to escape to a higher floor. When I reached the doorway, I felt a hand wrap around my arm and pull me backwards. I screamed and Viktor turned around to find a man in a Russian military uniform holding me with a knife to my throat.
“Don’t,” Viktor pleaded.
The attacker pulled me closer to him. I could smell gunpowder and petrol on his hands as he held my head against him, exposing my neck. He sliced the side of my neck, where I still have a scar.
“Then come with me!” the gunman shouted at Viktor.
Viktor complied, inching closer. When he was an arm’s length away, he extended his hand to me. The gunman released his grip and hurled me to the floor to switch hostages. As the gunman pulled him into the hall, Viktor spun around with a shard of broken glass in his hand, plunging it into his captor's throat. He pulled it back and stabbed again until they both fell to the ground. When Viktor was confident the attacker was dead, he took the pistol out of his hand and we fled down the stairs.
When we made it to the ground floor, I peeked out a doorway and found my father. Viktor lowered me from his arms and ordered me to run to him, then ran with the gun in his hands and disappeared around a corner as my father was carrying me away.
That was the last time I saw Viktor until fifteen years later, the day he took my virginity in the stairwell of the Mikhailov Bratva headquarters.
I pull up to the house where his family lived. The sputtering of my car’s engine weakens, exhausted from a trip it’s too old to handle. I shut off the car, open my driver door and brace myself to approach the front door of Viktor’s childhood home. There’s so many bullet holes in the building's facade you can barely see the paint. I remember it was a light yellow color, but all that’s left is curls of faded paint crusted over in filth, making the exterior look gray.
The front door is missing and I walk inside, stepping over a hole in the floorboards. The walls are webbed with cracks from impact and decay over the years, and most of it is covered in graffiti. A dining table is flipped over with three of its legs missing. I find the burnt remains of the table’s legs in the fireplace, most likely from looters wanting to stay warm as they rifle through possessions.
I press further inside, thinking of all the lives that ended 15 years ago because someone wanted to take over the Mikhailov empire.
A creaking noise coming from the kitchen stops me. When I hold still I hear someone else’s footsteps.
I freeze in fear and clamp my eyes shut, regretting my decision to come here.
The footsteps grow louder, as if someone is coming towards me. I turn to leave, making it to the front door.
“Stop,” I hear, followed by the clink of metal I know is from a gun.
I obey, doing what I can to avoid dying.
“I’m not armed!” I shout back, hoping that’ll help ease the man’s suspicions.
“Turn around!” he calls back to me.
I do what the man says, not expecting what I see when I turn around.
“Viktor,” I whisper.
The room is dark, but I can see his silhouette standing in front of a kitchen window, illuminated by fading daylight.
