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No one can. They’ll all think I’m more of a freak than I already am.
After cleaning up my mess, I ensure there’s no evidence left behind and flush the toilet before coming out. Washing my hands quickly, I ignore the girls staring and whispering about me and rush to my next class, realizing too late that I was in there so long that it was nearly over. Which means a phone call home because this isn’t the first time I’ve been so lost in my head that I didn’t even hear the warning bell.
My sweater covers the bloodstains on the waistband of my jeans, but the cherry color under my nails mocks me, calling me a wimp for stopping, for not digging deeper. For not creating more damage to my skin than what I had.
For years, I’ve sliced my delicate flesh, knowing I can never show anyone, but as I’ve grown older, the desire has blossomed into a profounder need to reach as far inside myself as I can. One day, it will be too much, it will be too late, and I won’t be able to stop the flow of blood as it streams from my body.
A day I oddly look forward to.
SEVEN
DEZ
Darkness has settled over the silent night. A winter storm is brewing if the clouds coming from the Black Sea are any indication. The fog rising as the temperature drops begins to overtake the moonlit shadows as buildings loom in the murkiness.
I don’t know why I’m back inKorsuntsi. I shouldn’t have come. But after Liliya told me I could never see her body, the venom in her tone left me shaken. A feeling I haven’t experienced in years—not since shortly after Vasyl found me.
Being here brings up the self-loathing, the hatred. Causing harm is such a fierce desire that I’m shaking with the need to inflict as much pain as humanly possible.
Everything here is the same—death and decay. There’s no life. No untainted life, that is. Malice and agony prevail as the buildings moan, settling in for the cold winter about to hit.
I grew up on these streets, lived the harshest of existences in the bowels of this neighborhood. There isn’t a thing I don’t know about these residents, and as I stride along the cracked sidewalks, the hood of my jacket over my head, I can see some of the more curious ones peeking out their windows, wondering what the prodigy of Vasyl Renznikov is doing here.
The truth is, I don’t know.
I’m looking for something…
Something to convince me I’m not nearly as reprehensible as I am.
I’m looking for a reason…any reason…to give to Liliya, to prove Iamworthy of her. I’m looking to convince myself that I can be what’s best for her because ifshecan pick up on the truth after only being in my presence for such a short time, then there is no hope for me.
This girl makes me want things, things I have no right to desire. Like being a better man for her. I will always have this darkness within me, but perhaps I can use it for good. I can use it to be her protector, even from the shadows.
“Well, well, well, look who’s back in the hole.” Years of practice prevent me from freezing at the sound of that voice. Without realizing it, I’d walked straight to the hell I’d been living in before Vasyl. As I slowly turn on my heel, I already know what I’ll find… My father and two uncles sitting on the porch, cigarettes in one hand, bottles of vodka, scotch, or whiskey in the other.
The rotted wood of the steps sports gaping holes now, the paint nearly gone off the siding, and the door is all but off its hinges. Further inspection shows the old lawn mower still in the overgrown corner of the yard, the rusted bike remains leaning against the rusted chain-link fence, and the bones of the dog they starved when I was a teenager lay in a pile on the sidewalk leading to the back of the house.
Staying quiet, I survey each man. Old, scraggly, beaten down, and malnourished. Time has not been kind to them, and I get a sense of happiness from that. After what they did to me in my youth, they deserve the worst humanity has to offer.
As they remain silent, trying to inspect me by the faint shadows of the moon, I realizeIam the worst that could happen to them. I’m no longer the scared little boy who ran away when he was fifteen. Half-starved on the street, begging for scraps, fighting to survive.
I am a man now.
A deadly one.
One of the deadliest, next to Petro, that is.
“Well, what the hell are you doing here, boy?” one uncle says.
“Came back to the trenches to get his dick wet,” the other laughs while fondling himself through his pants.
“Come to learn your place in life again?” my father, the sickest of them all, sneers as he wanders back inside.
They don’t see me as a threat. They don’t know that they raped the conscience out of me. They don’t recognize that the evil smile on my face as I walk through the yard’s broken gate is a promise of what’s to come to them on this night of turmoil.
My uncles hardly see the blade coming as it slips into my palm one second and slices through their jugulars the next. Blood sprays, painting the house and porch as they each try to stem the flow of blood. They are unsuccessful, and in the last moments of life left in their eyes, they fall to the porch, staring up at me in shock and horror until the last of their life force pools at my feet.
Satisfaction beats a steady drum inside my chest. A calmness jets through my veins as I step over the threshold of the home I swore to burn to the ground one day.
