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Jovanovich Imaginative Writing Award
Sophia Katsikas
Chort
Veronica stares at the tips of her inch long fingernails, taking note of every single
peeling corner. She wonders why the nail gunk, that sits comfortably in her medicine
cabinet back home, never seems to stop her nails from peeling. She gazes at her
somewhat translucent skin, stomach souring at the sight of the veins beneath it. A slight
twitch catches her eye, and she scrapes at the area where it came from. It twitches again,
so she scrapes at it once more, harder, and harder, until her nail rips through. Crimson
pools, threatening to drip down her hand. A breath catches in her throat, and she quickly
snatches a tissue from the coffee table to blot up the mess. Looking away, her gaze lands
on the vintage Solaris poster that occupies the wall space above her lavender client
couch. It was comic-like, the main character’s wife looking like a ghostly water nymph,
blue hair cascading from her head as she lay in his arms. Veronica’s fascination with
Solaris’ Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky, wells up inside of her chest and below. She
wonders if his films would have been different if he had grown up in a more rural area of
Russia.
“Mrs. Wood? Your three o’clock is here, your new client.” Her assistant’s shrill
voice shatters the silence, cracking through the intercom on her desk. She tosses the
blood spotted tissue into her rubbish can.
“Send him in, thank you.” Veronica’s voice sounds scratchy from disuse, as she
responds with her finger pressed lightly against the intercom button. She grabs the cream
colored file on the coffee table in front of her, placing it gently in her lap. She keeps her
eyes down, skimming the words on the pages, as she hears the door open and close rather
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slowly. She hears her client couch squeak softly under a person’s weight, but her eyes
remain glued to the inside of the file, where the clients name is stated: Andrei Sivakov.
“Allo? Mrs. Wood?” Her eyes immediately flash to him as the Russian accent
reaches her eardrums. He has an extensive scar that runs from his left eye, over his whole
cheek and down to his chin. It reminds Veronica of ancient water canals, dried up and
lifeless. She stares at him for a few minutes before responding.
“Oh, yes, excuse me, I was just looking over your background file briefly. Please,
feel free to call me Veronica, I enjoy when my clients feel less formal and more
comfortable around me.” A small smile parts his pink, chapped lips, and a lanky arm
reaches up to wisp a lock of black, shiny hair behind his ear.
“Well, it is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sivakov.” She has already begun to try
and memorize his last name, but stops herself from saying it over and over again in her
head, when she realizes it had evolved into Tarkovsky. His own tongue slips out over his
lips swiftly before he answers.
“The pleasure is mine, Veronica.” He crossed his legs, but then uncrossed them
again shortly after. His legs seemed too long to fit over one another, and his head cut off
the bottom part of Veronica’s Solaris poster behind him.
“Let’s get the ball rolling then, shall we? Did you decide on your own to seek
therapy, or was family somehow involved?” His tongue keeps escaping his mouth and
running over his lips, only making them more chapped, but somehow they still looked
attractive.
“I left my family back in Russia about six years ago and moved to United States.
There was problems with me back home but seeing a person like you was not exactly
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possible, we lived in very rural area. I enjoyed being on my own for so long in America,
but things always get worse. Recently things have been much worse, so I decide it is time
to take advantage of what I did not have available to me in Russia.” He speaks very
slowly and some of his words seem to drag out of his mouth. Veronica shifts her weight
in her seat, causing the hem of her skirt line to rise up her thighs slightly. Her cheeks
brighten as she quickly pulls the hemline back down to her knees, and she wonders if he
had noticed.
“Hmm, could you possibly elaborate on those problems back home?” She
wondered if the scar on his face somehow related to his issues back home, and she
suppressed her want to blatantly ask him.
“Da, I can try.” He leaned back into the client couch, closing his eyes and sighing.
Veronica tilted her head slightly to the left and waited, studying the contrast of his black
hair against the lavender of the couch.
“I remember the first day like yesterday. I was heading to birch forest behind our
izba, or house, back in Russia. I was going to seek out Vera, our pet fox, because my
younger twin brothers had lost her in the forest. They said they heard loud screeching
noise, and they were crying much when they returned. I thought they were just scared.”
“Excuse me, how old were you when this first event happened?” Veronica
interjects politely, wondering what age to set him as in the Tarkovsky-Sivakov movie that
is playing in her mind.
“I was twelve years of age.” He reaches his arm up to his face, scratching a part of
the scar that extends over his cheek.
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“Thank you, please continue.” Veronica is proud of her skill in masking the
eagerness that threatens to taint her voice.
“Mmm. Well, before I go into birch forest, I noticed this smoke curling up from
top of trees. I think maybe someone is in forest, using old family pechka, which is large
stone oven used in old Russia. I think that is where Vera must be. When I enter forest, I
get terrible feeling. I smell this sick-sweet odor; it was like breaths that leave animal right
before their dusha, or spirit, fades. It made my stomach sour, but I continued. I soon
began seeing outline of pechka some distance in front of me. When I get close to it, I see
smoke spilling from sides, and I remember thinking it looked like milk. To use pechka,
you put what you want to bake on large stone slab that goes into the mouth of pechka,
and then it bakes with proper fire.” He pauses, gulping loud enough for Veronica to hear,
his tongue slipping over his cracked lips once more.
“There was…something baking inside. I try calling Vera, around bottom of
pechka and sides. But I stop when air stops. I mean, there was no sound all of sudden,
frost was like sedated. It felt sticky.” He paused again, this time lifting his gaze up to
meet Veronica’s with a questioning look. She nods to go on and tries to turn her stern
expression into that of a reassuring smile, simultaneously wondering about how similar
his memory is to that of the Russian fairytales her father use to read her at bedtime when
she was a child.
“Well, feels like long time has gone by in silence, when loud scratching breaks it.
I recognize sound immediately; it is stone on stone, the sound of pechka’s stone slab
being pulled out of the baking area. By time I had walked to it, the…object on top of slab
made clear through the white smoke. I know it is Vera instantly, because I just have
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feeling. Her red fur was no difference than the pink and red all over her…” He trails off,
leaning slightly forward from the back of the couch. Veronica waits a couple of minutes
for him to collect himself and speak again, but when he doesn’t, she speaks instead.
“Go on, Mr. Sivakov? Are you alright?” She leans slightly forward in her chair,
before leaning back again. She tries her best to imagine the melting fox.
“I…it was like sound of hooves on top of pechka…like boiling hand on my
shoulder. His tongue warm and wet on my earlobe…and then I was pushed down
and…Vera’s skin was my skin, melted and scared…” Veronica’s eyes widen as she tries
to make sense of the fractured scene, watching Andrei’s hand gently caress the scared
portion of his face.
“Mr. Sivakov, or, Andrei, was someone else there with you? Did someone
physically force your face onto that burning slab of stone?” She watches him and waits
for an answer, but he only rubs his hand slowly, up and down his scar.
~
That night, after Veronica walks directly over the pile of mail on the inside of her
front door, and carefully places her leather satchel in it’s proper station on the foot stool
at the end of your bed, she heads for the bathroom. She peels off her dark maroon blouse
and pencil skirt, looking at herself in the mirror, before taking off the lacy bra that covers
her breasts. She doesn’t wear panties. Staring at her reflection, the white marbled walls of
the bathroom seem to blend in with her powdery skin. She cannot seem to get Andrei’s
tale out of her head, and she imagines her own body melting on the stone slab of the
oven. She turns the bronze handle of her bathtub, the steam immediately rising up from
the scorching waterfall. She wonders about the scene that Andrei had not elaborated on,
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as she plugs the drain to fill the bath She thinks that the other person that was there that
day in the forest, who was the reason for Andrei’s burn scar, is maybe a family member.
She thinks that it was probably father, but possibly the mother, someone who knew the
fox was part of Andrei’s family, and knew that he would be the one to come looking for
it.
As Veronica climbs into her soaking tub, goose bumps raise upon her chilled skin,
and she thinks of her father and his Russian fairytales once more. He wasn’t Russian at
all, but told Veronica that the Russian’s fairytales followed a kind of formula—there
always had to be a problem that the younger siblings of the older sibling couldn’t solve,
so the older sibling had to go and solve it for them, the older sibling then has to venture
off to complete the task and go through a series of trials, so on and so forth. He insisted
that they held good values and lessons to be learned for young children like Veronica,
and she could hear his voice reciting the tales in her mind, as her red curls spill over the
back of the tub, her body sinking into the water. She remembered that there was almost
always a stone oven in the woods that the main character in the fairytale would have to
aid in some way, and she thought about how Andrei’s experience had been like a sort of
horror-Russian-fairytale. Veronica can’t help but think that it would make an amazing
Tarkovsky film. She begins to imagine the birch forest and the smoke rising from above
it, as she slowly lifts your leg up and grabs ahold of her extendable shower faucet with
her toes. She carefully brings it to her hand, imagining, like always, that Tarkovsky is
handing it to her. As the showerhead spurts to life, she submerges it beneath the water
and wedges it gently between her thighs. A shiver runs over her body as she closes her
eyes, her head slipping lower on her chest, chin entering the water. She imagines
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Tarkovsky, her fingers entangling themselves in his raven hair, as he kisses down her
stomach and settles between her legs. A moan breaks from Veronica’s lips and her toes
curl slightly as she imagines what his tongue feels like. A strange sound tickles her
eardrums, possibly footsteps, but they sound louder, almost like a horses hooves, but she
ignores it, cheeks aflame as the rushing water becomes unbearable. She envisions softly
dragging her fingertips over Tarkovsky’s face, but instead of pale skin, it is the salmon
colored scars on Andrei’s face that she sees. As the sweet rush of orgasm washes over
her, she feels a sharp stab of pain in her head, and her moan turns into a slight cry. Her
eyes flash open, and she sees that blood has accumulated beneath the water on her chest,
and is slowing dying the water red. She sits up in a swift movement, looking down at her
breasts as the bloody water drips down them. Switching the showerhead off, she stand up
in the tub, peering into the mirror across from her. The blood is seeping from her nostrils,
and she recalls not having a nosebleed since she was six years old. She squats down to
unplug the drain and uses her other hand to pinch her nostrils shut. She wonders why it
was Andrei’s face that flooded her mind before she reached her climax, and if he would
have cared about the nosebleed.
When Veronica gets into bed that night, she almost forgets to begin her tape
recordings on him. She is forced to unfold herself from her purple sheets and blankets to
turn on the light and reach for her tape recorder on the nightstand. As she sits up, she runs
her finger beneath her nose, checking for blood again, but there was none. Her eyes fixate
on the curved slice on top of her hand that is shaped like a fingernail, as she begins to
recall her first session with Andrei Sivakov.
~
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It’s been a month since Veronica’s first session with Andrei, so she somehow
feels justified in bringing him the films. Solaris, Mirror and Stalker lay comfortably in
her lap as she sits patiently, waiting for him to make his entrance. For some reason, a
quote from Stalker seems to keep replaying itself in her head. “And there was a great
earthquake. And the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair. And the moon became
like blood… And the stars of the sky fell to the Earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs
when shaken by a great wind. And the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled
up. And every mountain and island were moved out of their places...”
As the sound of the door opening fills the silence, she snaps her head in its
direction, midway through the Stalker quote in her head. He’s already smiling at her
when he walks in, and doesn’t change expression as he closes the door and sits down on
the couch. She smiles back at him and turns her eyes down to her lap, not wanting to
reveal the pink on her cheeks.
“Hello Andrei, how are today?” She looks back to him as she speaks, his face still
frozen in a smile as he watches her.
“Allo, Veronica.” His voice seems to growl slightly over the V in her name, and
she waits a minute for him to say how he was doing, but he doesn’t.
“Well, I wanted to share something with you today. I’ve always been a big fan of
Russian cinematography, especially the director Andrei Tarkovsky.” She waits again for
him to answer her, but he doesn’t say a word. His mouth is still curved in the smile he
displayed when he walked into the room, and his eyes are glued to hers.
“I brought some films in from my own collection, and I wanted to lend them to, if
you have yet to watch them yourself, so you can truly experience your culture’s
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magnificence in the movie industry.” She grabs the films from her lap and leans forward
slightly, reaching them out to him. He leans forward and slowly extends his arm; the
movement reminds Veronica of a bat stretching its wing in early morning slumber. His
fingers latch onto the films, but he doesn’t try to pull them away, even when she drops
her hand and leans back into her chair. He lingers in that position, his hand holding the
films, seemingly suspended in the air, before finally leaning back into the couch and
placing the films in his lap.
“I hope you enjoy them, they are my favorites. All three of them are directed by
the marvelous Andrei Tarkovsky, who you just happen to share a first name with.” She
tries to feign a slight surprise, like she hadn’t already noticed that they had the same first
name.
“Spaseeba, Veronica, I will watch them thoroughly.” His words were even slower
than usual, and the smile was still frozen on his lips as he responded.
“Alright, well, let us get started then,” She watches him for a moment, to see if he
is going to say anything else, before continuing.
“In our past couple sessions, you repeatedly mention a “he” when telling me past
events. Today, I was wondering if you could possibly try to elaborate on that he for me;
who is he?” She turns her gaze up to meet his, and watches him carefully, studying his
facial expression. He doesn’t move, but his permanent smile droops slightly, and his
brow furrows a bit. She waits a few minutes, but he doesn’t respond.
“Andrei?” She makes no effort to hide the immense concern in her voice, but
fights the urge to physically reach out to him. She thinks of the first night that his face
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came into her mind while she was in the tub, and the numerous nights that it had
happened again, he and Tarkovsky melding into one person in her imagination.
“…When I was young child home in Russia, the banya is what we use for
bathing. It is outdoor heated hut separate from actual house, my brothers and I would
have to use at the same time. One day, we were inside the banya and was watching my
little brothers whip each other with the venik. This is kind of Russian loofah, is
customary to whip each other with it to get blood circulation going in winter. I was
frozen while watching them, with venik in my hand, and could feel him breathing down
my neck. In heat of banya, it felt like winter’s breath. Before I know, I am striking my
little brothers, over and over, with venik. They laugh at first but then they cry, they tell
me to stop but I do not stop. I keep striking until skinny lines of red appear on their
skin…I can hear the hooves and the…” He stops and slowly lifts his hand in the direction
of the scar on his face, and his tongue slips out over his lips in a fluid movement.
Veronica is about to speak before he breaks the silence once more.
“I forget to tell you, I must leave session early today, I have engagement I must
attend to…” Before she gets the chance to stop him, or get a word in, he’s up off the
couch and closing the door behind him. She stares at the closed door for about five
minutes before leaning back into her chair, her finger mindlessly picking at the slight
scab on the fingernail mark on the top of her hand.
~
That night, Veronica doesn’t take a bath. A quick shower suffices, and she gets
into bed to think about Andrei’s state today. As she lays there, she tries to conjure up an
explanation for his actions today, she thinks that perhaps he was taken aback by her
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giving him the films. She sighs deeply and tries to imagine the scene that Andrei
described today. She pictures a younger Andrei, sweaty and heated in his bathhouse,
wielding a harsh loofah and whipping it through the air. Instead of his little brothers, she
begins to envision herself being lashed, over and over again until blood is drawn on her
back. Her hand slowly creeps downward as moistness gathers between her thighs. A
sudden, sharp stabbing in her head stops her hand. The pain stabs again, searing the
inside of her skull as a whine slithers from her lips. She can feel the warm, sticky liquid
dripping down to her chin before her mind has the chance to make the connection.
Jumping out of bed, she shuffles to the bathroom, tilting her head back to keep the blood
from getting onto her nightgown. She heads straight for the sink and grabs some tissues,
holding them to her nose and looking at herself in the mirror. There was, thankfully,
nothing on her nightgown, and she watches the white of the tissues slowly bleed into red.
She hadn’t noticed it when she first walked in, but there is a dripping sound coming from
somewhere in the bathroom. She leans down to check the sinks, but they are completely
dry. She turns around, still holding the bloody tissues to her nose, and looks to the
shower, then to the tub. The bathtub is filled all the way, and the faucet is dripping into
the water slowly. She knew she hadn’t drawn a bath, so she walks over to it and stares
into the empty, clear water. She drops her hand from her nose. A few moments later,
blood begins to drip from her nostrils and into the water. She watches the red drops as
they penetrate the clarity of the water, staying themselves before blooming into different
shapes and sinking down toward the bottom of the tub. It reminds Veronica of roses
blooming, and she wonders if Andrei had taken actual baths with his brothers while he
was a child.
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~
In all the four months that their sessions had been going on, he had never once
been late, until today. He comes striding into Veronica’s office forty-six minutes and
twenty-six seconds later than their scheduled meeting time. She is quite irritated, but
simmers her temper to remain professional. She resorts to watching him silently as he
makes his way into the room. He’s never appeared physically disturbed, but today his
black void of hair hangs like greasy licorice, and alarmingly bluish circles cling to the
bottom of his eyes. He doesn’t take a seat, but instead, paces around the room for a
moment, before settling against the wall beside the couch.
“Well, hello there Andrei. What’s going on today? You are a tad bit late for our
session, is everything alright?” Everything seems dull to Veronica, and she notice that
there are stains of various colors on the white shirt that covers his chest. A strange, sickly
sweet smell permeates through the room—it reminds her of the way her lop eared rabbit
had smelt when she found it taking its last breathes on the floor of her bedroom when she
was a child.
“Allo….Verionca.” The hair on the back of her neck rises as he speaks, his voice
seeming a whole octave lower than usual, and lingering between words. He doesn’t reply
to her questions, and she finds herself shifting in her seat uncomfortably before speaking
again.
“Andrei, are you okay? Why don’t you take a seat, you look very tired today. I
hope you’ve been enjoying those films I lent you, although I’ll be needing them back
soon.” She smiles, trying to mask the panic inside of her pertaining to his wellbeing. He
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stares at her for a moment before a grin splits across his face, and then vanishes as fast as
it had formed.
“K chertiam…” It sounds more like a growl than a sentence, and Veronica leans
forward slightly in response to trying to hear.
“Are you speaking in Russian? I can’t quite hear you, Andrei, why don’t you…”
Before she can finish, he turns and sets himself onto the couch. He places his elbows on
his knees and leans forward, and she notices that his hands are covered in different
colors, the texture of paints.
“Chort poberi, chort poputal…” He speaks slowly and deliberately, annunciating
each letter perfectly with his tongue. She has no idea what he is saying, but she imagines
it must be something magnificent.
“Now, Andrei, you know I don’t speak Russian. Care to translate?” She smirks a
little, showing him she is not fazed, and he throws his head back in a fit of laughter. It’s a
boisterous, room filling sound that for a second almost sounds like two different voices.
She continues to smile at him, in confusion, leaning back into her chair slowly to speak,
but before she can, the laughing stops and his head snaps forward again. He stands up,
towering over her, appearing even taller than his usual 6’5.
“Tysiacha chertei.” He lifts his arms to the ceiling as he speaks, reminding
Veronica of a great warrior about to begin an ancient battle. After the display, he drops
his arms and stares at her from above, that smile creeping back over his lips and creating
folds in the scars on his cheek. He stays looking at her for a few moments like this, before
turning and heading straight out of the door. His words cling to the air in her lungs and
make her throat sticky, faltering her speech.
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~
When Veronica arrives home that night, the smell that looms inside is what
reaches her first—a sickly sweet smell. Andrei flashes through her head as she walks into
the living room and kitchen, wondering where the smell is coming from; it seems to be
everywhere. As she heads up the stairs to her bedroom, she can’t help but imagine her old
rabbit, how strained its last breathes were, and how they had smelt sweet at first, followed
by a rotten undertone. She had almost forgotten why she was even thinking of the smell
in the first place, when she walks into her room and stumbles back a few steps from the
scene before her. On the wall above her bed, a large oil painting expands over the whole
space. It is vivid, the figures in it jumping out at her against the cream colored walls. As
she gazes at it longer, her satchel drops from her shoulder and slips to the ground—it was
her. He had painted her, a frightening pig-faced, horned creature lying above her, but he
had painted her. It is exquisitely crafted, the red of her hair contrasting perfectly with the
black fur of the creature. A ball begins to form in her throat, and her cheeks burn with
flattery as a smile spreads across her face. The sickly sweet odor no longer bothers her as
she walks closer to it, sitting down on her bed to admire its fine detail.
After gazing at the work of art for almost twenty minutes, Veronica decides to
take a shower before driving over to Andrei’s. She scrubs your body viciously, cleaning
every possible crevice, and wondering if those Russian loofahs work better than her
plastic one. She pauses mid scrub, thinking that maybe she should wait till their next
session, that perhaps she should look over the work of art for a longer amount of time
before seeing him, but a strange and overwhelming excitement causes a giggle to break
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from her mouth, and she continues washing. She imagines how proud her father would
be—not only did Veronica find a Russian man, but he was an artist too.
When she gets out of the shower and finishes styling her hair, she heads out to her
bedroom to slip on the black mini dress she had laid out on the bed. It has a plunging
neckline and back line, and she imagines her red hair as a flame against it as she looks in
the mirror, his masterpiece on the wall behind her. She thinks that perhaps she should do
her recording before hand, but second-guesses it when she looks at the painting again. As
her eyes meet the seeping eyes of the creature in the painting, somewhere in her chest,
she feels a slight ache. The thought that she shouldn’t even consider going to Andrei’s
after he broke into her apartment, even though there were no signs of forced entry, and
painted a satanic scene on her bedroom wall, floods into her mind. Then her father’s
voice creeps into her thoughts, deep and grandfatherly as he recites one of her favorite
Russian fairytales about a hoofed demon named Chort. Not even grabbing a coat,
Veronica is out the door and in her car driving to Andrei’s apartment, never realizing that
her tape recorder was absent from the nightstand beside her bed.
~
“Today was my first meeting with Andrei Sivakov. He is on the younger side of
middle aged, and full Russian. He moved to the states around six years ago…”
The door is ajar, and Veronica can hear her voice slicing through the quiet in the
apartment as she walks inside. The sickly sweet odor fills her nostrils once more, but she
barely notices it now, as she walks into his living room. She’s about to call out his name,
when she sees the paintings. There is no wall decor, but instead, a monstrous mural on
each wall of his living room. Every one is painted with the exact precision and mastery
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that the one in her bedroom was done with. All of them appear vaguely familiar to her,
and she walks closer to examine them. There is a scene with two little boys, twins
perhaps, lying on the ground with blood streaked across their backs. She can hear her
tape recorder fast-forwarding and rewinding to other recordings, somewhere deeper into
the apartment.
“Andrei has yet to return the films I lent him, I’ve been itching to ask him but
want to give him enough time to fully absorb them. There was something off balance
about the way he smiled at me today; it never left his face…”
The living room is very stark, other than some books piled up in corners and a
single, leather couch in the middle of the room. The mural on the wall farthest back
seems to be the center of all the others. Finely detailed birch trees encompass a large,
stone oven, with a stone slab sticking out of it. Her eyes fall to the stone slab, to the
animal that lies on top of it. It is badly burnt, its flesh globed with its fur, melting onto the
slab beneath it.
“Today Andrei told me about an event that occurred early in his childhood, an
event he believes is the starting point of these ‘issues’ he has. It was about finding his
little brother’s pet fox in the woods behind their house, the fox had been cooked alive
partially in an old Russian oven…”
Veronica breaks away from the mural’s trance and walks towards the empty
couch, as her own words tell her exactly how she knows these scenes. His apartment is
small, so she heads down the hall into his bedroom, which looks like it hasn’t been lived
in in weeks.
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“Andrei continues to mention this ‘he’ when he tells memories to me, like this
individual is always there and somehow dictating Andrei’s actions. He never elaborates
on who this ‘he’ actually is. I have numerous theories about the ‘he’, the most substantial
being that it is his father or another relative …”
As she walks back into the hall, she can still hear her voice going off of the tape
recorder. She looks to the ceiling of the hall, because she is sure that’s where the sound is
coming from. There’s a slight outline in the ceiling, in the shape of a large square. She
wonders if Andrei is working on another masterpiece up in the attic, and stifles a giggle
at the thought of him listening to her voice while he works, pushing aside the fact that he
stole the tape recorder from her home. As she pulls the string to the attic door, the ladder
slowly creaks down in front of her. She wishes that she had taken a moment to use his
bathroom and look in the mirror, so she teases the back of her hair before grabbing onto
the ladder and climbing up, excitement lined with fear fluttering in your stomach.
“I wonder what he thought of the Tarkovsky films, he has yet to bring them up
and still has not returned the tapes, so I’m assuming he’s really mulling them over. He
has seemed a bit detached recently, always staring off at things, only making direct eye
contact with me when starting a sentence…”
When she makes it to the opening of the ceiling, she peaks through and
immediately sees him. He’s crouched over, his jet-black hair creating a void in front of
his face. There is a single light bulb hanging from the roof, giving the attic a very dull,
yellow lighting. She can’t stop the smile from spreading across her face as she sees that
he’s crouched over her tape recorder, looking down at it. It is a surprisingly large attic,
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and she can stand up fully as she emerges into it. She admires him for a brief moment, his
hand laying over her tape recorder and pausing it right before she speaks.
“Oh, Andrei, I found the beautiful painting you did in my home. Thank you so
much; you don’t understand how much it means to me. I’m so sorry I never invited you
over before; you could use all the walls in my house to paint on, if that’s what you wish.”
Silence creeps through the air before his chuckle breaks it. Her smile fades as her
stomach curdles at the sound, an icy feeling creeping down her spine.
“Allo, Veronica.”
The sound of her name coming out of his mouth usually tickles her, but this time
it makes her slightly nauseous—it’s like two voices in one. Before she gets the chance to
say anything else, the tape recorder is playing again and he’s standing up. He closes the
distance between them with two swift steps, and she stumbles backward in response. She
still cannot see his face as he nears her, but his skin seems even paler than usual. She lifts
her arms, to halt him as he comes close, but with one push, he slams her body to the
ground. All of her bones come crashing down onto the wooden floor at the same time, as
he lowers himself on top of her.
“Andrei is becoming increasingly detached from our sessions, his mind seems to
be stuck on something else. Even when he’s recalling memories to me, he trails off and
stops, like something else has taken over his train of thought…”
Her head is fogged from the slam to the ground, and pain sears down her back.
She tries to speak, to tell him to stop, but her words trickle out of her mouth as nonsense.
His long, bony fingers rip at her blouse and bra, exposing her bare chest. He bites at her
skin, his mouth like an oven. She can feel the blood dripping down from her breasts, and
18
Jovanovich Imaginative Writing Award
the pain writhes through her, throbbing wherever he touches. She closes her eyes and
imagines the first time she saw him, a smile slowly forming as she pictures his scarred
cheek in contrast with his black hair. He lifts his head, to bring his fist down against her
cheek more than once, splitting it open easily. She cries out, trying to move from beneath
him, but her body feels paralyzed.
“Andrei was never moody during our earlier sessions, but now his mood swings
are highly elevated. He’s never been violent, but today he got so angry that he punched
through the plaster on one of the walls in my office, and then he was laughing about his
mother’s chocolate covered prunes and asking me if I had ever tried such a desert...”
A deep, but almost childish chuckle falls from his lips as he watches the blood
burst from her wounds. She opens her eyes to meet his, to plead with him to stop hurting
her, but they look like bottomless pits in the dim lighting of the attic. She closes her eyes
again, cringing as she feels his hand thrust between her legs, prying her thighs open with
his nails. She whines and gasps as his fingers crawl inside of her, trying to close her
thighs to no avail. She can feel his nails tearing at her delicate walls with harsh
movements. His weight bears down on her, as his bare chest rubs against the blood on her
own chest, as he forces his hips against hers.
“Andrei slipped up today, referring to the “he” as Chort numerous times while he
spoke to me. When I would pause him and ask him if this Chort was the “he” he had
always been talking about, he just looked at me and smiled, then continued talking…”
Veronica cries out as he squeezes himself inside of her with a harsh thrust, but a
moan escapes her lips shortly afterwards. He lets out a deep groan, guttural animal grunts
filling the room as he thrusts viciously against her; his nails tear down her breasts,
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Jovanovich Imaginative Writing Award
leaving red rivers on her skin behind them. She pounds her fists against his arched back,
but drops them shortly after, pain seeping through every muscle and bone in her body. A
smile stays painted on his lips as he stares down at her. He feels like fire inside of her,
she can feel the blood dripping down her thighs as he forces himself deeper and deeper.
Another cry breaks from her mouth as he increases his speed, leaning against her to bite
down on a chunk of her flesh, ripping it from her chest. Tears stream down her blood
stained cheeks, but a black lull slowly envelops your body. Everything starts to go numb,
and a vision of Andrei as a young boy, walking down to the birch trees that evening to
find his brother’s fox, paints itself across her weakening mind. His back arch’s
inhumanly as he suddenly spasms inside of her, sticky crimson gathering on the floor
beneath her. Some blood drips into her eye from his mouth, causing her vision to go red
and blurry. She notices her tape recorder has stopped playing, and his harsh breathing
fills her ears. She imagines the painting back at her house, of the demon-like creature
above her, and she wonders why he didn’t just paint himself, before her body and mind
give way to unconsciousness.
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