CHAPTER 1
The Cold War
Russia, 1973.
It is a bitterly cold, and hostile country. Clouds of eerie, gray mist, slowly rolls across the vast, bucolic landscape of rural Votkinsk, as thirteen women load heavy baskets of swede, leeks, pumpkins, and cabbages, from the large garden onto a truck, ready to be taken to the market. Whilst a man, dressed in a hefty winter uniform, and carrying a rifle, though not a military officer, he however, appears to resemble one. He stands awatch from on top of the deck of the truck, supervising the workers, whilst another man sits quietly in the cab, smoking a cigarette, with a rifle spread across his lap.
Ludmila Provenskova, Mila for short, is one of the workers in the field. She is happily married to Viktor, who has been stationed in Perm, on his second two year term doing military service, whilst Mila works at the large, produce garden, and taking care of their two children, Ljuben, and Alexa. She has just one close friend at the garden, Yulia, whom she confides in occasionally, but most often, she works diligently, and abidingly, without causing any trouble or antagonism to anyone.
She does her days toil, and each afternoon, both her and Yulia, cycle the three and a half miles home together. However, this day takes a turn for the worse. It was something both she and Yulia had always dreaded, similar to other such times they had seen before.
Mila whispers to Yulia. "My hands are getting cold Yulia. I can't feel my fingers. Look, they've gone bluey-white" as Yulia and Mila quickly look vigilantly to where the guards are posted near the truck, before Yulia catches a glimpse at Milas' fingers.
"You didn't bring any mittens Mila?" asked Yulia. Milas' knuckles are close to ceasing, and showing obvious signs of chilblains. The affected areas on her fingers are angry, reddened, itching, and swelling fast. Sleet now begins to fall intensely, as she tries her aimless best to open and close her frozen and painful hands.
Both women's faces are glowing white. Their pinkish cheeks slowly fade to purple, whilst ice crystals begin to form across their eyebrows and over their tied head-scarves, underneath their thick woollen hats. It was the end of the growing season, and winter had come early. They had to get the last of the remaining crop inside, before they, like some of the vegetables, perished.
"Here have these" Yulia hastily offers, as she removes her wool and leather fingerless mittens. "Quick Mila, put them on, before the guard see's you."
"But Yulia you can't, your hands will freeze" exclaimed Mila sheepishly, as her face exuded astonishment.
"I'll be ok, take them, put them on, quickly Mila!" as Yulia conceals them in her hands, giving them to Mila, as she spies the guard standing on the deck of the truck catch what the two women are doing. He remains standing there idly, with his rifle in his hand, and casually walks away. Nonchalantly, he decides to light a cigarette, as other women begin carrying baskets of produce, walk towards him and onto the truck at the rear.
It begins to sleet heavier now, almost to a white-out; while the remaining women continue filling their baskets before they carry them towards the truck. As the sky almost begins to go dark, a squadron of eight Lavochkin La-9 fighter planes, flying in formation, scream overhead.
"Are you ok?" whispered Yulia. Mila, her shoulders to her ears. She has had enough. To her, living a life of humiliation felt like a prison.
"I don't know, I hate it here" replied Mila shaking her head. "I didn't know what he was going to do when he saw what we were doing."
The other workers were already busy carrying baskets of produce from the garden. They were handing them across to another woman on the truck who began stacking them four baskets high from the front and working their way towards the back as the officer stood on the bed of it overseeing them.
Another one of the other women, Tsenia, is a quiet woman, a Light Being, and someone who, in general, keeps to herself. Although strong, for this virulent emissary, not for a second was she under any obligation to abide or conforming by anyone, let alone believing, that she was the same rendition of her past. 'I am a magical little girl and I will live this miracle merrily, and I will die here, and then I shall depart, to return home', was her abiding mantra, in which 'here' meant, her playground where-ever and what-ever she wanted it to be. Principally, it was to be among the enchantment of nature and the trees, and home, Epsilon, the twinkly 11th dimension of the stars. Whether it was years, or twenty minutes ago, other than being purely and wholesome love in each escapement of time and timelessness, the presence of this moment was her opulent truth she stringently held close.
Tsenia held a fond interest in crystals and healing, riding her horse, Ilairy, through the wilderness. Often she'd be playing her harp at home, to escape the mad 3D world. Beautiful and slender she is, with long, wild, dark brown hair, and deep, pale blue eyes. Tsenia is several years younger than Mila and Yulia. Her husband Grisha is stationed at Perm also, along with Milas' husband, Viktor. One day, Tsenia and Grisha have budding plans to have children of their own, after he returns from his last requisition there.
As she carries one of her baskets past the front of the vehicle, to load on board, the guard seated in the cab winds down his window. He mutters something crude toward her, as he throws his cigarette butt outside. "You want to come inside this truck nice lady, where it's warm and dry?" the gravel voice heaved, as the heavy sleet now falling, made no effort to subdue the sickening offer and morbid feeling Tsenia Balakova always had for him. She couldn't bear the sight of Pavel, as she gulped, hunching her shoulders around her ears as the thought of his seedy eyes peering through that thick, matted face, crevassed with wrinkles and crooked, tea-stained teeth. She offered neither a slither of a thought, to him in particular, principally where she and her handsome fiancé, Grishas' plans together were concerned. This work was just a means to an end for her.
Mila and Yulia were almost done, and were down the garden collecting the last two remaining baskets. As the other women, who were doing the same had completed their work, stood near the road, sharing a cigarette. They were covering their faces from the numbing Ural wind, whilst two others followed behind Tsenia, with the last of their baskets finally loaded onto the truck.
As Tsenia, walked back past the truck, the cab door kicks open, as a leg flung itself out. Pavel reached with his hand to swing out his other leg as he laid his rifle along it with the barrel pressed on his boot toe. As with anyone, confrontation always came disguised as two battles to diffuse, not one. The painful obvious was the outer, the mischiefness of a heathen such as he, yet she plainly knew, that keeping her soul sacrosanct and unwaveringly pure, even in dark times such as these. But this morsel of a man, an unconscious human, she unwaveringly sensed in him, told her that this outer intrusion on her personal space required some dire methodology and instinct. As he lifted the rifle, he called to her again. "I don't like the way you ignore me young lady" as he raised the rifle, pointing it at her as he steps out from the cab. "It's time you learnt some manners lady. Move yourself over here. ... now!" he commanded, towering over her as he drew out another cigarette, and proceeded to light it, pointing to the ground next to him. The other women standing around, stop what they are doing, as Tsenia motions slowly toward him, as he held the rifle now at her, while the other women were bringing the last of the vegetables onto the truck at the rear. As the officer on the back began to do a final count of baskets collected, Pavel took her by the hair with one hand as he removed his zipper down on his trousers with the other hand. The others were still busy loading the produce. The officer couldn't hear the muffled cries and choking that was emanating from the front of the vehicle. Meanwhile Pavel's feeble mind was in Heaven, as his head fell back, closing his eyes, as a smile warmed across his dense and pathetic face. Tsenia however, couldn't imagine a hell as torturous as this Earth, wishing she was with her husband and home back in the stars.
No-one either enjoys the thought of human alienation being stymied away so unexpectedly. And for Pavel, this was one such moment, where he'd wished he never suggested such a repulsive invitation to an angel such as her. As his bounds of pent-up desires began to draw closer and closer to a climax, he looked down too late, as she took his worthless morsel manhood between her teeth, tearing it away from his body with as much might as she could muster. Her gnashing premolars clenched so hard together like a vice. So intensely forceful, that blood began to immediately spurt profusely from between her fingers, than the sticky semen that never came. Pavel screamed for his life as she spat the sorrowful phallic fragment out on the muddied earth, as nerves and blood vessels hung from it, with his blood oozing down her chin like silk over satin. Panic-stricken, his now trembling hand reaches out for his rifle. Angrily and filled with dread, he began to cock it as his now vacillating hands elevated himself with shock and outrage to shoot Tsenia between her eyes. Swiftly and unknowingly, to the mortal creature, as another rifle barrel from the guard on the back of the truck cocked itself assuringly against the back of Pavel's head.
"You shoot woman, I shoot you, you decide." The guard's voice spoke calmly as Pavel's face turned into a gaping wide-mouthed, pained animal that had just had its mother taken away from it. Tsenia's stomach emptied itself between her bended knees into the mud. In a few short minutes, the last faces he would see before his gushing wound bled him to death were the gathering group of women who watched in horror, as the grotesque symbol of a man, would be nothing but a rat clawing at what injustice that remained melted away, taking him to another hell worse than he had already made for himself.
Tsenia by then had already begun to walk quickly down the road in tears. Crying and distraught, trying to escape, as the hem of her dress dragged in the putrid mud as she coughs up phlegm, wiping Pavels' blood and serum from her bewildered and hysterical face.
She had no preconceived plans of doing what she had done. It was as if someone, or something, just told her to do it, and get away fast as she could. Still trembling, she picked out remnants of sinew and skin from between her teeth. Tsenia never thought either, that by what she had done would render a severely bleeding man to his own deathly demise, but she never cared about any consequences, especially his. Not for one second, had she thought that he would perhaps stick a bullet into her own head, but as she walked away after spitting out his decrepit morsel into the mud, she expected it, and she was prepared for God to take things from there. And God did. It came in the form of Roman, a father of three children, himself a kind man, and a fair one. As he too was directed by impulses from somewhere higher, that told him that woman does not deserve to die. For a short moment, he assumed, that a small wound like Pavel's would eventually stop bleeding and no-one else would need to die in this fiasco, even to a one lifetime reptile such as he, to one who had lived twenty seven. But he was about to be proven wrong, as Pavel's misguided heart was still beating like a determined, fiery runner, gushing out blood like a gaiety geyser, as the colour began to run away from Parvel's face, from purplish pink to a shade of morbid grey, then to ivory white, as his trousers around his ankles became soaked in a mass of red and rain. That same rain bought lightning in the distant midst. Its thunder muffled by screams so agonizing that even the dead would easily become aroused in their slumber, taking him with them, with every passing miscarriage paid with his own blood.
Pavel had painfully realized that he had undervalued the merits of that higher power, and more particular Tsneia's. One that he was ostensibly reminded too late, that he was nothing but a grovelling heathen of the most vulgar kind, where he would be soon on his next journey onwards, into fine specks of dust and nothing more. He was on the verge of ultimately paying his hefty price. Like an angry dog, he collapsed face first into the mud. Drained of his blood and not to mention his life, and the last sound he would hear would be his flailing heart B-bomp. ... B-boomp. ... B-boomp. ... B-boomp, slower and slower, until his fate predicted it, he was gone, as the dusky dark clouds began to clear.
At that very moment, a bright star began to twinkle in the dimming night sky. From above, an approving angel looked down upon, with adoration, healing, and peace again.
Yulia calls out. "Be careful Mila. And take a hot bath when you get home to your children, so you don't catch cold" as Mila offers a swift smile to her, as she turns to walk away before Yulia calls out again to her. "Mila here, take this." It was a large crust of bread and a small jar of honey that the she had in her coat pocket. Mila looks taken back, but remains appreciative to her and gives her an indebted smile back.
