Chapter Text
He was running from a world that had caught fire, and no one would tell him why.
There was no understanding. He couldn’t gather what had happened, why it had happened. All he knew was everything seemed fine, then the sun became too bright, swelteringly white-hot. It had been setting the grass on fire and burning it to a crisp. For a few days the ground felt crunchy beneath his feet, cracking with the snap of what sounded like dead leaves in an overgrown autumn forest, and yet, it was only the beginning of spring. A few more days and there was no sound at all. Just mushy, black ash.
Hide. He had to cower during the day, keep running at night. Running from the city, running from the men in yellow, running from everyone. He couldn’t make sense of them anyway, nor did they him. It didn’t matter how much he begged, how much he clasped his hands in prayer and got on his knees. They all turned from him, either unwilling to help or disillusioned in ignorance.
God’s will. He came to think it might be God’s will. Then again, he couldn’t remember anything in the Bible about the sun scorching the Earth. It might have been in there after all, but given he didn’t have a copy on hand and there was no chance to find one that he could read, it would be forced to remain a dreadful worry in the back of his head.
Maybe things were better off back in Georgia. Maybe it was only Russia, and the rest of the world wasn’t being broiled alive.
Hope, though dim, was ingrained into both his mind and soul. Despite it, the only thought that attached itself to the forefront of his head was a single longing: safety. He needed to find somewhere to hold up. Nobody wanted the boy with a mouth sewn shut around. Even looking at the other stragglers sent them into a visible panic.
He didn’t understand why nobody seemed to want to help him even in the slightest. They hated him before they even understood him as a foreigner.
Time and time again he knocked on doors, trying to find some quiet and empty home. Each and every time some man or woman came to the door and sent him away, some with guns aimed for him and others with enraged bellowing. Most, though, just held the door shut tightly, refusing entry without even an attempt at communication.
An urge to give up washed over him every single time. So desperately he wanted to just die, or to kill himself, whichever opportunity came first. It came in cold waves that swept over his mind and body as if he was physically drowning. Tears rowed in viciously with an incessant and uninterrupted fury and, unable to breathe well due to the wires, he saw stars of darkness in his vision more than once. He stopped hoping it wouldn’t kill him altogether. Even without the active desire to be dead, it became a passive way of living - something innate and almost natural.
Another door. Another house. He knocked, wide eyed, tear stained and hopeless. It was all he could do.
Like many other times, the man had begun to talk in Russian through the door, tone indicative of questions. He strained through blood and gritted teeth to speak, to try and give an answer, to beg for help, for anything. Even just a little food or water, something he could shove past the wires, would be enough.
There was little expectation. He awaited the man to walk away, or scream, or open the door to point his gun and maybe shoot it while he had the chance. It was what he expected when the tall wooden door swung open to reveal a man in a blue turtleneck. He was stately, with short brown hair, dark eyes, and a frowning face contorted into one of pity, maybe a bit of disgust. He was holding some sort of shotgun at his side, too. The gun, however, was pointed downwards, loosely held between his fingers as if he hadn’t a reason to be afraid at all.
The supposed homeowner stood there, unblinking, gesturing loosely for him to come inside the house.
He had imagined acting cautiously. The last time he had scrambled for help on the assumption people might actually be willing to give it, he was given a few fists to the face and ribs, right before being sewn shut. Despite his senses telling him to act on the assumption now would be no different, he found himself almost throwing himself inside, near to tears, shaking a bit with relief and anxiety knotted in one. He rested against the wall and watched as the man leaned out the door, checking his porch for anyone else before shutting and locking it.
Putting his eye to the door, the man began to speak, once more maybe asking something or other. The homeowner turned to look at him after a few moments, brow raised, eyes fixated on him; “you can go into any room but mine,” he said.
He didn’t understand. He shook his head and waited patiently, fearful, unsure of what to do or say or where to go. He had thought about just hiding in the little space to the left of the door, sitting there until the morning.
The homeowner, who, at once seemed to gauge his lack of response, placed the shotgun by the door, eyes unmoving from him. He walked beside him and slowly opened the door to the right, and gestured again for him to look inside.
A restroom.
He closed the door. Following as he walked into the home he showed him the other rooms of the house. A small storage room closet, a kitchen, a seating area, a living room, all with people inside them, resting on the furniture and on the floors, ostensibly not noticing them at all. Most of them looked to be sleeping, given the way they were sprawled about.
The final room at the end of the hallway the homeowner did not show him. He led him back to the crossroads of the halls and headed back to the door, grabbing his shotgun as he did so. It seemed he had work to be done. He was on his own, he assumed, to find his own spot to hole up.
The closet, other than the restroom, was the only empty space. It was quiet, tight, and appeared to be safe. Probably for the best he didn’t go around waking anyone trying to find a place to sleep. He let himself in and with one last glance to the homeowner, whose face was pressed into the peephole, and shut himself inside.
He needed sleep, at least for a little. Tomorrow's worries would be enough for tomorrow.
Nighttime hadn’t yet washed away when he awoke. Dead silence hummed without even the slightest chirp from any insects, the only sound being the ambient ringing in his ears.
It had been the usual gnawing pain in his jaw which had awoken him, ever burning with a throbbing misery that sent his entire upper half into a terrible suffering. The metal scraped at his teeth and dug into his flesh, clawing away ceaselessly at wounds that never had the slightest opportunity to close. The moment his eyes shot open he began to lick at them from the inside, as had become a terrible and painful habit.
It was time to get rid of them, once and for all, and he needed to do it while he still had time.
There were scissors in the storage room, laying on top of some box which was sealed shut with tape. He took them with only the slightest (yet unanswered) inclination to ask, and made his way to the restroom. He shut the door as quietly as he could and, grinding his teeth, took a long drag of air. As he turned to face himself in the mirror, the man - if you could call it that - looking back at him was utterly savaged.
He was hardly recognizable to himself. He hadn’t realized how war worn he had become. His eyes were opened wide, almost as if he was in a state of permanent shock, where even the willing attempt to make himself look more calm did little to help. They were glued into the awestricken and horrified display.
It didn’t help his ominous appearance that his face was also stained with blood; weeks of wicking it away with his hands had done nothing but cement it into his skin like varnish on a painting. The deep burgundy from nose down was in deep contrast to his pale, yellowing skin. He looked afright on that basis alone.
His hair, which was always too curly to keep in any sort of consistent style, had certainly changed more than he realized. It was matted, twisted into thinning coils and drenched in grime. Even touching the locks left him with fistfuls of hair that still, despite the coating of sweat, felt crispy to the touch, outright dead. The only saving grace was the half inch or so of blonde, which had sprang up through the roots, had become ombre’d into the purple thanks to the sun’s bleaching.
Despite his eyes, his hair, even the holes in his mouth and the blood stains in his skin, one thing remained unparalleled in horror - and that was the wrinkling of his lower eyelids. Nobody could prepare you for life on the run in a foreign country. In his life he had stayed up for several days on more than one occasion, taken just about every drug he could get his hands on, and all throughout it committed a myriad of other unquestionably poor choices. In spite of all of that and more, no bad day had ever come close to how he looked at that moment.
His appearance was a testament to his recent misery, but one detail surpassed all others in sheer horror: the horrifying wrinkles beneath his lower eyelids.
Nothing could truly prepare a person for the ordeal of life on the run in an unfamiliar land. His past was littered with sleepless multi-day stretches, the use of any drug he could get his hands on, and a multitude of other undeniably poor decisions. Yet, despite his history of hardship, no previous experience or bad day had ever culminated in the wretched sight he presented at that very moment.
Fatigued felt too small a word. How could a twenty six year old age so much in a month, give or take? He had known elderly men who kept color and strength in their face, and yet he was painfully emaciated, almost gangrene, a well-set dark red and purple clinging to the fragile skin around his eyes. He felt along the lines of the skin and noticed they were softer and more thin than the rest of him. If he pinched too hard, he feared, the skin would rip from the muscle easier than a bandaid.
Ruminating did no one any favors, he thought. He wanted to take a deep breath again, and that would have to do for the moment. With shaking fingers he gently felt along the wires in his mouth, and with his free hand brought the scissors to them. Not a moment too soon to be rid of them.
‘Damned fucking doctor fuck’, he thought. ‘Damn it, damn you, pig-spawn surgeon…!’
He started by opening his mouth as much as he could. Reopening the wounds led to a red-hot spurt of blood from each hole, jetting down his face and into the sink. Instinct made him want to grit his teeth, though he fought it for the moment. As soon as he could fit the scissors in, he grabbed and maneuvered the leftmost wire, to bend and push it as best he could into place. Taking it out seemed the easy part - the difficulty laid in shaping the damn things to fit through, without ripping any more of the thin flesh than they already had.
There was no helping the small whimpers that came from his throat. It hurt too much to suppress. Tears began to well and, blinking them away as much as he could, he tried to stay focused, to get at least one out as quickly as he could, but it was proving more difficult than he could have imagined. The repetitive plink-plonk of the blood trickling into the sink proved to be an irritating background noise, though necessary. It took away his attention every now and then as he peered down to make sure it was still dripping into the sink and not onto the floor or his clothes.
Minutes passed, maybe five or ten before, with an excruciating pop, the top half of the grimy wire had made its way out. The sigh he gave in response had not relieved him; after all, if so much effort had gone into just half of one, he wasn’t sure he could make it through.
A stroke of luck, perhaps, had come over him as he continued on. The pain became numbed not in sensation but in mental capacity to withstand it. He stopped trembling as much as he became used to the feeling of ripping skin and oozing blood. It had renewed him with a focused determination to finally be done with this, come hell or high water. Soon enough he had finished with one, then another. They dropped into the sink with a metallic chink. He tossed them with no regard - good riddance, after all.
The pulsing soreness and growing swelling were only signs that everything was going to be better from now on. What an amazing thing to speak without tearing, even if nobody could understand! He could understand himself, and God could understand him, what else did he need?! Maybe he could even find a phone, and call the embassy for help on what to do next when he was healed a bit…
Despite weeks of living nocturnally, he was still unused to the normalcy of life at that hour. Even in a house full of people who had been living the same, he hadn’t expected to be disturbed - so much so he didn’t bother locking the door, or even checking if there was a lock to begin with. When the door behind him creaked open, he turned, the scissors in his mouth scraping against his cheek.
In front of him was an unassuming and small figure, that of a woman. She was wearing an unseasonably massive winter jacket and dark green sweater. He didn’t come to realize how strange it was at first, as his mind was occupied with just how peculiar she looked otherwise. Her skin was so pale it was blue, even tinted white near her lips and eyes. It was more befitting of a corpse than a person, and the dead-eyed stare seemed to put the picture of one together.
The woman’s eyes opened wide and she gasped, staring at him as if he was the ghost. “S-sorry!” she murmured, a phrase simple enough even for him to understand. She closed the door with her head hung low.
His breath caught in his throat. Even if the homeowner didn’t mind his presence, he had yet to meet anyone else. Who knows if he would have told them about him and his… strange appearance. If he shocked someone, they might just shoot, given they’re able to.
Even without weapons, though, people were dangerous.
There was little to do but finish his work as quickly as he was able, if he wanted to prevent having them sewn right back on. As carefully as he could manage he continued, continually rubbing away the blood with the back of his free hand, though it helped little. Another wire, then another and so on; with each removed his hands trembled that much more, until the shape of each new hole became more and more ragged. It was the price to pay for swiftness, and he indeed finished his business as quickly as he could.
Minutes of pressure on the wounds did nothing to quell the bleeding. The only thing he could think of doing was covering his mouth with his hand entirely. It would shield others from having to see what he had become, but it would also keep pressure there. What other choice did he have? There were no bandages, not even that he would dare take them.
The wires, though, he could only think of tossing in the trash. Even in desperate times to think of reusing them for any purpose made him sick. He would burn them if he could. Something felt righteous about that.
As quietly as he could he stepped from the restroom, opening the door slowly lest he managed to scare someone or make too much noise. There he found the woman from earlier, leaning against the wall beside the closet. He had hoped that if she remained to just walk back to the storage room and go back to sleep, but upon seeing her, he couldn’t help but stop and stare.
She looked just as out of place as him. Her navy hair shook as she shivered, arms crossed in one another like she was dying for warmth. The only other time he had seen someone so blue recently was in the atrophied corpses that littered the city’s streets. She could have just been sick, though she truly did look to be on death’s door.
Her eyes looked up to him and she began to speak again. Only when he spoke again did the illusion falter - his voice was deeper, trembling. “S-s-sorry,” he stuttered. “I didn’t mean to ju-just come in…”
Like the homeowner, he just couldn’t understand him. He shook his head and, thinking of how to tell him he wasn’t able to speak his language, tried to speak himself. It came out rugged, miserably froggish - “I can’t understand you.”
The shivering man stared, borderline through him instead of at him. Neither said another word. He simply shimmied out of the way and locked himself back into the closet, and the other headed to the restroom.
Morning ravaged him, long before he awoke again. Irrespective of inside or outside it was blistering, a breathless dry heat that baked into your bones.
He woke up on the floor drenched in sweat. His mouth was so dry his tongue felt like sandpaper, and in swallowing spit he realized just how badly dehydrated he was. It had become, after all, no easy task to not only find clean water but to drink it when every single centimeter of your mouth opening was agony.
He wasn’t sure if he was to wait around for the homeowner to instruct him, or if he was to make the house his own. His condition allowed for no thinking room. He stepped out of the closet, one hand racing to cover his mouth so as to not offend or scare anyone who would see him. From what he remembered the kitchen was the first door on the right, so there he headed, tiptoeing around like a burglar in the night. Gently pushing the kitchen door open revealed no one inside aside from a young girl, six or seven at most.
Her eyes peered up to meet him as he took a step in. At first he assumed she would be frightened - she must have been the homeowner's daughter, after all. No one liked to have bloody strangers around their children.
Though the worry lines on her young face gave the impression she was indeed upset, as his eyes met hers, a bright smile beamed across her face. “Hi!” she said, gently kicking her feet underneath the table. “What’s your name?”
Hello. He understood that. He wasn’t sure what to do, and could only think of giving a gentle wave with his free hand in response. She waved back, and then quickly returned to the paper in front of her. She was drawing, or so it seemed.
“So, do you have a name?” the girl continued without looking up, scribbling on the papers in front of her. He didn’t respond, not that he could - his mind was focused elsewhere anyways. He anxiously poked at the faucet, seeing if the water was still running after all. He didn’t think to try it in the restroom the previous night. In setting out to be quick, he had forgotten about all of the blood in the sink. Hopefully, someone had run the faucet, should they have water…
After giving it a twist, he was dumbfounded to find that it was working after all. Stupid hospital must have just been on the fritz.
The girl ignored his silence and, turning to look at him, continued on. “Can’t you talk? Or-”
Cupping his hands, he leaned over the sink and planted his face in the water. He held his breath for dear life and inhaled as much as he could before gasping to do it again. It hurt like a motherfucker, his face was literally on fire and he could taste nothing but copper but, Lord have mercy, he couldn’t find the strength to care.
The girl became silent once more. He hoped she couldn’t see his mouth, or the fact blood was again pooling from the wounds down his face. If she did she didn’t seem to be bothered, or at least, she didn’t sound like she was saying anything about it.
After a minute or two, he turned off the faucet and breathed into the sink. The water had washed away most of it, but seeing no end in sight to their incessant bleeding, a quick escape seemed to be the right choice. He wiped his face as dry as he could with a paper towel, then returned his hand to his mouth and turned back around.
The girl, this time, was focused on her drawing and said nothing. The silence continued as he headed to exit the kitchen. His instinct had indeed been to crawl back into the closet, though he figured seeing the rest of the house during the day wouldn’t hurt. Who else was there, anyway? He had seen people lying about when he had been shown the rooms by the homeowner, but he didn’t really have time to meet any of them. Maybe one of them was also a foreigner. Maybe one was with that group of sick fucks who had let this happen to him in the first place. Either was good to know, for his own sake, and probably theirs too.
There was active conversation going on in the room directly next to the kitchen. Loud voices bellowed and chatted with laughter and discussion. The last thing he wanted was to barge in unannounced on unsuspecting people, at least for the moment, lest he become the topic of conversation. The door to the living room, however, wasn’t closed; it was open halfway or thereabouts, and inside wasn’t much of a sound at all. Maybe it was a better place to start.
Pressing his free hand on the door, he opened it completely, just barely peeking his head inside. The smell of smoke had hit him immediately. Both cigarettes and something else mixed in the stagnant air, burning his lungs. A window would do the room some good, but not one was present, despite the room being packed to the brim with people.
The most obvious was a tall man, massive on all accounts except for his frame, which seemed unnaturally thin for such a height. He sat melancholy on a couch at the other side of the room, chainsmoking on account of his ashtray packed with still-blazing embers. Directly to the left stood a hulking figure, that of a nun, whose very presence in the room seemed to create an uncomfortable atmosphere. Not that he disliked nuns; on the contrary, as an orthodox man he found them beautiful souls, arbiters of the faith on a level more advanced than the average person. This one, though, seemed… off. Like she was wearing only the skin of a human, and was something else entirely. She was holding a line of prayer beads and whispering something under her breath.
Besides her were two women who sat nearby, one on the couch on the opposite end of the tall man and another curled up in a chair. They both seemed dejected, with the one on the couch finding an affinity for chainsmoking along with her male counterpart. It reminded him of his parents, when they were still alive.
The only other person in the room was the blue man. Petite and shivering he paced back and fourth, arms crossed, eyes staring blankly at the floor.
He couldn’t fathom how anyone could be cold. The room was sweltering, the air thick with heat, and yet the man’s body trembled as if frost had already taken him, creeping through his limbs with no hope of revival. Though he wasn’t smoking himself, being in a room so full of it it seemed like a hovering thundercloud couldn’t be good for him. It was surely some heart issue. His mother was puffing until the moment she died, all blueish and freezing on account of that, herself.
Palm still steadfast on his mouth, he pulled his seville-orange jacket from his chest and took a step, handing it to the man. He didn’t seem to notice at first - it was only when he grazed him in his pacing that he turned with a start, eyes wide, stiff hair falling over his face.
He looked down at the jacket and gently reached a shaking hand out to meet it, taking it with such gentleness it ought to have been the first time anyone had ever given him something in his life. “O-oh,” he stuttered, “thank you. I don’t k-know how much it’ll help. But… t-t-thank you.”
There was still no understanding. He didn’t even dare to speak, thus he simply nodded, and backed out of the room. The cold man kept his eyes on him the entire time, unblinking as he took the jacket and wrapping it around his neck.
As he closed the door and went to return to his closet, an even smaller man - if you could even call him that - knocked into him, given that he had yet to turn around. “Sorry, pal,” he said, a hand raised to push away from him. Even briefly feeling the charred skin on his own left a sting of heat. Hunched over, the stranger opened the door once more and staggered inside.
In the brief seconds the door was once again opened, the cold man still stared, as if he somehow knew he was still there.
The following day was somehow worse than the last. A terrible headache had awoken him, the kind that pounded relentlessly against the skull and made the entire body feel sour. Sitting up from the floor he pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes tightly.
It did nothing to relieve the tension. He let out a deep exhale through his lips, unable to hold back a quiet whine of pain; his jaw was killing him, and now his head had gone and sent the rest of his skull into torment.
What a joyous and blessed day indeed.
To make matters worse, a terrible hunger was beginning to devour him alive. It had been so long since he had eaten anything… mushing half-rotten food though his mouth didn’t feel like it counted for much when it came down to it. His grandmother was going to be astonished at how much weight he had lost on his trip. If the dementia hadn’t caught up to her, the sight of him might just shock her into a panic. He could hear her voice in his head as if she was physically there - “little ghvino! Did they feed you nothing?! I told you not to go. Now look at you!”
The gnawing ache in his stomach reminded him that she was right after all.
So badly he wished to be back in his own country. They would immediately bring him in and fix him up. Hell, the moment he made it onto a bus heading north through the mountains he was sure the first person to set their eyes on him would shelter him inside whether he liked it or not. The Russians could be kind, saying otherwise would be a disservice to his friend, but out here it was every man for himself.
If he was going to survive, he needed to eat, regardless of the current circumstances. He stood on his feet and, as became second nature, covered his mouth with his hand. He felt there a crust of blood and probably saliva. He did his best to cover it, then cracked open the closet door, peeking his head out to ensure the coast was clear.
The door to the living room was open again, along with the door to the kitchen. He could hear faint chatter from the radio and murmurs from the living room. Standing in the doorway of the living room was the homeowner, done up in his usual blue sweater, brandishing his shotgun at his side. Though he couldn’t see his face, he stood rigidly, almost militant. Best not to approach him then.
Instead he made his way into the kitchen where, once more, the little girl sat, reading some sort of picture book. Though she seemed less cheerful, she perked up upon seeing him the same as she did last time, the smile returning to her face as she spoke. “Oh! It’s you!”
He gave her a wave. She grinned and waved back with an enthusiasm that only a child could harbor under such circumstances. Her authentic happiness made him smile, too, not that it showed under his palm.
He was becoming relaxed here. Not entirely, but a bit more, and progress was progress he figured. After all, nobody had tried to hurt him, and, as silly as it felt, a child not running in pure terror at the sight of him was a nice feeling.
Well… anyone not running, really.
Before he could fully enter the room, a rough grab on his shoulder made him startle violently. He whipped his head around, wide-eyed, only to see the homeowner standing there. His breath came in short, panicked gasps, and even knowing it was the man who had practically saved his life offered no relief.
“And how are you feeling?” he said with a straight face, apparently understanding he had startled him terribly as he retreated and gave a defensive raise of the hands. When he didn’t respond, the man sighed, his nose curling with a snarl. “How are we supposed to communicate?”
Why was he still asking things? He didn’t know what he was saying, or what to say in response. “I can repeat your words, and you can react to them. Maybe that way I will at least know what I am saying,” he opted to say. In the best Russian he could muster, he continued, “how?”
“What how?”
“I still can not understand. But I think you asked something.”
He exhaled. It truly was hopeless. “Maybe it was a question,” he finished, though he had left room to say something else but thought better of it. What else was there to say? What could he mention to make things right, to make him or anyone else understand? They had sewn his mouth shut for that very reason.
The homeowner mirrored him and sighed in response. Nope, neither had magically learned the other’s language; disappointing, but what did he expect? It was tiresome attempting to communicate, some sort of common language through charades might be a better option…
The homeowner took a step forward and reached out his free hand to his face, and upon rearing back from the touch, he retreated to his own face, pointing to his own lips.
“What? My mouth? Yeah, it was sewn shut. So what now? Do I need to smile?”
Pressing his gun underneath his shoulder, the homeowner used both hands to open his own mouth. His index fingers dug into the corners of his lips and he bared his teeth like a dog showing off his canines. A strange thing, he thought, watching the scene with a squint of his eyes, a brow raised. What was he asking? As he shut his mouth, the homeowner then pointed to him, and the answer became clear.
A strange request no doubt. He eyed the man up and down but ultimately relinquished the request. Gritting his teeth he inhaled, then grabbed his lips at their corners and spread them like his life depended on it, doing his best to ignore the burning pain soaring through his neck and his face. The strain was undoing yet another day's work of healing. The damned things would never close now, not that he had ever expected them to given how gnarled and soiled they had become.
After a few seconds, he slowly moved his lips back into place, rushing to cover his wounds with his hand once more. He tried to hide the fact it had hurt, but his eyes were welling with tears enough that blinking couldn’t restore his blurred eyesight. What had all of it been for? Not that he would disobey a man with a gun, but surely there was some purpose…
The homeowner seemed… content, maybe? Silence lingered in the room for a moment. The man's green eyes darted around his face as if he was looking for something in it. However, he eventually conceded with a nod and returned the shotgun to his side, only to leave the room and head back down the hall where he had first seen him.
Strange, no doubt… very strange…
Freed from such an unusual request, he had gone to retreat to the fridge when yet another person entered the kitchen. It was the cold man, still done up in his best winter attire and still very much blue. He was holding the jacket he had been given in his shaking hands, outstretching it towards him, still staring with that wide eyed stare that felt just as cold as he looked, though it was tainted with something else, too. Some empty feeling that unsettled him.
“H-h-here,” he said, extending the jacket closer. “Take it. Thank you.”
“No, it wasn’t a loan,” he replied, shaking his head. “You can keep it. It’s too hot for me. I don’t think my friend will miss it anymore…”
A future in which he needed a jacket seemed to become more and more distant. Georgia didn’t have much snow save for the mountains, and with any luck he would be home in no time. Lugging it around had been more of a service to his friend than anyone else. Now that he was gone, there wasn’t much reason to carry it around if someone else needed it. He had something else to remember him by, anyway - he couldn’t help but press his free hand to his ear to make sure the earring was still on.
The shivering man, despite the language barrier, seemed to understand, and again wrapped it around his neck, not that it looked to have helped. It was comical the way he seemed so utterly helpless. Sort of like a kicked puppy - the image coming so clearly to him that the exaggeration seemed wholly natural. Though, even a kicked puppy could be warmed by a fire, or a mess of coats during a heatwave.
In the silence, the little girl spoke up, pursing her lips. “Why can’t he speak?”
With her voice, the ghastly gaze of the cold man turned to her after a moment, though he did not smile. “He’s not fr-from here,” he answered her.
“Where’s he from?”
The man hummed in response. “I-I don’t know. He can’t s-sp-speak Russian.”
They both turned to look at him. He stood, head turning between them, uneasy.
“Why’s he covering his face?”
“S-someone sewed his mouth shu-shut.”
“Huuuh? Why? Is… is he bad?”
They continued their conversation, though he finally turned to the fridge to continue his search for food. Inside the fridge were a few packs of beers - naturally with some missing cans - along with coffee, a few energy drinks, and a pitcher of water. The only other item in the fridge was a large black pot which sat at the bottom shelf.
Though he dreaded uncovering his face, he wasn’t going to have a choice when he died from hunger. Craning his neck as much as he could to the side, he lifted the pot from the fridge, and placed it gently on the counter. The lid drooled condensation into the pot as he lifted it to look within. Inside was a greyish soup, a liquidy mix of massive white potato chunks and onions. There might have been some sort of meat, too - maybe chicken - but it all blended indiscriminately, making it difficult to tell for sure.
What a nightmare. Even given the circumstances, he felt disappointed.
Covering his face again he peeked around the kitchen, left and right and back again, looking for a bowl or just about anything that looked clean enough to eat out of. Besides the sink were a few pieces of silverware and clear plastic tupperware sitting on a hand towel. Without wanting to spend any more time than necessary around anyone, he took one, poured as much from the pot as he could without overflowing it, and called it a day.
When he had turned, the man had disappeared, though the little girl remained. She sat quietly, head resting in her hands as she stared rather blankly down at the page. How terrible it must have been for her, he thought. He never was good with kids, but he wanted to give her some sort of comforting words. Her father didn’t seem to be doing any good at that. Otherwise he wouldn’t be brandishing that gun around like it was nothing…
Bringing the bowl of soup back to the closet, he shoveled it into his mouth as quickly as he could. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before he was done and considering seconds, though even the thought seemed inappropriate, especially given there were so many people in the house. Maybe tonight then… more sleep would do him well. Then maybe he could get some more…
The morning started with not just with a throbbing continuation of his previous headache, but a terrible odor. Not that the house smelled particularly good to start - so many people cramped into such a small space would do that - but today, it was truly rotten.
Before he could even open his eyes, the homeowner burst into the storage room with a thundering crack of the door hitting the wall. There was no knock, no courtesy. He came in with blood on his arms and his shotgun held so tightly in his right hand his knuckles almost glowed white.
He stood to his feet as quick as he could, hands raising to his shoulders. He stared, open eyed and exhausted - what did he want? Had he done something wrong?
Did he fucking kill someone?!
The homeowner began to mime, moving his free hand outward, turning it over and spreading his fingers. By pointing to the boy’s hands, his meaning became clear.
“Hands?” he swallowed. “Fine…”
Reaching out both hands, he watched as the homeowner slipped the weapon under his arm as he had done before. He grabbed at him roughly, almost pulling him forward as he examined for… something. What could it even be that he was seeking? “Why are you doing all this?” he asked impatiently. Even if he couldn’t understand, he was going to go mad staying silent. “Why are you killing, for fun?”
There was a realization on the man's face. His eyes widened and the room became deathly still. It felt like the air had been swiped away and replaced with nothing at all. A rhythmic and hyper pulsing gradually entered his ears, his heart racing with fear - what had he seen? Why did he look so angry about it?
The homeowner practically threw his shotgun in his hand, aiming it right at his chest. Blinking, he took a step back, raising his hands in defense - “Put the gun down!” he howled, “I didn't do anything to you!”
Why? Why was he about to be murdered?! There was blood on his hands but it was his own! Blood stained skin like it stained everything else, could that somehow mean he was deserving?! No matter the reason, he couldn’t even defend himself. There was to be no argument, no discussion; his disadvantage of being different, of being disfigured…
It was going to do him in.
He had expected the gun to cock and fire. The dim hope for his own freedom had gone out again, only to be reignited as the man lowered his weapon, and placed it at his side once more. He seemed… dejected, almost apologetic, maybe just empty pitying. Whatever the reason, he had changed his mind.
“I should wash my hands then…”
The man turned from him and left, only to enter the room to the left of the kitchen. As he was left alone again he couldn’t help but exhale, not realizing he had been holding his breath the entire encounter. It was a sense of relief, though no doubt it was short lived and surface level; he could feel his shoulders tensing, locking into place as if that was their natural position after all. There was to be no relaxing in this house, nay, in this country. What a terrible mistake in even thinking otherwise.
He needed to go home. He never thought he would wish to see his old house again, but…
It had to be better than this.
The day proceeded with a ruckus that he hadn’t quite heard before. People came and went from the hallway and the restroom, loud voices talking and arguing without ceasing. He was starving and thirsty, though he didn’t dare leave the room until it all quieted down by a large margin.
He hurriedly rushed to the kitchen only to be met with a woman, who stood leaning against the counter, tears rolling down her face. She was a modest and thin thing; she was pale, staunchly depressed with worry lines that seemed etched into her flesh and eyebrows that angled towards her hairline. She looked up to him and had gone to step back, only to brace herself against the counters.
“Oh,” she flinched, sighing in what could only be relief. Her right hand raised to her chest where she looked down and exhaled once more. “I… I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”
He said nothing, but waved gently at her.
“You should… stay out of the office…”
He really wanted her to move. He wanted something to eat.
“Someone died last night…”
How could he tell her? He just wanted to go back to the closet, but he hadn’t gone for seconds yesterday.
“Someone… got killed…”
He took a step into the room and, looking up at him once more, quickly raced past him towards the restroom. In her panic she knocked into him, their shoulders brushing against one anothers. “I'm sorry,” she whispered on the way past. She didn’t turn to look back at him as the door to the restroom slammed shut.
Was she just as freaked out by the homeowner? Did he attack her, or someone else too? He didn’t want to wait around to find out. If he was in a bad mood from the heat, it was better to get what he needed and hide away for things to blow over.
The day crawled by with a lethargic sluggishness. Every hour seemed to creep slower and slower - an inevitability when there was quite literally nothing to occupy one’s mind. He had spent his time resting, doing push ups, applying pressure to the open wounds on his mouth. He even practiced his calligraphy with his finger and the wall. It had gotten to the point where idle amusements had begun to take their toll, and by God, he was going to die from the boredom.
Night, as it always had, did eventually creep in, and with it a slight cooling of the temperature. It was nowhere near enough to wick away the weeks of sweat from him. Especially in the closet - which wasn’t big to begin with - the heat seemed trapped, stagnant, and it was suffocating him.
He wanted a shower, maybe. Or just to splash water on his face. But when he decided that was ultimately his goal, of course someone in the house of infinite people had to get up to occupy the restroom.
He listened to the hum of the sink otherwise in complete silence. The only other sound was the occasional wind whirring past the house, the strength sporadically causing the whole place to creak with varying intensity.
A patented lack of patience was gnawing at him. At first he thought someone had just been washing their face, maybe brushing their teeth, but after some time that seemed an inadequate answer.
There really wasn’t much else to do but wait. What else was he meant to do, read a book? Even if he could understand it - which by itself was a notion so far-fetched he knew better than to even try - there was only so much reading could do when there was quite literally nothing else.
It felt like hours. Maybe close to an hour at least. Was someone hurt then? Or did they leave the water on by mistake? The homeowner wouldn’t be thrilled about that, surely. The sun had probably dried up the local wells and ponds a great deal. Conserving water had to be the best option.
Well, no point in leaving it running if someone had just forgotten to turn it off. He stood to his feet, pressing his hands on his knees with a grunt. He peered through the crack of the open door before opening it further, making sure the coast was clear. The dim glow from the restroom illuminated the otherwise black hall, the door wide open as if he was correct in thinking that someone had just left it on by mistake. Sleepwalking, maybe. Or maybe it was that woman. She seemed a bit distraught, after all.
Tip toeing to the door, he realized that someone had indeed been occupying it after all. If it wasn't for the navy hair and bulky jacket, the audible teeth chattering shiver would have given it away. The man took immediate notice of him, though he didn’t seem shocked to see him appear behind him in the mirror. Instead, he took a glance at the reflection, shut the water off, and turned around.
“S-sorry,” he began, thumbing the inside of his own palm. He stared at them, wide eyed, frowning. “I keep trying… but it b-burns me…”
He observed the man with a furrowed brow, eyeing him up and down. The other continued on quietly. “Doesn’t help,” he said with a half-smile that disappeared as quickly as it had come. His left hand grasped the wrist of his other, applying pressure to the point the skin where he had touched began to turn a ghostly bright white. The spots in which he touched remained the sickly color for long after he had removed them.
The man simply stood and stared at his chest, though it was an idle gaze, one that looked through and not at. “It j-just bu-burns me. Doesn’t help,” he repeated quietly.
Before he had conscious thought of what he was doing, his hands outstretched to the others’. He sandwiched his palms between his hands, and upon touching the skin of the man, realized his skin was still cool despite the fogging of hot water behind him. He couldn’t help but cringing at the sensation. How could it be possible? Feeling along his fingers there wasn’t even a speck of warmth, to the point where pressing his index finger against the layer of fat between his thumb and index could not register any heartbeat whatsoever.
“You’re… so warm…”
The man pressed back against his. His eyes closed and his lips parted, for the first time giving the impression that there was some relief that had come over him. Where there was respite for him, though, the sensation upon his own skin was akin to burning. It was one that crept in slowly at first, but doubled with every second. He couldn’t help but jerk away, an innate bodily twitch in reaction to the inhuman frigidity of the other, though the man pressed upon him again.
The initial shock of cold seemed to subside with time. Even through its initial unpleasant intensity came a soothing effect, one that cooled the very blood inside of him. What a strange thing, to find temporary remission in that of a man who was surely dying. Their opposite temperatures seemed like parasites on one another. The face of the shorter looked to have a bit of life brought back to it after all. His lips began to turn a light shade of purple from their previous white, and the color on his hands seemed to darken in shade, even if just by a bit. Had no one done that for him yet? Had no one held his hands all this time?
Taking a step forward, the man spoke through a mumble, just barely audible though still not understood. “C-can I?”
With his words he outstretched his arms though only halfway, as if he was waiting for permission to embrace him.
Who was he to say no? It was so oppressively muggy even in the middle of the night that any relief would be more than welcome. He wanted relief, he needed it, and it felt good to know he could help someone, too, with something so painfully simple.
More comforting than escape from the heat was affection. It was just nice to hug another person. He opened his arms and leaned in, wrapping his arms carefully around the shorter figure’s shoulders, holding him gently against his chest. The other folded his arms across his back. The hug proved just how comically massive his jacket was for such a small frame, as in feeling his figure he realized how thin he truly was. There wasn’t a trace of fat on his body, save for the roundness of his cheeks, which contrasted sharply with the rest of his fragile frame.
What came as even more of a surprise was how cold everything felt. His jacket was just as wintry as his skin, giving the impression he had just brought it in from a snowstorm. Even the hair on his head, which tickled ever so slightly at his chin, was absolutely freezing, like small icicles on a pine tree. The sensation of it all began to cool his body for the first time in weeks.
Relishing not just the cooling air but the warmth of affection, a weight he hadn’t realized was pressing on his chest lifted. What a fucking nightmare everything had been. He had lost everything; he was trapped in a strange, hostile place where nobody could understand him, and the first act of kindness he’d experienced had come from a moribund stranger.
He didn’t want to cry about it. He didn’t think he had any more tears left to give, everything considered. What a terrible thing it must be for a stranger to cry on you, he thought, though it did nothing to stop what was already in motion. All that was left to do was try not to make a scene of it. “Are y-you crying?” the man asked with sincerity as his arms couldn’t help but shake.
It didn’t sound harsh. Russians had a way of sounding impolite even if they were being courteous, so given that and the fact he didn’t reel away, he didn’t take whatever had been said to heart. The man continued with a whisper, “i-its okay… I’d cry too, if I c-could…”
Silent crying wasn’t in his nature. Silence in general was new, learned, miserable. He liked to talk, to go on and on about anything and everything, and he liked listening, too. But he had been forced quiet for too long, cursed for speaking in the first place. What a burden, to be trapped where nobody understood, where nobody cared to try. They had hit him when he cried. Even then his voice was unbearable. And still, his body betrayed him, erupting in whimpers, hiccups, and whines.
Yet his arms remained steadfast. He wouldn’t hide - unless the other made it clear that was what they wanted.
They stayed together, standing in a bundle of limbs just outside a stranger’s restroom. He was scared - he didn’t know if the homeowner would find the display strange or if it would even matter, should they be caught. All he knew was that someone was finally being kind to him. Christ, alive, how much it relieved his heart.
Minutes passed, maybe five, maybe less. He had stopped crying by then. His eyes felt terribly sore and along with it came a general exhaustion. Though he could have stood there for an hour more, he didn’t want the other to feel obliged or burdened too much. Without a moment more, he slowly released his arms from the shorter, and he did the same.
Parting ways didn’t exactly seem… the right thing to do. The two of them stood, silent and still, like mannequins in some abandoned storefront. What could he do? What could they even do to hangout with one another anyway? Maybe take turns drawing things, or acting out what they wanted to say…
A loud thump came from the last room at the end of the hall, snapping him out of his thoughts. Both of them turned toward it, hearts jumping, both of their nerves taut and alert it seemed. The man in the jacket gave him a final glance before retreating to the living room, arms folded across his chest, and he did the same for the closet. Just as he closed the storage room door, someone - probably the homeowner - shuffled down the hall, dragging his feet past each room toward the front of the house.
There he was again, to complete his nighttime patrols.
He made a mental note to ask him about the phone tomorrow.
Unless he decided to blow his head off, that is.