Originally from 2024

November 14th, 1987

My brother had always been very weird, but I never cared. In fact, I loved it. As a kid, Ivan would create burial sites for roadkill, dressing them with flowers and twigs. He would dangle out of his bedroom window, his stomach pushing against the windowsill, making chirping noises so birds would fly near him. And I would be by his side, enjoying whatever he was doing. No one in the world was as fun, interesting, or worth talking to as Ivan was. We were each other’s best friends, and we were each other’s only friends, and that was okay. More than okay. Ivan was mine–my weird big brother who would never leave my side.

I spent a lot of time getting picked on at school, and Ivan had none of it. This involved several fist-fights, one in which Ivan lost control of himself and punched and kicked another kid over and over again until his nose and mouth bled and a tooth rolled out of his mouth and onto the pavement. I had to stop him when enough was enough, and that was the first time I felt scared of Ivan. But I felt even safer at the same time. 

Then he turned 13 and met a boy named Roman at school. “Roman and I are going to be best friends, I know it,” he would tell me. Roman’s very existence felt like the ceasing of my own. There was no one to sit with in front of the oven, no one to search for dandelions in the woods with. It was just me, propped up on the armchair, my fil d’archal hanging nooselike over the carpet. I was a ghost in my own home, nothing to keep me warm from the cold, still air. Departed bunnies became rotten, warbling birds became silent. How foolish I was to assume that I was real. Roman, Roman, Roman. I didn’t know much about Roman, but I despised him. I gathered that he was the complete opposite of me—weak, pathetic, timorous. I wanted him dead. It wasn’t fair. He had stolen my shoes and walked in them, danced in them, jumped in them.

I thought of ways that I’d kill him. My dead skin flakes smothered under his fingernails as he grabbed onto me like a cliff’s edge, suffocating under the pressure of my hands around his skinny neck. The little splats of red leaving his cheeks and sinking into a pool of bubbling green as tablespoons of bleach whisked his intestines to soup. His blood becoming an inconvenience as it rained all over the carpet, a blade digging into his neck to expose his trachea to the light.  But then something strange happened. 

Roman came over to our house one day. His tattered brown boots sat untied where the white tile met the floral wallpaper near the front door, out of place. Ivan had been knitting Roman a scarf with orange and red yarn for a week, which made Roman want to learn how to knit, too. I sat in the living room on the red ottoman, the yellowy lamp in the corner flickering softly against the filtered sunlight from behind the curtain. The two boys knitted with each other across the room on the couch, giggling. I had last month’s issue of the Pravda in my hand, though I was much more fixated on Roman. 

This was the longest I’d seen him at this point. When he laughed, he covered his mouth. When he spoke, he ended nearly every sentence with a small hmm. The ends of his wool sweater’s sleeves were rolled up neatly, exposing the blue veins that wrapped around his bones. He finally looked up and noticed that I had been staring at him. He flinched, but then he turned to Ivan and asked, 

“Is that your sister? She’s very pretty.”

“Yes, pretty indeed,” Ivan replied, glancing at me from the corner of his eye. For a split second, I was his yarn.

I didn’t like how these things made me feel. Everything about me felt wrong from here forward. I did not feel like I belonged in my body or my mind. My thoughts were no longer my own. I hated myself. 

Every time Roman saw me he would comment on my appearance and it made my hands tingle with the urge to wrap them around his neck. I don’t know what I wanted. Slowly it seemed as though he was just coming over to see me and not so much Ivan, as he would often ask Ivan if the three of us could hang out and would bring me Rot Front batonchiks and flowers that he picked. I hated him. 

Neither Ivan nor I had been particularly happy people. We stewed in our own disgusting despair together for nine years through everything. But now, Ivan was clean. He smiled when Roman was around, and dust piled on my shoulders. I was filthy, vile, and left to die. But as Roman became less interested in Ivan and more interested in me, Ivan noticed. And he noticed almost immediately. 

The hardwood creaked underneath my ghostly body as I sat against my closet door, banging the back of my ribboned head against it. My vision blurred, but it didn’t matter because there was nothing worth looking at. 

I had to go after Ivan. There was nothing else for me. I didn’t want anything else. I didn’t want anyone else. Only Ivan. 

Sometimes, I snuck into his room at night, slept under his bed, and listened to his snores. 

Sometimes, I stole his clothes and replaced my tear-soaked pillowcase with the sour scent of his chest.

Sometimes, I banged and clawed on the door when he would look me out of his room.

This only made him scared of me and made me more and more in love with him. There was something about the chase, the fear I instilled in him, the game I created that I would lose and lose over and over again. I hated myself for it all, but it was all I had. It was me and my loneliness against Ivan and the way he hung abandonment over my head like a mistletoe. I leaned in.

“Natalya, please, go away, go away!”

“Why do you have to be like this?!”

“You belong in a psychiatric hospital!”

I got my hands on a handgun when I was 14. The same gun that Ivan once held to the temples of our parents as they slept, the same gun that caressed Dad’s bare tailbone when he tucked it under two layers instead of one, the same gun that I had glanced at too many times, imaging the orgasmic sensation of a bullet in my brain. Ivan had been obsessed with Roman for two years, and Roman had been obsessed with me for nearly as long. Things were only getting worse between the three of us and it was agony. I peeled the skin from around my nails until they were bleeding, soft, and raw. Food refused to nourish me, my stature still short and my waist sunken.  So I figured I had to do something fucked up to make anything change. 

I knew where Roman lived. Not once had I been inside of his house, but I’d walked to it once with Ivan and back. That was enough for me to have memorized the location. It was basically a straight line. A straight, hour-long straight line.

 His house was olive green, just like his eyes. 

Saturday, November 14th at 11pm I began my trek. On my way out of the house, Ivan tried to stop me and ask where I was going by myself. 

“What makes you care about me now?” 

He didn’t answer and just watched me walk out of the door. 

I had the handgun stashed in the waistband of my jeans like Dad, a pair of fingerless faux leather gloves just in case my hands got clammy, and my hair tied up. Still, despite having an hour to think as I trudged through the slush of thawed snow, I didn’t truly know what I was going to do. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hurt him. I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted him dead. I just knew that I wanted Ivan back. 

My hands were cold. They were always cold. I looked at them before shoving them into my leather coat’s pockets, the skin under my nails glowing a pale violet. I fiddled with the spare loose button in the left pocket, my thumb studying the microscopic holes. Cold air pounded against the skin of my nose and cheeks as I squinted, watching the snow-covered world swallow me as I plunged deeper and deeper into the uncertainty of it all. Despite being eaten alive by the clouds, the sun’s light beamed off of every snowy corner, penetrating my eyes. They began to water. 

The road was never truly a road, just a muddled runway of dirt and dead grass, but now it was nothing more than tire imprints and size 38 boot crevices disrupting the bed of slush. I looked up at the sparse pine trees that never seemed to change size, no matter how many years I spent passing them. 

I didn’t like the smell of the air. It was much more tolerable than the souring wood scent that plagued the house, but the stink of sewage and propane grew old just as quickly. I tried not to think about Roman, but I wondered what his body would smell like. How quickly would he begin to rot? Would the smell of death seep into my clothes? Would it haunt me?

Would it stink like Mom and Dad did?

The metal parts of the gun grew colder and colder against my skin as I continued to walk. 

When I got there, one dim light was coming from an upstairs window, and the rest of the house was dark. No cars parked on the street outside. It occurred to me then that I knew nothing about Roman’s family. 

At first, I thought breaking in would be my best bet, but then I remembered how much Roman liked me. He would let me in if I knocked. And that’s exactly what happened. 

“Natalya?” He was wearing a pair of flannel pajama pants with a wrinkled grey shirt and his brown hair was tied back into a low ponytail. “What…what’re you doing here?” His voice was grumbly and groggy. 

“Let me in,” I demanded, stepping forward. 

“Oh, umm, alright,” he complied without argument. He held open the front door and motioned for me to enter. 

His house was incredibly empty. The living room had nothing but a couch and a dinged up coffee table in front of a fireplace that was covered in soot. Nothing was on the walls but a pair of beige curtains over a window. I could see into the kitchen from where I stood. Old looking green appliances and cabinets, but generally empty. 

“Who the fuck lives here other than you?”

“Umm, my dad. He’s at work,” Roman explained. “Natalya, can I ask…why are you here?” He shut the door behind him, stopping the cold air from entering. 

I had a bit of an internal panic, but I tried not to let him notice. I still didn’t know what I was going to do. Reaching behind my back, I put my hand on the handgun. My fingertips filled with pins and needles as I stood there, eyes on Roman, wondering if he would still be alive in the next three minutes. 

“Is something wrong?” he asked me. 

I couldn’t figure out what to say. I just kept looking at him. My brain forced visualizations into my head of Roman’s bloody body, gunshots in various places, his bony hands clutching the wounds. It made me want to throw up. 

Roman frowned at me with clear pity. “Did something happen?” He hated the silence.

“Why does my brother like you so much?” I asked involuntarily. I could feel something taking hold of me, and I was in even less control of myself than I had been before. 

“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder the same thing.” He shrugged. “Why? Did something happen to him?” 

Now. I felt my hand wrap around the gun before pulling it out and pointing it at Roman’s chest. I looked down at my arm for a moment, registering that it was indeed my own, then back at him. He was about a foot taller than me. He flinched and gasped, raising his hands to head level almost instinctively. He fell awfully pale, his mouth trembling. What the fuck am I doing?

Roman began stuttering, his voice shaky. “W-Why..?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” 

“What?! You have a freaking gun pointed at me and you don’t know why?!” 

I shook my head. 

“D-Do you want something? Are you going to rob me? What is it?!”

“I…I guess I do want something,” I spoke. My arm was getting tired. “Ivan.”

For some reason, this made the color return to Roman’ face. “Huh?”

“Don’t act like you didn’t hear me.”

“I’m not…huh? I don’t get it.”

I could feel something rising up in my throat. “I want Ivan back.”

Roman shook his head like a wet dog. “I still don’t get it.”

My stomach started turning and the lump in my throat was only growing. I couldn’t speak anymore. I thought I would choke. Something inside of me was shattering like glass. 

“Hey, Natalya,” Roman called with pity. “Can you just, uh…put the gun down? Then we can talk. You don’t have to cry.”

I’m crying?

Nothing happened in my body. I was completely frozen. Slowly, Roman lowered one of his hands, watching me intensely for any reaction. When he realized I was stuck, he placed his hand on my outstretched arm and began to push it down. I didn’t resist him. He pushed it all the way down till it was at my side, disarming me the best he could. I still couldn’t move. “Natalya?”

My face tensed up on its own, but immediately my body let free of myself and I keeled over, dropping the gun on the floor with a loud thud. I instantly began vomiting bile onto my own feet before dry heaving uncontrollably. The brown liquid simmered on my black loafers.

“Oh my―Natalya,” Roman called again with even more pity. Before approaching me, he reached down beside my puke and picked up the gun between his thumb and middle finger like it was diseased. 

He put his other hand on my back and rubbed circles into it, and this only made me more nauseous, pushing more dry heaves out of me. “Please, sit here. I’ll clean this up.” Once my body calmed down, Roman led me to the couch with the hand he still had on my back and ran into the kitchen. I put my face in my hands. 

“Umm, so,” Roman started, sitting down next to me hesitantly after dropping a rag on the floor and pushing around my vomit with his socked foot over the rag. The gun was no longer in his hand. “You and your brother are very strange people,” he said, moving nothing other than his mouth. “I don’t think either of you are well.” 

I raised my face from my hands and looked up at him. I could taste the bile still on my tongue.

April 30th, 1992

With a cold smile on his face, Ivan pinched Yuri by the back of his little neck and dragged him around the corner and into the hallway. Yuri shrieked, the high-pitched bellow nearly rupturing my eardrums. It looked like Yuri was flying as Ivan whisked him away. Though the flight would soon crash. 

Muffled cries beetled their way back into the kitchen, all of us too afraid to scratch them away as they crawled under our skin. They had become too bothersome to deal with, too scary to face. Sniffles, wails, the choking on spit. We knew what was happening.

My gaze fixed on the mangled blini lying center stage on the floral-painted plate placed below me minutes before. The white yarn crocheted placemat underneath had more color than the floury carcass I was expected to eat. Yuri had done a horrendous job getting the batter to the correct consistency, so we were all served doughy, chewy, wet pieces of whatever. He had the nerve to put butter, sour cream, and fruit at the center of the table, too. 

No, I didn’t want to eat it. I’d had enough of Yuri’s shit cooking, but that wasn’t the issue. I could get past the shit cooking. I could get past the tasteless and shapeless goop. It was the stale air, the scuttling earworms, the strained silence, and the pale faces at every corner of the table that stole my appetite.

I stared at Aleks. He stared at his plate. The square glasses on his face were foggy, his pimpled forehead sweaty. A vein in his temple bulged as he clenched his teeth and wiggled his jaw. My piercing leer failed to penetrate him. 

A certain tingle grew across my right shoulder, and I turned to see Roman’s soft gaze on me, his long brown eyelashes barely giving way to his glassy eyes. I hated when he looked at me. I wanted to pull his eyes out of his head and throw them into the toilet. He looked away not long after we made eye contact, and I sighed. He swallowed his own spit and scratched the back of his head, further messing up the brown mop on it. His other hand was on his abdomen, which was typical. Roman was weak in more ways than one, but his stomach was absolutely pathetic. Every time anything went awry, he was in the bathroom, something coming out of some end—his stomach wasn’t picky about which one. 

Yuri’s cries ceased and a distant door shut. Roman and Aleks grew more and more tense as footsteps approached the kitchen door, louder, and louder, and louder, and louder. The specific squeaks of the old, rotting hardwood played different songs depending on who was walking across them, and Ivan’s feet warranted an orchestra under a frantic maestro. Ivan’s unmistakable towering body painted itself right in the center of the doorframe, his precious head with a drawn-on smile still attached to his scarred neck. How he could smile, I don’t know.

“Natalya,” his sweet voice called for me. 

I perked up, turning my chest to face his. 

“Would you make something edible for dinner?” he requested with red cheeks. 

I nodded. “What would you like me to cook, Ivan?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he shrugged. “Just do not waste ingredients like Yuri. You know better.”

I did. 

The moment I stood up from my chair, thigh skin unsticking itself from the plastic-wrapped floral seat cushion, Roman threw up. Unpleasant heaves pushed brown, gravelly liquid up and out onto his plate, seasoning Yuri’s blini with stomach acid and undigested buckwheat. 

Aleks put a hand to his own mouth. He was the type to gag whenever he saw someone puke, much like a yawn reflex. It was pathetic. 

I watched Roman’s nearly emaciated body shake pitifully as his insides poured out of him, the puke now dripping off of the plate and onto the table, and off of the table and onto his legs, and off of his legs and onto the floor. I sort of felt bad for him. 

“Roman,” Ivan whistled, leaning in his direction with his hands behind his back. “Are you sick again?” He just wanted to taunt him. 

Roman tried to look up at Ivan but could barely keep his eyes open through his hurls and gags. 

Ivan sauntered next to Roman and put his hands on his shoulders. Roman flinched, snorting back in the snot gobs that had begun to drip out of his fleshy nose. Ivan’s hands went from a comforting rub to a firm grasp. “Hurry up. You’ll need to clean this.”

Aleks’ head popped up, distress in his brow. His hand still covered his mouth as he stared wide-eyed at Roman, who wasn’t responding to Ivan’s demand. 

“I’m going to count to three,” Ivan said over Roman’s heaves. 

“Odin… dva…” 

Aleks sprung up from his seat, grabbing his cloth napkin on his way. He crouched beside Roman, whose vomiting was finally beginning to slow down. “I will help,” he cried, vigorously smearing the vomit in circles on the green and white checkered tile. Honestly, he was making it worse. 

Roman let out one final cough before lifting his head to look at Ivan. “Ack…s-sorry, Ivan…” he muttered. “I apologize. I’m not so sure what—”

Ivan moved his hands from Roman’s shoulder and stuck them into his armpits, lifting him out of his chair. 

“Tri.” 

He pulled Roman to the ground, placing him onto his knees next to Aleks, who was still frantically worsening the mess on the floor. After dropping Roman into the pool of his puke, he stuck his booted foot out. He shoved his steel-toe into the hunched-over Aleks’ abdomen and kicked him to the side, his nylon pants carrying him across the white and green tile like an ice resurfacer. 

Aleks groaned in pain, curling up like a newborn fawn as he came to a halt against the chipped green paint of a cabinet. 

“Don’t help.” Ivan demanded. 

He took an upside-down tin bucket from the drying rack and placed it in the sink, turning the water on. “You’re the second person to make a mess of the kitchen today,” he spoke down to Roman. He pelted a hardened yellow sponge at the side of Roman’s head before grabbing the filled bucket by its handle. “But I know you’ll do a good job making it spotless, da?” he finished, plopping the bucket beside Roman. The water sloshed around, teasing its rim with the threat of spilling. 

I wasn’t sure how Ivan expected Roman to clean with just a bucket of plain water and one sponge. Not even soap? But I kept my mouth shut. 

My eyes darted from the defenseless Aleks, still curled up in the corner, to Roman pathetically pushing water around the tile, to Ivan smiling as he stood over them. Roman was shaking. The water was clearing up the smears that Aleks had made, but the puddle grew and grew. I was certain that Roman was aware he needed a dry towel at this point, but Ivan’s stare was holding him down like an anvil. 

“Is it okay if I begin cooking now?” I spoke up. “I’ve thought of what to make.” I hadn’t. I just hated standing there. 

Ivan cocked his head to look at me. “Da, just don’t slip in Roman’s mess.” The smile never left his face despite the subtle irritation in his voice. 

Finally, I moved from my purgatory between the chair and the table and towards the pantry, making sure to avoid stepping in the watery concoction that lined the floor near Ivan and Roman. As I opened the creaky pantry door, Aleks finally began to move again. The cabinet he was up against was next to the pantry. He looked up at me before beginning to stand up, using the counter as support. I considered giving a hand to him. Instead, I turned my head and began to scan the pantry. 

There wasn’t much to see. Flour, sugar, salt. Buckwheat, sunflower seeds, oatmeal. Bag of potatoes. We always had a ton of potatoes. No matter what, there were always potatoes.  Everything else was a blur of dust-covered jars and crumpled-up paper bags. I put my hand on the doorknob, shut the pantry door, and shuffled to the refrigerator.

There was a bit more to choose from, but it still felt quite sterile. Sour cream, milk, eggs, whatever. Wrapped in some old newspaper were carrots and white onions that had already been cut into, and on the door shelf was a half-empty jar of chicken broth that Roman had made a few days before. Another paper had fresh dill and leeks rolled inside. Everything else sort of mushed together in my vision, much like the pantry, except this time, nothing was covered in dust. Ah, well, I guess I’ll make soup. I thought. 

I gathered my ingredients and placed the huge green enamel pot onto the back-right burner. As I turned the gas on, my hand discretely pulled the dish towel that hung on the oven’s handle off and tossed it behind me to Roman. Then, I eyeballed an acceptable milk-to-broth ratio and began to stir it with a wooden spoon. 

I heard Roman let out a sigh. 

Aleks made his way towards the stove. He watched me chop up the half-onion over the wooden cutting board. 

“Why don’t you go to your rooms until Natalya finishes cooking?” Ivan said. “Both of you.”

Roman had begun to stand up, the floor looking less disgusting and the towel I threw him used. The knees of his khaki pants were now wet and they made his legs look ball-jointed like a doll. He used the cuff of his green sweater to wipe sweat from his forehead. “Thank you, Natalya,” he told me before leaving the kitchen, Aleks following behind him. 

I dropped the chopped onions into the broth. Ivan walked over and put his nose over the pot. “You are making soup?” he asked me. I nodded. 

He giggled. “Oh, okay! I’m sure you’ll do a good job. You always do.”

I felt the corners of my mouth twitch. “Yeah. I will always do what I can to make you happy, Ivan.” I told him. I grabbed the knife again and began to skin a potato alive. 

Ivan giggled again. “I know.”

“Whether you like it or not,” I added.

“I know,” he repeated, this time without a giggle. 

He left the room, shutting the kitchen door behind him. My heart fell to my stomach. Why did he leave me all alone? I thought. Why couldn’t he have just stayed here with me?

I looked at the dulling blade of the knife I was wielding, an inch or so of a potato skin adhered to it. Ivan was gone. The ghost came back. It dragged the knife to my opposite arm. It must have mistaken my flesh for a potato that needed slicing. The ghost tried many times until it became exhausted with the attempts it made to turn my potato wrist into stew, unsatisfied. But there was now blood all over me and my dress. 

Ivan, I thought, you’ve seen Roman’s blood, you’ve seen Aleks’ and Yuri’s. But you rarely see mine, do you? I held my arm, dripping with blood, over the boiling half-cooked soup and let a few drops pollinate the creamy white bubbles in the pot. I shivered as I felt the blood grow cold and roll down my arm. I let out a nose-laugh. 

I looked over at the spot that Aleks was crouched at. It was just a cabinet before, but now I was looking at a shallow grave. We had all died many times in this house. Every rug, painting, chair arm, and toilet seat was the resting place of some part of one of us, sometimes more. No headstones, no funerals, no wakes. Just invisible sepulchers that homed pain and despair in their permanent addresses. It wasn’t a contest by any means, but I knew that I was the one with the least amount of them. I was the most alive out of everyone, and that was because of Ivan. He fueled my fire, and not once had I worried that it would be put out. He was the reason I could yawn and sigh. Could someone so dead produce so much blood? 

The curtain was closed and the spotlights were off, but at least I still had stage directions. 

Cook dinner. Make the soup. Make Ivan happy. 

The strings tugged on my limbs. So I danced like a stupid, limp puppet, chopping up the dill and carrots and stirring the pot while I thickened the soup with a bit of flour. I ignored the dried, crusty blood that decorated my dress and I. The only song that played was the gurgles from the pot. The room was dark, and the stage was freshly mopped. The strings kept tugging on my limbs. 

Once I was done, I peered out of the kitchen door to see Ivan standing at the living room window, his arms behind his back. Everything was gray. The sky and snow mushed together like paste, the trees like painted-over flies on the wall. Yuck. 

“Ivan,” I called. “Dinner is ready.”

He turned around and smiled at me, beginning to make his way towards me and the kitchen. I felt my heartbeat in my throat. I folded my arms tightly against my chest, smushing down my breasts that refused to stop getting larger. The slices stung under the pressure, but at least Ivan wouldn’t know how stupid I was. I considered going to get the other three from wherever they were hiding, but no, Ivan would decide when to call them in for dinner, not me.

He walked past me through the doorframe and I rushed to stand next to the pot. “It’s potato soup,” I said. “Would you like me to put some in a bowl for you?” I realized I already should’ve done this. 

He shook his head. “No, no, Natalya. You have a seat. You’ve done enough already. I can do it myself.”

That wasn’t an option. I reached for the cabinet above the sink that housed the bowls and plates. I could feel Ivan getting closer to me, but I tried to ignore him. I had to pick the perfect bowl for him. 

The bowls were mismatched and discombobulated. There was a blue ceramic one that was much too shallow. There was a purple one that was stacked and sandwiched in between four or five others. There was a yellow one on top of a stack of plates—I reached with both of my hands to grab that one. 

“Natalya,” he barked. “I told you I would do it.” He wrapped both of my wrists in one of his hands and yanked them away from the bowl. However, my fingertips had already begun to grasp the bowl, so in doing this, the bowl came plummeting down out of the cabinet and straight into the sink. It cracked. 

Ivan stared at the broken ceramic pieces in the sink, his grip still tight around my wrists. I swallowed hard. It wasn’t absolutely shattered—it had broken into about four pieces of varying sizes, nothing that glue probably couldn’t fix. But that wasn’t the issue. I had disobeyed Ivan. He knew what was best for me, and this was just a clear indicator that unless I listened to him, the world would end. At least that’s what it felt like looking down at the broken bowl. 

“You didn’t listen,” he said. “Why didn’t you listen? Look at what happens when you don’t listen.” He threw my hands down, causing me to be jerked back. I shivered again. No, no, I thought, this can’t be happening. Why didn’t I listen?

Ivan stopped smiling and the room felt cold. 

“I’m sorry…” I muttered. “I just wanted to help.”

He clenched his teeth, his gray eyes eating my flesh. For a moment, he just stared at me, brows furrowed, saying nothing. I got dizzy. Maybe I wasn’t in the kitchen. Maybe I had been outside rolling around in the sticky white paste, bumping my tiny head into the trees, frozen twigs snapping under my coat. I don’t know. I held one of my wrists in the opposite hand, trying to soothe the dull ache that Ivan’s grip had left on me. He noticed and looked down.

“Why are you covered in blood?” he asked me. His brows raised and his face softened as he unclenched his jaw. 

“What?” was all that came out of my mouth. The almost comically sudden shift in Ivan’s demeanor made my stomach turn. 

He reached to grab my arm, but I instinctively darted backwards, scrunching my hands up to my face and my elbows against my chest. “Natalya,” he barked again. He didn’t step to get closer to me. I lowered my hands a bit, just enough to make eye contact with him again. His eyes were somehow warmer now. 

“I accidentally cut myself while peeling potatoes,” I finally answered. 

He kept looking at me. I know he didn’t believe me. “Go get changed. Soak your clothes in vinegar. That will get the stain out.”

“But…but the bowl…and the soup…” I murmured. There was a lump in my throat and tears pushed and burned against the back of my eyes. 

He pointed at the door. “Just do what I say.”

“Fine,” I replied, heading towards the door. But then I stopped.

“Can you at least taste the soup? And tell me what you think of it?” I asked him. “I want to know if I did a good job like you said I would.”

“Alright.” He stirred the pot once and lifted the wooden spoon to his pink lips. “If that will get you to leave.”

I felt the corners of my lips twitch again as I watched Ivan take a small sip off the spoon. A creamy drop trickled down the center of his shaven chin, stopping right at the bottom. Everything tingled. How lovely. “Did I do a good job?”

He nodded. “Yes, Natalya. The soup is good. Now go.”