2020 SHORT STORY COMPETITION WINNER

Prize: £1,000

Finalists:

“Trick of the Light” by Liberty Hinze

“Proud Stallion” by Ruth Campbell

“The Visitor” by Amy O’Neil

“The Circle, The Sickle, The Star” by John O’Donnell

“Tales from The Culturist #64 - Nikolai” by Martin Roberts

and the winner is…

Amy O’Neil

The Visitor 

All this week I knew the visitor was coming. I dreamed of slime dropping from the ceiling like raw eggs, of ripping open mattresses and soft dead chicks tumbling out. I woke to bedsheets covered in sweat. Dima and Lyova fought over scraps unearthed from the compost or a rotten potato discovered in the raised beds. They groaned and bit, pulled each other’s hair and kicked tree trunks until the skin on their feet split. 

I stopped digging under the roots of last year’s radishes to strike them over the head. But I couldn’t blame them. Something in the windless heat made my nerves squirm. You cannot avoid that which is meant to happen, Olya. 

Even the grub curled in the toe of my shoe didn’t want to let go as I hooked it with a finger and lay it on the mud. 

I turned soil under the purple swollen sky and closed my eyes. The visitor was caught between worlds. She watched, smiling. 

I wished for rain, for the hiss in my ears to settle. But the pressure only increased. 

Mosquitoes followed us inside the house and hovered around our necks. Dima and Lyova went to the living room away from the heat. I preferred the kitchen. Sitting at the table looking out the window. It reminded me of better times, waiting for Seryoga to return from the village with pork or beef. A slice of bird’s milk cake from the bakery if he was in good spirits. A smile would spread across his face as he passed the window and I’d put on a little music for him and a nice dress, pin up my hair. 

“How was it?”

We’d sip tea, or something stronger. He’d tell me about his journey, about the hotel in the city, his kozyul of a boss. On the drunken edge between tired and happy we’d wait out the night hours, talking and getting to know the new lines on each other’s faces. 

I sighed, ransacked cupboards for flour, sugar baking soda and honey.

You cannot even waste one piece of bread, Babushka always said.

We made things last down to the final grains of buckwheat, semolina and oat. We scraped jam from the sides of jars with a blini, stripped the tree of young cherries before birds swiped them. I fished out our last pickled cucumber from the brine hoping to kill the worm in a hungry fever at 4am. 

Seryoga hadn’t sent money for months and I worried he had a new lover in the city. Drinking rubles and eating caviar while our children's stomachs groaned like wild boar. 

Dima and Lyova stopped asking questions. They were skin and bones stalking cupboards. And I waited like a fool for a phone call, letter, message in tea leaves. Something. 

Today I thought of Masha. I’d make medovik with the last of the honey Seryoga had brought back from the market. 

“He is up to something Masha, I know it,” I’d told her on my last visit. “Snout covered in down.” 

I hadn’t seen my sweet friend for four days. She had family staying until the end of next week. I missed her freshly made syrniki, the vatrushka she picked up from the bakery on her push bike when she knew I was coming. I missed her home-made jams and big pot of sour cream. When Masha’s husband died, he at least had the decency to leave her a bicycle. 

“But even if, so what? ” She wiped her hands on her apron and sat. I sunk my teeth into the soft pastry and sweet curd. Sugar already rushing to my head. 

“You need his money,” she continued. “Remember Curious Varvara. Don’t make yourself miserable with feeling, Olya.” 

Her beautiful face grew stern as she talked. Sometimes Masha was like a mother telling me off, though she was younger than me. 

I rolled my eyes.

“Yes Mashenka, but I cannot stop my mind playing these terrible movies.”

I could see she knew nothing of this thinking. Masha lined up thoughts like a drill sargeant. They dropped to their knees at her command. In my own mind they flailed wildly. They were devils. Left me in a heap on the floor. 

The boys laughed and terrorised her dog in the garden. Masha said to leave them be. They’d learn from his bark when it was too much. 

“I cannot stop eating!” I said, licking sweetness from my fingertips.

“Take. Take as much as you want. I’m full,” she said and leaned back rubbing her belly. She was so perfectly placed in her home; part of the wood. 

I winced at my own inability to relax. Couldn’t she taste trouble in the air? Did she not get visitors? I studied her face. She wasn’t in the least startled by the hiss outside the window. Electricity, or a storm, or some kind of science experiment by the government. 

I wondered then, if it was coming from inside me. 

“I’m bored,” a little voice moaned, causing me to spill sugar across the table. Dima sidled up next to me, leaning all his weight on my body. 

“Then clean your room.”

“It is done.”

He ran his hand across the kitchen surfaces. I didn’t know what he hoped to find.

“Play chess with your brother?”

“He doesn’t play properly. It is too easy to win.”

His dark eyes roamed about the room. He frowned and looked like his father, plotting something. 

“What can I eat today Mamochka?” he said, rubbing his head against my hip like a cat. The boy had my heart in his fist and he knew it. 

“Please don’t say potatoes.”

I sighed, clawed fingers through his scruffy hair.

“Sweet little Dimka, what I’m supposed to do? I make some kind of soljanka with what we have.” 

“And if I am good?”

“But you are never good!” I teased. “Maybe something sweet if you’re nice to your brother, but is better to eat it tomorrow after fridge.” 

“Can I lick the bowl? Please?”

“Yes, yes. Now go play chess. And let Lyova win.” 

I abandoned the ingredients in the middle of the table. Went to fill a bucket from the well at the back of the garden. It was fresher than the orange rust-tinted water from the tap. I poured it onto my arms and wiped a hand over my face. I imagined being a tiny beetle in that cool bucket. I wished, like so many Russians in summertime, to flock to the Dead sea. To let that vast, bouying mass hold the weight of our human problems while I commune with the sky. 

The boys screeches could be heard from across the garden. 

Inside, red-faced Lyova clutched his big brother’s hair in his fist over a chess piece. I threatened them with a cold bath. Lyova begrudgingly returned the king. 

“Idiot,” Dima whispered under his breath. I gave a stern look.

“Remember Mama sees and hears everything. Don’t make me come back in here,” I warned. 

I kept a third eye on the peripheries while I swept sugar from the floor. The visitor always came in sideways, sneaking. Easy when the door was permanently open. We lost the key months ago and had to force it once. Now there was no handle and it swung in the breeze unless we bunched a rag at the bottom. Seryoga said he’d fix it, but the door was not the thing on his mind now. Nor was his wife and children, it seemed. I needed to become more like Masha. To learn to fix things myself. 

On my way to the woodshed the sky had brightened again. Still no rain. How was it possible that the sky could change its mind? I sighed. This place was full of impossible things. 

I reached for the dry wood at the back of the pile, cradled it in the hammock of my skirt. This was the longest he’d been away. I collected wood and berries, squirrelled things in the cheeks of our home. But I didn’t know how long I could make them last. We’d all grown around the hole Seryoga left, as a tree shoots upwards despite a broken branch. But I still worried. Chopping wood steered my roaming mind back to safety. 

Each piece had a different smell when split open: nut, eucalyptus, dark honey. So many scents made my mouth water. I filled my belly with smells. Trying to stagger the hungry hours between breakfast and lunch. Sometimes I put the boys to bed early so we could skip dinner. 

I got the fire stove going. At least the smoke would drive away the mosquitoes. We had plenty of wood but I tried to save gas in the cannister for when it was needed. 

When it raged inside the little window, I added logs two by two until the stove-top was hot enough to boil a pan of water. I melted butter and honey in a glass bowl on top before beating together eggs and sugar. I added baking soda and flour until it melded into dough. I remembered a million things while I rolled out the layers. The door needed fixing, washing was piling up, I must find a way to get money. But how? 

I cut around the cake tin to make perfect circles. I pricked each layer with a fork and put them in the oven, turning so they didn’t overcook on the side nearest the flame. Each layer hardened into a beautiful golden biscuit. 

The smell of honey travelled to the living room. Lyova peaked through a crack in the door.

“When will it be ready Mama?” 

“Is better tomorrow little one, after fridge,” I said.

He decided he was a bee then, buzzing and knocking into walls. I forced a spoonful of honey into his mouth to make him stop and kissed his forehead. 

He would be hard to look after as he grew, I knew that. So much energy would channel into difficult questions and frustrations. The same worries that haunted his mama’s head would stalk him like the devil. 

I let the biscuit layers cool and started on other things before making the filling. 

I scraped splinters of soap into the bucket with a paring knife, swirling the water with my hand until it dissolved. I added drops of oil for the smell. Lavender and Clary Sage, citronella for warding off tiny wings. I did not look in the bathroom mirror in case our visitor stared back with her black eyes. 

Every towel was a little grey and stiff. I tried not to wash them too often. After wringing out the clothes, I straightened my aching back and gathered them in both arms, waddling through tall grass and stumbling over sun-baked molehills to get to the washing line. It would dry in minutes in this heat. The faded streaks of once bright colours would tell stories of the sun’s journey over the trees. 

I remembered talking with Masha the last time I visited. About when we were girls. On the longest night of the year when spirits hovered, listening, we’d read tea leaves, coffee grounds and cards. We asked about the harvest, marriage or health. We talked of dreams, lit candles and looked for answers in shapes in the wax. Everywhere held messages: in sugar, salt, grains, and even in the wood of walls. Houses were alive and rippling with untold knowledge. 

Masha stopped reading cards when her husband died. She took up smoking instead. Life is too short for superstition, she said. I want to make bed in real world. 

Still I hoped for answers in my surroundings. Otherwise the mind told its own future, supplied its own catastrophic predictions. 

It always found work to do. That is why I must keep my body busy. Especially on these white nights. Days that hung on forever like restless ghosts.  

I was awake before the chickens, feeling the electric prickle travel all the way up to my eyes and spurring mayhem behind them; a million half-thoughts, worries and premonitions. 

Sometimes I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. But Masha. She banged the palm of her hand on the table. This is real Olya, this. Here. now.

I beat powdered sugar into heavy cream and folded the mixture into sour cream, scooping out lumps with my finger and ‘testing’. 

Dima and Lyova’s soft laughs travelled through the wall. Thank god for small moments where they didn’t fight. 

After dinner I smothered the thin biscuit layers with the cream mix. I let the boys lick the bowl clean and filled their open palms, like begging bowls, with crumbled offcuts. 

I put the cake in the bottom shelf of the fridge so the cream would soak into the biscuit. And when the children were too tired to protest, I kissed their heads goodnight. They collapsed in their beds, sleeping without hind legs before I’d even shut the curtains. 

The sickly blue glow of night without sunset fell upon the kitchen. There was no rest from the blazing day aside from the mildest of shadows. I heard noises of storms breaking, but when I looked out the window, everything remained deadly still. Just the same heat and relentless daylight. Crickets whispering ghost stories to grasshoppers. 

I shivered even though I was far from cold. A Fork fell from nowhere to the floor. The visitor would be here soon. 

I removed the cake from the fridge and cut a slice. I had no cattle and could not spare a chicken to sprinkle corners of the house with blood. I offered honey cake. Put it on a saucer and set it down on the dusty threshold of the doorway.

I washed dishes to stop my fidgety hands from peeling paint or picking skin. I could feel the air grow dense as she finally wafted in. 

“I wondered when you’d come,” I said, not daring to look.

She was not your average Domovoi. She shared my own eyes, nose and mouth. Lines that hovered over my face were cemented in hers. She was me, and not me. My Domania was the pale grey of moonlight and old as the sun. The worry I kept locked inside rippled under the skin of her forehead. 

I tried not to look directly, but from the corner of my eye, I saw darkness huddled around her. Shadows played tricks like flames, inventing a snake’s tongue, a tail and horns. Sometimes she looked like my babushka. Other times, a cat. 

Today, she was translucent and tired. 

She perched on the tree stump criss-crossed with gashes where Lyova liked to sit. Mournfully scanning our low wooden worktops and the line of dusty mason jars that once housed lentils, rice, bulgar wheat and dried beans above the gas stove. I reached for bowls, pots and cutlery to wash. 

“You’ve gone grey,” I said.

She scratched at paint on the table until it peeled away. Something I’d done since I was a child.

“Time rushes past, doesn't it?” she said. Though she herself was timeless. 

I glanced out the window. The sun was cowering finally, giving way to clouds that threatened to crack under their own weight. Though I did not wish for the return of winter, I longed for the cool darkness of night.

“Why did you come?” I said.

She tilted her head but didn’t answer. I once asked how she knew so much unless she had lived in the future. She said it was the wrong question. I was, apparently, stuck in the rules of the physical realm. She was possibility. She was a warning.

I couldn’t stomach the sound of her nervous fingers. I imagined Masha’s voice, It is all you Olya. Only spirits exist in your mind. 

But if the visitor wasn’t real, why did her scratching reverberate in my bones long after she’d vanished? 

The Damania ate her cake greedily like a feral dog with sharp teeth. When she finished we fell into a silence again. I washed her saucer, if only to hear the soothing sound of chinking plates and running water. 

Her silence was not an easy silence. It was like that of a dream when the mouth opened to scream but no sound escaped. 

“Tell me,” I whispered without hope, still facing the wall, “does it at least get better?”

I felt her stare. The house breathed, deep, uneasy breaths.

“You know I can’t talk about that,” she said. I winced.

Drunken flies stuck to the coiled tape hanging from the ceiling. The air smelled like rust.

“Are they sleeping?” she said. Words rose in my throat and died, like the little chicks in my dream. I didn’t want to answer. I was sick of pretending not to hear her cries as she sat on end of their beds for hours. 

“No!” I snapped. I steadied the trembling in my voice. “Not tonight.”

“Why?” she said, rising.

The shadows grew and spilled over my shoulder. She filled the kitchen with darkness. I took a deep breath and turned. 

“I shouldn’t have to explain,” I said, “It makes me uncomfortable. That’s all.”

We locked eyes. Something dark seethed in hers. She chewed the inside of her cheek until they watered. I felt my own blood rise. 

“You come here and disturb us,” I shouted. “You disturb my children and tell me nothing of the future.” I shook my head. 

“You know how hard I work to bury these terrible thoughts. And yet you say nothing. You’re no longer welcome here!” 

With gritted teeth she looked around the room as if reconstructing an old memory. And then something else flashed in her eyes. Shadows began to retreat from the walls, floor and ceiling. Cowering like wounded wolves. 

“Ok. Ok,” she said, smaller than before. She lay her pale withered hands on the table. I stood over her. Now it was her turn to avoid my glare. 

“You ask me if it gets better,” she said, staring down at her hands. The house was still for a second, as if holding its breath. 

“It doesn’t,” she said, glancing towards boys’ room. “It gets worse. ” 

I tried to flood my brain with calm thoughts. Beautiful Mashenka on her way to the village, greeting the morning sun on her rickety bike. Lyova and Dima’s quiet soft breaths on my arms as I hold them close reading bedtime stories of forest sprites and snow demons. Me and Seryoga dancing, jam simmering on the stove-top, making the whole house smell of blackcurrants. But it was no good. The visitor must’ve been lying. She meant us harm. 

“Get out,” I screamed. “Leave us in peace!”

Stacked plates, empty jars and teacups rattled in place like an earthquake was coming. Sugar and flour spilled from the shelves. I did not look at the shapes they cast. I watched the Damania turn, her face solemn, and slowly fade. She drifted like a sleepy fly towards the door. Any colour left in her washed out. At the threshold, she turned back. 

“You have a choice you know,” she whispered. She was barely a shadow now.

“You can change everything. Tonight.”

And then she was gone. The air was thinner again. I could smell the beginnings of rain. 

I collapsed onto a chair cradling my head in both hands. I was exhausted. 

A scream pierced the air. It came from the boys' room. I ran, flung the door open. Heart in chest, I rushed over to the bed where Lyova was swaddled in Dima’s arms. His face was red and twisted with tears. 

“What is it? What happened?”  

Lyova couldn’t speak.

“Tell me Dima!”

“He is just scared Mama,” Dima said, wiping his brother’s tears with his own pyjama sleeve. 

“I...I was thinking about monsters,” Lyova finally blurted.

“I told him they don’t exist, but he didn’t believe me,” Dima said.

I sat on the bed, pulled him against me and kissed his clammy hair.

“Shhh sweet one. There are no monsters here Lyovushka,” I said, rocking.

“Only Mama is here. Only Mama.”

I folded his tiny body into Dima’s bed and perched on the edge while Dima slung an arm around his brother. 

I gazed at their lovely sleeping faces as the faint sound of rain tapped at the window. I could still see Seryoga’s seriousness in Dima’s face, but also a quiet observant beauty that was his alone. Lyova’s mouth hung open, showing nothing of his recklessness, his joy and easy laughter. 

I thought about the visitor’s words. I could change everything. Cut the thread of all possible futures that could harm them. I stroked their hair. I wanted to put the moment in a mason jar and close the lid tight. 

There was nothing but light and yet I could not see it. Only a million ways to die in the countryside: bad winters, fire, open gas cannisters, loose electricity cables, picking the wrong mushroom. And the things which killed you from the inside. Poverty. Silence. Loneliness.

In the kitchen, the knife slipped through the cake easily. Cream had soaked into the layers. Now it was perfect. Take yourself in your hands Olya! I could hear Masha saying. You are not slave to these demons. She was right of course. I should sit and enjoy cake for once without thinking of tomorrow.

I wondered how they were spending these white nights in the city. Shopping, drinking in taverns, sharing meals and vodka with friends. Or huddling under the eaves of buildings and churches at the first signs of rain. 

I wondered if seryoga was eating well, sleeping well. Did the unceasing day make him feel invincible? As if night could never come for him? Were we just a blot in his receding past? I doubted his new lover made medovik as good as mine. 

I reached over to the gas stove. There are many ways to die in the Russian countryside. I turned the brass knob until fully open. Behind the hiss I heard the lovely patter of rain working up to a torrent. Masha’s thirsty crops would have a good drink tonight. I smiled. 

I steered my mind back to here, now, this: the best cake I’d ever make, and waited for the air to thicken again.