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jezebelinhellTunguska, Soviet Union (USSR), January 1961
Somewhere, the Soviet's told themselves, her plans went very much awry. The wooden beam that must have broken off during the explosion lodged itself in her chest, piercing the skin just under the shoulder blade and coming out the other side. "Принесите её." Bring her. Boomed out KGB Field Commander Anatolyl Brezhnev, the burly Russian, before taking a swing from his leather flask with a hammer and sickle emblazoned in the center. Wisps of smoke puffed out of his mouth into the brutally cold air. "Perhaps we could stuff her, ah?" He laughed then, his yellow teeth, rotten by drinking poorly distilled vodka, protruded out in many directions thanks to his favorite past time- boxing. The laughter that rolled off his tongue was slow and sounded demented somehow, not like any sound anyone should have to hear. It sounded like a choking seal: arf, arf, arf, orf. "Perhaps we can use her to send a message to her comrades." Nudging the body with his foot he admired her beauty as a lion admires the warm, oozing entrails of the deer it slaughters. Her face was a death mask, smooth and yet wild against the snow that she was starting to sink into. The snow would outline the death of a foreign operative like crime scene tape. However, the evidence of her existence would be erased by the cold powdery stuff that complimented the deathly pallor on her marble-like face. There was something hideous in her beauty. So ugly as if to mesmerize. Like a burn victim that you couldn't take your eyes off of or the decapitated car accident victim. Yet, there was nothing so horrid there to warrant the comparison. Still, as young Lt. Vasili's eyes darted nervously to and from her face, he decided that she was the most monstrous, beautiful woman he had ever seen. He just didn't quite understand why.
"Did she have anything on her person?" Questioned the KGB Field Commander in a gruff voice, only slightly soothed by the Vodka that already turned his nose red. Tonight he would sing. Loudly and with gusto. And, yes, it would still sound like a seal being tortured. His round fur hat sat lowly on his head, emphasizing his lumpy potato looking nose. Vasili swallowed thickly. He had gingerly searched the corpse-afraid-much to the criticism of his comrades.
Visili? What you afraid of, eh? She is dead. Not like she will jump up and hit you. Their taunts would be repeated over a fire, a bottle of Vodka and other half-drunk men guarding the KGB outpost in the frigid tundra of Tunguska. That he was afraid of a dead woman would never escape him. Never.
"Only this slip of paper." He replied to the commander, holding out the simple white paper, whose worn soft creases spoke to the fact that it had been folded and refolded many times. How many times did she read the letter, he wondered? What did it say, and, was it the reason she was caught in the explosion? "We do not know what to make of the language." The commander laughed and slapped the man on the back. Unfolding the piece of paper, his gaze wondered over it as he nodded seriously. "Looks like some kind of cypher made up of symbols. Bring it to the good doctor. Puzzles make him happy." That wasn't the only thing that made the 'good' doctor happy. He was slightly too enthusiastic with a scalpel and too comfortable with the echo of screams that resonated through the dirty hallways as a result of it.
Vasili gingerly took the letter back from the general, folding it carefully along the previous lines and placed it into his pocket. Blowing into hands, he wondered whether he would ever be warm again. "You found her here?" Asked the commander.
Vasili nodded curtly. "Da."
"You checked if she was dead?"
"Da. No pulse. She's been out here for at least an hour. If the blast did not kill her, the cold did."
"The only thing that doesn't die out here is the winter." His comrade added bitterly. And It was true enough. The snow always seemed to sit sluggishly on the mountains, except near the bottom where it turned to slush mixing with the hot blood that ran down another mountain-a mountain of men. Shot, by the silenced Tokarev pistol, glory of the KGB. Perfectly round 8mm holes peeked out from the heads of the men like some twisted mystical third eye. Ironic, as none of them had seen the counter attack coming. Some of the men stared blankly up at the sky with their mouths open, as if they screamed their way into death or supplicated their way into heaven, while the others, the ones who still clung stubbornly onto life, moaned out apologies to loved ones that weren't there.
"Shoot her. Just in case she is very good at faking it." He half-joked. The Russian fired two rounds into her chest. So that was that. "Chtob vse byli zdorovy." Said the General, eyes oddly fixed on the corpse as he toasted her with his flask. And let us stay healthy. "To your health." He chuckled at his lame joke and looked pointedly at his underlings, expecting them to laugh along.
"Take her! Take her! Inside." The groans of the dying grew quiet as the howls of the wind whipped through them like a torturer with a sharp whip. Vasili and his comrade took the woman under the shoulders and dragged her across the frozen ground. The tips of her feet left long trails in the snow that vanished as Mother Russia blew them away. Even inside the compound it was cold. KGB men wore thick coats and wary expressions as they dragged her passed them and to the "mortuary". It also served as the hospital, although it was considerably more successful as the former. The angle of the hallway started to slope down and stringy lights flickered on and off. They were better off. When they were off you couldn't see the smears of dried blood on the walls; you couldn't see the lead paint peel away from the wall. It was better not to know where the screams came from, it was better not to know why the ground was slick and the exit door had bloodied finger nail marks dug into the metal...from the inside. The chunky lock groaned open and the lean KGB officers shivered in fear, not cold, although they held their chiseled chins high. Dropping the body on the metallic slab that wasn't yet clean of the remains of its previous host, they quickly shrunk back to the door. The good doctor wasn't much for company.
Only Vasili took a moment to lay out the corpse. Horrible. Hideous. Beautiful. His hands wrapped around the long wooden fragment in her chest.
"Wat you doing, Vasya? Come on. Let's go." But the man didn't move. He jerked the wood up only to have the flesh make a slurping noise against the wood as it moved. His comrade's hand flew to his mouth as he turned green and he threw up in his mouth a little.
"Just a moment. A moment." Again he tugged at the beam, the body lifting off the metal slab as he pulled. Finally, with another jerk and slurp, the body fell back on the slab, released by the wood. "There!" Vasili announced proudly, turning to his friend. "You see, only a moment."
Unsteady on the balls of his feet, his comrade sniffed with unbound haughtiness before thinking better of it. "I don't see why it matters."
Neither did Vasili. Still, he swept her hair back and took another glance at her face. This horrible creature...this...woman, looked so very familiar. For a moment he wondered why. Flashes of a dinner party where he had stood guard inside the Soviet ambassadors residence while the festivities tool place ran through his stomach like a sword that twisted inside his gut. Something felt off. He's seen her before. At the party. Yes! Yes, that is it! She was dripping in diamonds last night, right before she had donated them to 'the' Party, her milky skin highlighted by the rouge on her lips. Communist red, she had purred into the ambassador's ear, loud enough for Vasili to overhear. Aha! Yes. Now he remembered. Except...her name. It was something....something quite historic. He had smirked when she had given it. Vasili's brows knitted between his brows.
"Vasya! Come on! Or I will leave you here!"
"Catherine! Her name was Catherine! The treacherous bitch was at the party, yesterday." Proud of himself, Vasili threw the cryptic page that was found with her on her chest and walked to the door. His comrade nodded through a heavy frown. "American spy?" He suggested.
Vasili shrugged. "I don't know. But I tell you, my friend," Vasili listened to what sounded like metal grating on bone in the distance. Mad screams of pain echoed through the halls and punched the KGB hardened men in the gut. Ah. Yes. The 'good' doctor. "It is good thing that she is dead." He finished with a chill to his voice. He did not want to be here longer then he had too. His comrade swallowed thickly, looking at the distended entrails that Catherine was lying on while a ribcage lay discarded on another table. "I do not know about that. He probably can inflict pain on the dead." Nice fellow. With spooked glances at each other they looked at Catherine's body one more time and fled through the door.
Somewhere, the Soviet's told themselves, her plans went very much awry. The wooden beam that must have broken off during the explosion lodged itself in her chest, piercing the skin just under the shoulder blade and coming out the other side. "Принесите её." Bring her. Boomed out KGB Field Commander Anatolyl Brezhnev, the burly Russian, before taking a swing from his leather flask with a hammer and sickle emblazoned in the center. Wisps of smoke puffed out of his mouth into the brutally cold air. "Perhaps we could stuff her, ah?" He laughed then, his yellow teeth, rotten by drinking poorly distilled vodka, protruded out in many directions thanks to his favorite past time- boxing. The laughter that rolled off his tongue was slow and sounded demented somehow, not like any sound anyone should have to hear. It sounded like a choking seal: arf, arf, arf, orf. "Perhaps we can use her to send a message to her comrades." Nudging the body with his foot he admired her beauty as a lion admires the warm, oozing entrails of the deer it slaughters. Her face was a death mask, smooth and yet wild against the snow that she was starting to sink into. The snow would outline the death of a foreign operative like crime scene tape. However, the evidence of her existence would be erased by the cold powdery stuff that complimented the deathly pallor on her marble-like face. There was something hideous in her beauty. So ugly as if to mesmerize. Like a burn victim that you couldn't take your eyes off of or the decapitated car accident victim. Yet, there was nothing so horrid there to warrant the comparison. Still, as young Lt. Vasili's eyes darted nervously to and from her face, he decided that she was the most monstrous, beautiful woman he had ever seen. He just didn't quite understand why.
"Did she have anything on her person?" Questioned the KGB Field Commander in a gruff voice, only slightly soothed by the Vodka that already turned his nose red. Tonight he would sing. Loudly and with gusto. And, yes, it would still sound like a seal being tortured. His round fur hat sat lowly on his head, emphasizing his lumpy potato looking nose. Vasili swallowed thickly. He had gingerly searched the corpse-afraid-much to the criticism of his comrades.
Visili? What you afraid of, eh? She is dead. Not like she will jump up and hit you. Their taunts would be repeated over a fire, a bottle of Vodka and other half-drunk men guarding the KGB outpost in the frigid tundra of Tunguska. That he was afraid of a dead woman would never escape him. Never.
"Only this slip of paper." He replied to the commander, holding out the simple white paper, whose worn soft creases spoke to the fact that it had been folded and refolded many times. How many times did she read the letter, he wondered? What did it say, and, was it the reason she was caught in the explosion? "We do not know what to make of the language." The commander laughed and slapped the man on the back. Unfolding the piece of paper, his gaze wondered over it as he nodded seriously. "Looks like some kind of cypher made up of symbols. Bring it to the good doctor. Puzzles make him happy." That wasn't the only thing that made the 'good' doctor happy. He was slightly too enthusiastic with a scalpel and too comfortable with the echo of screams that resonated through the dirty hallways as a result of it.
Vasili gingerly took the letter back from the general, folding it carefully along the previous lines and placed it into his pocket. Blowing into hands, he wondered whether he would ever be warm again. "You found her here?" Asked the commander.
Vasili nodded curtly. "Da."
"You checked if she was dead?"
"Da. No pulse. She's been out here for at least an hour. If the blast did not kill her, the cold did."
"The only thing that doesn't die out here is the winter." His comrade added bitterly. And It was true enough. The snow always seemed to sit sluggishly on the mountains, except near the bottom where it turned to slush mixing with the hot blood that ran down another mountain-a mountain of men. Shot, by the silenced Tokarev pistol, glory of the KGB. Perfectly round 8mm holes peeked out from the heads of the men like some twisted mystical third eye. Ironic, as none of them had seen the counter attack coming. Some of the men stared blankly up at the sky with their mouths open, as if they screamed their way into death or supplicated their way into heaven, while the others, the ones who still clung stubbornly onto life, moaned out apologies to loved ones that weren't there.
"Shoot her. Just in case she is very good at faking it." He half-joked. The Russian fired two rounds into her chest. So that was that. "Chtob vse byli zdorovy." Said the General, eyes oddly fixed on the corpse as he toasted her with his flask. And let us stay healthy. "To your health." He chuckled at his lame joke and looked pointedly at his underlings, expecting them to laugh along.
"Take her! Take her! Inside." The groans of the dying grew quiet as the howls of the wind whipped through them like a torturer with a sharp whip. Vasili and his comrade took the woman under the shoulders and dragged her across the frozen ground. The tips of her feet left long trails in the snow that vanished as Mother Russia blew them away. Even inside the compound it was cold. KGB men wore thick coats and wary expressions as they dragged her passed them and to the "mortuary". It also served as the hospital, although it was considerably more successful as the former. The angle of the hallway started to slope down and stringy lights flickered on and off. They were better off. When they were off you couldn't see the smears of dried blood on the walls; you couldn't see the lead paint peel away from the wall. It was better not to know where the screams came from, it was better not to know why the ground was slick and the exit door had bloodied finger nail marks dug into the metal...from the inside. The chunky lock groaned open and the lean KGB officers shivered in fear, not cold, although they held their chiseled chins high. Dropping the body on the metallic slab that wasn't yet clean of the remains of its previous host, they quickly shrunk back to the door. The good doctor wasn't much for company.
Only Vasili took a moment to lay out the corpse. Horrible. Hideous. Beautiful. His hands wrapped around the long wooden fragment in her chest.
"Wat you doing, Vasya? Come on. Let's go." But the man didn't move. He jerked the wood up only to have the flesh make a slurping noise against the wood as it moved. His comrade's hand flew to his mouth as he turned green and he threw up in his mouth a little.
"Just a moment. A moment." Again he tugged at the beam, the body lifting off the metal slab as he pulled. Finally, with another jerk and slurp, the body fell back on the slab, released by the wood. "There!" Vasili announced proudly, turning to his friend. "You see, only a moment."
Unsteady on the balls of his feet, his comrade sniffed with unbound haughtiness before thinking better of it. "I don't see why it matters."
Neither did Vasili. Still, he swept her hair back and took another glance at her face. This horrible creature...this...woman, looked so very familiar. For a moment he wondered why. Flashes of a dinner party where he had stood guard inside the Soviet ambassadors residence while the festivities tool place ran through his stomach like a sword that twisted inside his gut. Something felt off. He's seen her before. At the party. Yes! Yes, that is it! She was dripping in diamonds last night, right before she had donated them to 'the' Party, her milky skin highlighted by the rouge on her lips. Communist red, she had purred into the ambassador's ear, loud enough for Vasili to overhear. Aha! Yes. Now he remembered. Except...her name. It was something....something quite historic. He had smirked when she had given it. Vasili's brows knitted between his brows.
"Vasya! Come on! Or I will leave you here!"
"Catherine! Her name was Catherine! The treacherous bitch was at the party, yesterday." Proud of himself, Vasili threw the cryptic page that was found with her on her chest and walked to the door. His comrade nodded through a heavy frown. "American spy?" He suggested.
Vasili shrugged. "I don't know. But I tell you, my friend," Vasili listened to what sounded like metal grating on bone in the distance. Mad screams of pain echoed through the halls and punched the KGB hardened men in the gut. Ah. Yes. The 'good' doctor. "It is good thing that she is dead." He finished with a chill to his voice. He did not want to be here longer then he had too. His comrade swallowed thickly, looking at the distended entrails that Catherine was lying on while a ribcage lay discarded on another table. "I do not know about that. He probably can inflict pain on the dead." Nice fellow. With spooked glances at each other they looked at Catherine's body one more time and fled through the door.
