A Life Less Ordinary

by Scarlett Cross

  Besides, he had pointed out to Dmitri, they had caught a glimpse of the castle, far up on a mountaintop, only just visible through the dense forest, which was thick despite the trees having shed their leaves for winter. Not one day ago. Once they had set eyes on it, confirmed it existed, their planning began, discussed in soft Russian out of earshot of the guide as they camped the following night, once more, it appeared neither of them slept.

  Assuming one of the children belonged to the extra two adults, they decided this must be the place that the government had sent them to investigate. All of the children born to the clone program had been recovered but one, the child of Oleg and Anya Korzhakov. Names that meant nothing but ‘enemy’ to Oleg’s nephews now. Oleg was still in Moscow, and they had been observing him for three years with no sign of the whore he had married and the child she had given birth to. The boy was fast approaching the danger point, at the age of five he would be considered too old and would have to be discontinued as they could not effectively train him the way they, the handlers, wanted.

  Drawing close to the top of the mountain path, both men hunched their broad shoulders against the cold, though they did not shiver nor show any real discomfort. Their feet remained remarkably steady, where most men would have fallen because it was so slippery, a solid sheet of ice, in fact. But they climbed on as if completely oblivious to the danger. Night was closing in and they hoped to reach the safety of the castle, because without their guide, he had taken his own bags back down to the village when he had departed, they had very little food and no fire or even lights. Not that they really needed lights, but that was a different matter entirely.

  The path wound right up a steep cliff and their progress would have been halted at the top where it ran into the twenty foot high stone wall if the gate hadn’t been badly damaged. The left side was completely missing, and the right swayed dangerously in the wind, barely hanging by one rusted and failing hinge. The two men exchanged glances, clearly questioning if anyone lived up here at all, but then Ivan elbowed Dmitri and motioned a gloved hand at one of the windows in the west wing. A candle was flickering there, a good sign that someone was, indeed, at home.

  They walked across the wind-buffeted stone courtyard, or maybe it was stone, the snow pack was so deep it was hard to say. At the door, they both looked down, somewhat dismayed, as there was a snow drift packed hard against it that had to be a meter or more deep. Dmitri bent slightly and knocked on the door using the large, heavy, rusted-iron knocker as if it weighed mere ounces. Within, even over the gale, they could hear the echoing of the heavy pounding blows on the door.

  After a while, when no one came, they turned as if to look for another door and, just as they did so, the door creaked open behind them, swinging inward. Turning, expecting to find an adult, their eyes trailed down until they found two enormous blue eyes staring up at them from the pretty face of a young girl. The snowbank was nearly up to her shoulders and threatened to collapse on her at any time, though she seemed to not notice the danger.

  “Oh! Oh you must be guests I have heard so much about! Grand-mama said you would come! I did not believe her but…here you are!” Without hesitation, she grabbed Ivan with her left hand and Dmitri with her right and tugged them inside, pulling them down off the snow drift. She struggled to close the door back against the snow, which they had shifted as they stepped down, straining for some time against it, stubbornly. Finally, Ivan grew exasperated and pushed the door closed easily. She did not thank him, simply grabbed their hands once more and pulled them on. Even through his gloves, Ivan could feel that her hands were almost as cold as death. “You must come with me, why, you have arrived just in time to eat. If I do not invite you grand-mama will be most disappointed in my manners. She will not mind. Come with me, I will take you to our small dining room.”

  “Where are your parents?” Ivan asked, clearly recovering from the shock quicker than Dmitri. If he noticed that her clothing was so far out of date she looked more like a child of the middle ages than a child of modern days, he didn’t give any indication. He looked pale, unwell almost, as if he’d seen a ghost as his eyes trailed over what had once been a grand foyer, now slowly falling to the decay of time. Ivan tried not to look around, tried not to smell the odor of rats and mildew, scents that were very unpleasant to him, though he could not remember why.

  “My…my papa is dead, sir…my mama is here but she is…not well.” She led them on, positively skipping with excitement. Ivan looked around him at the dusty, dimly lit corridors, the broken, rat-chewed furniture, and the general lack of fire in the dozens of fireplaces he counted as they walked. Once, Dmitri thought he saw a person within one of the rooms but, when he stopped to look, the door slammed shut and a wailing cry echoed along the corridor, making him pale even further.

  Something was, indeed, very wrong here. But perhaps, his rational mind countered, if the girl’s mother was sick and she had only her grandmother to care for her they lived only in a few of the small rooms near the kitchen. It would make sense, but what of the other adults and the second child? Thus far she had only mentioned her grandmother and her mother. There had been no mention of anyone else being here or even being alive. He chalked it up to her excitement at seeing strangers, which made it just a case of youthful indiscretion. Nodding to himself, he let the girl pull him on, her bare, freezing hand grasping at his, tightly, as if she were afraid he might flee. Dmitri looked like he just might.

  They passed from inside to outside, moving through a courtyard where the girl paused and pulled on her gloves, almost as if the small journey could cause her to lose fingers from the cold. When they re-entered the castle Ivan sighed at the welcome warmth and the smell of something very appetizing being cooked somewhere nearby. He pulled off his gloves, as did Dmitri, and stowed them in his pockets, then they both allowed the girl’s gloved hands to guide them onwards. A sudden, piercing scream gave them pause but she only laughed, but Ivan found nothing amusing about the sound. To his ears, it sounded human, no matter what she said.

  “It is just the wind, sirs, you get accustomed to it after living here for long time. I have been here since I can remember. Mama moved back here when papa died…now she does not talk much, in fact, I hardly ever see her.” Someone shoved by them, startling both men, but she simply allowed the hunchbacked old man who looked to be past ancient in years, to pass. “Never get in grand-papa’s way at meal time…he will run you down. We are not sure how he knows it is time, as he is completely deaf, so he never hears grand-mama call out…but then I am not sure how she can cook because she is completely blind. But, her cooking is just as good as ever I remember it, you will see! She can make anything delicious.”

  Dmitri was looking a little bit pale, still, Ivan noticed, then followed his gaze and flinched as rat scurry past them, a rat as big as a large dog, heading in the opposite direction as fast as it could go. He wondered if it was fleeing the kitchen, and being on the menu. He couldn’t help but laugh inwardly at the thought. Seemingly not noticing the rat, the girl was pulling them more insistently, leading them into a large, very warm, very clean kitchen.

  It was surprisingly neat and almost too-spotlessly clean with the exception of the far end of the enormous room where, to Ivan’s horror, the old woman was hacking at what looked like a human body. The limbs flailed and danced with each swing of her cleaver, as she hummed a strangely hypnotic tune, and finally the flailing ceased. Sure enough, she turned and hobbled over to a large pot and dropped in what, to Ivan’s eyes, looked like a human head, completely with long, brownish-blonde hair. One look at the green pallor of Dmitri’s face told him he had seen it, too. Ivan cleared his throat and Dmitri stiffened and closed his mouth, seeming only then to realize he’d been standing there with it hanging open in disbelief.

  “Oh, good! Dinner is almost ready, once the soup is boiled she will serve us. Come, I will take you into our little dining room. Grand-papa might be there, but he probably will not talk to you. Well, s
ign to you, he uses sign language, you know.” She chattered on as if she hadn’t even noticed the head being dropped into the pot, then pulled them into the dining area and showed them to their seats. “I can fetch you some tea? We do not have anything much stronger, maybe some Absinthe…I can check in pantry. My mama drinks most of it as soon as we come across it…but if we are lucky…I will look, that is best I can promise.”

  “That sounds great.” Ivan said, feeling in dire need of a drink, his mouth was dry and felt almost gritty, like he’d been eating sand though he could not understand why. Beside him, Dmitri nodded enthusiastically, still looking a bit green, and as if he didn’t trust himself to open his mouth lest he vomit what little food he’d eaten that day. The little girl disappeared and Ivan leaned close to his companion. “I am not eating goddamn thing in this house.”

  “No fucking shit…did you see…was that human…” but the girl was skipping back into the room, though something had changed about her. Dmitri jumped back and nearly fell off of his chair, for there was an enormous spider on top of her head, its legs moving lazily, and it appeared to be biting into her scalp, though she did not notice. Not right away. Finally, after she had poured them both a healthy measure of the blue liquor, she settled into a chair across from them. Only then did she reach up patiently and, giving a colossal yank, pulled the spider off. Its fangs took a strip of her scalp off, sending a gout of blood pouring down the side of her face. She seemed oblivious, and Dmitri looked positively faint.

  “Bugs around here can be murder,” The girl said, pulling off one of the spider’s legs and crunching on it like it was just another carrot stick. “If we do not murder them first.” The rest of it she slammed on the table and impaled with a knife, causing it to make a horrible high-pitched squeal Ivan swore inwardly would haunt him the rest of his days. “Excellent, we have an appetizer, if you would like? Their legs are usually pretty good, but the body is poison so do not eat it…nasty, bitter, and it will make you sick.”

  Across the dining room a door banged open and Ivan jumped, his hand going inside his coat as if reaching for a gun, but then he withdrew it slowly, his eyes devouring the new arrival hungrily. A young woman with long, fiery red braids that were nearly to her knees, large breasts, wide hips and brilliant green eyes. She looked at Ivan, but her gaze passed him over, instead finding Dmitri. She licked her glossy red lips, and moved towards him with all the confidence of a natural hunter. Dmitri, for his part, didn’t have a problem in the world staring right back at her as she approached and Ivan was afraid he’d be likely to throw her on the table in front of everyone.

  “That is mama.” The little girl pouted, clearly angry that she was no longer the center of attention. The woman sat on Dmitri’s knee and wrapped an arm around his neck as if she’d known him her entire life. Not that he minded, of course, and soon enough she was leaning in, whispering in his ear, and from the stiffness of his body, Ivan was willing to bet, licking it, too. He was a sucker for certain things, you couldn’t share women as they had done without knowing what turned your counterpart on and what did not, even if you were both straight as pins.

  But, her affection was short lived, for the old woman came bustling out carrying an enormous silver serving platter. When her head turned towards them her voice was high and screechy though how she saw the red head sitting on Dmitri’s knee, Ivan had no idea. Even from where he sat, even in the dim lighting of the room, he could see her eyes were completely white. This woman hadn’t gone blind over time, she’d been born that way. The red-haired woman got up and sat, instead, in a chair between the Ivan and Dmitri, positioning herself so Ivan could see that her hand was not at all in an appropriate place. She shot him a look as if daring him to try to stop her, and he was surprised that something in her eyes seemed to gnaw at his memory. But what? He didn’t have time to ponder it.

  The old man who had blown past them in the hall made his appearance, coming in from a different doorway entirely. He moved with a surprisingly fast gait across the room and sat slowly, as if it pained him to bend thus, at the head of the table. He rubbed his bluish-colored age-spotted hands together and tucked a rat-chewed napkin in the front of his ancient dressing gown. The old woman screeched out something in an impatient voice, though her words were quite incoherent, and banged a wooden spoon against the side of the cover on the platter. Was she calling the other adults and the male child? Ivan stiffened, looking around him warily. What happened, though, caused both Dmitri and Ivan to recoil; the kitchen door banged open a second time and the headless, bloody body they’d seen earlier, stumbled in.

  It took a while, that body, because it kept tripping over everything, falling, regaining its feet, then doing it all over, but finally it made it to the table and the old woman nodded and took her seat. The body then fumbled all over the table, Ivan just managed to save the bottle of Absinthe from being spilled by its searching hands, before it found the lid of the service tray and lifted it. Staring at them through drooping, water-logged eyelids, was the head that belonged to the body. Dmitri heaved, but managed to keep from vomiting, though how was a mystery to Ivan. He was feeling a little nauseous now himself. The little girl clapped, cheerfully.

  “His eyes survived boiling! I get to eat both eyes!” She crowed, then reached out and popped out the right eyeball, pulling to detach it, the optical nerve leaving a trail of darkened blood on the starch-white tablecloth. She ripped off the string of nerves and tossed them to the old man, then popped the eye in her mouth. As the old man sucked down the optic nerves like particularly tasty spaghetti, which Ivan was trying not to watch, a messy popping sound could be heard from between the girl’s sharp, young teeth. A small amount of dark eye-fluid dripped down her chin and she licked away before reaching to pop out the left eye, and repeat the process. It was all Dmitri could take, as he watched her pull out the second eye, and he fell sideways out of his chair in a dead faint.

  “Pussy.” Ivan muttered, then watched as the headless body attempted to eat a strip of meat pulled off of its own face, obviously unable as it had no head. Finally, Dmitri groaned and sat up, but he did not rejoin the dinner party, instead, he stood and went to the window to stare out at the heavily falling snow. Ivan remained in his seat, watching as the rest of the family devoured the head, squabbling over the better bits. When they used mallet to crack open the skull so as to access the brain, the headless body slowly seemed to realize it was dead and fell over with a sticky splat sound onto the table. Dark blood poured from it across the tablecloth, pooling around Ivan’s empty plate.

  The woman, who had partaken same as the rest, was the first to leave after the meal, and she went to Dmitri’s side, her hand squeezing his backside insistently. Ivan’s stomach rumbled but he ignored it, he had a few protein bars in his cargo pants pocket, which were under his insulated snow-pants. He’d dig them out when he was safely wherever he was going to sleep and not before. No way was he sharing with Dmitri, or anyone else. All he could think of was getting the fuck out of this place at first light, but then that was a long way off, he knew, and he wondered what the rest of the night would bring. The little girl stood up now and offered Ivan her hand. “Come with me sir, I will show you to your room. Mama wants to spend some time talking to your friend, he looks lots like my papa, she says.”

  “Hmph.” Ivan allowed himself to be led away, trying not to look at the strip of bare, still-bleeding scalp on top of the little girl’s head. At least it had begun to slow, finally, how she didn’t notice it was beyond Ivan. He wanted to say something, but what could he say?

  “I hope you do not mind that we ate my cousin for dinner.” She said, conversationally, as if this sort of thing happened every day. “He was sick, you know, he would have died soon anyway. Grand-mama did him favor, and he died to support all of us. That is honorable, do you not think?”

  “If…you say so.” Ivan said, then gave a low whistle as she opened the door to a sumptuously decorated suite fit for a King. “Is this to
be my room?”

  “For as long as you like, sir.” She smiled up at him sweetly. “You share bathroom with your friend, his room is on other side, but you will not hear from him again tonight, I am sure. Mama has not seen men in long time, she will keep him plenty busy.”

  “If she wants to visit me…” Ivan muttered, but the girl did not seem to hear him.

  “There is servants’ bell, but it does not do any good. We ate most of them last winter. Supplies are hard to get so we eat whoever we can spare.” She gave a little curtsey. “Breakfast is served at seven, grand-mama is strict. Do not be late.”

  The door slammed shut and Ivan turned to look at it, confused, then turned back only to find that the little girl had completely vanished. He sighed and walked over to stand by the roaring fire, warming his hands, wishing he had thought to grab the bottle of Absinthe, which was now sitting on the bloody dining room table. A faint squeaking behind him alerted him, and he spun, nearly falling backwards into the fire in shock, a serving cart had just rolled into the room with two whole bottles of the liquor and a basket covered in a linen napkin. He took the bottles, pleased to find them nicely chilled, then lifted the napkin and peered into the basket, cautiously. Much to his surprise, he found it full of what looked to be perfectly normal and nicely warm rolls.

  Giving a grunt of appreciation to the cart, he took the bread and the alcohol and wandered back over to the fire, settling on a divan there. He drank a good bit of the first bottle before he pulled apart the rolls, then gave a shout as a mountain of squirming maggots fell out onto the rest. “Jesus…fuck…this place…” He tossed basket and all into the fire and stuck to drinking the Absinthe, and eating his meagre protein bars. They, at least, would help combat his hunger until morning when maybe, just maybe, they would have more typical fare. He wasn’t holding out much hope.