Winter Thirst

by Ilia Bera

  She didn’t like going into town much. She was happy living out on the family farm, with her parents and their dairy cows. Like Hanna, Olga spent her time writing poetry. She would sit out in the field and just write for hours, every single day.

  The neighbourhood boys were all obsessed with her. She was the definition of a Russian Bombshell. Her hair was long and soft, she always had a smile on her face, and she always wore the most beautiful dresses, which flowed down to her ankles. She would braid her hair and wrap it into a bun whenever she went into town. Women envied her marvellous perfection.

  But whenever anyone spoke to her, she would just sheepishly look away. It didn’t take long for store-owners to learn to be quiet around her, and not make any eye contact. The only words that came out of their mouths were what was absolutely vital to the transaction. “Four dollars and ninety cents.” Anything more and Olga would become uncomfortable.

  Her unfathomable shyness led people to believe that she just didn’t understand any English. Everyone just assumed that she only spoke Russian, which wasn’t true at all. She actually spoke very beautifully and articulately. Every sentence that came out of her mouth could have been a poem in itself.

  But despite her reputation for being chronically quiet and shy, men couldn’t resist her beauty. Every time Olga went out into public, nearly every man would ask her out on a date. Supposedly, one man even asked her out in front of his own wife—explaining that he “couldn’t bare to be with his wife knowing there was a woman as beautiful as Olga.” Some men even skipped asking her on dates, and went straight for the marriage proposal. Olga never said no—nor did she say yes. She never said anything at all.

  When Olga was seventeen, she encountered Francis Wilkinson for the first time.

  Francis Wilkinson was a nobody—as in, nobody knew that he even existed. Like Olga, he never spoke to anyone except for his own parents. He spent most of his time in his old family home, listening to the radio and staring out the window at the mountains. He’d always loved the mountains.

  He was a talented painter, but no one knew it. He loved painting mountains and landscapes. Whenever he finished a painting, he would wrap it up in an old sheet and hide it in the attic, so that no one would ever see it—despite it being breathtakingly incredible.

  It wasn’t until Francis was a teenager that he really started to venture out from his home. He took a sketchbook with him and went from place to place, drawing different areas around town. If people asked him what he was drawing, he would swiftly shut his sketchbook and awkwardly leave. His awkward demeanour made people uncomfortable. They thought he was rude—and to an extent, he was rude. When people tried to see what he was drawing, he would snarl at them like some wild boar. He had the nasty habit of muttering things to himself—things he assumed no one could hear.

  But he was wrong. People heard him. People heard him muttering how much he hated the town, and how “the cancer needs to wipe everyone out already.” He was always referring to some mystical cancer.

  Eventually, Francis stopped sitting out in public. He found a beautiful view of the mountains in the gear room of the town’s clock tower, and started to spend his days there, drawing the mountains and the small town below. He always left the people out of his drawings, because he hated people more than he hated plague infested cockroaches. At least the hypothetical cockroaches had the potential to wipe the people out.

  People referred to Francis as “The Hunchback of Snowbrooke”. You could see him sitting in the window, looking out—day and night. Kids started to make up stories and rumours, which spread quickly around the town.

  One day, while Francis was drawing the town from his favourite spot, he heard a noise. Someone was coming up the steps of the clock tower. Francis quickly closed his sketchbook and prepared to leave.

  Olga Pytrovich emerged from the spiralling staircase. Without saying a word, or making a second of eye contact, she walked over to the clock tower window and sat down. Then, she started to write into her little poetry book.

  Instead of leaving, Francis reluctantly sat back down, and continued to draw. The two said nothing to one another.

  They simply sat in a peaceful silence.

  The next day, they sat together in the tower again—and the next day, and the next day. For months, the two sat together, never muttering as much as a single word to the other.

  Slowly, inch-by-inch, they sat closer together. One day, they sat right up against one another—still without muttering a single word. They never even looked over to see what the other person was creating. They understood one another at level no one else could possibly fathom—a peculiar connection of a peculiar magnitude.

  Even on the coldest night, Olga and Francis sat together in that old clock tower. Olga would bring a warm blanket, and the two would share it as they stared out into the town, listening to Francis’ radio, and together, they silently scribbled into their books.

  A year later, Francis decided to show Olga what he’d been drawing. It was the most breathtaking drawing of her—capturing her magnificent beauty. It was the only portrait Francis ever drew—the only portrait Francis would ever draw. In the picture, Olga was wearing an incredible wedding dress, and standing at a snowy altar. Underneath the image were the words: “Will you marry me?”

  For the first time ever, Olga spoke to Francis. “I will,” she said with a smile.

  “I love you,” Francis said, breaking his own chronic silence.

  “I love you too,” Olga said.

  The two got married to an audience of four—just their own parents. All of the men in the town were shocked and confused. The most beautiful of God’s creations had married The mumbling and grumbling Hunchback of Snowbrooke.

  SIXTEEN

  an unexpected tragedy

  Olga became unexpectedly pregnant with Hanna immediately after the wedding.

  But the pregnancy was complicated.

  Because of Olga’s small size and weight, her body wasn’t able to handle the woes of pregnancy. At three months, she became very ill and bed-ridden. Her body began to fail her, and she became increasingly weak.

  Doctors kept naively assuring that it was normal for small women like Olga to experience difficult symptoms during pregnancy.

  But after Hanna was born, the symptoms persisted. Within days—Olga’s body began to shut down. Francis was an emotional wreck—completely devastated. He spent every dime he had brining in different doctors to try and muster up a solution—but there was none.

  It was an inevitability. Olga was dying.

  Unable to fathom the painful death of their daughter, Olga’s parents had one final reluctant idea. They explained to Francis that Olga could be saved, but it involved returning to Russia, and never coming back. Francis couldn’t understand why, but the Pytrovichs would say no more.

  Francis wanted his wife to survive more than anything—so he reluctantly agreed to let the Pytrovichs take Olga back to Russia, despite knowing that it meant never seeing her again.

  In case Francis’ life hadn’t become difficult enough, his parents passed away just a few weeks later from sudden and unexpected natural causes.

  Francis was left raising Hanna alone. He had no money and he had no knowledge of how to raise a child. Life had taken a swift turn.

  Like her parents, Hanna was extremely quiet and shy. In her first few years of school, she said nothing at all—even when her teachers demanded she speak. Because of chronic silence, she never made any friends. As kids started to form little friend circles, Hanna found herself left out.

  During lunch and recess, she would sit under the school stairs, where no one would see her. Kids started to make up stories about her, and called her “The school troll”.

  Hanna’s teachers put the blame on Francis, who was struggling to make ends meet. Forced to work double, and even triple shifts at his work to pay the bills, Francis wasn’t able to make it to parent-teacher meetings, school plays or any of the school meet-and-gree
ts. He didn’t help with homework and he never filled out any of the field trip forms.

  Desperate for money, Francis took a job at the local high-security prison, as a security guard—a dangerous job for a new father. Unfortunately, it was the only job that was hiring—because no one else wanted to do it. The only reason the job was available was because the last guard was stabbed to death by an inmate. Because the prison was so understaffed, Francis often worked well over his scheduled hours.

  One day, Francis received a call from Hanna’s school. Hanna’s teachers demanded that Hanna see a psychiatrist about her social anxiety—blaming it on her poor performance.

  The psychiatrist was expensive, but Francis wanted his daughter to be normal and accepted—and to not have to suffer through the familiar woes of his own lousy childhood. Hanna began seeing a local therapist about her fear of speaking and socializing.

  No matter how many shifts Francis picked up, he couldn’t make quite enough for the mortgage, groceries, the expensive heating bill, and the pricey therapist.

  But there was a glimmer of light—a glimmer of a silver lining, anyway. Luckily for Francis, for the first time in forty years, the ban on capital punishment was lifted—the death sentence became reinstated as an attempt to control prison overpopulation. Despite the lucrative pay increase, none of the other prison employees would take the new prison’s newest position: Executioner.

  But Francis was desperate, and the money was the solution to his financial troubles.

  Francis Wilkinson became the town executioner.

  The job was simple—pull the lever to activate the electrical current to the chair. It was a job that took a few minutes every day—for double the income of his usual sixteen-hour day.

  But the guilt was twenty-four hours.

  It didn’t take long for the local students to learn that the school troll’s father was the local executioner. She was tormented to no end. Even the teachers looked at her with disgust. One day, she opened her locker to find all of her belongings soaked in pig’s blood.

  Their house was frequently vandalized. Almost every night they were bombarded with eggs, toilet paper and flaming bags of dog shit—not to mention, more pig’s blood.

  One day, Hanna’s “career preparation class” received an unfortunate assignment: Write an essay about your father or mother, and what they do for a living.

  When Hanna’s father returned from his day’s work, Hanna began to ask questions for her paper. Francis didn’t want to divulge any details, but Hanna was persistent.

  “Just don’t write about my job,” Hanna’s father insisted.

  “But I don’t have a choice,” Hanna said.

  “Write about something else. Write about your favourite poet.”

  “But that isn’t the assignment, dad.”

  “Or you can make up a story. It could be fun.”

  “But dad—that’s not the assignment. I don’t want to fail. They will fail me again.”

  “Your teachers will understand, Hanna.”

  “Your job isn’t anything to be ashamed of. You told me yourself—someone has to do it.”

  “I lied,” Francis said, starting to get frustrated.

  “What do you mean, you lied?”

  “No one has to do it—If everyone said ‘no’, they couldn’t force it on someone. No one has to do anything in life.”

  “But they’re bad people who deserve it—Right? That’s why you do it...”

  “Some are bad—Some could be innocent. None of them deserve it.”

  “So why do you do it? Why not do something else?” Hanna asked.

  “You’ll understand when you’re an adult.”

  “But that doesn’t help me now—for the assignment,” Hanna persisted.

  “Fuck the assignment! The assignment isn’t fucking important,” Francis snapped. “It’s just an assignment—it’s stupid and it doesn’t matter,” Francis yelled. “There are more important things in life than some fucking assignment.”

  Hanna was silent as she stared down at her feet. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard her father scream in her face. “But I’ll fail…” Hanna began to cry.

  “Then you’ll fail. So be it.”

  “But that’s not fair,” Hanna said.

  “Life isn’t fair,” Francis said as he walked up to his bedroom and slammed the door.

  Francis was far from what you would call a patient, tempered person. He was a great father, and everything he did, he did for Hanna—including his less than ideal job. But between the emotional abuse from the townspeople, the guilt from his work and coping with Olga’s permanent absence—things weren’t easy, and it was surprising that his outbursts were as isolated as they were.

  Hanna was young and still very ignorant. She loved her father, but she didn’t understand why he was angry with her. The reality was, he wasn’t angry with her. In his moment of weakness, he had just taken his anger out on her. She was in the wrong place at the the wrong time, yet again.

  Crack! Splat!

  As she sat down to try and muster up an assignment, eggs began to strike the side of the house.

  Tired of the emotional abuse from the town, Hanna was also feeling angry. Just like her father, she needed an outlet for her frustrations.

  She found one.

  What she didn’t realize was—her moment of weakness would have dire consequences that would follow her around for her entire lifetime.

  SEVENTEEN

  the assignment

  The next day, Hanna’s teacher thought it would be a fun idea to have all of the students present their assignments to the whole class. Each student took turns standing at the front of the class, reading out the paper they’d written the night before. Each presentation only took a couple of minutes.

  Student’s boasted about their perfect mothers and their amazing fathers. Every paper included bits about how many people their parents helped and how philanthropic they were.

  Then, it was Hanna’s turn.

  Hanna walked up to the front of the class with her reluctantly written paper in hand. Everyone snickered as she stared nervously at the class in silence.

  “Read your paper please, Hanna,” the teacher said with glaring eyes.

  Hanna’s hands trembled as she looked back down at her sheet.

  “Freak!” someone in the class coughed, eliciting laughter from the rest of the snickering students.

  “My dad…” Hanna started out slowly.

  There was a long silence in the class.

  “Hanna please—just read the assignment. Everyone has to do it,” the teacher said.

  All of the students began to giggle and whisper to one another.

  The young shy girl took a deep breath, legs trembling. “My dad—My dad kills people.”

  The entire class turned dead silent.

  “He kills lots of people. He kills people every day. He says that he doesn’t have to do it. He says that other people won’t do it, but that doesn’t mean they make him do it. I guess that makes him a bad person. He knows that he is a bad person, but he still does it anyway.”

  “Um, Hanna—Maybe that’s enough,” Hanna’s teacher said quietly, reaching her hand out to take the assignment away from the girl.

  “He says that none of the people he kills deserve to be killed, and that some of them are probably even innocent, and he knows it,” Hanna continued, unable to stop her pseudo-therapeutic venting. “But he does it anyway, even though he doesn’t have to. He always tells me that people cry on the chair. They cry for their wives, and their kids. He says that sometimes their wives and kids are there, watching him pull the lever, but he still does it anyway.”

  “Hanna—that’s enough,” the teacher said again with a firm tone.

  Hanna ignored her teacher. “Because of my dad, everyone hates me. He says that it’s too bad because life isn’t fair. But I think he’s wrong, because everyone else’s life is fair. Why can’t my life be fair?”

  “Han
na!” the teacher snapped.

  “I wish my father was dead,” Hanna finished.

  The class was painfully silent. Eyes were wide and mouths were dropped in shock and awe. The teacher stood up and swiftly took the paper away from Hanna. She placed a hand on Hanna’s shoulder. “Hanna—go down to the office right now.”

  “Why?” Hanna asked. “I did what you told me to do.”

  “I—You—Just go!” the teacher said, unsure of how to handle the peculiar situation.

  Hanna walked out of the class with her chin against her chest, past all of the shocked and scoffing students.

  “Psychopath,” someone muttered as she passed.

  There was one person in the class who wasn’t laughing, one person who felt as though she understood how Hanna felt—Brittany.

  Hanna found herself sitting in the office for the rest of the school day. The principal called and left messages on Francis’ phone, but Francis never showed up to face the situation. Hanna’s teacher stood in the office with the principal, and they discussed the situation. Hanna could hear bits of the conversation through the thin office door.

  “There’s something wrong with her—I don’t want her in my class,” Hanna’s teacher said.

  “I can’t just move her into a different class because you don’t like her,” the principal replied. “That isn’t fair to the other teachers.”

  “I’m not saying that. She needs to go somewhere else—a boarding school for kids like her—a mental hospital—anywhere but here. We can’t have this girl in our school.”

  “What has she done besides this?”

  “She’s just—Freaky. There are some loose screws in her twisted little head.”

  “Define ‘freaky’.”

  “She just scares me—like she’s always plotting something. I wasn’t that worried about it until today. Now—I’m scared shitless she’s going to come and hurt someone—or worse.”

  The principal sighed. “I can see that she’s quiet, but I can’t just expel her because of this paper. I mean—her dad is the prison executioner. She did what you asked her to do. I can give her a suspension, and I can suggest to her father that he look into boarding schools and therapists, but that’s it.”