by Jen Eastwood
“It is a port city not far from Finland, a major shipyard is there.”
That told me next to nothing. “Maybe I can take her there someday.”
“You would not get in, as an American. It is restricted to foreigners because of the submarine base.” Natalia brushed her shoulder against mine. “And she would not go.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “Why not?”
“Alexei,” she almost sounded sad, “would you think less of Anya for her past?”
“I can't if I don't know anything about it,” something big was about to drop, “but she's a different person now, I'm assuming.”
“What I am about to tell you,” she grabbed my arm, “you can never repeat to Anya. Do you understand?”
It's that bad? “I'm sure she'd have me neutered for going behind her back like this, so I know better.”
Natalia suddenly got up, pacing just feet in front of me. “You should come with me. You have not seen this place, but it is time to show you.”
We entered a wing of the academy I rarely visited other than to file some papers. Lara was already more familiar with it than I was, getting sent to put some document away when I wanted her off my back. I wouldn’t describe the place as dark or dingy, but it definitely felt empty all the time.
Natalia ushered me into the main filing room and locked the door behind us, a massive place full of storage cabinets holding decades worth of records. The thought of moving everything to digital records gave me heart palpitations, but we'd have to break down and do it at some point. Yet even when I looked for where Anya's records should be, I never found a thing.
She tapped on top left of what seemed to be one of the random, gigantic cabinets that needed a step-ladder to really look in the top drawer. “Pull this side from the wall, Alexei.”
I gave it a quick tug. Fuck, it's gonna be heavy. As soon as I put my weight into it, hidden rollers did their magic and made it far easier than I expected. Behind the beige behemoth was an open doorway.
“No one is to learn of this place, not even Lara,” she had the same serious look my grandfather gave on the rare occasion he wasn't joking around, “and especially not Anya.”
“What's in here?”
“Records for our special cases.” It was just a tiny fraction of the size of the main filing room. “Even my records are not in here.”
“So what makes a special case, well,” I failed to think of a better way to put it, “so special?”
“Has your dedushka taught you about erasing memories yet?”
“He's mentioned that it can be done, but he told me it would have to wait until it's needed.” And I remembered his warning about it too.
Natalia sighed. “That is good. We do not like to receive such girls.”
“Then why do it?”
It was like stepping closer to our goal was making her more depressed with every inch. “It is not that we do not like the girls. They are always excellent students. It is simply unfortunate that they were in such a situation to begin with.”
I started piecing the broad scene together. “You mean you took them in, because their lives were a mess.”
Natalia balked at the word 'mess.' “These girls are not delinquents, Alexei. Our special cases have been through situations that make me wish there was a hell.”
She wasn't talking about what she wished for our special cases, either. “You mean, they've seen some serious shit in their lives.”
“That is putting it lightly.” My grandmother reached for the cabinet marked 'V-Z.' Pulling out a box surrounded by much smaller folders, it had 'Voronin, Anya' written on the top.
“So that's her maiden name. She wouldn't even tell me that.”
“Because she does not remember it, Alexei.” Natalia sat the box on a table across the aisle. “This will tell you everything about her past,” she looked down and paused, like she was holding back a crying fit, “and it is not a happy one.”
“So why does she have a box, but everyone else has a file?”
“Promise me you will still love her after you see.” Natalia grabbed my hand before I could open the box. “She had no choice in how her past unfolded.”
There wasn't anything so awful that I could imagine it tearing us apart. Spiteful and harsh as she was, Anya had become my obsession, just by being who she was. “Trust me, she's too wonderful.”
She turned to leave. “Then I am glad she has found happiness with you. I will lock the door behind me and I will tell your dedushka that you are too busy to be disturbed.”
“Why didn't he tell me about this?”
“We disagree on whether you should know. Say nothing to anyone.”
She walked out, leaving me alone with the filing box that amounted to Anya's entire past. It was so much more than any other student, but at the same time, there was so little. I pulled the lid off and set it aside.
Her entry papers for the academy were on top. Date of birth, 4/10/1997. Parents, Iosif (deceased) and Sabina Voronin (deceased). Legal guardians, Mikhail and Natalia Smolensky. Date of admission, 8/1/2015. English-fluency, basic.
My grandparents adopted her? This is getting weird already. I set the papers aside, wanting to dig deeper. More boxes, and a tattered stuffed animal with a long snout and a creepily happy expression sat in one corner. Like someone had tried to make a some weird rat/fox creature cute by making it pink and cuddly.
The first smaller box I opened had a few pictures on top. Starting from her first photo after being born, her parents at least looked happy to have such a cute daughter. The obviously tiny apartment didn't look like either of them had much going for them, but Anya was the happiest kid you'd ever seen. Then around the time of her first school picture, her mother disappeared from the later ones. The one thing that replaced her mother was that stuffed animal she hugged tight in so many pictures, and the start of her sadness.
Her father started to look worse for the wear soon after. The apartment became more bare over time, until he disappeared as well, around the time she was probably twelve. Taking his place was a guy who looked right out of central casting for Russian Mobster Number Four. And the further I went, I noticed Anya's eyes became blank, almost like she wished for death.
By the time the scenery had obviously changed to some place you'd want to go on vacation. I gathered from a sign in the background of one image that it was Miami. But even without the depressing scenery of Russia, Anya's eyes around sixteen told the story.
It didn't take much guessing, but close to the bottom, I found a folded note with Natalia's handwriting.
This is to document the reason for our adoption of Anya, who came into our lives as a child. Alexei, if you are reading this, know that I did not intend for her to become your wife or a student at this academy. Mikhail demands it, however.
She lost her mother to pneumonia, and her father was murdered over gambling debts to the man you see with her later. His name is Anatoly Petrov. He is a criminal who sold her body to other men, starting from a young age.
At the time, your dedushka still had business dealings with his associates on a property in Miami. We were introduced to Anya during one of our visits, and she was the most pitiful sight, Alexei. I demanded that Mikhail pay whatever price to buy her freedom and end all ties with these men. They agreed to trade her for our shares in the resort.
Please know that I only reveal her past to you so that you know to leave it buried. I would prefer that you destroy all of this after seeing it. Although I wanted her to live the rest of her life as normal as she can, Mikhail believes that as a victim of sex trafficking, she would be too prone to falling back into that life. I reluctantly agreed, and took Anya as my personal student to give her the one chance at a happy life she would ever have. Please understand, it was the only choice I had.
I flipped the paper over, seeing the closing paragraph.
Alexei, give Anya the best life you can. She did nothing to deserve her past. I received her as a broken, hollow
shell of a girl and gave her a new life that is not certain to be happy. Should you prove yourself as the next Headmaster, it is you I have to trust with Anya. Please, do not ruin her only chance.
“Jesus.” It blew the fucked-up fact that legally, Anya was my aunt, out of the water. I almost wished I hadn't learned it all.
I knew I couldn't tell her, but it put too much of her personality into perspective. Suddenly, every one of her quirks that I couldn't stand made perfect sense, at least for someone who knows nothing but her life here. It's exactly why she was held as the absolute template our students should follow.
“She is the perfect graduate, because she was a blank slate when she got here.” As merciful as that was for her, parts of it still turned my stomach. My grandfather's decisions for Anya, while definitely better for her than her old life, had become absolutely revolting.
I rifled through everything else. Pictures of Anya before her official entry as a student showed dramatic improvement, that cold fire in her eyes apparent early on. If I was her age back then, I'd have crushed on her, hard. But then I opened the other, smaller box.
It was full of sheets of notebook paper, every one of them wrinkled like they had been balled up and then flattened back out. As I dug through, the solid Cyrillic began mixing English words. It was like Anya had written down a journal meant for the trash bin, but someone had salvaged them.
The last one was dated the day before I arrived here.
I am to meet my husband tomorrow. If he looks like the Headmaster, I will be sad. As the only student he does not test himself, I want my husband to be young, kind, and handsome. Basically, the opposite of Mikhail.
Natalia assures me that Mikhail has made special arrangements for who I am to marry, but will not tell me who he is. I can not tell if she is excited or sad about this. I hope he is as perfect a husband as I am a wife.
But I am not optimistic. I do not want to leave this academy.
I had to wonder if I was anything like she hoped for. The fact that she was able to stay, and when she said, 'You still ask what I want,' right before she agreed to be my wife made me smile a little. If anything, I knew I had to be more understanding of how rigidly she held to the ideals of this place, to the point the students had nicknamed her 'Iron Cunt Anya.' She was working with what was thrown her way without any say in the matter, and was absolutely thriving.
The only objects I put back in the larger box were the plush toy and the pictures from when her mother was still alive. Even if I had to lie about the rest, should Anya ever ask, I wanted her to have something to remember about when she was happy. Not that Anya really troubled herself with things like that.
I carried the smaller boxes down to the basement of the main hall. The boiler room was guaranteed to have at least one, if not several furnaces going. If I was given ownership of her past, I at least agreed with my grandfather, in that most of it had to be destroyed.
What few shreds I let remain, however, should have burned with the rest of it.
Lara was already in my office, sitting across from my chair. “Where the hell have you been?”
“You're here before I am for once. That'd be a good habit to get into.”
“Yeah, because you're late.” The thing about my intern is, she always has some smart-ass comment. “Anya needs your help with a problem student, like, now.”
“Shit. If it's the same one from last week, she knows I can't dole out punishment like that so soon after the last time.” I collapsed into my swivel chair. It was too much walking to get across this place a couple of times.
“It's a different one, and it's weird.”
“We don't call students 'it.' What's she done?” The disciplinary room was much easier to take care of now that I had Lara to do all the work, but I had an exam to administer late yesterday. “Get to cleaning back there, and I'll bring her back.”
“If you'd teach me how to use these bracelets, I wouldn't have to clean all that up.”
“Are you related to me?” I cocked an eyebrow, letting her know I was at my limit.
“No.” Lara's shoulders dropped. She had to learn some of our secrets, but I knew they'd have to be erased before she left, just like Anya's past. As Lara opened the door, she wrinkled her nose and said, “God, it still smells like sex.”
“Clean it well, and you'll get a surprise tonight.” And by surprise, that usually meant letting Anya go full-throttle in there with her. Sometimes I wondered who fooled around with my wife more.
Lara poked her head around to add, “You offer to help her, and you've got a deal.”
“This isn't a negotiation, Lara.” I stood back up, having sat just long enough to make my legs ache. “Be happy I'm feeling generous today.”
“Do you have any questions?” Anya addressed the class as she straddled the headless, limbless silicon mannequin. I had stood in the doorway and watched Anya demonstrate one of her reverse cowgirl techniques, the one where she swirls her hips around in a way you'd just have to experience to understand. Obviously, this wasn't a first-year class.
One of the girls up front raised her hand, legs split atop her own practice dummy. “Do you thrust your hips any? It almost looked like you did.”
“Very astute, Christina.” Anya broke it down, slowing herself until the waved her ass clockwise from twelve o'clock to six as smooth as her own cheeks, and then whipped the last half of the circle, starting all over again.
I wondered what the fuck her trick was. Sitting in on any of her lessons always left me impressed. Anya had broken sex down into a science, and somehow found a way to turn it back into a totally new art.
She glanced toward the doorway and caught me admiring her work. “I will be back. Practice until I return.” Anya got up, the soaked, erect cock on her dummy bobbing back and forth as she adjusted the black, leather skirt reserved for instructors. As soon as she was close enough to whisper, she said, “You are hard already. Perhaps I can use you to teach this to Lara tonight.”
“Speaking of her, she said you had a student I need to take care of.”
Anya turned back toward her class, every one of them moaning and whimpering on their lesson. “Yes, third row, second from the right.”
I looked toward the right spot and saw a fitly curvaceous redhead I'd been hoping to have a run-in with for a while. By the looks of it, she was enjoying the lesson. Too much, actually.
Anya looked back at me as I kept watching her pupil turn red in the face as she was in the hair. “Do you see the problem?”
“No.” I couldn't tear my eyes away. God damn! She kept giving it more effort, speeding up until she was doing revolutions at twice the pace of anyone else in the class. “She's a sight to behold. Just look at her go.”
“Alexei,” Anya put her hand against the door's frame, pushing all her weight against it, “how can I teach this girl when she can't help working herself into a climax at every opportunity?”
“So she's sensitive. What's wrong with that?” The little redhead was already on the verge, screaming loud enough to drown out the rest of the class. “God Almighty.”
Anya wasn't having any of it. As my wife stomped a heel into the granite floor, she broke down into her barely intelligible level of Russian accent, reserved for when she was at her breaking point. “Ja'yooliya!”
I was still enraptured, my heart almost breaking when she stopped right before climax. “Yes, Headmistress?” Tiny, curvy, redheaded, and enthusiastic as fuck to fuck. I knew, even before coming here, that all four of those traits meant fun. But I'd never had a girl with all of them. Two, at best so far.
Anya stormed over, bending right over the poor girl. “This is a class, not a honeymoon! V'at is v'rong v'ith you?” If I'd have mentioned the bottom of Anya's bare ass showed while she bent that far over, I'd have probably had a dummy or a student thrown at me.
“I'm sorry, ma'am, but it feels so good.” The poor thing looked like she was about to break down in the middle of class, and far from the
first time. “I can't help it.”
I watched my wife straighten up slowly and turn my way. She crossed her arms and smirked at me. “The Deputy Headmaster v'ill see you.”
What does she expect me to do? Have the time of my life and say 'A+, good job kid, keep it up'? Fuck! I knew I looked as scared and confused as Julia.
Anya almost bowled over a few students in the front two rows marching right back to me. Every step cracked out like a gunshot. “Alexei, this is serious. I can not pass this girl in this condition!”
I tried to keep quiet enough for the class not to hear us. “Well what the fuck do I do with her?”
“Your job.”
Who the hell are you to tell me what my job is? My neck tensed as I got ready to tear Anya a new asshole, and possibly a new cunt or two, in front of thirty or so students. But then I remembered that being the example of the perfect graduate was the only context her mind worked in. “I don't doubt you know exactly what you're talking about, but this is some new shit for me.”
The toughest woman I'd ever met suddenly eased herself, almost looking nurturing. “Alexei, you will find a way. As the next Headmaster, you have to.”
She was right. “I don't even know where to start with this girl.” Students usually got sent to me for routine progress evaluations or disciplinary measures because they were defiant toward the staff. “You're telling me she should enjoy sex less. That makes no damn sense here.”
Anya put a hand on each of my shoulders, walking me past the door and into the anonymity of the main hall. As soon as my back was against the wall, she actually gave a sincere smile. “You have been a good Headmaster so far. I have faith in you.”
I wanted to spill out what I knew, but this wasn't the time. “Have I been a good husband as well?”
She acted like her heart had stopped beating. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I want to know.”
Anya teared up on the spot. “You are everything I hoped you would be,” one eye let a drop rip down her left cheek, “but why ask this now?”
I couldn't come up with a reason that wasn't the truth, so I let loose with the safest one. “You were singing this morning.”