Escape

TRASMUNDO:

Escape

by

Varian Krylov

Please don't download illegal copies or distribute this book in whole or in part without the writer's permission. It takes months of full-time work to write a novel; when pirates choose to download or distribute copies of the books I write, they chip away at my ability to write the next story. Please don't steal the fruits of my labor—it's a labor of love, but it's also work.

This book is for sale to adult audiences only. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

All sexually active characters in this work are eighteen years of age or older.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations and places are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though references may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, including events, areas, business establishments, locations and situations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 Varian Krylov

Published by Varian Krylov

All right reserved

Edited by Emma Stedall

Cover design: Bey Deckard

Map and art: Bey Deckard

Cover Photograph: Strangeland Photography

The voice of passion is better than

the voice of reason.

The passionless cannot change history.
Czesław Miłosz

CHAPTER ONE: Fabric of Dreams

I was not meant to live anywhere

except in Paradise.
Such, simply, was my

genetic inadaptation.
Here on earth every prick of a rose-thorn

changed into a wound.

When the sun hid behind a cloud,

I grieved.

I pretended to work like others

from morning to evening,

but I was absent,

dedicated to invisible countries.
Czesław Miłosz

Naked. Frail and frightened. The youth's maimed hands outstretched, shattered bones and ruptured tendons grasping in agony for the knife, just out of reach.

A blade wasn't enough to save him, anyway.

In the rushing thrum of his own blood, floating and drowning in dizzying light-headedness and sour nausea, Luka felt the boy's helpless terror as if it were his own: the agonizing ache and throb of the broken bones in his mangled hands mingled with his paralyzing dread of the nightmare outside his window. Soon the flood would swallow the pale young man, moss-green eyes wide and horror-struck, dark hair matted to his pallid, sweat-slick brow. In the distance, red sluiced through the streets, coming nearer and nearer, no barrier slowing its advance.

So close the youth could hear their murmurs of dread, two dozen jostling men and women piled into a boat big enough for eight, all scratching and clutching at their neighbors for fear of falling overboard. Soon the flood would touch the walls of his dark, dour little room. Rush through his door. Spill over the sill. Seep up from below, through the gaps in the floorboards.

Except, there was no floor.

Caught in a thick crust of ice, the youth could get no nearer to the knife, no matter how he struggled, his thin, pale body straining, ligaments thrown into relief as his bony arms stretched in desperation, while below that strangling, possessive girdle of ice, submerged mutants clutched and clawed at his thrashing legs, at his bare feet, aching but quickly going numb in the cruel cold.

Which death would claim him, snatching him from the hungry maw of the other threat? Those vicious, hungry creatures writhing and licking and biting each other in their frenzy to devour him? Or the flood of red rushing toward him, erasing the streets under its ceaseless advance, surging past clusters of frightened bystanders almost hidden under the black umbrellas they clung to like shields on a field of battle, even though the river of soldiers—outfitted in their blood-red uniforms, faces emaciated, gray, corpse-like—seemed to see, to seek nothing, no one, but the frail, pale boy with the broken hands.

Luka set down the nearly consumed nub of carmine. Red-stained fingers. Butcher's hands. Pigment greasy as he rubbed the pads of his thumbs and index fingers together. It was his darkest drawing yet. Maybe the most beautiful. Leaning back, Luka let out a deep sigh. The relief that came in the wake of a session of painting or drawing was always so intense; a vaguely alarming, intensely pleasant sense of tension easing, strength diminishing, of fading away. Almost like death. Close to how he remembered feeling in the first seconds of aftermath when he used to masturbate.

*

JANUARY – Sovići, Bokana Region, Xukrasna

Luka didn't know if he could do it.

For a long time, he stared at the crisp, blank check. At the straight black line demanding a name, at the rectangle—a two-dimensional doorway that would open and close on his past and his future the moment he filled it with the number that would empty his bank account. His gut gave a queasy lurch as Luka wondered for the millionth time how many years of wages he really owed to the family who'd thrown him away when he was thirteen. Wondered if, rather than fulfilling some vague idea of filial duty, what he'd really been doing every month for the last six years was trying to buy back their love.

Whatever scrap of pride he managed to cling to, working full-time in Željko's shop and sending every penny he could spare back to Bijeljina was faded and threadbare compared to his shame at having no education since finishing primary school at twelve. No matter how many books he read about astronomy, the history of Japan, about the wilds of Patagonia, however many novels he read—classics from England, France, and the United States translated into Bokan—he still felt bent and low under his anxiety that everyone he knew thought of him as the dumb hick from some poor village in the east. That he'd been accepted by the best art school in the region based on his drawings, despite his lack of education, was a miracle, the impossible chance he'd been hoping for, dreaming of for years. No way could he let it slip away.

When he touched the tip of his pen to the paper, his hand shook, and the letters and numbers came out ragged and uneven. The
Szczecin
Academy for Plastic Arts. 1250 Dinar.

Afraid he'd lose his nerve, Luka addressed and stamped the envelope, sealing in his check and registration for the two classes he'd found that didn't conflict with his work hours. Worried he'd lose his nerve if he waited, he slipped out quickly to pop it into the mailbox on the corner.

There. Done. Too late to change his mind now.

When he returned to his little garret above the barber shop, he wrote to his father. Hand still unsteady, Luka resisted the impulse to offer a rambling excuse for not sending the bulk of his paycheck for the first time since he'd started working for Željko six years earlier. Riddled with guilt one second, with resentment the next, he kept it short and simple, just telling his father he needed to keep his money this month, to cover his own expenses.

When had the lie he told everyone in Sovići to camouflage the humiliating truth of his exile from Bijeljina started fooling him, too?

*

It was weird, absolutely surreal, seeing men he recognized, some he even knew—the clerk at the neighborhood grocery, one of the guys who worked at the art supply store, two of the librarians, and a handful of the customers at the barbershop—roaming the city, AK47s slung over their shoulders as they walked down the street in the blood red uniform of the Vega. When the soldiers of the elite Eršban paramilitary unit, operating under control of the new Ministry of National Unity, did their evening parade, or gathered in formation in from of the city hall, the carmine uniforms made them look like a futuristic army from a sci-fi movie or a graphic novel more than the regular soldiers Luka had been used to seeing now and then since childhood, in the newspaper or in movies, dressed in their simple, practical khakis or camos.

Luka turned away from the window and pulled the fine-toothed comb through Andrej's thinning hair the color of uncooked spaghetti, glimpses of gleaming pink scalp peeking through as Luka snipped a centimeter off the ends. The clippings tumbled to the floor, the fine strands dispersing, luminous in the ray of sunlight gushing through the glass storefront. For months, Luka had been almost asleep on his feet, lulled to the brink of narcolepsy by the tedious repetition of his job, shave after shave, haircut after haircut, day after day. Now, somehow just knowing he was going to start at the Academy the following week, his mind was turned on, eyes wide and alert, everything everywhere he looked suddenly either beautiful or interesting. Everything worthy of a photograph, a painting, a sculpture.

Even the blood red rectangle of men, identical as a flat of eggs in their uniforms, with their perfectly coordinated steps and display of their weapons as they paraded in formation, as if those hundred soldiers were all mirror images of a single man.

“Željko cut it too short last time,” Andrej complained for the third time since Luka had put the cape over his shoulders.

“I'm only cutting off this much.” Luka held a pinch of severed hair between his fingers. “Okay?”

“Yeah, that's good, Luka.”

“How's Mrs. Ilic?”

“Well, you know, since the fall she hasn't been the same. But she's getting up and around for an hour or two every day, now.”

“Good for her.”

“Oh, yeah—she said to thank you for bringing those new books you left last week. She was upset she slept through your visit. She read 'em all though.”

“Already?”

Andrej chuckled. “What else is she gonna do, lying in bed all day?”

“If it's not a bad time, I'll come by with a fresh batch tomorrow during my lunch break. I have to go by the library, anyway, for some books for school.”

“I didn't know you were in school. What are you studying?”

He could have just said, “Art.” But he was so proud he'd been accepted, he added, “I'm studying at the
Szczecin
Academy.”

Andrej laughed, and Željko and Stanimir started chuckling, too. “I thought you meant you were learning something. But hobbies are nice, too.”

“A boy your age should be playing football and chasing girls, not burying your head in library books and boxes of crayons,” Željko teased, giving Luka a playful swat to the back of his head as he sauntered by.

“Željko's right, kiddo.” Andrej's reflection gave him a smarmy grin from the mirror. “It's deer season, and you're a couple years late joining the hunting party, eh? Bag and dress a couple doe. That'll put some hair on that baby smooth chin of yours.”

Under the warming embarrassment rising up his throat, there was a soothing trickle of relief he hadn't told his parents the reason he wasn't sending them money this month. Even if Luka knew art was as important as things like IT and accounting and MBAs, convincing his parents or Željko or Andrej would be a waste of breath. From now on, he wouldn’t talk about it. He was used to keeping the important things to himself, anyway.

Stanimir started yelling at the little black and white TV mounted high in the corner of the shop. As Željko and the others turned their attention to the dark haired little man on the screen, the suffocating weight of their scrutiny slid off Luka's body, and he felt his tense muscles slackening.

“Ugly Bokan monkey,” Stanimir muttered, and Željko and Andrej laughed.

Luka used the electric clippers to clean up the stray fuzz at the back of Andrej's neck and get the line at his nape perfectly straight. Stanimir didn't mean anything against him, personally. The others, either.

After work, Luka picked through the shelves of crime thrillers at the library, hunting down four novels by authors he knew to be Mrs. Ilic's favorites, before going upstairs to the painfully small section devoted to books on art. His certainty there'd be nothing new on the shelves was tinged by a faint smudge of false hope that dissolved after a couple minutes of fruitless searching. Resigned, he checked out Nadeau and Shattuck's
The History of Surrealism
for the fifth time, a little amused and a little sad to see his name was the only one, repeated over and over next to a column of rubber-stamped dates going back almost eighteen months when the librarian had him sign the index card before banging the stamp down, marking the current date with a sticky overabundance of azure ink.

On his way home from the library, Ahmed, a guy Luka's age that he used to play football with, gave him a nod as they passed. Ahmed was wearing a black T-shirt with a slogan in white:

Fear is the main source of superstition,

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

*

A heavy, shifting nausea weighed in Luka's belly as he fastened the blue armband over his jacket. One more thing marking him as different. Shame and indignation coiled around each other, writhing and struggling for dominance. There were a dozen reasons he'd never felt like he belonged anywhere, but he'd never thought twice about where his great great grandparents had come from two centuries earlier, or the fact that, if they ever bothered to practice their religion, he'd go to a different building than Željko or Andrej and most of the other clients. They spoke the same language, ate the same food, wore the same clothes, watched the same shows on TV—what did three books written thousands of years ago have to do with anything?

He yanked the band off and tossed it into the trash can. Fuck the new law. Hell, just because President Zivkovi

had ordered it, didn't even mean it was legal. Did it? Luka imagined being stopped on the street, or one of the carmine clone soldiers coming into Željko's shop and asking why he wasn't wearing the armband, and fear dragged its cold claws down Luka's back. He snatched the strip of cloth from the bin and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

When he got downstairs to the barbershop, adrenaline kept his heart thumping hard and his hands trembling slightly. Željko said his usual, gruff good morning as he went through the register and receipts from the day before, and Luka made himself take a few deep breaths. Maybe Željko didn't care if he obeyed the new law, or not. Or, maybe he just hadn't noticed Luka had defied the decree and stuffed the band into his pocket instead of displaying it on his arm.

But when Radmilo came in for his usual Thursday shave, the first thing he said after grumbling a hello to Željko was, “Hey, Bokan, you're looking a little under-dressed this morning.”

That got Željko's attention. “Luka, you went to the Ministry of National Unity and registered, didn't you?”

“Yes.” He'd obeyed the mandate, announced over and over, every hour on the news for weeks, that all Bokan men, women and children register their name and address with the local government. After he'd handed his form to the bored and mysteriously resentful worker behind the counter, she'd handed him the blue armband, warning him that if he was caught outside his home without it, he would be fined, and might even go to prison.

“Didn't they give you the armband?” Željko sounded more worried than angry, and guilt nibbled at Luka's stomach.

“Yes.”

“Why aren't you wearing it? You know you could get in trouble, don't you?”

Luka struggled to find his voice. “Yes, Željko.”

“Go upstairs and get it.” It was startling, being scolded and bossed like a kid. Željko hadn't talked to him like that for years, not since the first months after his father had sent him to Željko to apprentice.

Luka went to the coat rack and plucked the strip of blue cloth from the pocket of his jacket.

“Put it on,” Željko ordered curtly.

It was just a stupid piece of fabric. Why was his heart hammering against his ribs, as if he was stripping naked in front of Željko and Radmilo?

Željko grunted and slung a cape over Radmilo's shoulders. “Don't let me see you without it again. Last thing I need is to be on the National Unity shit list because you don't know how to follow the rules.”

*

A white void, perilous, depthless. A blank rectangle of soft clean paper had never seemed so sinister, even when Luka had picked up a brush for the first time after those seven months of agonized abstinence three years earlier. Back then, he'd battled his dread without confronting any canvass, and once he'd found the courage to paint again, he'd felt brave and safe enough, so long as he strictly guarded against the dangers of one forbidden subject.

Luka set the small round mirror he'd borrowed from the shop on the table, just beyond the border of the blank abyss. Portraiture was the subject that interested him least, but since he needed a second class, and nothing else fit his schedule, he'd begrudgingly enrolled, assuaging his disappointment with the thought that even a course far removed from his favored surrealist scenes would make him a better, more well-rounded artist. But why did the first assignment—to be completed and brought to the very first class—have to be a series of self-portraits?

Maybe the better question was why the task should make him feel like he was falling slowly into a cold chasm. Delaying the inevitable, he opened the book of Giuseppe Archimboldo's Mannerist paintings. For one self-portrait, they'd been given the option of imitating the style of an artist of their own choosing. Archimboldo's style had the dual advantage of letting Luka play with symbolism, and avoid the cold stare of the mirror. Keeping the playfully grotesque style of the inventive master, Luka eschewed the Italian's penchant for cauliflower hair, asparagus mustaches, gourd faces and persimmon lips. He rendered his own likeness from the tools that represented the two sides of his life: for one half of the face and head, he used the scissors and combs, straight razors and white shaving foam that had cluttered his childhood instead of the toys most kids played with, and had become his tools of trade while other boys and girls his age were learning algebra and history. The other half of the face he formed from the tools of his true calling. Vibrant cylinders of pastels, soft sable brushes, curling shavings from sharpened pencils, the effervescent spirals of wood thin as the skin of an apple, the wood just a shade darker and warmer than his own skin.