Chapter One
Alexandr Miroslav
The first boy I ever killed was myself.
Depending on how you look at it.
Well, there is a grave proving as much, but the memory is hazy–hard to remember with the quick tapping of my finger ending every thought before it’s fully formed.
The ticking clock that hung on the wall facing me, mocking me, reminded me of the familiar instinct that tugged at the bottom of my spine and created mental tunnel vision.
I could still make it.
Where was I?
Oh, right.
I buried myself in a relatively beautiful fantasy, with well-tended soil and a shovel, leaving me to the worms and grave robbers.
In killing whoever I was, I found myself often able to sum up my existence in one question: Where would I wish to die?
This may all sound very confusing, I’m sure, but the question alone has been able to string me along through state and county.
Hanging on broken bones and, at times, on the reaper’s door with exhaustion beyond conceivability, I led myself to believe that I’d only ever get an answer to this existential crisis of sorts if I survived long enough to find out.
It was strange, really, the contrasts that somehow connected my thoughts, life and death grappling to drag me off the thin thread I was perpetually balanced on.
The slap of a notebook against the metal table interrupted the higher capacity for thought I was building up to. “Alright, Mr… Miroslav.”
He’d said it the way Americans say things, breaking down a honed blade to fit their malleable appetites.
My name rolling off his tongue burned my own, which only fouled my mood further.
I wasn’t particularly fond of the harsh fluorescent lightbulb glaring down at me from above. I also wasn’t fond of the forger who’d promised me not a second look from customs.
The man in front of me was large, built, and strong enough to plaster me against the wall if I tried anything. I was smart, self-preserving, and not particularly eager to add a few more injuries to the list of those haphazardly healing.
The CBP officer tapped the passport that’d gotten me in this situation in the first place against the edge of the table separating us with a raised brow. “Why don’t you tell me where you got this?”
I mirrored his stare long enough for him to have had enough, light flashing against his bald head, almost allowing me to see my future, as he lowered it and focused his gaze on the papers in front of him.
Allowing me a moment respite from the growing anxiety that this might be the final straw.
I forgot what I was pondering upon, but if I could withdraw further into the crevices of my mind, I’ll start somewhere.
When I was a child, my mother used to watch me in the rare moments of her consciousness.
She’d stare for hours at me or through me, I never knew.
But there was only one instance when I’d looked back, vowing to myself not to look away until she averted her gaze first. That was the first time she’d whispered in her broken English to herself, “I’ve birthed the Baba Yaga for my sins. ”
I swore to never meet her eyes again after that.
My eyes, as I would grow up to discover, were too frozen over, death lurking behind the ice, for her liking.
Later in the years, when my curiosity and time had met on an agreeing field, I looked up what my mother failed to teach me.
In Russian Fairy Tales for Children, nestled in the back of the Chicago public library, I’d found out my mother was simply an easily manipulated young woman who never learned to hold herself accountable.
And despite these shortcomings, I found it to be rather a compliment, considering it was the only feature most important for the cards I’d been dealt.
“Are you refusing to answer? Because I can sit here all day–or better yet, we can speed this along and have you in a cell by dinner.”
The deep voice thrust me back into the present, and I did not falter in weighing my options, wondering if there’d be any opportunity to make a break for it. Forget the manila folder in my worn-out bag and hide out in a small town before returning to the monotone life I’m used to.
It wasn’t that the information on the passport was all made up. My name is Alexandr Miroslav, and I was born on January 9th, 1965. I am a male, I have blue eyes, brown hair, debatably true, and both of my parents were born and raised in Russia before coming to America for a ‘better life’.
Stitching truths and lies was always easier.
It wasn’t any of those things that tipped them off.
It was that the passport the rat had made for me was so horribly fabricated, they couldn’t help but notice. A passport with twenty-eight pages rather than the customary thirty-two.
No officer who touched over a hundred passports a day would possibly be able to ignore the unfamiliar weight and feel.
I really was going to kill him.
If he hadn’t already disappeared with my money, and if I made it out of here handcuffs-free.
“I don’t understand why I’m being held.” I almost didn’t recognize my own voice with its rough rasp echoing in the cold room. It wasn’t like I used it often; no one was around to talk to.
“You’re going to play dumb when your…” he made a show of looking through the pages of my passport mockingly before discarding it on the table like it was nothing but useless paper that didn’t cost me the golden egg I’d pawned.
Well, it might as well have been, “passport is as fake as the bags they sell down by the river?”
I kept both hands on the table and my eyes dead set on him. I needed to get out of here fast, but looking for a way out with sharp eyes watching me only made me appear like a shifty crack addict, ready to break open at the first sign of trouble.
He heaved out a sigh that moved his entire upper body before leaning in, his eyes taking on a pitiful look. “Listen, kid… you’re young. Probably alone and dirt poor from the looks of it. But there are options for you. If you’re running from something, there’s help at the ready.”
Doubt it.
“I don’t need help.”
He raised his brow before glancing at my bag, the threads and traces of grime sticking out like sore thumbs. “Doesn’t look that way to me.”
“Thankfully, no one asked for your… professional evaluation.” I watched him take offence before he realized I wasn’t worth the frustration and shook his head.
“Fine, don’t talk. But you’re not getting on that flight.” He smiled, pleased when I glared, and glanced at the door behind him. “Neither are you slipping away to some abandoned train station for some shuteye.”
The words hadn’t fully left his lips before the door keeping me hostage opened, as if by a miracle.
It was loud, I noticed, as it swung wide open with a deep groan that resonated through the small room.
Another CBP officer slipped in before shuffling to the side in a robotic gesture to reveal a thin man with a side part and slicked back hair coming in behind him.
He looked to be someone with authority because it didn’t take a double-take from the man who had previously been questioning me to stand straight in haste. “Commissioner!”
Ah.
The new man in charge didn’t give him his attention before regarding me with an annoyed scowl. “You’re one lucky kid.”
I didn’t know what he meant and only blinked in response before he decided to elaborate, “A call came in at the nick of time, making me drive down all the way from Washington.”
He sounded irked as he only slightly muttered the last part, and something told me that pointing out the correct phrase being “drive up” stunted my chances of getting out of here by at least half. So, I opted to stay silent.
This time, I couldn’t hide the confusion on my face as I tossed and turned his words over in my mind like a riddle ready to be deciphered.
From the sound of it, this was the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, if the badge hanging off his breast pocket was to be believed, and he looked royally pissed to have been dragged out of the comfort of his home to handle a situation in a completely different city.
“Sir?” The officer, who’d looked almost smug only a few moments ago, searched his face to try and make sense of the situation.
Still, the commissioner didn’t so much as glance in his direction, instead turning to the officer he had come in with. “Get his stuff. Where’s his gate?”
I wanted to be defensive, I really did. Watching an officer of any kind approach my bag, the very one filled with stolen goods, made my hands instinctively reach out to stop him, but I was quick to stop myself.
If this was a way out, handed to me on a golden platter of opportunity, who was I to invite any form of debacle.
It was all a blur afterwards, almost as if I was watching myself get escorted out from a stranger’s lens, the bustling noise of the airport filled my ears once again.
It was comforting in a way.
Relief wasn’t a feeling I’d ever gotten used to, but that only accentuated the sweetness of it.
For reasons beyond my understanding, I was getting on that flight, leaving the slums of the States with a one-way ticket to Scotland.
Though, I doubt that if it weren’t for the letter I’d gotten only days ago, a leisure trip to Scotland wouldn’t have changed the circumstances of my lifestyle.
I didn’t let out the breath I’d been holding until we reached my respective gate, the flight attendant alone to accommodate any late passengers. The two officers and the commissioner flanked my sides all the way there.
For the first time in a long time, I wanted to smile, only forcing it down for appearance’s sake.
“Sir, I only, respectively, wish to understand the situation.”