venom in the forest

The icy embrace of the wind bit through his thin jacket, but he lumbered on.
The frozen moon disappeared as the sun had begun its slow ascent from beneath the earth. As the birds of heaven still roosted in wait for the coming dawn, a tall figure trudged through the mist-clothed city of Moscow. His dark hair was cut crudely short away from his rough leather-like face. He stumbled on a discarded spirits bottle and crashed to the chilled ground. He lay there uncertain if he should stand up or instead let the gale claim his life and let the earth chill him to a deathly corpse.

Solemnly he rose to his feet and trudged on. The man came up to a crooked old shack with a rubble of a shingle roof that the cruel years had died a muddy red. He cautiously stepped up the rickety wooden steps and with a frozen hand he gripped the tarnished brass doorknob and slowly turned the knob. Quietly he crept into the dark infested room stamping off the frozen air of the early morning.

The cold light illuminated the room in a ghostly white light, it was the remains of a once great laboratory. Alexei scanned the room with his dark soft eyes. Aged books and papers lay strewn across the rotting floorboards, vials and magnifying glasses lay smashed and destroyed fading into the earth. He sighed as he climbed and ducked over crushed desks and burnt chairs. Under one of the overturned desks a singed corner of a photo, he bent over and with a withered-gloved hand he pulled the document out of the grasp of a ravenous rat.

A young women stared out of the photo. Her long locks cascaded down her gentle shoulders, adorning her pale silk-like face. Engraved on the back were the words, “To my darling Alexei I will love you always” painted in a deep red. He gasped as a salty tear ran down his face and dropped onto the photo.

He strode out of the building trying to escape to torturous memories of the past.
He walked on into the chilling embrace of the morning dawn. After lumbering through the fear-drenched city, dodging passing troopers and glass bottles hurled toward his face, he found a dark alley on the side of an abandoned war hospital. He crept into the abyss of nothingness and rested his freezing head against the dripping- damp wall. After many hours he stood up and scanned the streets for prowling soldiers; with cat-like stealth he tip-toed through the deathly silent streets. Nothing moved, it was silent and dead. The sun had begun to dip beneath the city painting the sky a soft orange. He crept through the ice glazed streets moving carefully not to slip,

Like a stampede of water a troop of soldiers on their night shift appeared like the plague, their heavy coats strong against the freezing cold, their hard boots smashing through the snow adorned streets, their guns lighting up the dim evening air like a brilliant ray of sun.

Without hesitation, Alexei ran, the fear screaming at him to move faster, the sound of the troops growing ever closer like hounds biting the heels of a hare.
“STOP, INTELLIGENTSIA DOG, STOP!!!!” howled the commanding officer, with a voice booming like a battle drum.


Weaving in and out of sleepy, dark streets, his hands clawing through the mist, as the harsh voices and chesty panting of the soldiers died down into the fog, his hopes rose as he believed he had lost them. Taking refuge in a nearby doorway of a long forgotten house, he desperately tried to warm himself by rubbing his frozen fingers together. The bricks of the doorway had begun to crumble into the grasp of nothingness, the scratched painted door was splintered and lying tattered on the scorched floor.

After resting his screeching leg, he cautiously stepped out into the darkened streets of Moscow, he took a few crunching steps through the crisp snow as the wind licked him with its icy tongue. He dashed through the ever dimming streets desperately searching for some shelter before the bitter cold night would claim him. He was cautiously walking down the murky streets when he felt a sharp stabbing pain and the world he knew around him became a jet-black abyss of its former self.

With agonizing slowness he lifted his heavy eyelids, he gingerly touched his head with his moth infested gloved hand, blood spilt down his face like a cascade of deep maroon waves. He winced as slowly he sat up to examine the world around him.
It was a train truck. Alexei crept over to the small air pockets to see where they were; outside was an endless horizon of treacherous mountains and snow-covered forests, the blizzard creating elaborate mirages. Dust rained down from the roof of the aged truck as it went across the never-ending icy tracks. The truck was pungent with the smell of animal manure. Choking he leaned over against the loading gate and furiously tried to pry the door open.
“You’ll never get out, you young fool,” croaked a harsh voice “unless you want to try to leap out of a moving train.”
Alexei turned to see a middle-aged man with a long dark beard huddled against the corner of the truck trying frantically to escape the cold.
“Sir,” Alexei said gruffly “do you know where they are taking us?”
The man shot him a fierce look.
“Where do you think they are taking us, to the death camps, we are enemies of the Soviet regime,” he mumbled spitefully “where we are to be slaughtered like animals and our blood to be spilt on the floor that is Russia.”
“Calm yourself Yuri!” barked a silver-haired old man. “My friend tends to overreact.”

Alexei scanned the old man. His hair was tied back in a rough ponytail, his face showed remnants of battle scars.
“My name is Ivan,” remarked the old man “and this is my old friend Yuri Romanavich and your name young man? ” “Belanov” he said quietly.
“My name is Alexei Belanov.”
The men sat together trying frenziedly to warm themselves against the bitter cold, after hours of long talk of past lives.

After what seemed an eternity of frost-bitingly cold trekking through the mountains the old train finally came to a halting stop. The sound of thick heavy boots trudging through the crisp fresh snow, the termite infested loading door swung open exposing them to floods of illuminating light.
“Out intelligentsia cowards” barked a young soldier. “Move before I decide to shoot.”
Reluctantly they stepped out into the cold jaws of the morning. Alexei stared gauntly at the new surroundings; the frozen plains stretched as far as the eye could see cut off by threatening mountains adorned with sparkling silver birch trees. The wind howled angrily through the mountains; small animals hastily moved through the canopy of trees.

Flourishing his well-polished rifle at the bedraggled men the soldier barked at them to move into the embrace of the tall malicious grasp of the high barbed wire fences and daunting watchtowers prowling the camp with eagle eye stares. As they trudged through the wretched camp soldiers with hard stone-like faces stared at the three men with despising eyes.

They came to a line of rusted metal hut; roughly they were pushed inside the daunting void; inside there were a line of simple, crude bunk beds with only a thin woollen blanket on each side. The other men in the hut stared with curious eyes examining the new arrivals.
“Find a bunk and then come out to start work! ”yelled the soldier. “If there is any rebellion you will die.”

After changing from his moth-ridden clothes into the striped death camp uniform heavy against his skin, Alexei along with the other men in the hut stepped out into the frigid air. They were herded like cattle by shouting and gun flourishing soldiers into a vast room; it was filled with monstrous machines banging and clanging as hundreds of prisoners, men and women worked rapidly to avoid agonising punishment; the smell of burning coal cloaked the room in a toxic choking screen consuming any source of light. With the hoarse yell of a guard the men trudged down to the assembly line of ragged figures hammering at spitting metal utensils of war.

“GET TO WORK INTELLIGENSIA COWARDS!!!” barked the hoarse voice of a prison guard. “WORK OR IT WILL BE THE DOGS FOR YOU!!!!”
The shabby figures shuffled over to the suffocating coal embrace of the machine and began working away with the other worn prisoners, both men and women.
The hammered at the spitting metal constructing crude military supplies.
The day agonisingly dragged on and on, the eternity of pain and despair.

Alexei stared down at his red raw fingers, after an endeavour of hammering and screwing, his exhausted hands cut and bled.
Hastily he tried to swab away the crimson blood but as a guard caught him with eagle eyes “DOG,” he bellowed “FILTH,THIS IS PUNISHMENT FOR YOUR MISTAKE, FOOL!”
He grabbed him by the scruff of his collar. As Alexei writhed away from the iron grip of the guard, he revealed a pistol in his belt and held it to the head of an unknowing woman working on a tarnished brass kettle.
“Move and she dies,” the guard sniggered.

Alexei breathed deeply as he caught the woman’s terrified face. Her gentle rose lips quivered in fear, her deep fern green eyes darting forward and back for a glimmer of hope for escape from the flaming barrel of the ground. She yelped as the spiteful guard yanked at her silky jet black locks.

Alexei drew in a strong breath, “Leave her” he murmured, “I will let you take me.”

The heavy clothed guard sniggered disdainfully; he shoved his gun at Alexei and signalled for him to move; he grabbed the girl by her pearl white wrist and yanked her along as he marched Alexei through the dust-snowed building. Hundreds of eyes looked as the two trudge along the dirt floor but then quickly directed their eyes to the floor as the prison guards howled out grating orders to continue work.
The two were brutally shoved into a rickety old shack filled with pieces of scrap metal; they were harshly ordered to shred them into fine strips by hand for the new military production line. The guard glared at the two with burning scornful eyes, he slammed the splintered wooden door shut. A chilling cascade of snow fell from the hole plagued ceiling blanketing the room in a cloak of ice.
The young girl stepped solemnly over to a nearby corner and began carefully shredding the rusted metal. Although her fingers were cut and torn she worked on.
Alexei looked at her silently as she continued to shred the biting metal.
Her gentle shoulders shuddered as she let out soft tearful gasps, Alexei turned towards her with dark eyes.

“Why are you crying miss?” he asked thoughtfully.
“Have I done something to upset you?”
“No, you haven’t,” she breathed as salty tears ran down her cheeks “it is just that, you remind me of my gone lover.”

With a stroke of epiphany, with nostalgic thoughts, he remembered the soft cooing voice and the gentle skin of the intelligent woman he had once adored with all his heart.

“Miss, may I ask of his name? ” he inquired hopefully.
“H his name was Alexei,” she shuddered. “We met each other as youths at the University of Moscow. We were to be married on the first dawn of spring, but my darling, my Alexei, was taken away from me when our laboratory was stormed by troopers. We never saw each other again.”

She sighed softly as her tears burnt and blinded her as they ran down her cheeks.
He placed a warm strong hand on her shoulder and lifted her meek head and gazed deep into her eyes. At first in the breathlessness of shock she tried to shy away but then she conjured up long lost memories as she stared into her lover’s eyes.

“A..Alexei,” she whispered silently ”is that really you?
“Yes Arina,” he said deeply “it is me.”
They kissed each other gingerly.
And in the dead of night as the dark painted the camp in a hue of dark, the two young lovers reunited planned their escape………….