“Come here, you!” Mom barked.

Kostya, a boy of five, felt cold inside his chest, a lump rolling up to block his throat. Freezing in the middle of the room, he imagined throwing an invisibility cloak over his shoulders.

But he had no such item.

“Here! Move it, brute!”

The last word hit him like a whip, the lump in his throat dropping, followed by his heart. Like a rabbit hypnotized by a snake, he took a couple of small steps towards the couch where his mother was seated, the carpet beneath his feet soft as quicksand, bogging down his steps.

“Are you deaf or what? Why are you standing there like an idiot? You! Here! Now!” she yelled.

Two more wary steps, bridging the distance between him and what felt like a chasm that he was about to fall into.

“What is this, you moron?” she hissed, sticking a magazine in his face. “What? Is? This?”

By her lowered voice, he realized the performance was coming to its climax.

The part before the end was the worst. He could do nothing to change it or to stop it. All he could do was put up with it.

Every time.

“Look here!”

He couldn’t help but look at the magazine that was shoved in his face. The smooth, glossy page smelled of print, showing a fair-haired woman in an off-white trench, walking on a carpet of autumn leaves.

She used to be fair-haired, actually. Now her curly hair had been changed to black by a felt-tip pen.

A few days ago, his mother had brought home a glossy magazine. Kostya had never seen a publication like that: large, full-color photos on every page with some text right over them. At first, the boy was confused by how he was still able to read it. Taking a closer look, he solved this mystery: the print letters were black on light backgrounds and white on dark ones.

The magazine cover depicted a holiday, a strange but captivating fairy tale.

As Mother examined the cover woman’s trench, she clicked her tongue, muttering,

“That’s the thing, the real thing.” Heaving a sigh, she lamented over nothing like that being available in the local shops.

Kostya had decided to please his mother by making the woman on the cover look more like her. As if it were her wearing that fancy trench. He put his best into painting her new hair as black and thick as Mother’s. She will like it. She will no longer be sad.

But Mother didn’t like it.

Rolling the magazine, she hit him on the cheek. “What is that?! What? Is? That?” she yelled, landing another blow with her every word.

Kostya crouched, covering his head.

“You brainless brute!” Mother shrieked, pounding him with the magazine again and again.

He closed his eyes, yelping at every new blow coming to his head, back, or shoulders. Blood rushed to his cheeks.

The performance was nearing its end.

At last, the blows stopped.

Half-opening his eyes, he squinted at his mother through his fingers. Leaning back on the couch, she breathed heavily. “Get out, moron. And stay away from me.”

Dropping his hands, Kostya turned around and plodded away to his bedroom, smoothing his ruffled hair.

At five, he was already used to always being the culprit. Not just of a particular offense, like he’d been that day, the general culprit, guilty of his very existence. His mother would punish him for “talking nonsense,” “running around like crazy,” or “opinions no one asked for.”

Growing up as a reserved, unsociable kid, he made no friends in kindergarten. Other children hated him for always being silent and for trying to bite or kick those next to him while the teacher looked away. They would complain to the teacher or find Kostya later as a small group to beat him up.

By the age of nine, Kostya developed a firm belief that he was a good-for-nothing, the reason his mom could not meet the right man, and a loser just like his daddy; that was what his mother told him every day. He lived in constant, tensed expectation of her hysterical attacks.

Kostya had made no real friends by the age of twelve, not that he really wanted to. His classmates gave him the nickname of Kosta Reeky. Boys despised him, girls grabbed every opportunity to make fun of him, and, most of all, Sveta, his dark-haired, sly-eyed, leggy nemesis. She always taunted him, but, for some reason, his spirits lifted whenever he saw her. The days when she skipped classes were dull and flat.

One day, shortly after he turned thirteen, something happened that relieved his ever-present tension for a while.

“Why does our classroom have this foul smell? Natasha, could you please open the window?” Ms. Gerasimova, the elderly geography teacher, squinted shortsightedly at the seventh graders sitting in the first row of desks. Her appearance and manners were reminiscent of Victorian ladies, her bleak, blue eyes behind the thick glasses were childish and naïve.

Smiling, Natasha stood from her desk to open the window.

The uncontrollable seventh-grade class was making it through the geography lessons with surprisingly few disciplinary issues which made the school administration wonder what aces this weak-sighted, fragile, old lady had up her sleeves to keep the troublemakers in line.

None.

And that was her secret.

This kind, open-hearted, old lady lived in a world of her own, oblivious to the wild reality of the mid-1990s working-class teens. For the tough, seventh-grade kids, she offered no challenge to beat. Acting up in geography class simply was not cool, just like taking candy from a first-grader wasn’t cool.

Everyone would rather try to get to the English teacher: an oppressive, pushy, short-tempered man who would yell, spit, throw chalk, and even hit misbehaving students with his pointer. Filling the keyhole of his classroom door with a mixture of playdough and matches was a task any seventh grader would eagerly accept. It made their hearts soar to watch him, red-faced and boiling with fury, thrust the key into the lock hastily, then use an awl to rake out the broken fragments of matches caked in dough.

But no one sabotaged the geography lady.

…until that day.

“Any idea why our classroom smells of feces, dear children?” Ms. Gerasimova asked again.

“That must be Kosta Reeky shitting himself,” a voice from the back of the classroom suggested.

Those in the back desks laughed, while those at the front grimaced to contain their laughter.

Everyone turned to look at Kostya. Noticing the nasty smell, which was strongest at his desk, he’d already examined the soles of his sneakers to see if he’d accidentally stepped in some dog poop, but his footwear was clean.

He suddenly realized that no one else was looking down at their shoes although they all smelled it too.

The geography class was his second class that day. No odor problem in the first class. During recess, Kostya had gone to the library, leaving his bookbag in the classroom.

His bag.

Oh no! It seemed to be the source of the stench.

His classmates’ glares drilling into him, Kostya opened the bag. The pungent smell hit his nose, but his books were clean.

His lunch.

The sandwich on the top had been unwrapped and then rewrapped haphazardly in the same crumpled paper. Kostya noticed that instantly; his own wrapping was never that hasty and careless.

Feeling as though he were in a bad dream, he unwrapped the sandwich.

Tucked in between the two slices of cheese was a bone caked in dog poop, its clean end wrapped in a napkin, most likely used by whoever put the bone into his bag in order to avoid getting their hands dirty.

“Help yourself, Kosta,” Sveta sang in a honey voice, looking at him from the desk in front of his; her lips were curved in a smile, but her eyes were cold and piercing.

Their eyes remained locked long after the classroom burst into laughter. Sveta took in his every move in order to tell her friends later what hilarious faces Kosta Reeky had made when discovering the “gift” in the bag, topped with her witty remark.

Snatching his bookbag, he burst out of the room, forgetting his books on the desk. Slamming the door, he ran towards the exit, slipping on the orange-red, waxed tiles.

Ignoring the janitor’s shouts to stop, he pushed the heavy front door, darting out of the school building, and raced away as fast as he could—away from this hell. The wind dried his tears as he ran, sobbing and panting.

He stopped in the middle of an old birch grove at the edge of the city park. Littered with trash—empty bottles, syringes, bubble packs, even a piece of rope—this spot looked like the local drug addicts’ favorite place for “meditation.” But no one was around right now, except for a tabby cat watching Kostya without much interest.

Plopping down on a large log polished by many other previous sitters, Kostya took a breath and saw his open bag still in his hand. His lunch, seasoned with his classmates’ tough love, was still inside. Taking the ruined sandwich with two fingers, Kostya flung it away. After a brief thought, he decided not to eat the other, untouched sandwich either, dumping the bread with two pieces of boiled sausage onto the grass at his feet.

The smell of food piqued the cat’s interest. Standing up, the animal passed by Kostya, brushing against his shin and giving him a cold, piercing once-over, just like the one from Sveta a few minutes earlier.

As the cat headed for the sausage, Kostya, mimicking Sveta’s voice, suddenly said, “Help yourself, Kosta.”

Casting another glance at the strange human, the cat bent down towards the meat. Waiting for the animal to start eating, Kostya went over and crouched to pat it. The cat jerked at his touch but resumed eating, probably too hungry to notice or just felt the petting human to be a minor distraction.

Using his other hand, Kostya pulled a piece of rope lying on the ground closer to him. Carefully, in order to not scare the animal, he put the rope beneath the cat’s neck. His other hand kept stroking the stray thing comfortingly.

The cat did not seem to pay any attention, too busy gobbling down the sausage. Moving slowly, Kostya took both ends of the rope, tying a noose around the cat’s neck.

Sensing something wrong, the animal shied away, but Kostya tugged at the rope, pressing the cat down with his knees.

“Help yourself, kitty!” he growled, pulling hard. The choking cat thrashed and wheezed.

Strangling the animal, Kostya pretended it was Sveta on the end of his rope, wheezing for air and scratching the ground.

The cat was long dead, the half-chewed remnants of sausage forgotten in the grass, but Kostya remained in his squatting position, clutching the rope with numb fingers and staring blankly inside himself.

His heart was calm and empty for the first time in many years. It had released all its anger and bitterness. He enjoyed this moment of relief without really caring about how it had been accomplished; it was simply nice to forget his resentment and fear for a while.