Humpdays 10

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Book I: Portal Of God




The first drops of rain were just beginning to fall and the sky had turned an angry shade of grey. Olga looked up and shielded her vision with the sleeve of her arm, the fabric caked in rich soil. A wind was picking up, blowing through the fields behind them, causing the grains and flax to bend and sway in it's grasp. Her mother ripped up another fistful of weeds from the garden bed before looking up into the sky as well. She motioned with her arm at her daughter, who quickly moved alongside her and helped the older woman to her feet. Olga's mother wet her dry lips with her tongue and glanced behind her to where the family's sheep were grazing.



"You'd better put them up in the pen my dear. We can't shear them in the next few days if they get too wet." she said placing her hand on her daughter's shoulder. "I'll head inside and secure all the windows."



Olga nodded and quickly moved off to herd the animals into their wooden pen as she had done many, many times before. Normally her brother Vassily did this work, but he had gone to town with father and Tatiana, leaving she and her mother to weed the onions. Onions are slow-growing, shallow-rooted crops that can suffer severe yield loss from weed competition so it was very important work. As she finished herding in the small supply of sheep, latching the pen door and testing it before she headed back towards the house, she noticed with some alarm that her mother was still standing only a few feet away from where they had been weeding. There was a tall, skinny man approaching her. He wore a thick mustache that drooped down over his lip and a peaked cap on his head. His overcoat was buttoned all the way up and as grey as the sky. On his feet were ragged shoes and as Olga made her way over she found that she did not recognize him as one of the men from the village.



"I have been walking for some time," the man continued, pausing only momentarily as Olga made her way up behind her mother, placing a hand on her shoulder to reassure her, "and I was hoping to get a few mouthfuls of water before I continue onward. The generosity of the kolkhoz is very well known in these parts."



His accent sounded Georgian and his breath and teeth reeked with foulness. Olga had taken an immediate dislike to the stranger and so had her mother, who continued to eyeball the man suspiciously without saying a word.



The man held his calloused hands out to his sides, palms up. The rain was continuing to fall every more steadily and pelted off his heavy coat. "Please, I realize I am a stranger in these parts but all I am asking for is a drink. Can you not look into your heart for a passing stranger?"



"Why don't you simply cup your hands and drink the rain-water?" Olga asked curtly.



"A clever girl you have there!" the man replied, smiling widely to reveal his broken, yellow teeth. "I am sure she takes after her mother."



"I will lead you to our well and there you may have your drink." Her mother finally said in a firm voice. As she and Olga began to show him the way the man chuckled and shook his head.



"I am from the city," he explained, "and am never comfortable drinking like that. I may as well cup my hands over my head, da? I would prefer it if you could bring it to me in a glass. Then I will drink it and be on my way."



Olga's mother locked eyes with the man and looked him over, up and down, studying him. "Then perhaps you will not mind waiting a few more moments, my husband and his brothers will be home any moment and they can assist you." Olga arched an eyebrow at that, knowing her father had no brothers, but played along with the deception. "My daughter and I have to make preparations for this storm now and it cannot wait. I can show you to a place you can sit..."



The man rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet in the soft earth, chuckling to himself before quickly pulling a wicked looking sheath-knife from his wrist and pointing it at the matriarch threateningly.



"Now I think it would be best," he said in a menacing, quiet tone of voice, "if we all three went inside. In fact I must insist."



Olga acted without thinking, lunging at the man. If she could catch him off guard, do something he would never expect she might gain the upper hand and surprise him. This was in all likelihood not the first time he had assaulted a lonely woman on the roads or in the fields and the response was probably what he savored the most: terror, fear and the complete and total domination over his victim. Well not tonight. Tonight he would find his prey built of sterner stuff. She would be damned if she was going to let him lay his stinking hands on her or her mother! The move momentarily took the man off balance as Olga quickly rushed towards him, but the stranger was nimble and quickly stepped to the side and the best she could manage was only a glancing blow. She heard her mother cry out her name even as the man punched her hard in the side of her face with his fist. Olga slammed down into the mud, momentarily stunned. Her mother rushed to her side only to be intercepted by the dark, mustached man. His blade, almost half a foot in length pierced her through the side. The older woman's eyes bulged as she sank down to her knees in the mud, a growing crimson stain appearing on her dress. Olga looked up to see the man looming over her wounded family member, grabbing a knotted fistful of her hair as the rain began coming down hard.



"That was a foolish move for both of you." the man said in a shaky, angry voice, his confidence obviously wounded, "Now get up and we will all go inside and..."




The man never finished. His eyes went wide at something behind where Olga was lying and he pulled Olga's mother backwards into the mud as he fled quickly towards the fields. Twice he almost tripped and fell and twice he managed to regain his footing as he darted into the rain-soaked field of grain.



"I know where you live!" was the last time Olga heard him shout as he disappeared from her view forever. She scrambled to her feet and looked over her shoulder at what had so frightened the man. There, coming down the road was another man...possibly her father...possibly just another man from the village. Either way she needed help and so did her mother. The young woman stood up on unsteady feet and waved her arms frantically over her head, screaming for help through a long roll of thunder. The man must have seen her because he quickened his pace down the road, his feet splashing up puddles on either side. He would be here soon. Olga then rushed over to her mother and knelt down beside her in the muddy garden where she had fallen. There was so much blood all around her, mingling with the earth and rain. The older, dark-haired woman took a hold of her daughter's hand and locked eyes with her. Her grip was like an iron vice. On her face was a look of such horror and terror that it froze the blood in Olga's veins. Her mother was possibly dying right before her eyes and she had been impotent to stop it from happening. The man had cast her aside and thrown her to the ground as if she was little more than a rag-doll. She had failed. If she couldn't protect her own mother from pain and death at the hands of a stranger, how could she protect her younger brother or sister or anyone else in their family for that matter.



Her mother would survive the ordeal she suffered that dark and rainy night, but she would bear the scars of it, both physical and psychological for the rest of her days. She was no longer able to do the strenuous labor that life on the kolkhoz required at times and thus the farm was never quite as productive as it had been. Any time a stranger would pass by, her mother would watch them, never able to trust them again, always looking for a hidden blade or a dark, sinister agenda. Olga however always remembered the kind man who had arrived in time to help her take her mother to the physician. There were both good and evil men in the world and that evening she made a promise to herself that she would never let those evil men do something like that to anyone she loved ever again.


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Concussion couldn't help but grin at the memory as it washed over him. He could taste all of her emotions...the sense of utter failure, the despair. The deep-seeded pain it had caused, so much so that she had buried it deep down inside herself. It was delicious to him.



"All that bravado and physical strength and you're really nothing but a scared little farm-girl, unable to stop the boogeyman from hurting her loved ones. Pathetic." he said to her, curling his lip as he leaned over her struggling form. "And as much as I would love to poke around in the deeper recesses of your mind for more good times, I'm afraid your time is up. I can already feel her approaching, like a moth drawn out to a flame and when she arrives..."



David leaned in close, his voice almost a whisper in her ear. "This entire world will be nothing more than a bad memory..."


To be continued...

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Concussion is the creation and property of


Soviet Superwoman is my property and creation.


This takes place in