[Assimilation]
"...and due to latest attacks on the border, the CCCP are announcing more security checkpoints for closed towns, also issuing security positions for factories, industrial estates and commercial services. That is all with the latest news updates. We will see you tomorrow evening."
"Glory to Magnitogorsk."
I turned up to the guardpost half an hour early. It was my first day. Didn't really want to get fired before my job as a security guard even began. I leaned on the walls of the small building, straightening my new security uniform. The hideous dark khaki coat and pants neatly buttoned, my black tie done up, the large Ushanka hat right on my head and my badge polished; one of them bearing the coat of arms of Magnitogorsk, another is the Soviet's insignia of the Hammer and Sickle, and my name printed in gold Russian letters right below the badges: Ruslan Petrovoski. I hated the idea that my name sat below the badges; a reminder of superiority.
I inhaled the Russian winter's air and stared across the road. Very few cars passed by. There wasn't much to look at, if you didn't count the endless horizon of factories, refineries, smokestacks and powerlines. The air wasn't as good as it used to be. Even the sickly-looking trees beside the road were telling me that too. They were grey. The factories were grey, the sky was grey...and somehow the colour of my uniforms was sucked out too, leaving a faded-out khaki uniform with a blend of grey.
Glory to the fucking Soviets.
My superior came after what seemed like hours. Dressed similarly, but more polished and prestigious with an officer's hat, his bushy moustache bristled as he grunted to face me. He raised a hand to salute.
"Glory to Magnitogorsk." he said, his moustache synced to the movement of his lips.
I saluted back without hesitation. I've done it too many times to the point where my brain does it as a reflex action. Another form of Soviet conditioning.
"Huh, you look eager," Bushy Moustache said as he checked his watch, "Well, at least they sent me someone reliable this time. The last guy; not so good. Had to get the KGB to sort him out."
Ah fuck, that's the consequence for not turning up on time?
From in his pockets, Bushy Moustache handed me a pistol. I took it, immediately inspecting the workings of it: A Makarov. Uses its own special 9mm cartridges, eight rounds, the bullets going as far as 50 metres, most common-made handgun...I turned the pistol over and over in my hands, as Bushy Moustache stood there, holding the ammo for it.
"Don't use it unless you see absolute trouble. We're not a shooting gallery here." he said as I took the rounds from him.
"I'll, uh..try not to." I lied.
Clearly he could see through me. His eyes narrowed as he grunted, his moustache bristling again. Without a word he turned and retreated back into the giant factory that I was to protect and serve under the authority of the Soviets. If I were to die today, I will die for the motherland...
Ah, fuck that, I'm gonna try and live today.
*****
My first day of work began with me cooped up in the cramped guardpost. A cheap wooden desk with some battered drawers, a matching chair, a file cabinet containing little contents and a booklet of my security manual. A quick flip though the booklet proved futile to satisfying my boredom and quickly I found myself leaning on the crappy chair, opening up my bag to pull today's newspaper.
Like the greyness of outside, the newspaper matched it well. The Komsomolskaya greeted me with the island of Cuba and some front page news of the Americans making an attack on the island. An invasion, it stated. Not wanting to read more about the Cold War, I flicked through, searching for anything that would capture my interest. There were the sports, and then the repetitive propaganda of joining the Soviet Armed Forces. There was however, an article which featured some weird-looking animal apparently spotted in Aktyubinsk. I read on a little, but didn't exactly take it to heart. It amused me, the bullshit that the Komsomolskaya would sometimes put in.
I put aside the paper and checked my pocketwatch. Eight 'o clock. Right, the employees would be arriving soon, or workers or whatever the fuck the Soviets called us. They may as well call us peasants; we aren't much to the CCCP unless we have the missiles. I watched through the windows of the guardpost as the workers filed in, some weary-looking and faced me with worried expressions. I stared back, still haven't changed my bored posture and silently observed the single-file of workers, almost looking identical to one another. Yeah...we're just peasants to the Soviets. Like lambs to the slaughter. Like a cog in the machine, working away until we rust and eradicate in some ditch beside the road, suffocating in a pointless and agonising death. Agonising for the fact that in these Russian winters, frostbite was common. Pointless for the fact that our progress within this machine is nothing but a death machine designed for American Destruction...
No Ruslan, gotta keep your head on and look on the bright side of life, right?...
...what's there to look at if nothing is bright?
I tapped away at the desk, watching the road outside as soon as the line of workers had come to an end. Very few civilian cars would pass by, at full speed. The roads were dominated mostly by the SAF: The Army Trucks rolling past in convoys of three or five, and sometimes the rumbling and shaking of the desk meant an Armoured Transport Carrier was crawling across the asphalt. The Russians that walked were almost identical to each other. A long overcoat, boots, scarf, maybe a ushanka hat on them or so. Robots, on the way to whatever the authorities had assigned their duties for them. The workers of the factories were cogs in the machine. The vehicles were the fuel pipes. The walkers were conveyor belts. The soldiers of the SAF were the packages. I held out my Makarov; the product made on the assembly lines. The superiors were the real engineers. You did what you were made for. If you didn't, you were either fixed, or replaced with something new.
"The last guy; not so good. Had to get the KGB to sort him out."
Assimilation. We were to assimilate into a machine.
*****
The time for dismissal had come. It wasn't a bad day, I suppose...well, considering that I did almost absolutely nothing to get a measly $20 salary from Bushy Moustache, and that I got keep my Makarov. My stomach gurgled a little, knowing that it was time. I managed a small smile. Time for drinks it meant.
I crossed the almost empty roads and streets, walking as fast as I could and not attempting to stop. The place that I wanted to go to was very clear in my head. The warmth I always felt from it was touching me, forcing me to go forward towards it and out of the bitter coldness of this frosty winter air. I bumped and pushed through groups of people, but I cared little for them. They have no place to go.
And there, past the corner of a block was the run-down brick grey concrete apartment, sitting on the corner of an intersection with a flickering and malfunctioning streetlamp. The sign above it was once decorated with gold and the letters than spelt its name were silver. No, that stuff was stolen from it a long time ago. Thieves, maybe….or the authorities.
Endgame. That’s what it was called. A nice name for a bar…I think.
Battered from the outside, the place was still working fine in the inside. Opening the rusted iron door, I was blasted with the warmth of the heaters nearby. The place has this yellow and brown theme to it: Wooden and brown fluffy furniture, with lamps hanging from the ceiling providing that beautiful murky yellow glow in the bar. A few were either burnt out or flickering, but no matter. The pool tables in the middle of the bar tad tape keeping the green felt down, and most of the cue snapped and balls with cracks or small holes in them. Empty glass bottles, cups and alcohol spills were on every single table.
There were only a few men and a woman in the bar. It was usual though, for Endgame to have this many people in the bar. As far as I know, the barkeeper told me it was packed during the war, when the exhausted yet uninhibited Russians would have great times in here. Now the Soviets have basically sucked the life out of it.
Just as how they’re trying to do with me.
I sat down by the counter as the barkeeper finished 'trying' to clean a table. As a regular, he knew me quite well, and was ready to take my order.
“The usual this time, Ruslan?” He asked me abruptly.
“Da.” I said, knowing what my stomach wanted.
It turned over slightly as I watched the barkeeper grabbed a glass and opened a bottle of pure Russian Vodka. Filling the glass to the brim, I passed the payment for it over while he slid the glass forward to me. While the men I usually saw would down shots in one go, I always savoured the drink, sipping a little of it, allowing the cold liquid to drip into my mouth and bring warmth to the bottom of my heart. I sipped the vodka slowly and silently, turning away from the counter to face the bar around me.
There was the sound of scratching beside me. I turned to my right, where a woman was scribbling hastily on parchment. Paper was prioritised more for the media and the authorities. The woman was quite young, just about the same height as I am, wearing an over-sized lavender coat that has seen better days. Her hair was brown, but on closer inspection you could tell she had a strand of purple or two. I moved closer to her. She was still scribbling away, her face cringing in an emotion of determination.
"What's wrong this time?" I asked her quietly.
She looked up to face me with her purple eyes, but she still continued to write.
"Oh, it's you Ruslan." She was here often, writing down something every single time she came here. We knew each other...just barely.
"Yeah...it's me again." I said, trying to get a better look at her work. Before she could swiftly close the sheet of parchment, I saw enough...could swear though it looked like she was trying to draw something rather than actually writing a letter - it was just that messy.
"Sorry, I..." she said calming herself down a little. "I'm just...busy today. In a hurry."
"Oh really now?" I said smoothly, "You never tell me what sort of work you're doing."
She leaned back slightly and raised an eyebrow. "Would you believe me if told you?"
"Well, I..." actually, I stopped simply because I had no idea where she was going with this.
She changed the subject. "What about you? You seem different today. You get a new job?" she asked politely.
"Oh, yeah! Um," I stared at my security uniform and pointed to it, "got a job as security for some factory around here."
"Huh, neat." she nodded. There was a slight shimmer in her eyes. She slipped her hand into her coat pocket and checking the time on her beautiful silver pocketwatch. "Oh dear, is that the time already? I better go now, Ruslan. Gotta try and finish up this letter." she got up from the bar stool, hurriedly stuffing the parchment into her coat before finishing off her drink.
"Will you write to me someday?" I joked.
She gave me a puzzled look, before smiling. "Yeah...someday I'll write you a letter; if I'm not that busy."
I watched her as she passed by me and walked quickly out of the bar. I didn't mind her at all. She was...someone in this place I could at least talk to, if my friend Petyr wasn't wanting to go out. She was a little weird, I have to say. The way she walks is ridiculously strange. It's like as if she was recently crippled, and was having trouble with trying to walk on two legs. She hasn't told me her name, and neither has she said anything about her work. If I was to try and pinpoint anything that I knew about her, it was that she would come here to get a drink and write, and that she likes a lot of purple.
I checked my pocketwatch for the time. The iron metal was tarnished, but not rusting. The clock face had dust inside and the second hand doesn't work any more. Pocketwatches were cheap to buy, but this one remains to be mine.
More like father's watch, really.
*****
After a hour's walk back home, it was already dark and had just started to snow. The streetlamp nearest to my home flickered in some sort of pattern, so it was a matter of figuring out which lamp on my street did that. Having found the specific one, I stood by the front door of the triple-storey apartment. Newly built, but compared to the rest of all the other run-down apartments around here - it was just the same. This one was yet to earn some vandalism and damage. To the delinquents of Magnitogorsk, it has a big red target painted on it's walls.
I took one look behind me before I decided to unlock the door. For a second, across the street a figure stood in the darkness. It's body blacker than the shadows of the apartments and the night itself. Somehow, I could get the feeling that the figure was staring at me. Watching me intently. I tried to squint to get a better look, but with a quick flicker from the streetlamp, it disappeared in an instant; blended away into the darkness as if it transformed into smoke. I blinked, and tried to gather my thoughts. It's an animal, right? It was sitting down, with ears pointing up. A stray cat or dog perhaps? Has to be a cat. No, no cat disappears that quickly. And it was pretty big for a cat...
And no cat or dog would stare into your soul like that.
I shook my head. Get over it, Ruslan, it was nothing. As I turned the key in the lock, I looked back once more, seeing nothing across the street. It was all still. Closing the door and locking it, as per to the rules of the landlord who reigned supreme here, I sighed to myself.
"Welcome home, Ruslan." I muttered.
It wasn't all that dark in the apartment. A small lamp lit up the staircase, along with a spotlight sitting above the landlord's room. I went up to it, pulling out the payment for today's rent. There was a small slot beside the door with the words "payment goes here if I'm not in!" Along with it was a list of those who lived in the building. A debt list. Good thing I wasn’t one of the few who owned the landlord more than 100. Nah, I owed him 95. I slotted in the payment through the hole, then checking my savings for today. A measly $3. Not enough to buy me anything at all.
At least it was better than having no job.
Solemnly, I walked up the stairs hanging my head. All in all, it was a good day: A drink, some savings for once, a job, and seeing that lavender woman again, still not knowing who the fuck she really is. Stopping off on the second floor, I was about to enter my room when I was lightly tapped on the shoulder.
“Hey! Where have you been today?”
Petyr was in his pyjamas, holding a small torch.
“Sigh, just…been busy.” I muttered, feeling the tiredness catch up to me.
"Yeah," Petyr shone the torch into my face, "You really look like shit. Bolsheviks didn't treat you so nicely on your first day?"
"Uh, no...it was allright I guess..." It was fucking boring as watching paint dry.
Peytr lowered the torch. "Well, Andrey called an hour ago, says he wants you to stop by his office, talk about your accounts and taxes as soon as possible."
I huffed. "Yeah...I'll go over there in the morning, before work."
Peytr came over and patted me on the shoulder. "You take it easy, allright? Any time you need money, I'm always here."
I smiled. "Thanks Peytr."
Nodding, he shut off his torch and returned back into his room. The hallway went pitch black, making me lean on walls to get into my room. Switching the light on, my room was even filthier than the apartment itself. Old newspapers and rubbish everywhere, unfinished bits of paperwork...good thing I do clean up any food mess, or otherwise the rats would be infesting my bed.
Yawning, I prepared to turn in early. First day of work had already exhausted me. I undressed out of my security uniform and swapped for...whatever seemed to be clean. I shifted whatever junk that sat on my bed, turned off the lights and climbed in, ready to fall asleep.
A low, muffled shot rang through the air. I stared out through the bedroom window, where you could see distant lights of the city and the tops of the newly-built factory roofs and smokestacks, lining the horizon. Beyond it was the Magnitogorsk border, closed forever; all city residents weren't allowed out, and all visitors had to have a timed permit to enter the city. Beyond the border was the other border - the border of Kazakhstan, where the city of Aktyubinsk was closest to Magnitogorsk. Headquarters to the Anti-Soviet insurgent groups, they often attacked the city's borders, raiding, sabotaging, throwing bombs and rarely (and most dangerous of all), firing a few long-distance rockets. They were sometimes the reason why most factories around here were newly built.
I leaned back slowly until I was lying on my pillow, staring up at the ceiling.
I really hope the insurgents let me sleep peacefully tonight.
