Shadows You're Seeing That He's Chasing—Russia, 1916
The train spat acrid black smoke into the air as it prepared to depart. Groaning into action, the locomotive inched forward. A shadow, peering out from behind a pillar, watched as the rear of the train approached before drifting silently to the platform in the back, which he effortlessly climbed. The engine whirred, and the speed picked up. The boy tried the door but found it bolted. Yet it mattered not; he was gliding away from the other besprizornye of Moscow to start a new life wherever the tracks took him.
Settling down, back against the steel, legs squashed against the metal bars, his youthful mind filled with wonder at the prospect of life outside of the smothering city where he, like a wisp of smoke hovering for just a moment after the match is lit, barely existed. He for once, a hazy cloud drifting in the wind, offering no rain to nourish the barren land and instead sweeping in a listless grey to dampen the clear sky, allowed hope to blossom up through the gloomy clouds of misery.
Dusk circled in, clouding everything beneath a mask of veiled darkness. The shadows of night concealed the world under its dark wings, and like clouds in the sky, turned all to unfeeling opacity; light trapped behind the obscuring feathers. Flitting restlessly between sleep and lonely consciousness, the boy imagined his new life. He would leave the shadows of Moscow to step into light, where the glowing sun would push away the haunting demons.
Jolted from his daze by a shout, he looked up to see a man, tall and robust, towering over him. Up he scrambled. Now facing the man, he saw in his face no compassion. Rather a cold and hardened exterior glared down. He knew this look well; it was the look of the wealthy—the ones who had a bed to sleep in each night, a meal each day, and somebody to love them. It was the look that he, a vagrant besprizornye, all but expected. It held disgust, scorn, indifference, and sometimes the tiniest most imperceptible bit of pity.
The man, yelling loudly, seized the boy's frail arms, gentility forgotten. He asked no questions, not wanting any answers the child had to give. Too weak to protest, the boy's bleary struggling went virtually unnoticed by his captor. Just like a cloud trapped in a gust, he could neither fight nor resist the overwhelming strength of his opponent. So he was forced against the cold metal bars. So he was lifted above them. So he was thrown over.
He made no noise. No shout escaped his lips as he crashed to ground with a limp thud. Over and over his body rolled, head lolling after striking the metal tracks hard, until it came finally to halt. Shallow breaths scarcely louder than a whisper alone told that the lifeless body had a faint wisp of life remaining still.
As the boy lay bleeding on the tracks, his breaths slowly faded into silence. There he would lie, motionless but for the Cinereous Vulture's picking at his carcass by morning, until the next train would blaze down the tracks, devouring his remaining flesh beyond recognition.
And as the train sped off into the distance, leaving him long behind, the shadows crept around his body, enveloping him. His name was Afanas Alkaev. He was thirteen years old. And he faded away into the eternal darkness of night.