A/N: Shadow-Ocelot, thanks for the feedback. -pokes-You looove Volgin, you want to kiiiiss him! Hehe, I amuse myself. I know what you mean though, I'm beginning to get strangely fond of the brute myself! Looking forward to your next chapter!

My Pretty Jungle Flower

Chapter 4

I stayed in his room that night, which was in itself, quite an achievement. I was told much later, by Major Ocelot in fact, that he rarely invited his conquests to stay the night. Indeed, many a half naked prospect had been shown the door when he had his fill. I couldn't blame him. Truthfully, what was there to be said after an occasion like that? The circumstances were far from normal. Even though the Colonel asked me to stay, we passed most of the early morning in silence. On my part, at least, I'd said everything that needed to be said during the night. Or rather, squealed it at the ceiling. I had nothing to compare the experience with, admittedly, so my perception was understandably skewed. I hadn't so much as seen a man who wasn't a ward during my time in the Care Home, let alone one who was as physically... intriguing as the Colonel. He was understanding, but not gentle. Patient, yet demanding. Completely enigmatic, particularly given the fact that I was a virgin and, well... how best to word it delicately? The Colonel was perfectly proportioned, as it were.It was about 4am when I rose from that oversized bed. His bedroom was separated from his office space by a thin wall, that I imagined hadn't always been there. Ironically, most of the nights exploits had not involved the bed at all, but the desk, the windowsill, the coffee table, the bookcase, the floor…

I tinkered around his office, bare breasted in the early morning light. He watched me through the door, but said nothing. So I played him at his own game, stood completely naked and watched him back. It wasn't long before he barked a laugh and went to stand by the window behind the desk. It was raining, and a thin mist rose slowly from the mountains. My plaintive Adonis. Crimson lines snaked along his entire body, where the immense current within his body had broken the skin in thin, continuous trails. Once that infuriating red exoskeleton had been removed, it had amused me greatly to follow those paths with the tip of my finger. He had not been as impressed. Most of them led to palm sized lesions, where his very skin seemed to have been burned away. One on his right shoulder, one just above his right hip, one on the base of his back, and of course, one on the left side of his face. It struck me that he must have endured terrible pain in his life, and for a moment I pitied him. But the feeling left almost as soon as it came upon me.

"So, Colonel, what is it you do here?" I inquired coyly of him, absentmindedly twirling a pencil around my fingers as I sat on his desk. "This fortress has no real strategic military value, unless… you were planning to hide something where no one would find it." I went on. Being in such an environment for so long, where I was expected to shut my mouth and take orders, I had the perfect opportunity to observe. For someone who was as naturally perceptive as I was told I was, the secrets of Groznyj Grad were slowly but surely being revealed to me through the words and actions of the people who lived there. He smiled his custom smile, but didn't look at me. "What are you planning to hide, Colonel?"

"Some things are better left secrets, my dear Lenusya…" He attempted to satiate me with a cryptic answer. I rebuked him.

"I want to know your secrets…" I said, inclining my head to one side, although he continued to look though the window. This brought a somewhat bitter sound from his lips. He clenched his fists, although this time without the familiar creak of his gloves that I'd grown so accustomed to.

"You know all of mine. I'm willing to bet you knew everything about me before I even came here…" I continued, rising from the desk and flicking the pages of an open book back and forth. "It seems only fair…" He knew that I was toying with him, but he wasn't one to be toyed with on any account, not even by me. He was a dangerous animal, and this was not a zoo. A taunted animal will always inevitably bite back, no matter how much you think it adores you. He had only to shift his eyes slightly in my direction, and I bit my tongue. I picked up my discarded, crumpled uniform from the floor, and set about buttoning up the ugly garment. He finally turned to look at me, looking almost distressed.

"Where are you going?" His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but not with anger, as they normally would, but with the sudden realization that he would be left alone. He came towards me and quite urgently took my arm, wrapping his fingers around my elbow. I angled my head faintly, casting a dull shadow across one side of my face as I looked up.

"I have to get breakfast ready for your several hundred groggy, hungry soldiers. The kitchen doesn't man itself, you know." He grumbled, reluctantly releasing my arm. I took a step away from him, to find my horrible slip-on shoes that had also suffered the ungrateful fate of being kicked halfway across the room in a particularly frenzied episode. They turned up under the desk, turned away from me. I could almost hear them whisper, "Dirty girl! Pray for your soul!". Interestingly, the voice was vaguely redolent of my own mother's voice. A woman who had turned to God on her death bed. Hypocrite. I steadied myself against the desk as I slipped the shoes on. He was still watching me. "And you…" I pointed casually in his direction, the tip of my tongue protruding slightly from between my lips as I struggled with the shoes. They were at least two sizes too small, but it was to be expected when they were provided by men, who were eternally hopeless at finding the right sizes when it came to women. "You have an inspection today." He groaned as I reminded him, covering his face with a hand. I laughed.

He deplored the routine inspections. They took him almost the entire day to carry out and were dreadfully tedious. I always enjoyed them. It meant that for one day at least, the girls and I were not tormented. Even the day before, the men would be confined to their rooms, furiously polishing their boots and ironing their parade uniforms. They even treated us particularly nicely, in the hope that we would help them. And we did, but not unselfishly. Some of the girls requested contraband; chocolate, cigarettes (none of them had arrived smokers, but had curiously picked up the addiction during their stay), perfume, silly things like that. All I wanted was information. Little bits here and there was all I needed. Many a soldier had spilled his guts while I laundered his uniform, and it all added up in the end.

He inhaled languidly, running his sparking hands along the soft indents of my waist over the crumpled fabric that sighed smoothly under his touch. Gruffly, he pulled me to him and entwined the fingers of his left hand in my hair, weaving the strands around and between his digits. He had a look of childlike awe playing across his features as the soft, sandy curls laced around his hand.

"I'll see you later." he announced, not so much as a means of farewell, but as a command. I acquiesced readily, dipping my head slightly in acknowledgement before I drew away from him slowly. He let the flaxen locks slip through his fingers as I moved away, rubbing his fingertips together when the final strand had eluded him. I walked backwards to the door, keeping him within my sights, until I backed out of the room and made my way to my room to tidy myself up. No doubt the girls would have some questions for me.

-----

That afternoon I watched the Colonel beat a man to death.

The unfortunate was a relatively new recruit to the facility. In fact, he had arrived the day before I had. Captain Aleksandr Dmitrovich Malenkov was a brash new transfer from a similar facility in Kursk. He was in his early forties, and had seen much action in the war. He had a rather becoming scar across his right eye and a stern, uncompromising expression. In all, he was a perfect candidate to keep the junior officers in line. An indisputably attractive man, had I been interested in other men. We often shared smiles in the corridors, when he would wink innocently and click his tongue in the roof of his mouth. It was one such gesture that earned him his transfer to a morgue.

I had made my way to the kitchen that morning as usual, looking decidedly exhausted. I was the subject of much rumor and whispering from the soldiers as they filed into the "dining room" for their measly morning ration of watery porridge. Their miserable faces always disheartened me. I would have dearly loved to cook them a proper breakfast, as I knew the day that faced them was long and arduous, and each was beginning to look like a ghostly image of his former self. Military service in Groznyj Grad was a measured step above laboring in the gulags. The only difference was an AK-47. The faceless recruits were reassured that it would all be worth it when Brezhnev and Kosygin took power. They would not be forgotten when the conservative coalition assumed control of the Motherland, or so the routine lecture went.

Captain Malenkov had lined up with the other junior officers for the lions share of the breakfast. We shared our blameless smiles as we always did, and he went to sit at the officers table. As he went, the entire room went silent as Colonel Volgin walked in. I smiled shortly, as I heard the whole room struggle for breath, before there was a scuffle of chairs as each man made it to his feet to salute. I could virtually hear their hearts beating. The Colonel never ate with the rest of the troops. He never so much as entered the mess hall, unless it was absolutely necessary. He sneered, raised a hand.

"As you were." he ordered. Not one man sat down, but their arms fell gingerly to their sides. The utter silence and the gaping mouths was astounding. And he enjoyed it. He turned to me, behind the wretched kitchen counter, still looking completely dishelved.

"Everything all right?" he inquired, raising his voice a discerning notch, so that the whole hall heard him. What could I do except nod bemusedly? Although, being entirely girlish, I was bowled over by morning-after modesty, and couldn't stop my cheeks from turning a warm shade of cherry. It was exactly his intention, and having accomplished it, he chuckled and made to leave. At that very moment, Captain Malenkov threw me an indulgent wink. No doubt he had intended to show some sort of solidarity in the situation, but the gesture came at exactly the same time as Colonel Volgin turned to look at him. He stopped short, fixed the new Captain with an arctic glower, then smiled and left the hall. Nothing was said, nothing was done. Until the inspection.

I finished my duties early, to watch the main appraisal. All of the girls did. Hundreds of men lined the southern yards of Groznyj Grad, regimented into their troop formations, medals catching the late morning sun. They always turned out splendidly, thanks in part to our help. We watched from the sidelines as Colonel Volgin passed along the ranks, scrutinizing each and every man in the formation. Captain Malenkov stood before a division of privates. He didn't so much as flinch when the Colonel drew up in front of him, towering over him, casting a long shadow. He was the one man in Groznyj Grad, in the East, that had no fear of the Colonel. Or if he did, he disguised it well. However, this foolish characteristic was easily attributed to his newness to the place.

"I trust you are settling in, Captain?" The Colonel asked, his voice echoing off the steel walls in the yard.

"Yes, sir! You run a fine establishment." Malenkov may have been a war veteran, but he was also a skilled boot-licker. The Colonel sneered and gestured grandly around him.

"Well, we do have the finest staff…" His grin became more sinister. "Wouldn't you agree?" He was baiting the Captain, and everyone knew it but him. Malenkov had ingenuously mistaken the words as a joke between officers, breaking into a furtive chuckle. The Captain was well aware of the nightly antics of the men, and although I'd never seen him in our room, he had more than likely enjoyed more than one of my fellow maids. The Colonel laughed along with him for a moment, before something snapped behind his eyes. From our position, we could almost hear it.

A massive hand closed around Malenkov's throat, silencing his laughter with a helpless wheeze. He pawed idly at the determined hand that had fastened around his windpipe with a sickening cry of anguish, lines of saliva escaping from the sides of his mouth, his eyes streaming tears as they rolled back in his head, his boots leaving the ground. Nobody dared move. The soldiers standing next to Malenkov squeezed their eyes shut, lowered their heads, attempting to block out the stomach-turning cries of their suffocating superior. The Colonel's smile had completely dissipated, leaving only a crazed look of self-righteous intensity that I'd never seen before. Just as he sensed the Captain was about to lose consciousness, he relinquished his grip. Malenkov fell gasping and panting to the ground, his trachea surely crushed. Colonel Volgin rotated his arm over his shoulder.

I'd never seen a man cry before, let alone one so strong and fearless as Captain Malenkov. Sobbing uncontrollably, sounding like a strangled animal, he struggled to escape, in a mad scratching crawl away from the Colonel. Realizing the futility of the action, he got to his knees in front of his commanding officer, yelped something about a family, and frantically produced a photograph from his back pocket. Colonel Volgin took the photograph and studied it, allowing one side of mouth to curl into a smile.

"Don't worry, Aleksandr." he said, soothingly. Malenkov looked up hopefully. "I shall send you to them safely enough." I heard Volgin's knuckles crack as he flexed his hand, Malenkov began to shed new tears. He begged for help, though none was forthcoming.

"Oh God! Somebody help me! He's going to kill me! Dear God! I have a family!"

His fraught face looked desperately at his comrades, who avoided his frantic gaze just as urgently. It all sounded distorted and faint. I took an instinctive step forward, only to be violently restrained by the girls. Electricity began to snap and crackle around the Colonel's body, turning the surroundings a pale, sickly shade of blue. His fist connected with Malenkov's jaw, a nauseating crack signaling that the mandible had been dislocated. Another upsetting thud arose when Malenkov's body hit the ground, his skull fracturing against unforgiving gravel and cement. I was surprised when the girls didn't scream. It seemed their desensitization to violence was complete. I could see the sickness rising in the abdomens of the soldiers, a sea of blanching faces, staring blankly ahead. I could hear whispered prayers from petrified lips. I thanked the Lord myself, that at least Malenkov was unconscious now. Volgin lifted his limp body by the neck, shocking him into consciousness once more and dropping him to the ground anew, for one final insult. What a truly deific power, I thought. A hard boot to the Captain's midsection unquestionably broke some ribs, ruptured some organs. Streams of blood and saliva flowed from his mouth, a rivulet of blood trickled from his ear. He ceased to cry. His eyelids had folded over blood-shot orbs, his body twitched once as the current racked his limbs. He drew his final breath.

I think I wept. Solid, frozen tears of anger and confusion. The kind of shock one feels when a beloved pet suddenly turns on a friend, without reason or mercy. My breath burned in my lungs, and I felt myself sink to the ground, where I was encircled by the friendly arms of Svetlana.

I'd shared a bed with the devil.