title & summary lyric from taylor swift's 'all too well' from red
guys i can't believe it's already october
p.s. trying out a new style, hope you guys like it :D
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" well sir, if things are real, they're there all the time. "
" are they? "
c.s. lewis ; the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe
every year, yelena belova counts down to october. starting from september, she ticks the thirty days off one by one, waiting as patiently as an excited little girl can without imploding.
october means it is the time to get ready for halloween, to dress up in silly costumes, eat all the candy she wants, spend the cooling nights trying to watch natasha's favorite horror films without covering her eyes at the scary bits.
mama always bakes them cupcakes with orange icing.
mama sits patiently with them to carve up the pumpkins papa brings home. he always brings back too many, and mama says she doesn't know what to do with all of it.
yelena's favorite thing to do is to scoop out all the seeds into a big tray, because that means roasted pumpkin seeds to snack on for the next month.
she's not very good with the knife, not like how mama and natasha are.
but she likes to watch.
mama cuts the cleanest lines on the pumpkins, can make them look happy or sad or spooky—whatever yelena asks for. papa says she makes the prettiest pumpkins on their street, maybe even in the whole town.
natasha is good with the knife too, she's not as fast as mama, but she also makes clean, straight cuts. her pumpkins always have a smile on them.
yelena gets to use the knife too, under supervision, but the pumpkin skin is thick and difficult to cut through. she stabs at it and it looks ugly and she cries because she just can't do it right, but mama says it's okay, she'll be a big girl soon and be able to cut the best pumpkins, and then mama helps her fix the pumpkin so it has a scary face with teeth on it.
papa always buys big bags of candies and chocolates. yelena's favorites are gummy bears and worms, natasha's favorites are the chocolates with peanut butter in the middle.
she loves jumping in the leaf pile with natasha in the corner of the backyard. lying in a sea of red, orange, and yellow leaves, lazily watching the clouds drifting across the sky. stamping her feet and hearing the crunch underfoot.
then papa would come out and pretend to look disappointed that they'd ruined the pile he spent the past hour raking.
and the next morning, the leaf pile would be ready for them to mess up all over again.
yelena had begged to go to the haunted house at the fair, lots of other kids were going in and it looked like fun. papa had taken her, she didn't know why mama and natasha didn't want to go but maybe they were just scaredy-cats. she wasn't a big girl yet but she could be brave like her papa.
but it was scary.
she had screamed.
papa had screamed too, even if he said afterwards that he didn't. she's sure he did.
the ghost made her cry.
when it was over, she decided she didn't like haunted houses.
but she did like dressing up. her favorite costume had been the green dragon that had wings and a spiky tail. she had run up and down the street, roaring at everyone.
and afterwards, she and natasha would eat all the candy they had collected and stay up late at night until stomping and running around the house made them so tired they would fall asleep on the floor and wake up in their beds the next morning.
it had always been magic.
yelena belova thinks october might be her favorite month.
when summer starts, yelena is ready to start counting down to october again.
but she only gets to the twenty-first of august before her world falls apart.
it is always cold in the red room. cold, damp, and dark.
it reminds her of the haunted house.
the other girls with their white, expressionless faces look like ghosts.
she hears screaming from other rooms at night and it makes the goose bumps rise on her skin.
it makes her think of the horror movies she used to watch with natasha. there would always be a lot of screaming, a lot of blood, and she would jump in fright, but natasha was always there with an arm around her, even if she never stopped teasing.
this is worse than the horror movies.
and it's scarier, because the monsters look just like real people. makes it harder to tell them apart.
the handcuffs clanking against the bed remind her of the chains that ghosts drag around and she shivers.
she wants to cry, but she's been here long enough to know that crying is useless and no one cares. and even if she tries to cry, the tears don't come.
it makes her think of the last book she had listened to mama read.
it had been a warm summer night, and natasha had curled up at the foot of yelena's bed while mama read to both of them:
" if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you — you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. you feel as if nothing is ever going to happen again. "
yelena hadn't understood it then, but she understands now.
she hurts so much she wants to scream and wail, but all that comes out now is a strangled sob and the ache in her chest never goes away. she feels like she cried all her tears and now she's run out and there's no more left.
the red room demands the quietness. girls who cry and thrown tantrums need to be broken. she knows that tears mean no dinner and all it will give her is a sore throat and stuffed nose, leave her choking, gasping for air.
the quiet is just as painful, but it is easier. it keeps her alive.
there is no mama that is coming to save her.
mama died on the plane, yelena saw how all the blood coated her neck, her hands, her clothes.
[ like the fake blood she used for her costume two halloweens ago, only this time it was real. it was real and mama was bleeding to death and yelena couldn't do anything to stop it. ]
she doesn't know where papa went.
she waits for natasha to come.
but she doesn't.
madame b puts the knife in yelena's hands.
it's sharp and glints in the sunshine as they stand in the courtyard of the academy.
it's not so different from the knife at home, the one they used to carve up the pumpkins.
except there's blood, and girls crying and screaming and it hurts and yelena cries too, at the line of fire down her arm, on her side, the crimson beads of blood on her pale skin, staining her uniform.
[ pain only makes you stronger ]
she realizes this is why mama and natasha were so good at using knives.
[ my girls are the toughest girls in the world ]
she moves faster the next time, doesn't flinch anymore. gets better, more agile.
in no time at all, she becomes good at it. when her little fingers curl around the smooth handle, she feels stronger, braver. they're taught knives are an extension of their hands, and she soon learns all the places to cut that inflict the most damage, the most pain, certain death.
for the first time, madame b praises her.
it makes yelena smile.
but yelena wishes she had a pumpkin to carve instead. now she could show mama and papa and natasha how she, too, could cut straight and sure.
they're only six years old, too young to use guns. but they get to hold the empty ones first, learn how to point and aim. they learn to name the different makes of guns and their respective bullets. each part of the gun. how to clean the gun, how to load the clip.
it is strange, the first time yelena holds a gun in her small hands.
a tokarev tt-33.
7.62x25mm cartridge.
small in size, but simple, powerful, accurate.
[ " just like how you should be, " madame b had said. ]
yelena's surprised by how heavy it is.
it's solid, the metal cold against her sweaty palms.
nothing like the toy gun jackson had been holding when he was dressed up as han solo last halloween. he'd let her play with it for a while, and she had waved it around pretending to shoot – pew pew.
now she knows real guns aren't like that.
the sound when they goes off makes her want to cover her ears, the smell of gunpowder stings her nose and the back of her throat.
it makes her think of papa hanging off the airplane wing, shooting at the bad guys with his big gun.
madame b shows them how to aim for the bullseye.
her gun is silver, just like her hair.
bang.
bang.
bang.
some of the girls flinch at the sound and cry, but not yelena. she doesn't cry anymore.
she's a big girl.
she can even braid her hair all by herself now. tie her own shoelaces.
but mama and papa and natasha aren't there to see it.
october in russia is cold, so much colder than ohio.
yelena hates it.
everything is grey. even the leaves that fall from the trees seem less colorful somehow.
their class is already two girls fewer.
she misses mama's cupcakes, the ones with orange icing.
she can't really remember how they taste anymore, except that they were sweet.
she hasn't had sweets in so long.
she misses mama.
when it snows the second week of october, it feels all wrong. it's only supposed to snow after halloween comes.
(there won't be halloween anymore)
and during ballet class, as she rises on the tips of toes, works on her turn-out, her flexibility, she thinks of all the costumes that she will not get to wear.
[ just several months ago, she had been hoping to go as wednesday addams, because that meant she would get to dye her hair, just like natasha had been allowed to. or maybe a power ranger, because they had really cool suits. ]
now she wonders if she will ever get to celebrate halloween again.
from her bed next to the window, yelena watches dismally as the snow falls on the ground outside the academy.
it's the last day of october.
it's halloween.
she thinks of the house in ohio. the jack-o-lanterns, the pumpkin pies, costumes and chocolates and candies. papa reading them scary stories in the dark bedroom with only a flashlight. mama making sure the decorations in the yard were all set up nice and pretty. natasha helping her zip up her costume.
she wonders what luke, the boy she kissed in kindergarten, would be wearing for halloween this year. if their neighbor kaitlyn was going to wear the princess dress she had been talking about all summer.
did they notice that yelena and her family were gone?
was someone else living in her house now? playing with her toys?
it's cold.
she hugs her bruised knees a little closer to her chest as she curls up under the thin blanket.
her body aches from the sparring session they had earlier that morning.
today feels just like every other day. even though it's halloween for some people, somewhere else in the world.
she's so, so tired.
the wind howls mournfully, and yelena thinks it cries for those who cannot.
it will be november tomorrow, but it doesn't matter either. there are no halloween decorations to take down, no jack-o-lanterns to throw away, no leftover candy to find and finish.
no mama, no papa, no natasha.
it is the end of autumn. it will be the first day of winter tomorrow.
yelena belova is six years old when her childhood is over.
there will be no more halloween, no more dress-ups, no more chocolates, no more spooky fun and games.
the days blend into each other, pass in a blur. yelena can't tell them apart anymore. it's always cold, and the chill settles into her bones.
her ledger begins to fill up, her hands stained with real not fake blood.
by next october, yelena is seven when she makes her first successful kill.
the gunshot rings loud in her ears, but her hands don't shake anymore and her aim is true.
blood splatters, crimson, onto the powdery white snow.
madame b smiles, lips pressed into a fine line. her lipstick as red as the blood at their feet.
she reaches out to give yelena a pat on the head.
for half a second, it almost feels like mama.
but mama's gone
yelena belova hates october.
" if ever they remembered their life in this world it was as one remembers a dream. "
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all quotes from c.s. lewis' the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe
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