Sometimes your mind is like a room with steel bars on the windows. You’re retreating into a corner, dragging your hand across the wall. There’s something at the door and it moves toward you. Sometimes it’s just a mass of pain – a tumour of pointed teeth, flailing arms, black claws. Sometimes it has aContinue reading “Nightmares:”
Category Archives: Stories
Bash my clever little head in
“It’s Quieted Down” by Nikolai Nikanorovich Dubovskoii. 1890. The State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow. Before my eyelids come unglued – I know what the day will be like. If the day is bad, the pain in my head and heart start immediately, the second after the alarm clock’s depth-charge disrupts the blood-warm sea of sleep. IfContinue reading “Bash my clever little head in”
Xenia
I have written about this on some Russian-language sites, and have (surprisingly) received a lot of hate for it, a lot of false accusations, but also an overwhelming amount of support. The name has been changed. This is Xenia’s life. From start to finish. It’s condensed, and there are a lot of blanks that willContinue reading “Xenia”
My mother
Was walking home one evening, when she saw a girl and a boy standing outside a dorm (we live next to a small college). The boy was yelling and swearing and pushing at the girl, and she was standing there shaking, and my mother, seeing and hearing all this, couldn’t help herself. So as sheContinue reading “My mother”
Men Who Write About Prostitution Tend to Piss Me Off
… Probably because they’re men, and, in some way, my prejudice tells me that they will never see women who sell their bodies as human beings. Particularly if the men involved are priviledged Americans and the prostitutes are from “the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.” Nevertheless, I liked this latest offering on Common Ties.Continue reading “Men Who Write About Prostitution Tend to Piss Me Off”
Natalia A. 