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section7mfu2013-12-11 07:56 am
The Randomness of Life Chapter 72 for a "Little Drabble Do Ya" Section VII challenge
Prompted by: The Thin People~Sylvia Plath
They are always with us, the thin people.Meager of dimension as the gray people.
Were small that they famished and Grew so lean and would not round
Illya watched as the crowds in Red Square shuffled by, moving with little purpose, as if they walked just for the sake of it, with no destination. Thin people with thin lives, life a daily drudge without hope. Yet he was not one of them.
Out their stalky limbs again though peach. Plumped the bellies of the mice.
Under the meanest table. It was during the long hunger-battle
It was a daily task to work for so little money, and have no food in the State-run stores to feed their hungry mouths. The black market served those who were clever, but their risk was two-fold...being caught by Secret Police or in the hands of the Vor.
They moved under the watchful eyes of sentinal tanks and guns in the morning mist.
Out their stalky limbs again though peace. Plumped the bellies of the mice
Under the meanest table.It was during the long hunger-battle
Illya walked from Krasnaya ploshchad', heading in the direction of Klodina airport and to the headquarters of the GRU. He had been summoned, and knew it was finally his time for an important assignment, one that was surely a test of his abilities and loyalty to the Party.
.
They found their talent to persevere. In thinness, to come, later,
Into our bad dreams, their menace. Not guns, not abuses,
His training was to be put to use. Kill someone...a traitor. He did not know who just yet as that was to be revealed. It weighed heavily on him.
Why could there not be another way?
He was unlike other GRU agents...he felt guilt. He cared for innocents.
Empty of complaint, forever. Drinking vinegar from tin cups: they wore
The insufferable nimbus of the lot-drawn.Scapegoat. But so thin,
It was as Illya surmised, a test. He was to kill a man, one who had trained alongside him less than a year ago. He was deemed a traitor, that was what was said.
A man ready to defect. Kill him they said, he is an enemy.
.
Keep from cutting fat meat. Out of the side of the generous moon when it.
Set foot nightly in her yard. Until her knife had pared
Nicholaí Alexandrov had a wife and newborn son.
How could Illya in good conscience do the deed he’d been ordered to do. They were not defecting, and though the man was an agent, his life was being forfeited by GRU to test young Kuryakin.
The moon to a rind of little light. Now the thin people do not obliterate
Themselves as the dawn. Grayness blues, reddens, and the outline
No matter what his training told Illya to do, he couldn’t murder this little family in cold blood. At risk to his own life, he would save them and hope the ruse he’d devised would save his own life.
They’d head for the Finnish border through the Karelian Isthmus to freedom.
Of the world comes clear and fills with color. They persist in the sunlit room: the wallpaper
Frieze of cabbage-roses and cornflowers pales. Under their thin-lipped smiles,
Nadia was afraid, at first refusing. She hated what her husband was and hated Illya. Reason finally took hold and they left with nothing except the will to save their lives. It would be dangerous, but staying meant their deaths were assured.
Illya made promises he wasn’t sure he could keep.
Their withering kingship. How they prop each other up!
We own no wilderness rich and deep enough.For stronghold against their stiff
The trek was arduous, and keeping the infant Grisha quiet most difficult. The mother was not a strong woman and much of their journey would be on foot once they’d passed Lake Ladoga.
There would be patrols to evade, and now Illya thought surely KGB was following them.
Battalions. See, how the tree boles flatten. And lose their good browns
If the thin people simply stand in the forest, Making the world go thin as a wasp's nest
Illya’s plan failed as the KGB caught them. He killed them, but suffered the loss of his charges, only the wounded infant survived... not for long.
He returned to his handlers; Nicholaí’s grisly finger as proof the task was completed.
KGB would have to solve their own riddle...
And grayer; not even moving their bones.
Friend and family lost to the cruelty of their government; Illya wondered if this
might be his fate someday... being tossed aside like yesterday’s trash.
And for what purpose; it mattered not. This was his lot in life, kill or be killed, life or death.
A grim future indeed.*
Note: this was the inspiration for my story “The Test” https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9258789/1/The-Test
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