Petrov

Two weeks earlier, Petrov had been a farmer. He was a simple man, young enough to not yet be married, but old enough to be looking for a wife. He grew sugar beets on his father's land, but in two years time he would likely have land of his own. The war called all this into question. There were always wars, that much was sure, but until the well-dressed officer came into town, his pockets heavy and clinking with coin, Petrov had never entertained the notion of becoming a solider. When the officer finished his speech in the crowded beer hall, Petrov surprised himself by being among the first to step forward.

His parents wept for him, even after he assured them that he would hardly be gone long enough for them to notice he was missing.

The well-dressed officer was never seen again. He had gone off to some other town, in order to charm more of the farmers and miners around Kəlbəcər. The fresh recruits, men of various ages, builds, and fitness for the military, were brought to another officer. This other man was heavy-set, with a scar that showed from under his collar and presumably descended across his chest.

They didn't march, as they weren't really an army at all. Their new officer, the fat one, didn't even give them orders. They followed him though, having nothing better to do, and thinking mostly about the promised pay that came at the end of service. Petrov didn't talk much with them, mostly because the older men seemed to have already settled into a pattern of jokes and stories without him. They would gather around the campfires, eating food donated from local farms, and Petrov would listen, adding nothing to the conversation.

If you asked an Azerbaijani, you would hear that Petrov never entered into Armenian territory at all. To use neutral terms: Petrov crossed into contested territory in his second week of military service. Their fat officer didn't even mention the transition, but it became clear one night when they stopped near a farmhouse and the farmer refused them resources.

Petrov never saw what happened, and only bore witness to screams of the farmer's wife and daughters as they were raped. He felt bad about it, but ate the chickens they had taken anyway. When they left the farm, Petrov didn't see any blood, just a farmhouse with people inside it, indistinguishable from the thousand others that dotted the countryside. It was almost eirie how things like that could happen and look so normal so soon afterwards.

Their small band entered into Susha after most of the looting had already started. There weren't just soliders making a mess of things, but normal people too. Windows were smashed in, dead bodies lay in the streets, and the air was thick with the smell of smoke and sweat. Later on, when Petrov was forced into telling this story by his children, he would say that it was a nationalist fervor, that only some of the people were acting like animals.

I apologize for how historically inaccurate this probably is.

Story #7

Seed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shusha_pogrom

This story is due May 12th at 11:59PM.

The Atomic Man

Daniel was the best actor at Richardson's Theatre, and some went so far as to call him the best actor in all of England. Among those who followed the lives of actors, there was talk about why he stayed there; certainly, there were better troupes to be acting with, such as . When the enthusiasts approached him, they found him polite and gentle, but always somewhat remote. Once he stepped from the stage, the emotion fell from his face.

Away from the crowds, he lived a simple live. His room contained a small bed packed with straw, a bedpan, and a large pile of scripts which he read by candlelight. He ate simply, refused liquor, and kept his distance from the women of the troupe, most of whom were little better than prostitutes. Noble men would come backstage after the show to speak with the women of the stage, talk that eventually came round to money and the lack thereof, and if the noble men later slipped into their tents, no one would call it a transaction.

On stage, Daniel dropped away, and the characters seemed to inhabit his skin. He studied the scripts not just to learn the lines, but to divine the emotions of the men he was playing. When he was finished reading, his knowledge was intimate, and the words came from his mouth unbidden by rehearsal, as though they were being said for the first time with the full force of emotion. It was as if he did not even notice the audience. At times, his devotion to the craft detracted from the performance; he did not like to cover for the mistakes of his fellow actors.

In his eighth year with the troupe, Daniel was introduced to a petite young woman who had recently joined the troupe. Her name was Eliza, which he committed to memory, and about whom he promptly forgot.

Later that week, during a staging of Hero and Leander which had been adapted from the poem by Marlowe, Eliza was playing a friend of Hero's. This was an original invention of their writer, who was following the time-worn tactic of having a close friend make bawdy puns which would be completely inappropriate coming from the virginal Hero. Daniel, as Leander, saw her for the first time. It was not merely her youth or beauty that caught his eye, but the unflinching way that she played her role. Daniel held a low opinion of comedy - the masses would burst their guts laughing at any old penny gaff - but this was something different. She did not play to the crowd, but to the other two people on stage. Daniel found himself laughing, though he'd heard the jokes told a hundred times before.

Late at night, after the third show, Daniel found himself wondering what it was that attracted him to her where so many other women had failed. After some time, he came to the conclusion that it must have been Leander; perhaps his love for Hero was not as pure as once thought, and his mind strayed to other women. With that in mind, the next night went much better - Daniel succumbed to the desire, and wrapped it into his act, a new facet of Leander for the audience to see.

A few days later, she was on his stage again, this time during an original play of the standard love quadrangle variety. Daniel played Orville, a brooding poet, while Eliza played Candice, the smith's daughter. In the end, after much chasing around and various hijinks, along with brief intervention from both gods and fairies, Orville ended up with a different character. Daniel stood beside Eliza during the curtain call though, purely by accident, and could not help but glance at her - stripped of her character, she was flushed and full of excitement, basking in the afterglow of adoration. Daniel had never gone in for audiences, had seen them merely as a distraction, but through her eyes he could somehow see the appeal.

She came to him that night, after the crowds had cleared out. She looked shyly at the floor, then cleared her throat and locked eyes with him.

"What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?" she asked with a sweet smile.

"The exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine," he responded almost automatically.

She approached his small straw bed, where he lay with a script on his lap, and he felt his strength and security fall away, as a wedding veil lifted up after the nuptials had been completed.

A Trip To 1803

Mona stood above the patient, a white mask covering her face and her mind drifting off. She had been employed at Maple River Dental for over 20 years, and while she knew everything about her employers, she often felt they knew nothing about her. Mona was the weak silent type. Physically, she was thin and tall. Her almost albino features nearly faded into the beige walls. With hair too white to be blonde and too brittle to be beautiful, Mona looked older than her forty-years. That is, she would have appeared older if anyone had ever bothered to look at her. As it was, Mona was as close to invisible as a person could be.

Today was like every other day for the past twenty years. Dr. Cindy Fellomy was rushing from room to room, frantic to chip away at her patients' teeth. It was as if she were a little god creating and recreating the crumbling landscape in the planet of the mouth. Because of her godlike powers, she had gone a little mad. At times Mona almost worshiped Dr. Cindy for her pure energy. Dr. Cindy was one of those women who lit the room on fire when she entered, and left it as cold as ice. Despite this, (or more likely because of it) she had a difficult time retaining either her employees or patients for any amount of time. If anyone ever took any notice of Mona (and no one ever did), it would have been obvious that she was in love with her boss.

Today, like most days, Mona watched over her patient as the nitrous oxide began to take effect. This was her favorite time in any day, because Mona could become someone. No one was watching (at least no one who was aware), and she could crawl into their brains through the widening pupils of their eyes, the small narrow vacancy widening to let her jump into the adventures so impossible in her own life.

Mona had discovered this special skill thirteen years ago and indulged in it (as if it were a drug or a king sized candy bar) daily. On her first trip, Mona had fallen quite by mistake. Her patient at the time had been an elderly man, with quite awful bridge work. As he motioned for her to increase the amount of laughing gas, she leaned forward to note the size and shape of his pupils. As Mona drew closer, she began to reach out her hand to steady herself and realized that there was nothing on which to steady herself. She was no longer in the dentist's office, but in the backstage of a very small, long theatre.

When she got her bearings, Mona began to explore a little more. The backstage of theatre ran directly behind the stage and was about four feet wide and a hundred feet in length. At the moment, Mona was alone except for the sound that rushed in over the top of the stage wall. She began to creep slowly toward the apron, and looked out onto the stage. As soon as she grew near, a man dressed in 17th century garb grabbed her arm and threw her onto the stage, "Your turn lad. Remember, we are all merely players."

Though normally Mona would have been frozen to the spot, shuttering and shaking with fright, this time things were different. She strutted to the middle of the stage, and she began to dance. She became a whirling dervish, tipping and spinning, seemingly losing control if only to regain it in the last moment. Mona flung her limbs to and fro, her mind and body in seamless meditation.