Storm

That's how my memory starts.

Me, shivering and sitting on my hands, clenching my butt cheecks together, and staring past my grandma, who smiles at me, towards the window. There is a storm outside and I'm watching the dark clouds and the lightning and the rain hammering against the window and I would rather be outside.

Grandma smiles. She says „It's okay, we can call the police soon.“ When she finishes speaking her lips are just flat, dry, gray pancakes pressed on one another and I look away from her, back down to the wet, black, moving mass on the ground.

A heap of dirty laundry, but moving every few seconds.

I was 3 when dad went to the shelter with me. Some of it I remember, some of it he told me afterwards. Dad tried to get me to pick a cat, but I walked right by the cats towards the dogs. Some were pushing against the metal bars, others just sat in the corners of their kennels and then there was that dog, some pitbull breed, and I put my hand through the metal bars and before dad could pull me away the dog had his head pressed against my hand and I must have giggled like rarely before or after.

So we got Vitaliy.

And Vitaliy was there for me, to protect me, and slept at my side even as my parents were suspicious, watchful, of the huge, muscular pet that could rip their child in half in less than a second. They got used to him. Took them half a year. They got to love him. And then Vitaliy started eating the furniture.

So Vitaliy went to grandma's place, the big former farm with plenty of space and other things to chew on.

„You want to tell me how it happens?“ Grandma smiles again. „Please?“

I, 8 years old, shake my head.

Mr. Torre had a strange face. Round, like his whole body. And always smiling. Nowadays I would have recognised it, but back then he was just the round, rubicund, funny man.

He gave me lots of sweets, that man. He also liked to hug me. Grandma called him 'deranged' and 'punished for his sins', but he was so happy that I never thought he could be punished for something.

He also liked to take me to the woods. Grandma did not like that at all, when Torre and Vitaliy and I went to the woods. She said Mr. Torre once felled one of her trees. Then he broke her fence. Then he broke her grandchild, that day, when I came back from the forest with blood all over my trousers.

„It's okay,“ grandma says. „He can't hurt you anymore.“

The laundry on the floor moves, makes a gurgling sound, but fails to speak.

I, 8 years old, nod.

„It was really painful.“

„What was painful?“

„That time in the woods. I was on the floor and it was really really painful. Here.“

I point at my left knee.

Grandma presses her eyes shut and turns her head away.

„And you don't need to say more, okay? You don't need to say more.“

„I don't tell them how Mr. Torre cired?“

„No,“ she says. „Don't tell the police that.“

„Why not?“

„Just don't tell them.“

„Do they want to know about the scar on my knee? From the fall?“

„Tell them how he always gave you sweets and took you alone to his workshop.“

„Oh, yeah, he did.“