Legs

Story of twin brothers from Ukraine- one was born with four legs and one was born with none.

Sergi mulled around the main road for a little bit, in front of a gift shop with shiny trinkets, debating whether he should go inside and get his brother Maksym something before heading over to the bus stop. Then he decided not to. Why would Maksym want anything that had Kyiv, Ukraine written all over it? He was born there and lived there for 20 years, he was probably just as sick of it as Sergi was.

Sergi hacked a lugi into the street as a woman and her young daughter walked by. The woman had a red, patterned scarf over her head and a fashionable beige coat with red mittens. She avoided eye contact, while her daughter, dressed in a similar-yet-miniature-fashion, looked up at him with big brown eyes that betrayed both curiosity and fear. Sergi stared back, also with a sense of curiosity, but more a sense of insolence, as if to say “What?” really loudly to the little tyke. Didn’t these parents teach their kids not to stare anymore? Jesus.

Sergi supposed that he would rather people stare at him then pretend to completely ignore him, like the woman was doing. He liked to be acknowledged. Nothing wrong with that, he thought.

He heaved himself off of the bench using his arm muscles and his crutches and started going down the road to the bus stop. People tried to stay out of his way as he walked down the road, often giving him unintentional second glances as they passed by. It’s not like Kyiv is a huge town, Sergi thought sarcastically, you think they would know about me by now.

The storefront windows glittered in the almost noonday sun of late fall, farther to the south than normal. The sun was not warm, but Sergi didn’t mind- using his arms this much was always a good work-out, and he was working up a minor, sticky, sweat under his plaid shirt by the time he got to the bus stop. People were waiting in a small crowd, wearing their hats, mittens, scarves, mostly in reddish tones, like fallen leaves. A few of them glanced at Sergi before turning away abruptly, taking the “no staring” rule to heart. Sergi ignored them, and found a bench for him to perch on. Wait until you see my brother, he thought. He snickered as he crossed his arms and laid back on the bench, letting the sunshine hit his face.

Sergi heard the roar of the bus in the distance, and perked his head up from his reverie as everyone else was craning their heads to the right, tip-toeing to catch the first glimpse of the bus coming all the way from Warsaw, Poland. Maksym had been away with the circus for almost three years now, after escaping in the night to go follow the dream his mother had not allowed.

“It is a disgrace!” she had said frantically, “All my sons are leaving me alone to die alone.” Then she would start crying until her coughing fits acted up, and Sergi had to ask her to sit down and take her medicines. She was getting old, and Maksym didn’t seem to care. He only wanted the fame and the glory that came with being a circus freak- because he didn’t want to go through life being just a normal freak who had to take care of his mom. So he left, automatically appointing Sergi to the position of looking after his mother. What was he going to do? Just leave her there by herself? The woman was showing the first stages of lung cancer. That would just be heartless to do, after all that she had done for him over the years. Maksym was heartless.

All this overthinking about Maksym’s desertion caused Sergi to scowl as the bus rolled up to the bus stop, its brakes releasing and causing a puff of warm air to exhale from the underbelly of the bus. The driver opened up the doors and people with tacky track suits and duffel bags came spilling out of the bus. Most looked like high school athletes or middle aged men coming back from Warsaw. The people in the crowd held up their signs, and there were tearful and joyful reunions happening all around Sergi, no longer the center of attention. Of course, one of the last ones out of the bus was Maksym.

Maksym was a handsome man, handsomer than Sergi, with a strong, square jaw and whispy, light brown hair. He had clear blue eyes that exuded confidence as he walked down the stairs of the bus with his strong legs. The pants he wore had extra pants legs for his two, shorter legs, in between the pair of his normal legs. Sergi thought that they must have made them for him special at the circus. This thought caused him to scowl and put him in a disagreeable mood as Maksym embraced him.

“Brother, it is so good to see you!” he said as he backed away, smiling his smile of straight, white teeth. A pale woman with a very theatrical black cloak hovered close to him, and Maksym introduced her, “This is Malina, my girlfriend.”

Sergi noticed the woman’s long, spider-like fingers, pale except for the little hearts and stars tattooed on them as she pulled down the hood of her cloak. She had vivid raspberry colored hair that fell to her shoulders , and full lips of the same color. There were tattoos of little birds almost fluttering above her eyebrow and spiral designs crawling up her neck. She must be the tattooed woman at the circus, Sergi thought. She reached out her right arm to shake Sergi’s, and he barely poked out one of his hands from his crutch to shake it. Maksym had done well for himself, Sergi thought bitterly.

 

They walked through the crooked front door of their mother’s little cottage, Sergi leading the way and not taking notice whether Malina and Maksym were following him or not. He just wanted to get home to eat his mother’s dinner. She was standing over the stove, and the warm, brothy smell of her Borsch wafted in the air. She turned to greet her sons and Malina with two kisses for each cheek for both of them, and a small gasp at Malina’s sheer number of tattoos before giving her a kiss on both cheeks as well. For the first time in a long time, their mother had rosy cheeks, finally having her sons together.

They sat down to dinner, Sergi sitting on the highest chair with his crutches propped up against the table, Maksym sitting composedly across the table from him, and Malina his side. Their mother sat at the head of the table, right in front of the window, which caught the last little bits of sunshine even though it was only about 4 pm. They said their prayers and started eating, Sergi and Maksym gluttonously slurping away at their soup while Malina sipped carefully at first to be polite. Eventually she started hounding the soup down just as the men were, which made their mother smile.

“How did you two meet?” Their mother asked, turning to Maksym and putting her hand on his arm, hoping to hear a romantic story.

“It’s a funny story mother,” he said, glancing at Malina with a smile as she looked back at him stifling back a giggle, “I was backstage at our show in Prauge, just coming back from doing my bit, when I saw the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen…”

“Oh stop it!” Malina said playfully.

“And I was in a daze, because I knew I had to go talk to her. I was so nervous, but I decided that I had to do it. So I walked up to her, and right as she turned to see me, I slipped on elephant dung and fell straight on my back!”

Their mother and Malina started laughing, Sergi sarcastically muttered, “Oh those damned elephants.” He wanted to puke. He couldn’t believe that his mother was just letting Maksym get off scot-free after deserting her to join the circus.

If I had done what Maksym did, he thought, I would be shunned from the family. I’m gone for over two hours and Mother starts to worry. Damn him. Damn Maksym and his Goddamn Circus.

That evening, Sergi lowered himself into bed, feeling worse than ever. His stomach hurt and he was cross from not even being allowed a word at dinner without Maksym interrupting about something crazy he did in the circus. He lay in bed with his crutches still attached, and while cursing in whispers, detached his crutches from his arms and threw him off his bed. They fell on the wood floor with a great thud, which he was sure the whole house had heard.

“Don’t slam your crutches, sweetie.” Said his mother from the room across the hall. He scowled. The walls were paper thin.

He rested his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes, trying to will himself to sleep, but he kept hearing Maksym and Malina whispering sweet nothings to each other, just on the other side of the cracker jack wall. Sergi tried to cover both of his ears with a pillow, but ended up giving up and looking straight up at his ceiling, praying for sleep.

“Hey Malina, have you seen my red duffel bag?” Maksym said. Sergi heard him rustling around the room.

“Uh, yeah I left it out in the living room.” She said.

“Oh ok, I’m going to go get it…”

“No, don’t go! Come into bed with me.”

“But Malina, I left all of my money in there…”

“So? You’re at your mother’s house. No one’s going to take it. Come here, I want kisses.”

Sergi growled, and, fed up, knocked on the wall, “GO TO SLEEP!”

“Oh sorry Sergi,” Maksym said. He then heard Malina say, “What’s his problem?” and Maksym shush her.

Sergi dreamed of the circus that night. The freak show, what he imagined it to be like. He imagined that he was wearing the big top hat of the ring leader, and the long red coat with the pointy coat-tails in the back. He had legs, and they were in shiny black boots that didn’t scuff or look dirty, even walking through elephant dung. He was in the main ring of the circus, and there were people there, watching, clapping, and chanting his name. He only saw Malina there, sitting in a chair with her black hooded cape falling around her shoulders seductively as she eyed him. He smiled confidently, knowing that he was the in the form that could please her. As he got closer, her blue eyes twinkled in the ethereal torchlight under the striped tent and the birds tattooed above her eyebrow and on her cheekbones started flapping their wings. He leaned over her and looked down into her eyes, noticing the coils on her neck slithering like curious snakes, ready to see what he would do next. He went for her lips, biting them softly, moving to her neck, and behind her ears. She giggled with delight and pulled off her cape, letting it fall to the ground around her. Her entire body was covered in tattoos, but Sergi couldn’t decipher them all. He was caught staring right above her breasts- she had a chest piece- and it was an eye, an eye that one would see drawn on heiroglyphs of Egypt. It was moving around frantically as if it couldn’t focus. Sergi knew it wasn’t Egyptian. It was Maksym’s eye.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it” he explained to the eye, scooting farther and farther away from Malina who was now staring at him blankly with pasty white eyes.

“I’m the one who’s sorry.” The words came out of Malina’s mouth, but were in the voice of Maksym. Right then, the eye focused it’s attention on Sergi and Sergi was hypnotized. He shrunk back to his original form- a man without legs, and the coils and creatures tattooed on Malina’s body came to life and jumped off of her body, coming directly towards Sergi. The sensuous lines ensnared Sergi, wrapping around his neck and asphyxiating him, as the birds pecked at his face…. He was suffocating...

Sergi woke up with a start, and caught his breath. Making sure that he was safe in his room, he rubbed his throat, and stared at the ceiling. He couldn’t let Maksym just live the life he had always wanted.

Then he remembered. The duffel bag was in the living room. It had Maksym’s money. It wouldn’t be a problem if I just went down there and saw how much there was, he thought to himself. He climbed off of his bed, deciding not to use his crutches- they made too much noise, and someone would wake up. He pushed open the already slightly ajar door and walked on his hands all the way down to the living room- this required some stairs, but in Sergi’s mind, it was worth it. He waddled over to the living room, where the duffel bag was perched on a couch. The lamp from a streetlight poured into the living room through the blinds, and Sergi was immediately uncomfortable, as if he expected someone to come up to the window and see what he was doing. He pulled the duffel bag down and quietly zipped it open.

He couldn’t believe it.

The entire bag was stuffed with money, and a few of Maksym’s circus costumes. In disdain, he pulled out the costumes and left them all over the floor. Then he quietly zipped the bag back up and pulled the strap over his head so he could wear it behind him, and clutch the straps in his teeth. His arms were strong enough just to get him back up to his room. So he hoisted himself to the bottom of the stairs, and decided to guide his way back up by using the banister, and hoisting himself one arm at a time, using his lower body to hop up every time he had reached his arms out to capacity. He got to the top of the stairs after getting into the rhythm of this task and crawled into his bedroom. He grabbed his crutches and strapped them onto his arms, and hoisted himself up, so that they were supporting him. Sergi then walked over to his window, knowing that he could jump out- the drop was not that far. He opened the window with his arm still attached to his crutch, and this caused the crutch to clang against the wall underneath the window. He put his hands on the windowsill, but immediately regretted this decision. His right hand had snagged on a rusty, bent nail that was hammered into the window sill. There was a little bit of blood, but nothing serious. He wiped it on his shirt and pulled himself onto the windowsill, making sure to avoid the nail. As he did, the duffel bag on his bag got twisted, so that the strap made an x behind his head. He ignored it, as he stared of into the slightly cloudy night over Kyiv, Ukraine. He hoped he’d never have to see this place again. Then he grabbed hold of the widow, and tried to lower himself down, thinking that it would lesson the noise that way. In the process, he lost his grip, and fell, the duffel bag getting caught on the rusty nail. He was suspended in the air, with the strap around his neck, tightened on by the x he had left in the straps when he tried to get out of the window. He panicked, and tried, to reach up to loosen himself, but the crutches got in the way. Panicking, he tried to take them off, but he realized he still would not be able to reach… His vision started to go dark, and the stars twinkled above him like the torchlight in Malina’s eyes…

They found Sergi the next morning hanging by the strap of the duffel bag. His mother had cried, because she didn’t know what it meant. Malina looked horrified. Maksym tried to swallow his guilt.

“It’s because I left.” He told Malina, as the morgue escorted his body out of the house, “I got to have all the glory, and he wanted it too, because he never had it.” Maksym wiped away tears.

“I can’t believe it. “ Malina said, shaking her head and contemplating Sergi’s death.

“If only he knew,” Maksym said, burying his face in his hands.

“If only he knew what?” Malina asked.

“That money in that bag was for him. It was for us.”

Malina looked confused, “What do you mean?”

Maksym choked back authentic tears and looked towards the sky as if he were betrayed. “That was the money that was going to give him my legs!" 

Author's Note

This was written with no real revisions, so any suggestions would be helpful. I hope I don't come across making fun of people with disabilities, because that is not how I feel at all or wanted to portray in the story. I was trying to capture the essence of the freak shows in Europe during the twentieth century.

Reviews

[E.H. Monroe]

Don;t apologize to the slugs ali. Let them complain if they want, its a story that you told with great detail. People would complain about car abuse for people who wait for oil changes. Let them die on their flags.

Sergi hacked a lugi into the street as a woman and her young daughter walked by.”-all stories have a great spitting scene in the first part. They also have to spell loogi in any way they see fit HA.
Him scowling at the youngster after his hideous act and finding himself defensive is a tight scene, clearly the cat has zero moral fiber.

The commonality of the crutches to the audience really sets the tone. As if how said in passing, we should automatically know and say to ourselves “Yeah, what the f**k is with those people.”

“wearing their hats, mittens, scarves, mostly in reddish tones, like fallen leaves.”-awesome visual

“Then she would start crying until her coughing fits acted up”you have this natural story telling sense, like no big f*****g windup to “oh his mom was sick and she coughed blah blah bullshit” The way its brought up is again, something we hear in random conversation. You don’t pull on unnecessary description, but hit us with the quick pieces and let the reader fill in the puzzle.

The extra legs contrasted by the hamdsome figure of Maksym is almost disturbing. Like, f**k the extra legs, this dude was stylish.

“That money in that bag was for him. It was for us.”- I just got hit with 18 layers of d****e chills.
Jesus Christ, talk about fucked and depraved and depressing. This is beyond talent. This is seeing a picture in passing and making a layered story of confusion and intrigue in one solid bolt. The symbolic kick behind Maksym having all that Sergei wanted and LITERALLY had HIS legs was the icing on the cake. This was jealousy, masked behind brotherly love in a way that broke my f*****g heart.
Genius, f*****g genius work

Revisons? Nah. Maybe less of explained internal dialogue from Sergei and the narrator. Just throw some italics around it and the reader should be able to pick up without so much "telling"