Glorious Heroes of the Revolution

        It was our chance to be Brutus, our chance to make a mark on history. Ever since I was a child, a poor farmer's child with callused hands, who knew nothing but work, at night I would wish away my weariness with dreams of being remembered forever. The mere idea that people would hail me as a hero, remembering my name long after I was gone was well enough to dissipate the weariness, so each night as I lay in bed I identified myself with all the heroes, and each day as I tore at the ground my mind wandered to the dreams I'd spent the last night. As I watched my father waste away, his body collapsing around him, I swore it'd never happen, I wouldn't waste away to nothing.
        The worst part of it all was after. When whispers would abound on Anastasia, how she had escaped to fall in love with a farmer, how she had found her happiness in the midst of the cold world, how I knew she was only a part of this cold ground now, nothing more. I had no spark of hope to keep with me during the cold winters, all I had was my memories, and those were colder. I watched Anastasia rise from where I had lain her mutilated body, my mark on the history of the world, to grow into a hero of Russia, what I had always dreamed of, while I wasted away, waiting to be lain down.
        But to have heard Lenin call for it, the man who was everything to me, I would have done anything.
        They meant nothing to me, nothing; I had seen the Revolution as glorious, I had heard Lenin in his earliest days, and been captivated, he had seemed a gilded hero, calling for my hand. The Czar and his Queen, they meant nothing, they'd never truly affected my life. I hated them for Lenin had told us of their extravagance; how they spoke French among themselves, bastardizing Russian only for the servants; how each time we toiled over the earth they took from it for golden chandeliers. To think of those chandeliers every time my hands raked over the cold earth, to try to feel their warmth, and to think of the soft hands that had afforded them, from my weary work. To this day it makes my blood boil, to think that while I worked my hands to the bone, they warmed theirs over gilded gold. But worse he told us of the Queen's hatred for us, and the Czar's apathy; how they'd take ropes we'd tied ourselves, wearing away at our hands till they bleed, and tie them around our necks, till the rope burns matched our hands, a full set of our pain; how they'd taken his brother. And the Revolution was golden, a light in our dark winters, and more, more a fire in our blood that kept us warm with our hatred and vodka all winter long. A fire that razed our farm lands, jumping from one plot of land to the next, tearing at tongues, a fire no one could ever put out, for it burnt within us. Only when we were only ashes would it die down to simmering embers. And this fire lit the passions we had all forgotten in our cold hearts, until I was no longer content to merely be a tongue of flame, I wanted to be at the heart of the fire, where the scorched earth would bear my name forever. Ever since I was a child I had wanted to be remembered forever I remembered.
        Those wet bullets were the easiest, it wasn't your hand that sunk into their back of their skulls, tearing it apart, matting their hair with a dark warmth. The steam rose from their wounds, as though their ghosts were leaving this world, and we shot at those to and laughed at their cowardice, as they crumpled, our screamed, our stood rigid, until their knees let out from under them, we laughed at our rag doll Czar and his raggedy Queen. At the children we laughed the hardest the way they fell to their side, weighted by their hard hearts we laughed, our maybe their rings, as if we laughed for anything other than to harden our hearts. I wondered whether Brutus himself laughed at the line "et tu, Brute" bathing in the irony that it was him all along, trying to warm the cold blood that was in him now with laughter. But those wet bullets were the easiest, because you could pretend that those levers in the gun had a mind of their own, all you did was twitch, all you did was twitch. Driving them was easy too, the Czar and his children were quiet, you could forget you were driving them to their deaths, and just watch the country, remembering your dreams of being somebody, and believing that today you would be remembered forever, knowing you were making history. And the Queen, she spit vehemently in her bastardized Russian, our prayed in her French, only making you remember what Lenin had said, and allowing you to hate her all the more. And then you had the hope that this would mean so much, that perhaps you would glow when it was over, and all who saw you might know that this was a glorious Hero of the Revolution. A glorious Hero, you could still think to yourself. But breaking their bones, finding all the hard places left in their rag doll bodies, and tearing at them, raking over them like the cold earth, breaking them apart, it's nearly impossible. Whatever glow you might have had becomes covered with dark blood that hardly comes off your hands, and dirt like the rest of your life. It takes something from you tearing apart a body, a coldness you think you could have had, and no matter the fire in your blood, you never feel warm again. You chase your warmth, your dreams all the harder when you fear they're falling apart, and this cold you feel now gives you strength to burn away at their bodies with acids; to watch it sizzle away at their skin; to watch it eat away at them, a single drop devouring so much skin and bone; to watch closely as it burns away at their lips, their eyes, their tongue, close enough to catch any sign of the warmth that you ought to feel. It gives you the strength to dig deep into the cold Russian ground, tearing at it till your hands are raw and bleeding, and place what's left of them into this cold earth, they've hardly known, and it gives you the strength to hate them for that. It gives you the strength to take two of the children and tear at another hole in the cold Russian earth, and place them their, to scream to the world, Look, I've outdone Brutus, I had the foresight to kill the whole family, their will be no Roman Empire, I out did you Brutus, I won, I won, I Am Hero.
        But you're left with a weariness, a weariness that rests with you, and wears away your dreams and wishes as well. A weariness that wears away at your bones and collapses your support. A weariness that eats away at you, and wastes you away.