Matryoshka

Disclaimer: This story falls under the category “horror” and is therefore fit for mature audiences and up. Some common, potentially triggering topics are included. For specific trigger warnings, please scroll down to the bottom of the text as they might serve as spoilers.

Matryoshka 
by Elise Marai

The sun had not risen yet and would remain hidden beneath a black horizon for a while, but the morning fog had already assimilated and was filling the air with a surreal, ghost-like presence. To Nick, it looked like pudding. Or clouds. Clouds that had descended to the ground, pulled down by all the rain they carried inside them and had not been able to release. Eventually, it had become too heavy for them to stay afloat, and they had sunken, fallen from the sky, right onto the wet, gray, and dirty alleys of an unloved neighborhood that was, at this time of night, barely visible underneath broken street lamps casting their own shadows onto a world they were supposed to illuminate. Nick did not mind the darkness. He had lived among the shattered windows, graffiti tags, and rubbish piles for almost 24 years, and the time he had spent elsewhere had long since been lost in the perhaps never-acquired or possibly forever-lost memory of an infant. Consequently, Nick could identify every corner just by the smell of either piss or alcohol, the feel of solid stone or pebbles beneath his worn-out, greyish-white sneakers, and the noises accompanying it all: faded rap music, yelling, fighting, fucking. Anyone who ever laid eyes upon Nikolai Volkov would agree that he did not appear like a man who could easily be scared. And they would be quite right in their assumption. Nick had seen it all, done it all, and bore the scars and prison tattoos he had collected over the years on his skin, providing a glimpse into almost two decades of bad influences and even worse decisions for everyone who crossed his way. Tonight, this way had led Nick from a horror movie double feature in the local cinema to a wild Halloween party in a club downtown, and now finally, although he did not quite remember how he had ended up here, back into his own four walls.

He turned the key in the apartment door and pushed it open. The echo of a screeching sound filled the deserted hallway, followed by the echo of the door closing behind Nick. He didn´t bother with the light switch in the hallway and stumbled right into the kitchen, washing his – dinner, midnight snack, breakfast? – down with half a liter of vodka, his own personal version of hot milk with honey before bed. It had long since stopped doing the trick, leaving Nick no choice but to exploit the secret stash in his living room. His rough, calloused fingers easily found the light switch. He turned it on and found a huge black spider right next to it. A second later, the spider was a dark red spot on the wall, and Nick absentmindedly wiped his hand on his sweatpants.
Although he had no memories of living in Russia prior to his first birthday, he had still put in the effort to learn the language to the point where he could even write and read Cyrillic—horrible grammar aside—and kept some of the items his mother had brought to America when fleeing the country 23 years ago. One of those was an old Matryoshka, an absolute cliché, and Nick was not even sure whether his mother had really brought it from Russia or been gifted it by one of her many American boyfriends lacking creative ideas for a last-minute birthday present, but he found the little wooden doll with its painted-on rosy cheeks, green and red floral dress, and horrible, ugly yellow head scarf incredibly useful. Despite it’s obvious purpose, it also served as a token of a childhood he was not sure had ever even been.

Nick regarded the ugly little doll for a long moment without thinking of anything particular. He was tired now, could already feel his eyelids becoming heavier as a comfortable, familiar numbness crept into his hands and feet, and it took him a couple moments to realize that the Matryoshka was not supposed to stare back at him. Yet it did. Nick blinked, squinted, moved to the left. The two small, beetle-black doll eyes followed him. He took two steps to the right. Again, the Matryoshka’s gaze followed.
Feeling an uncomfortable sensation somewhere in his belly—or was it his chest? Nick turned on his heels, stumbling towards the door. He needed to lay down for a while. Outside, the wind picked up speed and rain splattered against the living room windows, but the faded yet horribly close sound that reached Nick’s ears now was not a product of the worsening weather. It was a high-pitched, goose-flesh-inducing scream that could be deemed somewhat human with a little imagination, mixed with the sound a chainsaw would produce when cutting through splintering wood and something else that could only be described as the tearing of human flesh. Nick closed his eyes, stiffened, and held his breath. Nick Volkov was no coward. And he was not going to run. Even though he knew he should. Run as fast as possible. But Nick wouldn´t be where he was now, who he was today, had his fight, flight or freeze response ever settled on one of the latter option. So he turned around, the room a blur of rubbish and dark furniture around him, and bit back a scream that could have matched the one he had just heard, had it ever been realized. The Matryoshka was right behind him. Its black eyes were gleaming now, gleaming out of an old woman’s face that was half wood and half skin. Her hands were wrinkled, dotted, stretched out in his direction, and her teeth were sharp golden splinters. She still wore the mustard yellow head scarf and the floral dress, and something was moving underneath them. Her breath reeked of sanitizer and mold. Instead of lifting them in defense and throwing the first punch like he had planned, Nick pressed his own hands against his stomach, swallowing down vomit instead of a scream.
“Pain”, the half-wooden monstrosity—zombie Pinocchio, Nick thought—croaked in an inhuman, rough, and hollow voice. Her features changed as she spoke, and now Nick recognized her, despite the splintered teeth and the dead black eyes. He had known her almost his entire life. Mrs. Cartwright had moved into the flat across from the one his mother had rented for them when they had first come to America after her husband had died of heart failure all the way back in 1999. To Nick, Mrs. Cartwright had been something of a grandma replacement, baking apple tart every Sunday, always making sure he got the biggest piece, and reading him a bunch of American children’s books his Russian mother had not been able to understand. He remembered her warm and lovely brown bambi eyes and the smell of cinnamon and vanilla in her apartment. Nick had felt at home with her. That had not stopped him from stealing her entire supply of morphine and fentanyl, however, after she had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer some years ago. Her death had been slow and painful, and Nick had been there to witness the light go out behind those warm brown bambi eyes until they had turned as black as they appeared now.
“Pain”, the Mrs. Cartwright thing croaked again, “so much pain.” Now he could see the tumors growing inside her like parasites, swelling and bursting through her clothes, creating horribly distorting bumps everywhere on her head and upper body. She took a clumsy step towards Nick, and her long wooden fingernails scratched his lower left arm. He let out a quiet squeal.
“You cause me pain. Now I cause you pain.” Nick felt her nails sink deep into his flesh. His breath caught in his throat as they dug down all the way to his bones until the wood splintered against them. Paralyzed with agony, all Nick could do was close his eyes. The moment they fell shut, the pain vanished. It was replaced by another soul-chilling sound Nick had only ever heard as a faint echo of what it really was: in horror movies, when the innocent citizens of whatever creepy small town were finally ripped to shreds by the monster. Just this afternoon, he had witnessed it all in the cinema, laughing and throwing a handful of popcorn into his mouth. Now, as Mrs. Cartwright was torn wide open, right through the middle like a real Matryoshka, by a force from her own inside and the hands of something—someone else—dug their way through her intestines towards the light, all that popcorn came back up. Nick fell forward to his knees, vomiting on the living room floor.

“Is that the son I raised? Kneeling in his own puke?”, a ghost-like voice asked, dripping with disgust. Nick looked up into a face he had known he would recognize the moment the voice had first echoed through the living room. He had tears in his eyes and snot dripping down from his nose as a consequence of the vomiting, and he wanted to reply, wanted to sound strong and brave, but he could not produce a single sound, facing the ghost of the woman who had abandoned him half his life ago, not wooden but also wearing the yellow head scarf and the floral dress of the Matryoshka, which was dripping with Mrs. Cartwright's blood and bile.
“Get up”, the ghost commanded. Nick felt her voice in his bones more than he heard it, and he was sure, icicles were forming all around them every time she spoke. He remained exactly where he was, shivering on the ground.
“Get up, I said”, the ghost repeated, and extended a hand despite her drill sergeant-like tone. It had always been that way with his mother. Carrot and stick, and he should have known better than to fall for the first, should have seen the latter coming even after all those years without her, but his need for comfort was stronger than the little rationality he had left, whispering to him that this was not a good idea. He reached for her hand and closed his fingers around thin air.

Flabbergasted and desperate, he grabbed for her wrist again, and this time his fingers made contact with something warm. The ghost was gone, replaced by a much younger woman who was part porcelain, part flesh. She was too tall to be considered conventionally attractive, but her big red hyaluronan filled lips and surgically enlarged breasts and butt would have made almost any straight man turn a blind eye on her height had it not been for the huge gaping hole between her legs. The woman was naked apart from the yellow head scarf, and her cheeks were just a little redder than those of the wooden Mrs. Cartwright and Nick’s mother’s ghost.
"Oh, you poor thing”, she said to Nick, her voice an odd mix of nails on a chalkboard and the sweet, almost childlike tone some people used when talking to their pets.
“Rough night, huh? Don’t worry, I can make you feel better.” She smiled, and Nick saw that she had no teeth. Her eyes were empty sockets too, her ears missing, and the hole between her legs began to grow, omitting the smell of stale, old fish that made him feel sick all over again. He remembered that smell, and he remembered the woman too. Not her name. Not any of their names. But he remembered them. He had been a child, almost 11 years old and naïve, eager to prove himself to the older guys that lived around the blog, and when they had taken him to a shady establishment in someone’s cellar, full of smoke, loud music, and naked women, he had not hesitated a second. He did not remember what exactly had happened then, but he did remember that smell, the stale, old fish, and the feeling of being crushed underneath someone—more than someone, actually. It had been multiple women; he was quite sure of that, but they had all smelled the same, suffocating him with their huge, heavy bodies and penetrant odor. The last thing he could recall before passing out had been the irrational fear of literally falling into them and being swallowed by the big black hole between their thighs.
The eye- and earless woman in front of him was growing straight through the ceiling now, coming closer until she stood directly over Nick and all he could see was that same black hole. He was suffocating again and tried to crawl away, fighting for air and against the urge to empty the contents of his stomach once more. His back hit the wall, and re-entering a childlike state of sheer panic, he drew his knees to his chest, slung his arms around them, and panted hysterically. Overhead, the ceiling was bursting. Dust and cheap tapestries rained down on him, and the black hole was pulling at his entire body, threatening to absorb him any second. Nick grabbed the leg of his couch table in a desperate attempt to hold onto something and turned away, facing the wall. Bang! The explosion was deafening, and for a moment all he could hear was a constant beeping that steadily grew louder in both his ears. He did not want to look, did not want to play this game any longer, but he had to know what was happening now, what danger was presenting itself to him this time, and because he could not hear, he had no choice but to turn around once more.

A teenage girl was climbing over the ruins of what once had been the ceiling, barefoot, dusting her floral dress, and smiling at him in a shy, innocent way that would have made her very beautiful, hadn’t it been for her metal braces. The smile did not reach her eyes, but that was alright, because it never had.
Kitty LaPointe had been Nick’s classmate for eight years until he had dropped out of middle school, and she had been everything he was not. Sweet and kind and gentle. Nick remembered the hearts she had used as i dots, the way she had always rescued lost insects from the classrooms, even if they were aggregated wasps with stingers just waiting to puncture her soft, warm skin, and he remembered the red cuts that had eventually started appearing on that same skin and the gun Kitty had put to her head the year she had been supposed to start high school.
For a moment, Nick expected her to split herself in half the way the Mrs. Cartwright’s appearance had done and produce all the other girls he had ever slept with from her midst, because surely, that was what this had to be all about after he had just encountered the woman who had taken his virginity, and he could practically see their faces appearing all around her—Hanna and Sasha and Emma and Ellie and Seven and dozens, maybe a hundred other nameless females, perhaps some of the guys he had been with too—but then he noticed the thick, black liquid slowly dripping down Kitty’s left temple. As the blood spilled over her left eye, she kept it wide open, unbothered, not blinking, and the brains began to follow it out of the wound. Kitty’s skin turned gray and bloodless, and her head began to deflate like a balloon.
“No, no, no, no”, Nick whispered. “No, I grabbed the gun; I stopped you. I saved you. You aren´t dead. You didn’t die. I saved you.”
“You did not”, Kitty said softly, “you ruined me. But I can save you.” She stepped closer, touched the hole in her temple, and smeared some of the blood and brains on his cheek. The unexpected warmth made Nick shrink away from her, despite her touch being as gentle as it had always been.
“You just have to do what you did not allow me to do.” He knew what she was going to say before she did it. Somehow she had gotten hold of the gun he kept on his bedside table. Blood and brains were coming out of the muzzle as well, and Nick began to feel a horrible pinching sensation in his own head. It was his blood that dripped out of the gun. His brains, the bullet had penetrated.
“Pull the trigger”, Kitty said, no more trace of warmth or kindness left in her voice, and Nick screamed.

The pain turned into agony as Kitty’s head disintegrated in front of his eyes and her body followed until all that was left on the ground, where she had stood a moment ago, was a newborn. A newborn in the midst of all that destruction looking as vulnerable and innocent as any baby. The headache left as suddenly as it had come over Nick, and despite himself, he stepped towards the baby, bending down to pick it up and save it from this nightmare, but as soon as he touched the baby, it began to cry in a way that could only be described as demon-like. Nick withdrew his hands as if he had burned himself, and the baby immediately stopped crying. It lay completely still as tiny red spots, needle marks, began to appear, first on its arms, then spreading to the feet, legs, dotting its entire body, and finally making their way up to the throat. Tattoos presented themselves on the baby's skin now—Nick's tattoos, followed by his scars. The tiny veins inside the baby's eyes popped, giving them a bloodshot look that was underlined by a dark circle on each side. The baby cried again, and Nick pressed his hands over his ears and screamed, too. Suddenly, the baby began to shake. It had stopped crying as suddenly as it had begun, but its mouth still stood open and spit drizzled down the tiny, chubby cheeks and chin. A flood of vomit smelling of pure ethanol followed, and it was so acidic that it melted the babies punctured, wounded skin right down to the bones wherever it made contact. The tiny body began to shake, cramp, and contort in ways Nick would have never thought possible, and all he could do was watch with his mouth open. He didn`t notice the spit that ran down his own chin. The baby had his full attention, and even when it finally lay still, dead eyes rolled into the back of its head, it wasn`t over because now worms and larvae began crawling out of its eyes, mouth, and nose, eating away whatever was left of the soft flesh. Others found their way to the floor, where the disintegrated skin of the baby, which was no more than a mere skeleton now, seeped through the carpet and burned a six-foot-deep hole right through the ground. It filled with more crawlies—spiders, bugs, and maggots—and burst wider and wider open until it was big enough to fit a coffin. The grave stretched almost all the way to Nick, who sat hunched over, pressed against the wall next to the living room door, and beneath him, the floor began to buckle too now. He tried to catch a hold of something, anything, but it was too late. Nick couldn`t save himself. He fell.

When the midday rays of a cold November sun found their way into his living room, which resembled a battlefield more than a place anyone could call home, Nick awoke with dried vomit on his sweater and wet underpants. There was broken glass on the floor; somehow his gun had found its way into the living room, and—had he fired it against the wall? His couch table was missing a leg, and a bunch of stuff had fallen from the shelf above the TV; most of it—everything but that ugly little wooden doll, really—shattered on the ground or directly on the screen, which had clearly seen better days. Maybe it was time to invest in a new one, Nick thought when, after a slow and clumsy start into the day, he got around to tidying everything up, vacuuming, and scrubbing the floor twice before finally stumbling into a hot, relaxing shower. He never noticed the tiny, red drops right underneath the Matryoshka` small beetle black eyes, rolling down her cheeks like bloody tears.

 

Trigger warnings: drug/alcohol abuse, addiction, violence, rape, childhood trauma, self-harm, suicide/death

About the Author
Elise Marai was born in 2000 in northern Germany and currently commutes back and forth between Hambrug and Lübeck. After graduating from school, she spent some time in the US and Canada, which really sparked her interest in the English language after about a decade of writing in German. She currently studies infection biology in an international masters program and takes minimum-wage, part-time lab jobs whenever a good opportunity presents itself. In her free time, she reads and writes a lot, and has published her debut, "The (W)hole Picture" in August 2023.