Somewhere in the Shadows, 2075
The call. That frozen gasp in '80's cradle, when the abyss first whispered and the wolf in me stirred under Dad's shadow. Nine years to the scar, but the roots sunk deep—pain the first lesson, survival the only playbook. Trauma's the howl from home's dark corners, kid: Dad's fists my primer, Mom's tales the faint light. Looking back from this creaking seat, embers dying like old enemies, I see it sharp: the call wasn't streets or blades. It was the bruise that said fight back. Father's madness? My first forge. Listen—the wolf whelps in the welts, waiting to roar. Be honorable in the dark, even when it bites hardest—that's the code I carved from his chaos, the fang that kept me whole when the world tried to break me.
St. Petersburg, Winter 1980
Neva gripped the city like a crazy ex, ice snapping under hidden wrongs, snow piling thick on slummy streets where buildings slouched like drunk uncles, leaning on each other to stay upright. Our dumpy flat, Number 47, hunkered in the murk of Petrogradsky District—one bulb flickering like a weak heartbeat over peeling wallpaper stained with the ghosts of better days. Mom Irina labored hard on the sagging bed, breaths rough as Siberian gusts whipping the frozen river outside, her face slick with sweat and quiet grit. I didn't wail coming out—just gasped, tiny fists clenched against the chill sneaking through cracks in the walls like invisible fingers of blame, the metallic tang of the Neva seeping in to mix with the sour reek of cabbage soup boiled one too many times. Midwife Olga, old hag with cig breath curling like factory smoke and rough paws callused from too many births in too few rooms, bundled me in ratty cloth haunted by past cries. "Tough pup," she grumbled, cord snipped quick with a rusty blade. "Thunder eyes. He'll chew the world or get chewed—mark my words, Irina, this one's got fire in the frost."
Irina, pale as the snow blanketing the streets outside, cradled me tight against her chest, factory-hard fingers soft on my cheek despite the years of stitching uniforms for the Party's endless machine. "Dimitri," she whispered, voice a threadbare lullaby against the distant wail of sirens calling workers to the grind. My dad, Alexei, paced the narrow room like a caged bear, cheap samogon stink rolling off him thick as the fog off the Gulf, his eyes red-rimmed from the bottle and the bitter verses he scratched in secret. "Another hole to fill? Useless runt from the start—can't even cry right." He smacked the rickety table, sending a cracked teacup rattling; Mom flinched but held me safer, her body a shield I'd learn too late couldn't stop everything. He'd been a dreamer once, my father—a poet scribbling samizdat jabs at the Kremlin bosses on scraps hidden under floorboards, his words sharp as the winter wind. But the system's squeeze, the endless queues and whispered purges, turned his fire to ash, the bottle his new muse, the belt his brutal pen.
Before my gasp into the world, the black Volga government car hadn't snatched him yet. He'd stagger home from the docks after twelve-hour shifts hauling crates for the glory of the Motherland, fists flying at her "flops": rations too short for the table, soup scorched from a stove that barely sparked, dreams too loud for the thin walls that echoed every curse. Marks bloomed purple under her scarves like forbidden flowers; his "sorrys" drowned in more samogon, slurred promises that tasted like lies. She'd stitch by the gas-flicker of a single mantle, humming old tales of Baba Yaga's chicken-legged hut stalking the woods and clever Ivan the Fool outsmarting greedy tsars, her voice a fragile barrier against his storm-snores that shook the bedframe like thunder.
My first noise wasn't a cry of life, but a hitch in the throat—his hand cracking across her arm for Olga's meager pay, her sharp breath mixing with the far-off factory horns blaring the start of another endless shift. Life's rules hit early and hard: line up at dawn in the biting cold for stale black bread that tasted like sawdust, dodge the militiamen's grabby paws and wandering eyes on the way home, sew uniforms by sputter-light while the whole Soviet world held tight like a fist around your throat, ration cards your only prayer against the slow starvation of the soul. Be honorable, she'd whisper in those stolen moments, her fingers weaving thread through cloth like spells against the dark—"even when they try to break you, malysh. Honor's the light they can't steal." But honor felt like a fool's game in a world that rewarded the boot on your neck.
*Lesson of the Forge: Hunger's a bully—no nice asks, no mercy. It shapes you rough, like Dad's mad shaped Mom and me into something harder than bone. Viktor Frankl picked sense in the hell of those camps, turning bars into bridges for the mind; Dad picked the bottle, letting it chain him before the guards ever did. But you? Pick different. When life strips you bare as a winter branch, ask: What do I build from this mess? Turn the mad to muscle, or let it rust you from inside. The wolf whelps in the hammer's blow—clench tight, don't crumble. Be honorable in the forge; it's the heat that tempers true steel.
By age five, hunger bit ribs raw like a cornered rat, famine nibbling relentless while Dad's gloom bulked bigger than the shadows in our flat—his boots thumping up the stairs like bad news rolling in from the docks. The hits blurred into a rhythm of survival: lash of the belt for a spilled drop of milk that we couldn't afford to waste, knuckles cracking across a cheek for her "talking back" when she dared ask for a kinder word, me balled small in the corner behind the stove, tasting copper on my tongue and learning the art of the duck, the flinch that saved skin if not spirit. Nights were the worst, his slurred rages echoing off the thin walls like accusations from the Party itself, Mom's quiet sobs the only counterpoint as she rocked me to sleep with whispers of Ivan outwitting the dragon.
One stormy night, when the wind howled like Baba Yaga herself, he vanished for good—the black Volga pulling up with a growl that cut the dark like judgment's blade, headlights pinning him in the doorway as the men in gray coats dragged him away for "bad scribbles," those smuggled poems mocking the bosses harder than he ever mocked his own family. The gulag gulped him whole, a maw that spat back only rumors of broken men; the bruises on us faded slow, but the fear stuck like tar, coating every shadow. Mom kept stitching through it all, her eyes sinking deeper into hollows that no amount of thread could mend, holding me like a lucky charm against the next storm. "Be smart, little one," she'd say, pressing a crust of bread into my palm with fingers that trembled just a bit less each day. "The world eats the slow... and the broken. But you? Be honorable—hold the light, even when it's just a spark."
School was a joke, a gray cage of droning teachers parroting the same tired gospel of Marx and machines, kids like me turning pencils into mini-knives under the desks, trading kicks in the yard for a scrap of pride. The streets taught true and cruel: spot the undercover musor cops by the telltale bulge of their holsters under cheap coats, vanish into the twisting alleys when patrols prowled the corners like hungry dogs—or when his ghost haunted my dreams, boots thumping up stairs that weren't there. Mom clung to me like a talisman, her hugs fierce but fleeting, but her eyes got emptier with every passing winter; I'd wake in the dead of night to her quiet weeps, the needle piercing cloth in rhythm with tears she thought I couldn't hear, sewing sorrow into the hems of uniforms that would clothe the men who broke our world.
*Wisdom of the Street: Power's grabbed, not given—snatched in the space of a heartbeat, a shadow's flicker. Marcus Aurelius, that old Roman boss staring down empires crumbling around him, said the roadblocks are the road itself, turning obstacles into the very steps that carry you forward. Dad's hits were my first shove into the alley; snatching that drunk's wallet at eight, leather slick with sweat and regret, fingers trembling but sure? That was my first real win, the spark that said you decide who eats today. When the lines snake endless around the block and the bullies feast on the weak, pick your target smart and strike clean. Save yourself first, before the hurts carve you into just another ghost on the Neva's banks. Be honorable in the snatch—it's the code that keeps the wolf from turning on its own tail.
The scar came at nine, under a bloody-orange moon slung low over the shipyards like a warning lantern, its light bleeding across the cranes and crates like spilled samogon. Old Viktor the Knife ran those docks—a skinny spider of a man with tattoos like faded wild roses blooming across his knuckles, his word law in the black-market haze. I'd been running his malyava for months—secret notes scratched on cigarette paper, folded tight and passed hand-to-shadow, dodging between stacks of contraband caviar and hidden bottles of Stolichnaya smuggled past the patrols. That night, a rival crew from the Narva slums crashed our protection racket hard, their boots heavy in the fog-shrouded alley as they cornered Viktor's collector against a rusted shipping container, fists and threats flying like gulls over the Gulf.
I showed up late, heart pounding like a stolen drum, brass knuckles heavy in my pocket—borrowed from a dock rat who'd laughed at the "kid with guts." The collector was already down, ribs stove in and wheezing, but the leader, a thick-necked brute named Sasha with a switchblade grin that split his face like a fresh cut, wheeled on me the second I burst from the mist. "Fresh meat for the grinder," he sneered, lunging low and fast—the knife slicing across my left eye in a hot line of fire that split skin and soul wide open. Blood poured hot and metal-tasting, flooding my vision in a copper haze, but anger exploded darker than the pain, Dad's endless useless runt fueling a punch that swung wild from the gut.
I swung hard, brass knuckles cracking bone with a sick crunch; elbow drove into his throat next, turning his sneer to a gurgling choke as the air fled him. He dropped the blade, staggering back; I scooped it up, the hilt sticky and warm, and plunged it home—once in the gut with a twist that made him buckle, twice in the side as he grabbed at me like a drowning man. The alley floor drank it all, red seeping into the cracks like the Neva claiming its due. Viktor found me slumped against a crate, breath ragged and scar already swelling, and laughed low like ice breaking underfoot. "Grim—like death's own ugly mug. You've got the ponyatki in your veins, kid—the code runs deep as the river."
Grim stuck like glue from that night, a raw map etched into my flesh that no mirror could erase. Mom cleaned the wound with vodka-soaked rags by candlelight, her hands shaking like leaves in the wind—echoes of all the times she'd done the same for her own hidden hurts after his rages. "No more of this, malysh—promise me," she begged, voice cracking thin as the thread she used for her endless seams. But the mirror lied back at me that first night, bandaged and bloodied: the scared kid was gone, replaced by something wilder, feral-eyed with one storm-gray orb staring fierce and the other already clouding to milky-white scar. The world didn't spare the weak, didn't hand out mercy like ration cards; it chewed them up slow and deliberate, spat out the bones for the crows. And in that deliberate chew, I heard the call—not from some distant stars or indifferent gods, but from the deep, hungry dark of the abyss itself, whispering be honorable, fight back, claim what's yours.
*Cost of the Blade: Becoming a guy costs blood—yours or someone else's, spilled hot and without asking. Jordan Peterson talks facing your inner monsters head-on to drag back the gold they guard, but the scar's the toll you pay for the kid-stuff you leave behind; Dad's endless mad paid mine early and ugly. Your first real fight? Maybe a broken trust that cuts deeper than steel, or a killed dream that haunts quieter than ghosts. Don't look away from the mess. Clean it up deliberate. Stare down the mirror and own the guy blinking back—or spend your days fearing the shadow he casts. And that charm you flash to win friends or dodge the hard stares? It's sharp as a fresh edge but short-lived as summer snow—till the call demands the full wolf roar, honorable and unyielding, fang bared to the bone.
The Neva whispered its endless night song outside, wolf howls carried faint on the wind like promises from the wild beyond the city lights. Normal life? That was a story for quitters and fools who never learned the taste of their own blood. My path had just started bleeding—and man, the rivers it would carve, honorable or not, would drown empires in their wake.