spy in a russian insane asylum

i was in the deep, deep woods. russia? it was a house for mentally unstable people in some kind of regression rehab. baby blankets, bottles, thumb-sucking. everyone was dirty or fat or both. nothing anywhere suggestive of childhood in its sweetness, only perverse, filthy remnants. everything in the house was dark. blankets and dirty, broken baby things laying everywhere. The floor was a carpet of tangled, dirty blankets and it was hard to walk without catching your toe and falling. everyone moved in an exaggerated leg-lifting kind of way to avoid toppling.

when i took the mission, i'd been shown footage of my target. he had long, stringy hair, a beard, spent his days in a giant, dirty onesie and looked like he'd needed a bath for at least a year. he resembled Che Guevara. to gain his confidence and get the information i need to be immediately perceived as unstable. i am delivered to the house by armed guards and when i am sure i can be seen by the inmates of the house, i spit and kicked at them. my target pretended not to see but i knew he had. days went by. i knocked over dishes, threw food and screamed obscenities. part of my cover story was that i'd just had a baby taken away which i still pumped milk for, so every day i would be escorted into this dirty RV where i plugged in the pump. stuck the suction cups to the crusty naugahyde seat (loud and sucking sound) off-loaded progress reports, got orders for the next day, took a fresh bottle of warm goat milk that had been left for me and made my exit. i did not know who my contact was in the house. i left info for her/him in a secret compartment. after i finished, i took the bottle of milk and left the rv screaming about my hungry baby.

within a couple of weeks, the target and i happened upon a tiny orphaned kitten. i no longer relinquished my goat milk to the officer when i exited the RV and we fed it to the kitten. it became our 'baby'. the target started trusting me and started telling me things.

two months in, a band of loud, dangerous thugs approached the house. as they drew closer and climbed up the hill toward us, they shouted in more and more graphic detail what they were going to do to us because we were a group of 'retards'. since my arrival, i had always seen small guitar pick shaped pieces of a silvery pot metal lying about. some had various insignias stamped into them. i'd always thought they were cheap souvenirs from some long ago carnival field trip. i understood now that they were bullets. my mark produced a gun, loaded it with a handful of the metal shapes and shot every member of the attacking gang at least 7 times in the head and 7 times in the upper body. shooting and shooting until the blood flowed like dark rivers into the dead leaves and debris on the hill. he then turned to the other inmates and without a word seemed to tell them it was time to leave.

the inmates immediately dropped all remnants of infantile affectation and i saw them for what they were; special ops. they gathered their things to follow my mark out of the now not safe house into the grey woods. my mark said, 'we can't take the kitten'. i cried. he squeezed my arm and said 'get your stuff'. it was all so sudden, nothing i had been briefed for... i wasn't thinking clearly. in a small moment when i found myself left alone, suddenly my contact reveled herself and she did not appear surprised by the turn of events. i thought, 'she looks just like my sister'. she held out the wire she had worn, i knew if i put it on i would probably wind up dead, i took it from her hand and started to shove the pack into my waistband. the other inmates were yelling for me to hurry, she said 'pull the mic wire up through your bra- it will hold it secure and the mic will be closer to your face.' i did as she said and grabbed the rest of the bullets i could find shoving them into my pockets as i moved toward the door.

tears were falling from my eyes as i made my way into the woods to catch up to the others- but those tears had nothing to do with the kitten.