Violet

Part I - Chapter 1

3 months ago...

I was running, the snow was biting my unprotected skin and soaking the clothes I had on. It was burning me like cold fire, but i couldn't stop. If I stopped I'd get killed.

The people I was running from weren't the kind of people who would stop themselves from killing me due to something like snow. It was to kill or get killed, because if I just ran away I knew they would have followed me and killed every single person I loved until I gave myself in. That, I couldn't let happen.

Running helped, I had to cross my way into Georgia before dawn, keep running a little more until I found the tree house. There, I could hide and recover until they caught up. I was one walking day away from it, "Just a little more, Vi, just a little more", I kept telling myself. So, I kept running.

I'm really good at motivating myself in these situations. Soon, I started feeling my body failing in need of rest and hydration. I had to find trees. According to my GPS radar there were no covered areas for another 20 kilometres. On a normal day I would run 20 kilometres in under 30 minutes but under those circumstances and calculating the force of the wind that I was against, it would take me about 3 hours to find shelter. 

I checked my pockets, "yes! it's still here" I thought to myself. The little bottle of vodka that I got at the hotel in Tyrnyauz. The Vodka would warm me up inside for at least 30 minutes while I ran it off. So I drank. I shouldn't,  it's just an illusion of warmth, but an illusion is all I have if I want to survive.

God knows how many hours later I was 500 metres away from leaving the bitter snow mountains and had officially entered Georgia. I was lucky it was a mild October storm, if it had been in December or January I wouldn't have been able to handle it in these clothes. The vodka did help, bless the Russians for their favourite drink.

It  had almost made me forget about my arm. I had been shot, bummer, I know. And the guy is now dead, head-shot. I don't kid around with guns, if I'm going to shoot someone I aim for the head, less time for reaction more chances for me to live. The bleeding had stopped but I knew that as soon as I got warm the blood would start flowing again. Soon I'd have to clean the wound and sew the skin back together. I was walking slowly and as I felt the sudden pain shooting into my arm I knew I had to start running again. So I did.

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I enter the forest area. Slowly, leaving the snow behind me, the bitter cold still biting my skin. I knew I needed to find the tree house but it was still far away. All I could hear was the wind as it forced itself through the thick trees ahead of me. Other than that, was silence, a silence that made me uncomfortable. I kept going. I knew that sooner or later I would run out of strength and that the pain in my arm, that was now getting stronger, would take over my body. It had happened before, the first time I got shot. 

I was 14. The attack on the house was so sudden that my mother didn't have time to prepare me, all she did was pick up her gun from under the bed, silently, and look at me. 

"Take this." she said. I didn't want to take it. I'd touched my father's guns before and I had seen him shoot a target as he taught me how to shoot. Back then it was exciting, I was learning how to shoot and it was my father teaching me. I always thought it was in case I needed to protect myself from whoever was stealing our cattle. Now I know better. 

"I don't want it." I said to my mother. She ignored me and put the gun in my hands. 

"Remember, you can't tremble when you lift it up and shoot. The other person won't think twice to shoot you. They'll kill you if they sense your reluctance. Never allow that to happen."