This episode contains depictions of death, ableism, transphobia, child abuse, and body horror.
[tape recorder turns on]
Sasha: The more I think about everything that’s happened, the more I think that thinking may be my main problem. I’m becoming convinced that, if I did not think about these things, they would stop happening to me. That may sound far-fetched, but– [chuckles] well, if you have trouble believing that, there’s no hope at all of you believing any of the other things I’m going to tell you, so just turn this recording off now. Go ahead, turn it off. Go back to your everyday life and be grateful you aren’t me. Leave before I can trap you in my cycle of thoughts…
Are you still there? Your loss.
I don’t want to talk about anything that’s happened. I don’t even know how to begin. Why am I recording this, then? I cannot stop thinking and the more I think about all of it, the more my thoughts wear out the events, losing detail from how often I’ve picked them up and run my fingers over them, until it feels like they’ve been smoothed over. The events of my life started out impossible to believe but my constant thinking has given them the qualities of a fairytale…I’m not sure if I even believe them.
But I have my scars and my truck and your blood drying on your jacket. So it must have all      happened.
And I must record it so the tape can preserve the events before my mind twists them up with all my stupid, evil thoughts. The whole story of my life and other lives can exist here and I won’t be able to fuck the details up in my head anymore. It won’t be my problem.
By telling people stories, you transfer the blame from yourself to your listener. So congratulations. This is your problem now.
I did warn you.
[recorder turns off and on again]
S: It should be easier if I talk to somebody. Not the mysterious listener who may or may not find this truck with a recorder and, probably, my dead body. I don’t know you. I can’t imagine you in my head. So, if you’re listening, hi. I’m not talking to you.
I’ll tell this story to the only person I’ve ever enjoyed having a conversation with. Hi, Ben. You wanted me to tell you about my childhood. You hung on to all my stories like they were about somebody important, so I’ll tell you this one, too. 
You’re a good audience, given that you’re dead and there’s no chance of you ever actually hearing this. Thanks. Sorry I stole your jacket, by the way. I’d like to say it was an accident, but it isn’t like you’re using it. I don’t need to make excuses to you.
I know what you’re thinking. I’m stalling. [sighs] Ah, fuck it. Here goes.
[recorder turns off and on again]
S: The only thing worse than Russian cars is Russian roads. That’s what my father used to say. It’s one of about five things I agree with him on. Russian roads are not so much roads as patches of land that don’t have trees. The pavement is more mildly domesticated potholes than anything, and any markings were made before the Union was made. 
I’m in the middle of a forest, driving down something that has no business calling itself a road. If I don’t have at least one flat tire by the end of the night, it’ll be proof of divine intervention. It’s raining hard and the wind is picking up, slamming wet leaves against my windshield. This is a Russian storm, not an English one like I’m sure you have in your hometown. Russian storms rage like they’re targeting you personally, like you killed their wife and children with a tire iron and they’ve finally found where you live. My mama used to call this “witching weather”. I guess she’d know.
Is that a fucking bear?
[recorder turns off and on again]
S: I was born and raised in a part of Siberia called ‘Kalivan’. That does not mean anything to you because you’re clueless and British, but “being sent to Kalivan’” is basically the equivalent of being sent to the gulags. Kalivan is famous as the place where various dissenters were sent for disagreeing with whoever was in power at the time. Most people who got sent there got worked to death, trying to grow anything in the frozen ground. 
My family lived there for generations and generations. In fact, we got in trouble once with the person in charge of our sector back when the Union first started.He threatened to deport us. “Where?” asked my grandpa. The person didn’t know what to say. We were already living happily at rock bottom. Where else could they send us?
With all that said, I loved my childhood home. We had a bigass farm with a dozen pigs, a dozen cows, three dozen chickens…we raised them all for sale. At least on paper, that is how we made money. In reality, we made most of our money being witches.
Only the women in our family get the witchcraft gene and the really powerful shit usually skips a generation. My great-grandmother was really good at it, so was my grandmother, and I would have been too if I’d been a girl. Instead, nobody’s sure what I am and magic doesn’t know what to do with me. But that’s beside the point.
We would do little potions and family remedies for whichever neighbour arrived at our door. The ailments differed every time: a horse with a lame leg, a person  with migraines that wouldn’t stop, tremendously bad luck. Occasionally we did abortions. My mama always prayed to god after those, but she did them anyway and gave the girls tea and soup before sending them the long distance back home. It was always girls for that, never women. I tried not to notice that.
I went to school for the first nine years of my life. Until I cracked a kid’s skull open for picking on some first-graders. The ice was black that day. I tackled him around the waist and he slipped, fell back. Crunch. He survived with minor trauma. After that, my mama taught me at home. That entailed her buying textbooks secondhand and making me read them aloud while she cooked or cleaned. I read through all of the twelfth grade material by the time I was eleven. She bought me college books on biology and neuroscience and made me explain the big words as I read.
She was always saying that my brain would get me out of Kalivan, that I was never born to live on a farm among the taiga and pine trees, that I’d never have to help my neighbours just to have enough to put food on my plate. She swore to everybody who came to our house that one day, I would be a great doctor. I’d help people. I’d earn money and I’d come back and care for her in her old age.
 My father would always laugh meanly and say, “Sashka? Sashka’d rather hurt people than help them! They’re gonna rot on this land just like their ancestors before them.”
…well, he was right about the first thing, anyway. I was never really gonna be a doctor.
[recorder turns off and on again]
S: There was something in the middle of the road just now, I had to swerve to avoid it. Almost ran the truck into a ditch, I probably would have if this wasn’t a Kamaz. I know I said Russian cars are shit and I meant it, but this is a Soviet car. Soviet cars will kill you and fuck your mother on your grave. Soviet cars don’t give a shit.
[laughs] Look at me go, Ben. You and your friends could barely get a word out of me. Now that you’re dead, I can’t shut the fuck up.
There was something in the middle of the road and I thought it was a dead bear at first. It was lying in a giant heap, way bigger than a bear should be…then again, I haven’t seen a bear in years. Not since my father moved me with him to Peter– uh, Saint Petersburg. No bears there.
Obviously I thought it was dead. It’s the end of autumn, all the bears are going to sleep. But then, as I was swerving around the bulk of it, it raised its head up to my window and–and I saw it wasn’t a bear at all. It was a wolf, but…huge. Fucking enormous.
Ben, I swear to god, the wolf smiled at me. 
[recorder turns off and on again]
S: My parents lived apart since before I can remember. I’m assuming my mother loved my father at some point since she agreed to marry him and had me. She wouldn’t have had me if she didn’t want to. But, by the time I was old enough to know what went on around me, my father only visited our farm every month and he always smelled of vodka and disappointment. 
He used to pick me up by my shoulders and stare at me in the face and then scoff and just drop me. Didn’t care if I was wearing my prosthetic or not. If I ate shit, it just gave him an excuse to call me a cripple. I don’t know why he loved doing that so much, did he think I’d forget if he didn’t remind me?
Anyway. I only had to see him once a month back then. Those were the happiest years of my life and I didn’t even realize it. Living on that farm, helping my baba weed the vegetable patch, picking wild berries whenever I could find them, running around in nothing but shorts and a tank top all summer…I was a happy little kid. My mother and my aunts and my baba all did their very best to raise me. I’d probably still be there, learning witchcraft and helping my baba grow crops, if my mother hadn’t died.
It happened when I was thirteen. She usually woke up at dawn or earlier, but that day, it was noon and she was still in bed. My baba yelled for me to come wake her up. I went into the room we shared and there she was, lying on her side facing the wall. I called out for her a few times. Then I reached over to pat her on the shoulder. She rolled over on her back and her eyes were open.
Later, the neighbours said they heard me screaming.
One of them must have called my father because he was there, at the funeral. My aunts didn’t want to give me up, they told him to get the hell off their property. He got off and came back with the town police department.
I was sobbing when he pulled me away from my baba. I sobbed all the way to the airport. Finally, he turned around and said that I got this one for free, but next time I cried he’d make me wish my mother had died before giving birth to me. Then he added that if I was gonna look like a boy I could start acting like one.
Say what you want about his parenting skills and god knows I’ve said a lot, but I haven’t cried since.
Seven years and not a single tear.
I can imagine you right now, like you’re sitting next to me. Your eyebrows are furrowed like they are whenever you feel uncomfortable or sad and you’re not sure how to express it. You stare at me for a moment and then take my hand and say, “I’m sorry, Sasha.”
Or maybe “you didn’t deserve that, Sasha.”
“I love you. Thank you for telling me.”
[silence for a moment] Nah, who am I kidding. You’d say, “Why didn’t my death make you cry?”
You always were a selfish asshole, Ben.
[recorder turns off and on again]
S: There’s something following the car. I keep catching glimpses of it in the rearview mirror, but it’s not there when I turn to look out the window. It looks something like…the fucking wolf again. But there’s something wrong with it…there’s something really wrong…
That’s not what a wolf is supposed to look like. The silhouette is all wrong, it…fuck, what’s wrong with it? Something’s wrong, I can’t put my finger on it, it…
Holy shit.
[recorder turns off and on again]
S: Ben, it’s standing on two legs. It’s running after me.
[recording ends]
This episode of Go I Know Not Wither stars Thomas Malinovsky. It was written by Thomas Malinovsky and edited by Olivia Spreen. Cover art is by our friend Sasha, you can find them on Instagram at @anartpostaweek. Special thanks to our patrons, Tessa Prodromou, James Harper, Jennifer Parlett, and John-Ashley Mulvaney. Also thank you to Val Zvyinatskovsky.  If you’d like to support Go I Know Not Wither and any future podcasts check us out on our patreon and instagram at @malinovskyandspreen. We really appreciate it. Thank you for listening. If you see any strange animals on your next walk in the woods, check how many legs they’re standing on. We’ll see you next time as we go we know not wither to find we know not what.