Walli 1

Morgan Walli

Dr. Rodgers-Carpenter

HON 151 004

24 February 2017

To Run and Fall

“We are all running from something, Kliment.” That’s what he told me. Those were the

last words he spoke. I wonder what mine will be – no, would have been. I’m already dead, really.

I died the night that batman was killed, the night he said those words. I just didn’t know it yet.

Death is a stealthy thing, slipping between fingers and down the shafts of needles. It flirts

treacherously with the nurses here, obscuring their good intentions and mocking my

helplessness, my failures, my bleeding lungs.

I know the year, 2015. That’s all. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I don’t know

how long I was imprisoned. How long since our unit was betrayed. I don’t know how long ago I

left eastern Ukraine. The other hospital was bombed. They took me here. When? It doesn’t

matter. I’m never going to leave.

The nurse’s knowing glances betray that much. The scathing judgements they imposed

when I arrived have faded, replaced by feminine pity as they acknowledge the superior verdict of

my disease. It is suffocating, demeaning, to be looked upon with such condescending sympathy,

to be considered as if I were a crippled, senseless child. The self-satisfied pride they take in their

work, a false countenance of strength, is misguided. They are weak. Challenge, frustration, loss –

these are just words muttered over missing grocery lists. They know nothing. I am no criminal

and I am no child. I know more of the world and its painful love of coincidence then they ever

could. I’m not like them, set apart by a life – an identity – that was never ordinary, never easy.
 Walli 2

I was always different, as a boy, but it was a difference I couldn’t express and couldn’t

understand. It was only later that I understood why my friends never seemed to reciprocate the

affection I felt for them, and why I batted away flirtatious glances from girls like flies. I’d done

something wrong. There was something wrong with me. I was gay. I couldn’t be gay. It wasn’t

possible. It was illegal. Detested. Degenerate. I would fix it, correct myself. I wouldn’t be gay –

no – I wasn’t gay, just imagining things, delusional, I would prove it to myself. From then on, it

was a difference I ran from, a uniqueness I shunned and masked beneath a molded identity – my

effort to render false what I knew to be true.

Often, I would joke, yelling curses and sexual innuendos, mocking. My nights were spent

drinking, whistling at women on the street and throwing the coals of my joint onto the pavement

as they passed. I picked up girls, then dumped them, my lack of interest obscured as masculine

indifference, dominance, sex drive. I married one of those girls. She was older, pretty, normal. I

never loved her. I resented her, sometimes, but she’d done nothing wrong. She just couldn’t

make up for the side of me she never saw, the part I pretended didn’t exist. Her thin, unwitting

fingers, tracing the contours of my chest – they were reminders of everything I hated and

everything I wished I loved. Her affection was wasted, maddening in its inherent insignificance.

I cried anyway when she was killed. A stray bullet three years ago was all it took for her

to become a name on a list of casualties, the side effect of Ukraine’s civil unrest. I lost a

roommate, a friend, an escape. I never had a lover. I wonder if she knew. I hope she didn’t. She

was the first thing the war stole. Whoever pulled that trigger marked her finish line and sounded

the starting signal that set me off running into the arms of the thief.

That year, protests were raging in Kiev. President Yanukovych had fled. The Luhansk

People’s Republic declared itself a sovereign state. The world ignored them. The Lutenhyne
 Walli 3

theater was bombed1. I felt the shock, the vibrations shaking the foundations of my apartment a

block away. The walls I had constructed were collapsing and I needed to rebuild them, reinstate

order, reaffirm the illusion I needed to survive. I needed to hide, fight, run, something. The LPR2

was calling for men, soldiers, so I went north to Luhansk – up in the world, so I thought.

The months that followed are blurry, irrelevant. They rushed me through basic training

and tactical measures, the dogged military order a welcome distraction. The respite wasn’t to

last, however, and I was assigned to a unit in the People’s Militia, escape giving way to

tormented boredom. The little action our unit saw was child’s play, just a happy disruption of

monotone duties, and most of our time was spent drinking, smoking, arguing, and raucously one-

upping each other in a drug-induced, boyish display of testosterone.

The order I’d hidden behind was gone. I was slipping, the mask I so furtively wanted to

believe becoming thin and the person behind it more apparent. I needed to lose myself again, but

order – control – was gone. So I lost myself in recklessness, injecting my ambrosia, my relief,

letting it course through my veins, warming my blood, stilling my mind, and leaving me to join

in the unit’s medicated abandonment – unabated by a staff sergeant too smitten with his first

love: boltushka3. Like him, my drug use wasn’t a thought-out behavior, something considered for

its benefits and drawbacks. It was just necessary.

The unit’s heedless revelry and failed leadership didn’t go unnoticed and we were

recalled within a month of my arrival, split up, and reassigned. I was assigned to a special task

force, the LPR’s Rapid Response Group. That’s when I met him. We were his men, his soldiers.

He became our father – a commander, a leader, a god. His name was Alexander Bednov, but to

1
This is fictional event. However, Lutenhyne is a real town to the south of Luhansk.
2
Luhansk People’s Republic
3
A homemade and dangerous stimulant, similar to methamphetamine, that is common in eastern Europe.
 Walli 4

us, he was Batman. We would have followed him through hell. Many of us did.

There are some people who inspire loyalty beyond reason. Beyond ethics. They are loved

unremittingly by those who follow them – an instinctive, overpowering love – and loathed by

those they pursue. Batman was one of these people. He was Jarovit4, pure and respected in his

violent, unchecked power. We never questioned his leadership. We did as was asked, without

hesitation. Our intellect, hazed by the amphetamines coursing through our blood, never paused to

question if the pain of the women we held captive, the screams of the men we tortured, were

justified, righteous. They became necessary with his order, not a question of right or wrong.

Simply a matter of completion.

I did things for him that I never thought I was capable of. Things I would have hated

myself for had he not reassured me, actions that contradicted my every belief. But what I

believed was irrelevant, obsolete, unconsidered. I’d never felt less alone. I’d never felt more

valued, more loved. It was a perfect, crudely brutal existence – the melding of two extremes. He

didn’t truly know me, I’m not sure I knew myself, but he understood me.

“We are all running from something, Kliment.”

It was evening when he approached me, the dusk of both a day and a year. I was sitting

outside the barracks, on the ground leaning against the building. It was damp, the ground soggy

and the air cold, my warm breath mixing with the smoke from my blunt as I lost myself in

numbness. The other men were inside, drinking, laughing, jesting about the women they would

fuck come the new year. I’d snuck away, tired of forcing exuberance, wanting to be alone.

I looked up as he approached. He smiled resignedly, sitting down beside me and tilting his

head back against the wall, his eyes scanning the dusk as he considered the shadowed outlines of

4
An ancient Slavic god of war, harvest, fertility, and springtime
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the trees at the edge of camp, their edges blurred by the moisture in the air.

“It’s exhausting, isn’t it?” He said, “Running, and never getting anywhere.”

I nodded, resting my blunt on my knee and following his gaze.

“I suppose there isn’t much else. You can run and keep running, or you can run and fall.” He

sighed. “You and I are no different, Klim. We’re both runners. May I?”

He gestured to my blunt. I gave it to him and he inhaled deeply then took it from his lips and

breathed out, a few embers from the joint falling onto the damp earth, sizzling, and going black.

He handed it back and rose to his feet.

“Ščaslyvoho novoho roku5, Kliment.”

He turned and walked away, his rugged figure fading into the outline of the trees. I watched

until he disappeared, then rose and rejoined the party, letting the thoughts in my head be swept

away and the world around me transform on the wave of analeptic euphoria I sent burning

through my body.

I woke the next morning to the sound of gunshots, my sweaty face pressed against the floor.

Shouting. Pounding feet. More gunshots. My wasted brain slowly brought the room around me

into focus, and I struggled to my feet, clumsily clutching my Glock and stumbling to the door.

“Kliment!” A soldier yelled at me from his cover behind a patrol vehicle, “Get over here!”

Another wave of shots sent adrenaline coursing through my body, and I sprinted, taking

cover next to him, a younger man, Bohdan.

“They killed him – Batman.” His voice trembled with controlled anger. “Blew up his car this

morning. The LPR. They betrayed him, Klim. Blew him up. He’s dead. They’re –”

A grenade cut him off mid-sentence, exploding nearby and shredding the delicate insides of

5
“Happy New Year” in Ukranian.
 Walli 6

my ears, just as Bohdan’s words had eviscerated my heart. I took off running, into the strand of

trees where Batman had disappeared, chasing the memory of his silhouette. He was gone. There

was no point staying. I needed to leave, escape, so I ran, straight into the LPR forces attacking

the RRG6 base. They didn’t shoot, but forced me to my knees, tied my hands, covered my eyes,

and shoved me, falling, into the blackness. Hours later, they removed my blindfold and left me in

the dark, a prisoner, betrayed and grieving the loss of the man I loved.

The details of my imprisonment don’t matter. They are immaterial, purposeless, just as they

were for me then. Batman had fallen. I learned later that the media chronicled his death as an

accident, the result of his resisting arrest for the things he had done, the things he had asked us to

do. I had fallen also, the past I feared close behind me, a chilling rustle of leaves in the shadowed

brush along the road, stalking my footsteps. It started with the fever, the weight loss, the

exhaustion, as though my body had reconciled to reflect the agony in my mind. Then came the

chest pain, the cough, relentless, abrasive, scorching the depths of my lungs, wringing the little

strength I had left from the dry folds of my body.

They brought me here after I collapsed. They told me I was dying. The drug use that had

given me life had given me HIV, selling me to an identity I despised. The forgotten details of my

time in prison, my weakened body, had given me tuberculosis. So they said. But the blood I

cough up from my lungs, I think, is truly blood from my wounded heart. I can’t run anymore. My

legs have failed me. I have failed myself. But I am not weak. I am no criminal and I am no child,

but a soldier, a man. The face I’ve shown has been loved, the one I’ve hidden detested. I have

run, stumbled, fallen. My knees are bruised and raw. I’ve been running too long, my lungs are

tired, my breathing painful, slow. My eyes are heavy. It’s time to sleep. I think I will.

6
Rapid Response Group
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Works cited

“About HIV/AIDS.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 Nov. 2016,

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/whatishiv.html. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.

Friedman, Misha. Untitled. Misha Friedman, 2011,

http://mishafriedman.com/photoessays/tuberculosis/#/20

Luhansk News. Luhansk-News.com, 2017, http://lugansk-news.com/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.

“RRG ‘Batman’ LC.” VK, 2017, https://vk.com/gbr_bat_lnr. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.

“Tuberculosis (TB) Disease: Symptoms & Risk Factors.” Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention, 7 Jan. 2016, https://www.cdc.gov/features/tbsymptoms/. Accessed 5 Feb.

2017.

Ukrainian Policy. “Something is Rotten in the Luhansk Republic.” Ukranian Policy, 6 Jan. 2015,

http://ukrainianpolicy.com/something-is-rotten-in-the-luhansk-republic/. Accessed 5 Feb.

2017.

Volokh, Eugene. “Batman killed in the Ukraine, allegedly on orders from The Carpenter.” The

Washington Post, 2 Jan. 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-

conspiracy/wp/2015/01/02/batman-killed-in-the-ukraine-allegedly-on-orders-from-the-

carpenter/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.