A Man

He looked about with a suspicious eye. To the left, glaring at the old hag with her hunched back and her stained babushka. To the right where he saw nothing more than a wet long field of green grass, mown into a buzzcut like the buzzed head of buzzing military police. Bastards.

He took a staggering step to the right, correcting himself with an elegant swish of the hips, and bringing his flask to his lips. The grass was moist and cold and soft, and soon his thin legs could carry him no longer. He found himself on his arse on the ground, his knotty fingers knotting the grass around his knuckles. It was so cold his breath moved in a cloud of steam, and then stood hovering above him. Another gulp of vodka, of holy water, holy water to an atheist in the grass with the water seeping through his trousers.

A slimy thing made its way to his ring finger, and wrapped itself around it. This is the closest he had ever come to marriage. He picked up his hand, and with the other dipped his index finger in the holiest of waters. He tried to give some to the poor creature wrapped around his finger, but little did he know you can't tell which end is the crapper and which is the mouth. Kind of like him, you don't know which end spews the shit, really. So he tried both, there was a 50 percent chance he would get it right anyway.

He said whatever, and drank some more, lay on his back and stretched out his bony fingers. This thing lived underground, making tunnels with its head or its arse, no direction in life whatsoever. Sometimes it would come out when it rained, and let the cool rain splatter on and around it. Then it would go back underground into darkness and nothingness, waiting to be dug out by children wanting to fish. Maybe they could have children, his new wife and him.

The slimy thing fell off, sliming on his face and his preciously grown beard. A beard defines a man in Russia. If you have no beard you are a, how do you say? Homosexual. If he ever met one of those homosexuals he would curse them right out, tell them exactly who they are and how they are wrong. He'd put them underground. He stood up, staggering and cursing, wiping this slimy thing off his splendid beard. Splendidly, he staggered off somewhere where the worm never saw him again. This man, it thought, I wonder which end spews the shit, really.