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    The Rusalka
    The Rusalka
    The Rusalka
    Ebook42 pages32 minutes

    The Rusalka

    By DeAnna Knippling

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Vlad keeps so many secrets that they surround him like a cloak of mist:  one secret hides another, protects another.  He’s a gay man in Volgograd, Russia…and a drug dealer…and a vedmak, a witch, who can release the souls of the dying, if they wish it.

    His secrets keep him safe…until he meets a rusalka, an undead water spirit who drowns the men who get too close to her, and has to face the terrible truth she brings...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWonderland Press
    Release dateAug 25, 2017
    ISBN9781386400240
    The Rusalka
    Author

    DeAnna Knippling

    DeAnna Knippling is a freelance writer, editor, and book designer living in Colorado.  She started out as a farm girl in the middle of South Dakota, went to school in Vermillion, SD, then gravitated through Iowa to Colorado, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She now writes science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime, and mystery for adults under her own name; adventurous and weird fiction for middle-grade (8-12 year old) kids under the pseudonym De Kenyon; and various thriller and suspense fiction for her ghostwriting clients under various and non-disclosable names. Her latest book, Alice’s Adventures in Underland:  The Queen of Stilled Hearts, combines two of her favorite topics–zombies and Lewis Carroll. Her short fiction has appeared in Black Static, Penumbra, Crossed Genres, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and more. Her website and blog are at www.WonderlandPress.com.  You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

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      Book preview

      The Rusalka - DeAnna Knippling

      Copyright Information

      The Rusalka

      Copyright © 2017 by DeAnna Knippling

      Cover image copyright © LarioTus, denisds | DepositPhotos.com

      Cover design copyright © 2017 by DeAnna Knippling

      Interior design copyright © 2017 by DeAnna Knippling

      Published by Wonderland Press

      All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the author. Discover more by this author at www.Wonderlandpress.com.

      The Rusalka

      It was not a good night. The air was thick with chemical smog, the kind that didn’t exist (many things that were part of Vlad’s life weren’t supposed to exist), and yet made all the streetlights hazy. The night was warm and yellowish and smelled like sewers and armpits. Above the city rose the statue of the Motherland calling all Russians to fight the Germans. That was Volgograd: smog and honor. Lately the honor was misplaced.

      Vladislav Tsaritsyn walked down the street with his hands jammed in the pockets of his blue jeans. He was wearing a dark-blue waterproof jacket, the kind that doesn’t breathe, and he was sweating like a pig underneath it. He was walking back to his apartment, past a children’s playground—actually a calisthenics park. With carefully graduated bars so that you could have the optimum height for pull-ups and other exercises. The ground was rubberized.

      Further back, under the heavy boughs of the swaying night trees, were four men, sitting on swings. Vlad walked faster.

      Shhh, said the wind in the leaves. Now that he knew the men were there, he could hear them laughing and talking in low voices. The creak of the chains. Cars drove on other streets nearby, but the only lights around here were the streetlights. Across from the park was a factory that was under construction. If he screamed, someone might hear him. Then again, maybe not. In neither case would anyone come to his help.

      He put his head down. It was one of those moments where your prayer is not tonight, please, not tonight, and whatever god that answers you is the one you follow.

      · · ·

      He made it home in one piece, climbing five flights of stairs rather than waiting for the claustrophobic, ammoniac lift. The apartment building was a big block of ugly gray cement with balconies that stretched across each floor. If you were daring, it was possible to cross from balcony to balcony, all across each story. Vlad wasn’t daring. He was tired and he was hungry and he had a kilogram of cocaine in his inside jacket pocket.

      He worked at a local hospital as an aide, caring for the sick and the dying. Our angel, they called him. He

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