<span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 90%; line-height: 116%;"><span style="color: #80BFFF">Some things pass on to our children, and some things do not. <br/>Unfortunately, the more harmful the trait, the more likely it would seem that your offspring are to inherit it. For Alexsandr, this is true. <br/><br/>Like his father, he is tall and broad shouldered. Like his mother, he is fair of face and blue eyed. Like his grandmother he can see the dead and bend steel with his bare hands. <br/>It is not a good thing. There are suicide victims spattered on the pavement when he walks to the 7/11 for milk. There are murder victims keeping him up at night in his falling down apartment complex. He accidentally gives change to homeless people who froze to death the winter past. It is a troublesome gift to have. <br/><br/>Aleksandr’s grandmother tells him to be glad that the <span style="font-style: italic">oborotnyk</span> in their bloodline has watered down over generations; that he does not have to worry about having a beast form. When he was a child this seemed a shame, in the stories <span style="font-style: italic">oborotnyk</span> turned into wolves and foxes and were powerful sorcerers. Now he is older he has learned to heed his grandmother. He is lucky to have been born into a family with a living relative who also has the gift - he knows that without direction it would have been all too easy to have ended up in a padded room with a straightjacket for company. Even with only a few of the talents his ancestors are said to have possessed Aleksandr struggles to conceal them from humans and spirits alike, having to control the need to shift into another form would only be another problem. He does not worry that he will never be a bear like great grandpa Nikolai.<br/><br/>There is an old saying his grandmother, Zorya, has beaten into Aleksandr: ‘Не позволяйте духу увидеть вы видите их , или вы будете скоро следовать за ними навсегда.’ <span style="font-style: italic">Do not let a spirit see you see them, or you will soon follow them forever. </span><br/>It sounds better in Russian, but you get the drift. <br/>The temptation to test the rule haunted Aleksandr for most of his childhood until a chance news report when he was nine ended the fantasy abruptly. It was only a few frames of a horror-struck young man babbling incoherently as he was lead away by Policemen. The reporter rehashed the cold details on what had been referred to as ‘an attempted murder of an unnamed second party’ and Aleksandr spied two small children slithering after the handcuffed young man, eyes no more than blank black holes and tiny bodies desecrated by gruesome wounds. The Policemen did not acknowledge the children at all, though the man cast terrified glances back to them often. Aleksandr’s grandmother had tutted in irritation. “Дурак, говорить с мертвыми только заканчивает жизнь”<span style="font-style: italic"> Fool, talking to the dead only ends the living. </span>The stark terror on the young man’s face was enough to convince Aleks to give up on his private fancy of befriending a spirit. <br/><br/>The apparitions a select few can see are not merely tormented souls, there are things out that have never been human haunting the edges of life as well. Aleks remembers Sirin and Alkonost, Rusalka and Vodyanoy and other bizarre creatures from his early childhood in Moscow. There are strange things in America too, but they are not the wights and wyrds of his homeland. <br/><br/>Now Aleksandr is twenty one and lives a few blocks over from the apartment he grew up in. This has less to do with feeling the need to stay close to his roots and more that the surrounding ten to twenty blocks are populated almost entirely by immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, Romania and other Eastern European countries. He knows this place, he can get work relatively easily and his lessons with his grandmother can continue unimpeded. He will move out of this city altogether one day, but he still has much to learn. Also, his mother may kill him if he moves away too soon.  <br/><br/>The evening air is heavy as Aleks walks home from the factory - the first of his two jobs. He passes a group of teenage boys loitering in front of a convenience store and calls out a lewd joke to one of them - they are all the brothers and sons of people he has known most of his life. Raucous laughter follows him as the youths answer in kind. He is a block from home when an asian man in a tailored suit emerges from a sleek black car outside of the Polish restaurant and bar next to Aleks’ apartment complex. A wave of wraiths bearing the unmistakable signs of suicide - self -inflicted shotgun wounds, deep ligature marks ‘round their throats and slit wrists, each more awful than the last - follow the well dressed man into the bar. Aleksandr’s eyes slide off them automatically, all too often people bearing strings of spirits like a line of macabre ducklings show up to Bratumil’s Bar - Aslan Grigorevich Vasilyev’s house seat. <br/><br/>Aslan Grigorevich employs half the families within a mile radius of Bratumil’s and has a hand in everything, be it legal or decidedly not. Aleksandr knows he operates an arm of the Russkaya Mafiya, knows the majority of the boys who he passed at the store are likely already <br/>working small time jobs for gifts, money and favor, but he has never been approached by Aslan’s henchmen. Aleks mentioned this at dinner once with his family when he was sixteen. “Существует уважение к имени Достоевскому.” His grandmother had said. “Наше название старое, люди помнят , что мы сильны в том, как они не понимают.” <span style="font-style: italic">There is respect for the Dostoevskii name. Our name is old, people remember that we are strong in ways they do not understand.</span> She looked proud. “They are just scared of your babushka, Aleksi.”  His father said in english, “They are worried she will turn into a bear if they try to recruit you.” <br/><br/>Aleksandr ignores the stream of ghosts and their host, he is almost home now. </span></span></span>