His legs throbbed. His back felt broken. Around lunchtime the cook—another old hand—brought him a bowl of hot slop. Mike was hungry enough to eat almost anything.
But after the first spoonful, he knew he couldn’t. It was salted so heavily it made his jaw ache. Not just oversalted.
It was brine. Deliberately ruined. When the cook came back for the bowl and saw it still full, he grinned and asked:
— What’s the matter, soldier? Not tasty enough?
Mike tried to keep his voice even.
— It’s too salty. Nobody could eat that.
The cook just laughed and said next time he’d add sand for texture. Half an hour later Gafurov and Yusupov came to his post.
— So, Sokolov, making complaints? Hurt your feelings over lunch? — Gafurov asked with fake sympathy.
Without waiting for an answer, they grabbed him by the arms, dragged him into an empty compartment, and beat him in silence. Not enough to leave him broken—just enough to hurt and humiliate.
— You’ll eat what you’re given. Got it?
They shoved him back out into the corridor.
And he stood there. Another day. No food, no water, no sleep.
He just stood, swaying with the motion of the train, turning into a suffering machine. After two straight days on his feet, Mike’s body stopped obeying him. He no longer felt hunger or pain in his legs.
Only a crushing, leaden exhaustion. His mind blurred. The world narrowed to the rattle of wheels and the rocking corridor.
At some point he simply slid down the wall and collapsed onto the dirty floor. He didn’t even have the strength to think. He spread out his overcoat, curled up on it, and dropped into a heavy, sticky blackout.
It wasn’t sleep. It was shutdown. The only escape left. He wasn’t awakened by an order or a kick.
He woke to pain so savage it didn’t feel human. At first there was only the smell—sharp smoke from burning paper and the sickening odor of scorched skin.
Then came the sensation itself, as if his feet had been shoved into a furnace. He screamed and jerked upright. His boots and socks had been removed, and smoldering scraps of paper had been stuffed between his toes, burning the bare skin of his feet.
He thrashed on the floor, kicking wildly against the metal wall, trying to put out the fire. And standing over him were Gafurov, Yusupov, the cook, and a few other old hands. They were laughing.
Not chuckling—laughing hard, pointing at him, delighted. They called it “the bicycle.” Beside them stood the train car attendant, an older man in uniform, laughing too, showing bad teeth.
The sight of a soldier writhing in pain was the best entertainment they’d had all trip. Finally Mike managed to stamp out the flames. He lay there on the floor, making small helpless sounds, while his tormentors gave him a couple of parting kicks and wandered back to their compartment.
— Don’t fall asleep on post again, rookie! — Voronov called over his shoulder from the doorway, where he’d been watching the whole thing.
Mike was left alone in the dark corridor, the floor smelling of burned paper and flesh. And for the first time in all his service, he cried—not from pain, but from humiliation, from total helplessness, and from the terrible realization that to them he wasn’t a person.
He was an object. A form of entertainment. And that scene of pain and humiliation had not gone unwitnessed. The whole rolling nightmare had unfolded in front of the very men they were escorting.
Behind the heavy barred doors of the cells, dozens of eyes had watched in silence—convicts, repeat offenders, men for whom violence was ordinary. Their reactions varied. Some of the younger, cockier ones smirked, finding amusement in a guard being humiliated.
But the hardened inmates, the ones who had spent half their lives behind wire, looked at it differently. In their eyes there was no sympathy, but there was cold contempt. Not for the beaten soldier—for his tormentors.
In their world, harsh as it was, there were still lines. This kind of pack cruelty against one defenseless man was considered low. Mike lay on the floor, shaking with silent sobs. Then from the nearest cell, through the food slot, came a low, raspy voice:
— Hey, soldier.
Mike lifted his head. A scarred face with faded prison tattoos was looking at him. The eyes were hard as steel.
It was one of the men the others clearly deferred to. He studied Mike for a long moment, then said quietly enough that only Mike could hear:
— Tears. That’s what they like. You’re feeding them.
A pause. Then even lower, and somehow harsher:
— In our world, a man like you gets called a patsy. Remember that word. And men like them? They’re jackals. Pack animals. They only go after one man when they’ve got the numbers.
The voice stayed calm, but every word drove in like a hot needle:
— Stop crying. Be a man. Or you’ll die in here like a dog, and nobody will remember your name.
Then the face disappeared back into the dark. Mike stayed on the floor. He stopped crying.
The burns still hurt, but another feeling rose up stronger than pain—shame. The judgment of a hardened convict hit him harder than the beating had. Those words would keep sounding in his head.
Day and night. A week later the train finally reached Kharkov. The prisoners were turned over to the transfer jail.
The car emptied out. It seemed, at least for a moment, that the worst might be over. On the return trip, maybe he’d at least be able to breathe.
But Mike was wrong. For his tormentors, this was only the beginning. Before, they had at least been constrained by the formal presence of prisoners and the need to keep up appearances. Now, in an empty car, they were in their own sealed little empire of cruelty.
And they had plenty of free time. The abuse stopped being casual entertainment and became the main activity. They made Mike scrub the entire car from one end to the other, then came through and deliberately dirtied it so he’d have to start over.
They played cards for forfeits. The loser had to invent a new humiliation for Mike. He became their living toy, the thing they used to relieve boredom, anger, and their own smallness.
The tension in the car built hour by hour. It hung in the air like static before a storm. The return trip to the capital was shaping up to be Mike’s last.
Then came the holiday—Army and Navy Day. A holiday, which for the old hands meant one thing: drinking.
From early morning the car smelled of cheap fortified wine and loud laughter. Mike, after finishing every degrading chore they’d given him, crawled into the farthest, coldest compartment, curled up on the hard bunk, and tried to shut down. His whole body ached. His eyes burned from lack of sleep.
He wasn’t really sleeping so much as sinking into a gray half-consciousness, the only escape he had left. Then the compartment door slammed open so hard it hit the wall. There they were—Gafurov and his closest buddy, Corporal Yusupov.
Both were drunk. Their eyes were glassy, and the smiles on their faces had a predatory edge.
— Sleeping, Sokolov? — Gafurov drawled.
Mike sat up without a word.
He knew this visit meant trouble. Holiday, booze, boredom—that was the worst combination there was. Yusupov kicked him in the leg.
— Up. You’re coming with us. We need to talk.
There was something in their eyes Mike hadn’t seen before. Not just cruelty or the urge to humiliate. Something uglier. Something sticky and rotten.
A cold knot rose in his throat. He understood that what was coming would be worse than another beating. They dragged him down the narrow corridor into the bathroom.
A tiny freezing compartment that smelled of bleach and urine. The door slammed shut behind them, cutting him off from the rest of the world. Gafurov, swaying a little, pointed at the toilet:
