Confessions: Myra's Story

[[This is a project of mine to tell the story of Myra’s past in small segments. I’ll be switching between her doing first-person narrations for an unknown recipient (a lot of wording is intentional to avoid giving an idea as to who) and third-person “flashbacks” depending on what I’m writing about and how I feel it would flow better. I apologize if clarity in the writing is lacking. I write mostly for my own enjoyment, and tend to make stylistic choices (both in content and form) that make the story sound clear to me but often not to other people. Usually this happens when I try to make allusions and mean to be deliberately vague (ie, saying “we” without explaining who exactly that entails). I’m not sure how long this will take me, but probably quite a while. I have a lot of ideas in my head, but I also have a conclusion. I’m sort of just coming up with things as I go, so we’ll see. It’s a bit heavy at times, so be warned.]]


The only light in the room came from the computer sitting on the desk in front of her, and from the faintly glowing embers in the ashtray next to the keyboard. It was about 11pm now, and if she had the blinds open she would have had the perfect view of a full moon reflecting off the ocean from outside the window of her Waterfront studio apartment. But they were closed. Her phone was turned off, her door was locked, and her car was parked and safely locked in the storage unit across the street. She wasn’t going anywhere – not until this was finished.

A blank Word document was open on the screen and Myra, reclining back in her chair and biting her nails from the indecision about where to begin, was staring at the blinking text cursor towards the top of the page. A small paper box sat on the edge of the desk, and her fingers tapped lightly on the lid. Eventually, she leaned forward and rested her hands on the keyboard, let out a sigh, and started typing.

This is a story you already know. Most of it, anyway. There were some secrets I kept, even from you, and I’m so sorry for having done that. It seems like forever since I last saw you or heard your voice, though in reality it’s only been a couple of years. We’ve been through so much, together and separately, and to put it down in words on a screen almost seems to me to rob our lives of their significance. But I have to try. I need this to be waiting for you for when you’re ready to read it, and if you never are, then maybe it will fall into the hands of somebody else who can find some kind of insight from it.

This is the story of my life, and although it’s addressed to you, it’s written for no one in particular.


My name wasn’t always Myra Alekseeva. It feels foreign to me, no matter how much I hear it or how hard I try to get used to it. It doesn’t even feel like an alias or an identity, more like an assumed porn name I use so that the other me can hide my dirty secrets. The name I grew up with is Valerie Mihailova, but nobody else can know that. And in prison, I didn’t have a name. I had a number. I’ve had other identities, sure, but these are the three that stay with me. I don’t know which one is real – am I Myra, am I Valerie, or am I The Number? Is it the life I had that defines me or the life I live now? My past dictates my thoughts and dominates my actions in the present, and so I can’t decide.

But there was a time when The Number and Myra Alekseeva didn’t exist, when I was just Valerie Mihailova.


The house where I grew up was enormous. It was three stories tall, and I’d guess somewhere around five-thousand square feet altogether. We were perched right on the top of a hill, and the only thing within half a mile around was the gravel road that led up from the small town below to our house. At night, you could see the lights from Saint Petersburg on the horizon. Our family owned all the surrounding property (town excluded) out to around one and a half square miles. There was absolutely no practical reason whatsoever for having that much land, but nobody even considered suggesting to father that he should sell it.

The exterior of the house was a little plain despite the size, but inside was magnificent. Picture the most expensive looking house you’ve ever seen: that’s it. We had spiraling marble staircases on either side of the entryway flanking a polished, heavy wooden dining room table that could seat two dozen people comfortably. Sculptures and paintings lined the walls on lit pedestals, each one worth a small fortune, and three huge crystal chandeliers hanged from the ceiling. There were more rooms than I can even begin to remember.

The house always had the smell of fresh flowers, which were arranged in colorful bouquets that filled every available surface. Ornate rugs from some place or other adorned the polished stone floor. There was an echo, and no matter how quiet the original sound, you could hear it all throughout the rest of the house. It was an imposing place to step into, but being a guest in our home was not nearly as frightening as living there.


Our house was dominated by my father, Leonid Mihailov. He was a bear of a man, standing well over six and a half feet tall and weighing close to three-hundred pounds. His hands were worn and scarred like those of a carpenter, and he had a short but remarkably full beard. His head was shaved completely bald, though I’d seen old pictures of him before he decided to get rid of his hair and I must say, I would have supported his decision to do so. His beard, even from the time I had been born, was starting to get streaks of grey in it. I only ever knew my father as an old man.

We hated him. He was bitter and cruel. His deep voice bellowed throughout the whole house whenever he spoke, and when we’d done something wrong he’d take hold of you with his enormous hands and drag you away to be punished, and as his fingers clenched down around you, you knew there was no escape no matter how much you kicked or screamed or pleaded with him. He’d yell at you and he’d beat you, sometimes with his belt, but just as often with his bare fists. And until he couldn’t get his dick up anymore without a prescription, he’d rape you.

Nobody else knew about it, of course. He was one of the most respected men in organized crime in Saint Petersburg. He answered only to the vor v zakone himself, and his KGB handler. Yeah, that’s right. Leonid Mihailov, my father, was an undercover agent in the Russian Mafiya. It’s why the outside of our house was so plain, and why he wanted to keep all that undeveloped property around us: the walls were made of concrete thick enough to stop an AK round, and anybody who tried to come up to the house could be spotted from far, far off. That he worked for the KGB I didn’t find out until years later. I don’t know if anybody knew. It’s one of those things I never told you, and I should have. It’s how they found you.

There’s no rational explanation for my father’s actions – he wasn’t a rationally thinking man. I believe it was the control that got to him. He could play hotshot gangster all day and night, and all he had to do was drop one little letter in a safety deposit box every month to report his progress and he was free and clear of any charges. All the depravity he could think of, without any of the limitations or consequences. Of course, in the ‘90s, when the Soviet Union disbanded and the KGB was broken up, his justifications lost any tenuous ground they may have had to begin with.

His handler told him to break off his ties with organized crime and retire the operation. Father refused. Said he was in too deep, and he couldn’t back out now – that if he did, they’d suspect something, and they’d kill us all. It was a pathetic excuse. Crime to him was like a drug. The money, the respect, the power... the violence. It kept flowing, and he was addicted to it. You could see in his demeanor as he walked the halls of that house, and in the glint in his eye and the sadistic smile on his face as he delivered his beatings, that he’d die before he gave it up. And he did.

Father never laid a hand on me. I don’t know why he didn’t, but I think everyone resented me because of it. What scares me most is that I think the reason he liked me is because he saw a hint of himself in me… that ferocity, the lust. God knows if any of us deserved his rage, it was me. I was awful. I still am. Whenever he was home - which, thankfully, was rare – we would cower in whatever dark corners of the house we could fit into. But I didn’t have to.
I could greet him at the door, or run out to his car when he got back, tired and with fresh blood and his hands, smelling of gunpowder and alcohol, and give him a hug. He’d laugh and pick me up, and as he carried me inside on his shoulders he’d ask how my day at school was.

Meanwhile, Alisa , my older sister, he’d wake you up early before he left and take you to his office downstairs, and as I lay in bed with the pillow covering my ears I could still hear your muffled screams, and then your sobbing when he returned you to your room when he was done.

And Anastaysa, mother, he treated you the same. Even if you did whatever he asked beyond his expectations, he’d find an excuse to take his rage out on you. It got so bad that you couldn’t leave the house because, unlike Alisa, he’d leave his mark on your face and you were too afraid to show yourself in public. The time father broke your leg, we were still very young… but we tried our best to take care of the house so that you could rest. We couldn’t do everything perfectly though, and when he got home he applauded me for my “kind-hearted effort” and beat you even more for letting us do “your work.”

We had a brother, Dmitri, who I never got to know. He died when I was either two or three years old, I’m not exactly sure. All I know is that he wanted nothing more than for Leonid to be proud of him, and it got him killed when he tried to follow in father’s criminal footsteps. I don’t think father ever did anything to try and persuade him otherwise, and I know he didn’t tell Dmitri that he actually worked for the KGB.

What eats at me more than anything is that if I asked him to stop, I think he might have listened. Eventually, I did stop him, but it was far too late. I was too scared to speak up, lest he get angry with me for the first time. I was a coward, and I have to live with that.


((More to come...))

”Come on Alisa, they’re over here!” Valerie yelled behind her as she ran ahead of her sister. It was 1993, in the beginning of summer, on a day that was unusually warm for the region. It had rained every day of the week until last night, when the clouds had finally lifted and left their thousand-some acres of land wet and soggy, to begin drying in the pleasant heat of the sun today before inevitably going right back to the way it was in a matter of days - if the clouds didn’t come right back in when night fell in a few hours.

They had both just returned from school, and were racing through the fields of tall, damp grass to the spot where the wildflowers on their property grew in abundance. Despite being a year older, significantly taller, and much more athletic (not to mention beautiful) than her sister Valerie, Alisa was lagging behind her today, favoring one foot over the other. Her left leg was so stiff from the bruises she had endured from her father that she could barely move it, let alone run to keep up with her spry younger sister.

Valerie ran up the side of an enormous boulder that overlooked the plains around them for hundreds of yards while she waited for Alisa to catch up. She peered out into the distance, and could see the fields of flowers just a short ways off at the edge of their property, beyond which was a significantly wooded area. Valerie squinted against the sunlight in her eyes and looked a little further. ”Hey, I think I see other people. Was there anybody else at the house?” she called back, turning around to see why her sister wasn’t by her side yet.

Alisa lay collapsed on the ground, her long blonde hair clumped together with dirt and her long skirt and blouse spattered with mud. Valerie rushed down from the rock and raced back towards her, shouting her name in panic. ”I-I-I’m okay…” she stuttered, through faint sobbing, as Valerie helped her get back on her feet. ”My sandal broke, I think from the way I was walking on it.” Valerie looked down at her feet and, sure enough, the strap on her sister’s bright new summer sandals had snapped clean in half. ”Are you hurt? Do you want me to help you back to the house?” asked Valerie, with an oh-so-slight hint of annoyance beneath her sincerity at the possibility of their day outdoors being cut short. Alisa tested standing on her ankle, and found that it wasn’t injured. ”N-no… I think I’m okay. Let’s pick the flowers for mother, you know how much she loves them.” They continued on at a slower pace, Alisa carrying her ruined shoe in one hand, and before long she started sobbing again, stronger this time.

”What’s wrong?” asked Valerie, gently steadying her sister by holding her by the arm. ”When papa sees my sandals and my stained school clothes, he’s going to be so upset.” Valerie let go of her and looked down at the ground, silent. After a few moments, she turned back towards the flowers and started walking again. Alisa said nothing more and continued to follow behind, but Valerie still heard the occasional sniffle or shaky attempt at a deep breath as they walked.

Lately, it had been getting worse and worse with Alisa. They used to spend every day out here exploring the land and playing all sorts of games with each other, but now she barely had the energy to do more than the most basic, routine chores. They knew every hill, every tree, every ditch, every boulder, every place that made a natural shelter against the rain, and every place they could go to pick flowers. There was one point in particular where three giant rocks had arranged themselves around a huge, dead tree in such a way that they could crawl in through one small entrance between the rocks and play in the burned out husk of the tree. It was their own secret hiding place for when things were going bad in the house.

They went around the boulder and crossed over a small stream that Alisa had considerable trouble jumping because of her leg, then scurried over the side of one last hill and were there. ”Papa?!” said Valerie in surprise as she reached the crest of the hill, looking down on the patch of flowers. Not thirty feet from her, in the middle of where they were headed, Leonid Mihailov stood across from another man Valerie didn’t recognize, both of them shoveling dirt into a freshly dug hole that even she knew was a grave.

Alisa froze behind Valerie like a frightened deer as her father and his “associate” turned to look at them. ”Valerie? Alisa? What are you doing this far from the house?” he asked, his voice a mix of anger and surprise. The man across from him quickly spat out something that Valerie couldn’t hear, and gestured towards the two of them with the shovel in his hand. Her father shot him a look that could stop a freight train and he fell silent immediately.

”We… we came to get flowers for the house. We always come out here after school on Fridays to pick the wild flowers.” Valerie answered, nervously. The man who was with her father mumbled something else and then started walking back towards a car that was parked on a tiny dirt trail a little ways off in the wooded area. ”Get back to the house now, you two. I don’t want you ever coming out here again, do you understand?” Leonid said firmly, shaking one of his huge, thick fingers in a scolding manner in their direction.

”And Alisa, what happened to your dress?” he yelled as he noticed the mud stains. Tears started streaming down her face once again. ”My sandal broke, and I tri-tripped in the mud. I’m so sorry, papa…” she said quietly, only barely loud enough for her father to hear. From back in the woods, still walking to the car, the man her father was with turned and yelled something to him about “needing to hurry back for the next one before sundown.” ”You stupid girl, you’ve ruined your entire outfit for school. Don’t think I’ll have forgotten this by the time I get home tonight, you understand?” ”Yes, papa…”

At the continued behest of the other man, their father picked up his shovel and returned to the car, while Valerie and Alisa hurried back to the house as fast as they could possibly go.

After that day, the house would never smell of fresh flowers again. And sure enough, that night, the clouds and the rain returned.

Leonid Mihailov was currently sitting in the large, soft leather chair in his office, but in the uncomfortable position of staring down the barrel of his own Colby SNR 850 revolver.
”Valerie…” he said quietly, ”hand me the gun.”
”Shut up!” she screamed back at him, cocking the handgun with her thumb.

Her father was always a man of extremes, but he had taken it too far this time, and she couldn’t sit idly by and watch it happen anymore. About two weeks ago Mr. Tarasov had left, and although the few days following his departure were peaceful, Valerie’s father quickly fell back into his regular routine of terrorizing the family. Except for the night before last that routine was broken when Alisa, now fully nineteen years old, had tried to fight back.

Valerie wasn’t sure why Alisa had decided to make a stand on that night in particular after putting up with it for so many years. The eight months of reprieve during Mr. Tarasov’s stay must have given her strength, in a “the calm before the storm” type of way, she thought. Regardless, when Alisa was playing her violin and her father approached her, she had tried to fend him off by striking him with the sharp point of the small, but very heavy, antique wooden metronome that she used to practice. It put a hole through her father’s cheek and shattered three of his teeth.

A bloody, crooked smile started to creep across her father’s bandaged face as he looked into Valerie’s frightened eyes from the chair in his office, showing the extent of that wound right now. ”You’re not going to shoot me, girl… if you were, you would have done it already. You don’t have the courage! he yelled at her. Valerie took a cautious step back and adjusted her grip on the handle of the gun, the heavy revolver shaking noticeably in her outstretched arm.

When Alisa hit him, Leonid had, as was to be expected, gone berserk. He had chased her around the house, beating her when he got close and throwing whatever was around him at her when she tried to run. Winter had come in full force now, and it was night – if she had tried to run out of the house, she wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near to the nearest person who could help her before she would have frozen. Valerie wasn’t home, having stayed late that night in the city to study in the library after school. All their mother was doing at the time was standing in the corner, screaming for the bloodshed to stop.

Within a few minutes, it did. Alisa was trying to run down the spiraling, marble staircase from the third floor when Leonid had thrown a glass vase at her, striking her in the back of the head and sending the young girl tumbling the rest of the way down. About midway through her fall, there was a loud crack as her spine broke in two near the neck. By the time she reached the bottom and lay bloody and sprawled out on the floor, still barely conscious, she was paralyzed for life – if she lived.

Somehow, remarkably, she did. When Leonid realized what he had done, he panicked and drove her to the nearest hospital immediately. Whether he did it out of remorse or an attempt at self-preservation, Valerie didn’t know. She suspected the latter. The hospital was where she was now, along with their mother, while Valerie and her father were here in the office.
”You’re wrong… I just wish I knew how to make your suffering last.”
”Aim for the gut, then. Right below the stomach.” he spat at her, leaning forward in his chair. He started to laugh.
And then Valerie pulled the trigger.

The force and unexpected suddenness of the bullet knocked Leonid back into the chair, and his laughter ceased immediately as his right lung began to fill with blood. The shot nearly deafened them both, echoing through the house countless times before the sound finally dispersed. Valerie’s ears rang painfully, and she dropped the gun and ran out of the room as she saw, but couldn’t hear, her father in his death throes, coughing and hemorrhaging out blood in huge quantities. His eyes remained fixed on the wall behind where Valerie had been standing when she carried out his execution.

Valerie had already packed a few bags, and had made arrangements to be far away from here in a few hours time. She ran to her room to retrieve them, put on her coat, and grabbed the keys to her father’s Patriot Vegas before heading back downstairs, careful to avoid the splatters of blood yet to be cleaned up that were left by her sister on the marble steps a short time ago.

Her ears were still ringing when she reached the front door, but not so much that she couldn’t hear the click of the hammer being drawn back and the cycling of the Colby’s cylinder behind her. She turned around just in time to see her father leaning in the doorway to his office, gun in hand, a river of blood flowing out of him. Then the gun cracked out again and Leonid Mihailov slumped over, succumbing to his own wound, as the bullet struck Valerie in the gut. Right below the stomach.

She made it two steps out the door before falling unconscious, the thunderous echo of the gunshot back in her ears.