Nalchik was a good place to recover. I spent several hours each afternoon in the hot springs with my nose above water and my hair freezing into icicles. The pool girls brought me tea. Every few minutes a bubble of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide or nitrous oxide farted up to the surface. I made no attempt to pursue the nitrous bubbles because I was there for healing, right? Healing.

I ducked my head under the water to un-freeze my eyelashes. When I came up a young woman with milk-white skin and hard brown nipples was waving for me to get out of the water. A banya partner! I could do with a good scourging!

I followed her swaying buttocks toward the steam shack, droplets of ice falling from my skin. At the halfway point she turned, smiled and punched me in the eye. Her fist left a circle of something sticky and warm that I took to be blood. Her other fist came up under my ribs. I coughed and lashed out, catching her on my shoulder. My fist sank in and pulled away with a sucking sound. Her eyes glistened and she smashed her forehead into my face. I heard bone and cartilage break, and my world filled with the smell of rotten eggs. I fell forward with my arms outstretched and we tumbled to the ground, her elbows and knees swinging in and up, heavy as sandbags. I squeezed as tightly as I could and felt her torso separate from the rest of her body as though unconnected by bones or ligaments. Her hands continued to squeeze my skull and I saw red and slowly sank into her dissolving remains.

When I was finally able to open my swollen eyelids, Doctor Kaitouk was staring down at me.

“I have a question for you,” she said. “You were brought to my hospital frostbitten and covered with mud. But of course it is winter, and there is no mud. Your injuries were consistent with a fall of twenty to thirty feet. But of course there are no buildings of that height near where you were found. You smelled like a manure pile, or an oil refinery, or a particularly vile geyser. So my question is,” and she clicked her pen against her teeth, “what exactly did you do to make horses, Gazprom and the earth itself want to kick the shit out of you?”

I will never tell her that.

_{Image CC-BY by Alaskan Dude}