Prussian Blue3rd Place in the Fiction Writing Contest
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Issue 18
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The dolly’s wheels squealed across uneven tile as I pushed the crate through the narrow plaster service halls. Bare bulbs hung along the ceiling, each halo dimmed by dust, glinting off the salt crust feathering the crate’s edges.
A scream rang out from above, blunted by the narrow corridor. I froze, waiting. The gas mask rasped as I breathed, mechanical in the long silence. I pushed on. “This the last of them, Dmitri?” a muffled voice called. I turned toward the voice, my suit’s rubber seal pressing against my ear. Through my fogged visor I could see her walking up behind me. “What was that scream?” I asked. “Galina’s daughter touched one of the shipments with a bare hand. Galina turned away for just a moment,” she sighed. “She liked the way the dust sparkled.” We worked together, wrestling the crate through the vault door for contaminated art. Inside, dozens of crates bore the name of a museum and its city of origin, art saved from evacuation zones across the empire. Mere days ago a mile-long asteroid struck the potash ponds of a Himalayan plateau. That’s all it took for eastern lands to cease to exist entirely. Reactors had been falling out across our Empire, and the fallout came west on every wind. This city was the last refuge. The Hermitage vault, a shelter for great art against the poisoned rains. Galina appeared at the door, panting. We all straightened as she passed. “She’s with the medic,” she said. “Let’s finish.” I steadied the edge of one of the unopened crates as crowbars strained the lid loose. As the crate split, flakes hissed into the air like poisoned glitter. Inside, gilt frames gleamed through layers of plastic. We shifted one canvas free. Galina’s dosimeter shrilled as it passed over Madonna, her eyes lifted in prayer. She thumbed the alarm to quiet. We logged each work of art, labeled the crates, and sealed the vault. We stripped off our contaminated layers outside the vault, trading them for the military-issue garments Galina handed out. I raised my shirt to the light. It was freckled with holes. “You have burns,” Galina said, pointing her bare finger at my chest. Red welts speckled my skin where the dust had touched. I handed over my ruined shirt, pulled on elastic trousers, then went for the medic. In the kitchen, ministry workers stacked boxes of food. A medic brought over a bowl of rationed water, soap, and iodine. He wrapped my wounds in gauze, his gaze lingering a little too long on the old scars beneath the chest hair. “Here,” he said at last, tossing a museum tourist shirt at me. “Cover yourself. I’m finished with you.” I pulled it on, iodine stinging under the cotton, and stepped into the entry hall. Soldiers hammered boards over the windows outside to keep looters out of the empire’s last great palace museum. Over the clank of nails, a distribution officer droned, “children first with their caregivers, then women, then men,” gesturing at the table and the line already forming. I lined up for my Prussian blue rations, watching a clerk tick names off a clipboard. Yulia, Galina’s daughter, stepped forward in line. Both hands were wrapped in gauze, thick white bandages swallowing her small fingers. She winced as her mother angled one upward, and a soldier forced it into the blue indelible ink. The stain spread dark through the gauze, bleeding toward her knuckle. Yulia held it up for Galina to see, her face rosy with pride, but her mother’s face was stern. Galina’s finger was dipped into the same ink, a mark every soldier and citizen bore, proof to prevent Prussian blue ration fraud. “One pill, three times daily. Split in half for children. This is all you’ll get. Two weeks for adults, four for children,” the officer drawled as the line inched forward. The officer studied Leonid’s sons, who were next to step forward. Their rigid shoulders and set jaws were met with a fleeting look of approval. “And where is your wife?” the officer asked. “She was a nuclear engineer,” Leonid said. “Stationed in the far east.” The officer gave a curt nod. No human life had been recovered that far out. His gaze lingered on the boys, slipping extra capsules into their envelopes before pressing them shut with government seals. I looked away quickly. “Take care,” he muttered before waving the line forward. When my turn came, the officer glanced at my museum ID. He looked up at me through heavy lids before reading my old name aloud. The man behind him made a tick on the list without lifting his head. “What future will you give this country? Can you procreate?” he asked, letting a half dozen capsules slip from his grip, back into the sanctioned supply. I opened my mouth to speak, but Galina’s voice cut through. “I can't bear children, officer,” she said, stepping forward. “I adopted. We are sacrificing ourselves by wheeling in this radioactive—” “I won’t hesitate to take away your rations,” the officer snapped. “Sacrifice is a pointless, stupid word to use now.” He tossed my rations envelope across the table. “Take it. You're lucky to get anything.” ***
Five sparrows circled the vaulted ceiling as hammers thundered outside. With each nail, the birds panicked, wings clicking against the panes as daylight thinned to dark behind the heavy boards.
“Dmitri!” Yulia called. She leaned into the Reception Hall from the adjoining gallery, waving me on. Her dark hair spilled over the railing, falling below her waist. At eight, she was tall and gangly for her age. Her doll dangled at her side, its tulle dress a twin of her own. One of the doll’s cotton fingers was smudged with blue ink, matching the blot seeping through Yulia’s bandages. I glanced over at Galina. Her daughter had taken an immediate liking to me, and Galina didn’t seem to mind, giving a nod of approval. “Come see,” Yulia whispered, pressing her face to the slit of window glass between two wooden planks. From the vantage point, we could peer out on the palace square. Tarpaulin-covered trucks rumbled with floodlights that strobed in the mist off the river. Soldiers jumped down, their respirators glowing pale in the glare. “They look like insects,” she whispered. “You see those box things they’re holding?” Her face pressed close to mine. “They sound like crickets.” “They’re Geiger counters,” I muttered. “They check what’s safe and what’s not. What you touched today,” I nodded at her hands, “wasn’t safe.” Beneath us, soldiers finished walling the palace windows. Their empty dollies clattered down the marble steps, wheels rasping against stone. Beyond, buses unloaded refugees into the white sprawl of a tented city on the outskirts of town. “Do we have to stay here?” Yulia groaned. “Yes, to protect the greatest museum in the empire, and the palace that holds it,” I said. “You are one of the protectors.” Yulia tipped her head back, watching the sparrows circle overhead. Lost, their tiny shadows darted this way and that across the gilded ceilings. “Is there a way out?” she asked. “Always,” I told her. I hesitated. “But for now, being sealed in was preferable.” Days passed. The walls groaned when the wind picked up. In the chaos I had managed only a single black backpack. Inside, I kept a notebook for logging my testosterone and Prussian blue intake, the arithmetic of staying myself. At night, I slept with the straps twisted around my arms. The women and children slept in the east wing, closer to the chapel. The men took the service corridors and staff rooms near the loading dock. I found a stretch of floor in the east wing gallery, beneath a skylight. At night, I’d often see satellites streak across the skylight above. In the darkness I could hear Yulia counting them aloud to her mother. Often I lay awake long enough to hear Galina's whispering, desperate prayers. ***
I knelt with a rag and bucket, scrubbing at a dark stain before it could set. The rag rasped across the stone, echoing in the vaulted room.
Someone had been sick in the night, likely Yulia. She’d been sick a lot lately. I rubbed my jaw, watching the floor lighten as it dried. My beard was thinning into uneven tufts, a ration detail I logged. A dark bullet shot past me. I jumped, watching the sparrow settle on the cracked vinyl of a security guard's chair in the corner. Its wings trembled half-open, puffing up and deflating its body with each breath. I poured a small amount of water into my bottle’s cap and nudged it toward the sparrow. It cocked its head from side to side and after a moment, hopped forward and drank. Another sparrow joined, then fluttered up to a nearby statue’s head where a tiny nest of twigs lay, tucked into the crown of thorns. A strange warmth tickled my nose. Red smeared my fingers when I touched them to my face. I knocked my head back and drew out a wad of tissues from my pocket, twisting them up into my nostrils. Around me, the statues' pale throats lifted towards the sky as well, stone gazes hollow and unblinking. I took a seat on a red velvet-lined viewing couch and tilted my head back. The domed skylight was blanketed with ash. At odd intervals, sluggish, brown-tinged rain droplets slid down, spattering faint shadows across the floor. Clipped pattering shoes on marble broke the silence. “No running," I called out of practice. Yulia flopped on the couch beside me, reclining to gaze up at the skylight. “I keep getting nose bleeds too,” she said, staring up at the sky. She shot her blue-stained forefinger into the air. “looks like snow.” “I suppose,” I muttered. Yulia wagged her forefinger up and down like a talking mouth. “Mama says we are the lucky ones.” I wagged my stained forefinger in the air above her. “Your mother’s right,” I said. “You have long arms. You’ll be quite tall one day.” Yulia turned over onto her stomach, her long hair spilling to the couch. She rubbed her finger across her blue-stained lips. “Mama is making me take extra pills because I’ve been sick. She forces some of hers into my mouth.” “That’s a good thing,” I said, fixed on the pewter skies. “It’s an ugly lipstick color,” she sighed. After a moment, she added, “I heard Mama say another retractor has overheated.” “Reactor,” I corrected. “Where did she hear this?” “On the radio.” I turned to her. “There’s a radio?” Yulia skipped ahead, her doll tucked under one arm, the pink hem of her dress swaying with each bound. We passed through the vast complex of corridors until we reached the wooden doors of the Tsar’s old library. The doors groaned as Yulia pushed them open. Inside, a cluster of museum employees were bent over an old radio set. Galina met us at the threshold, holding her arms out for Yulia. “Go play, Yulia,” she said. Yulia scratched her head aggressively. “But mama, Nikita and his brother are here,” she said, pulling her fingers away from her scalp to point at the boys. A few strands of hair went with them. “And stop scratching your head,” Galina said, yanking the strands from Yulia's fingers. “Out,” she demanded. Yulia gave me a sad glance before she obeyed. The radio crackled. A voice cleared the static. “...Less rations this week than last. Refugees are to remain within designated camps. Medical assistance and Prussian blue tablets will be distributed on-site. Any attempt to breach camp limits will be met with shoot on sight order. The Empire will…” The voice fractured, swallowed into the haze. The museum’s head engineer sat hunched over the set, twisting the antennas as the signal slipped away. “If we don't plan ahead, the refugees will take our food rations,” Leonid said, his voice louder than it was commanding. “Our service was not meant as our entombment.” Voices rose, clashing over Galina’s sensible reply. My hand reached for my shoulder strap, but my pack was gone. I must have left it where I’d been cleaning. Yulia had been waiting in the hall. She trailed after me. I headed back to where I’d cleaned and slowed when I saw it, slumped in the corner. “Were you scared someone stole your bag?” Yulia asked, close at my heels. “Just scared,” I mumbled as I worked the zipper open. Yulia sat patiently beside me. She hummed, rubbing her face into her doll’s painted one, as I checked the amount of T shots and PB pills I had left against my ration log. A picture slid from my notebook, gliding onto the floor. Yulia was fast to snatch it first. “Who’s this?” she asked, holding it out but not handing it back. “My babushka. And me.” She passed the laminated photo over, leaning against my shoulder to keep staring at it. “That’s you?” “Yes. We loved to play her music box and waltz together.” “Why are you in a dress?” “My babushka liked putting me in dresses.” This was met with resistance, but Yulia seemed, after a moment, to find it an acceptable answer. “But you didn’t like dresses. Because you’re a boy,” she said, nodding to herself. “That’s right.” “Your hair was long.” “Not as long as yours,” I said, tossing some of her hair over her shoulder. Her smile faded. She looked down at her feet and asked, “did she die?” I nodded. “A long time ago.” “Mine too. I never knew my grandparents.” She pointed at the picture. “Do you own that music box now?” “Sometimes other family members inherit heirlooms, even if they don’t want it.” I tucked the photo back into my notebook. “Want to see something?” I hoisted her up in front of the statue, careful to leave space between us and the sparrow’s nest. “Wow!” she cried. “There’s a bird in there!” “A baby bird?” Yulia considered this. “No, I think that’s the mom. She’s just sitting there.” “I bet she’s laying an egg.” I lowered her. “Let’s give her some privacy.” Yulia picked her doll up and twirled its hair thoughtfully. “Do I bother you?” Yulia asked. “Mama wants to know.” “Of course not.” “Good,” she said quickly. “I don't have too many people to talk to. Just you and mama.” “What about Nikita?” I asked. “He's around your age.” Yulia shrugged. “He’d rather play with his little brother than ‘some girl.’” I grunted. “Mama doesn't let me bother any other men. Mama says you're an acceptor.” I considered this then corrected, “exception.” “Exception,” she repeated. “Why are you an exception?” “Well, in general, little girls have no business hanging around older men who aren't their fathers,” I said. “That’s what Mama said,” Yulia mumbled, brushing the hair out of her doll's face. She hesitated, then asked, “But why are you different?” “I was born different. But some people aren’t afraid of different people. Maybe that's why I'm your mother's exception.” Yulia’s brows pinched in puzzlement. She studied me. “Mama can't have children. That makes her different. You can't either?” I shook my head. “That's okay,” she said with a shrug. “The army man shouldn’t have gotten so upset about that. You can still adopt.” In the quiet of the museum, loudspeakers drifted in from the street. Yulia’s face froze, mouthing the words she’d memorized in puppet imitation: Symptoms include nausea and bleeding gums. Report to Checkpoint Twelve for tablets. She covered her mouth to hide her blue-toothed grin as a siren’s long mechanical wail filled the halls. ***
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QUINCY TURNER lives between Connecticut and Reykjavík. She writes about what it means to be human in increasingly engineered worlds.
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