Tonya

The wax dripped from the sill onto the wooden structure below it. It hung melted and suspended in mid air. The flame had long since gone out.

He saw the red teardrop as himself. It had once burned, as he had burned, and it had now melted, as he had melted. From the sturdy wick to the fragile, porcelain plate that it sat on.

Shifting the thick fridge of his hair from his eyes, he hunched over a piece of ragged paper and began to scratch with his pencil.

"My dearest love, I do not know what to say." For he didn't and there was no use pretending.
He paused and pursed his lips in frustration before continuing, " It is not long now until the NKVD come for me. As you know I have been accused of raping a young woman; a girl barely touching the edge of adulthood. Hear me and listen when I swear to you; I did not commit such a horrid act."

The memory of the previous three days wrought his mind with anguish. During the morning of the 5th, he and his wife - to - be were enjoying a breakfast of bread and eggs before he was due to start work at the factory. Upon arriving at the shabby building he had been roughly dragged away by two members of Stalin's men. What followed was an interrogation of the rape of the daughter of a wealthy man. He swore he had not committed such a thing until his lungs burned with effort. And still, they had sentenced him.

"I am sorry that I ran. Fear has taken me over and I can not bare it anymore."

He had fled as fast as his feet would carry him. The skin on his feet was blistered from the snow and he could no longer feel anything in them but a dull tingling.
He stopped briefly to take a swing of the liquid that sat by his side. Victor had been the wise and elegant brain behind this little concoction. A mix of pure whiskey and water accompanied by the dissolved ruminants of hemlock. His kindly middle class comrade had be hesitant at first but, upon learning his alternative fate, reluctantly agreed.
And so the poison was born.
"I have no long my love but know that I shall always be with you. It pains me to leave you like this; so unexpectedly."

Again, he took a gulp of the liquid. His breath was beginning to catch in his throat.
"But at least you shall recognise my body when I am gone."
He finished the drink and dropped the glass to the floor boards.
"Look after Mama and Papa. Lara should know nothing of what I have done; she is too young for the likes of this."
He took a pained breath.
"Your love. Yury."
He lay upon the cold boards and waited for the darkness to completely ingest him. It would not kill him instantly, it would be long and painful, that he had known. But through the last passing moments of his peasant life, he spent it with the memories of his beloved. Tonya.