1.1 March: A Bad Idea!

The cool breeze of the March air fluttered Yuri’s hair. He was standing on his back porch staring at the incredibly large backyard. It was closed off with a large metal fence that was around two heads taller than Yuri and you could barely see what was behind the fence unless you stood on the elevated porch and on your tiptoes. It was mostly just open, empty fields behind, probably belonging to some farmer. Not too far back, past the vast fields, stood a bunch of trees, an edge of a forest. And Yuri was admiring and scanning his yard. Although he wanted to feel excited, an irritated feeling rose up in him.

“Ah what the fuck, so annoying.” Yuri said and aggressively brushed the loose strands of hair away from his face that continued poking in his eyes and fluttered against his skin, irritating him. He held his hair back from his face with his hand but the moment he let go of the hair, the wind did it’s job again and the hair fell back on his face. 

He continued struggling and brushing it away a few times until he gave up and accepted defeat, rubbing his hair roughly with both his hands, making him look like he just walked through a tornado. ‘I’m going to shave this hair and go bald’ he scowled. After losing the fight with his hair and the wind, he looked back up at the yard, through his hair that was fluttering over his eyes. He tried to continue convincing himself that the large space was great, instead he sighed and slumped down into a squat, covering his face with his hands.“Who the fuck am I kidding? This looks awful.”

The yard was in fact, in terrible condition. Apart from the leftover snow from the harsh winter, that covered ugly patches of dirt, everything was muddy and any grass that was in sight was yellow and clearly dead, not to mention the bare plants…if you could call them that, they looked more like random sticks protruding from random places. The fence was also old and rusty with dark green paint chipping off, Yuri was surprised there was still any paint left at all. It was easy to tell that the land had not been used or cared for in ages. Which makes sense, because the last people who actually took care of this land were his grandparents, who were long dead.

This land was called a ‘dacha’, a sort of summer house out in the country that people who lived in the city owned, so as to come to during the spring and summer time and tend to a garden, escaping the busy city life. It required a lot of work and effort to maintain, and Yuri’s parents neglected it as they were too busy with their jobs in the city to come and stay in the country where they would have to work harder than in the city. Simply said, not an ideal vacation for everyone. That’s not to mention that the nearest town was  an hour away by car. ‘I can’t believe I thought this was a good idea.’ Yuri wallowed in self-pity until the pain in his knees was too much and he slowly stood up, grabbing the porch railing for support, the sharp pain making him wince.

Yuri cringed at himself. "I'm in my early twenties but if anyone was to see this, they'd think I'm in my sixties." He walked inside the house through the back door. He hadn’t even noticed how cold it was outside until the warmer inside air hit him and he shivered. He closed the back door, making sure to lock it, and walked into the kitchen to fill a tea kettle with tap water, and turn it on. 

While doing so, Yuri was lost in his own thoughts, thinking back to a few weeks ago. His parents were talking about the dacha that was long left behind for their family by his mother’s parents. They were arguing about whether or not they should just sell it. His mother was against selling it as it had belonged at some point to her family and it was tied to many of her childhood memories, getting rid of it was just too pitiful. His father on the other hand, tried convincing her to sell it as they had no use for it and had not even once went on the land since the death of the grandparents. Yuri had overheard all of this and interjected into their conversation.

“I can live there.” He said, appearing out of a dark hallway like a ghost. Though he looked more like a vampire or a zombie, with pale, and slightly gray skin complexion, dark under eye bags, chapped dry lips and shoulder length dark hair. His sudden appearance from out of nowhere made his mother shriek and his father freeze until they realized it was just their son. Whom they haven’t seen in a while, as all he did was sulk in his room, god knows why and for how long. His mother looked at her pitiful son with sorrow filled eyes, until his earlier statement processed in her brain.

Her eyes widened with shock, "Wait what?"