Stepan Rannikov
Secrets

“Childhood fears and fantasies haunt us throughout our lives. Just bring them out of our subconscious with a powerful event, and everything changes.”

CHAPTER 1

Everything would have been fine if the damn toilet wasn’t leaking.

Sveta sat huddled on the trolleybus, a shivering metal shell that smelled of damp wool and old exhaust. The workday was dead and buried. Tomorrow was Saturday—no office, no deadlines—but the prospect of a Friday night offered no sanctuary. No excitement, no variety. She knew she was attractive, even striking in the right light, and her body still pulsed with a hunger for touch, but her life was a desert. There was no man, and certainly no one to treat her to a drink or a decent meal. The few men who had drifted through her life lately had been little more than static—meaningless, disposable, and gray.

She was forty. And as the trolley rattled through the darkening streets, the usual Friday rot settled into her bones. She frowned at her reflection in the glass, mourning the monotony. Groundhog Day, she thought. Just like everyone else.

The trolley hummed, a nearly empty vessel vibrating against the asphalt. Near the doors, an old woman sat with two children, their voices lost to the engine’s drone. A few rows ahead and across the aisle, a man sat alone. Behind her, two women traded whispers like currency.

When the man turned his head, catching the streetlights in profile, something in Sveta’s chest snagged. He wore a weathered leather jacket and jeans. His hair was black and coarse, defying the wind, and his face was a map of hard angles—stubbly cheekbones, a sharp, thin nose, and a jawline that looked like it could take a punch.

He looked exactly like Andrey. Her old classmate.

“Could it really be him? My God, it’s been twenty years.”

Curiosity, sharp and desperate, pulled at her. She leaned over the seat in front of her, trying to catch a better glimpse of his face without looking like a stalker. I’m acting like a fool, she scolded herself. What will those women in the back think? She forced herself to stand, clutching her purse and smoothing the hem of her coat with practiced nonchalance. She moved toward the central platform, pretending to check her reflection in a window while cutting a glance his way.

It was him. Andrey Kretov.

In high school, he’d been a scrawny, cocky kid—the kind of boy Sveta had looked right through. Back then, she’d been busy dreaming of "real" men, of heroes who didn't sit in a classroom with her. But the man sitting there now was that hero. He had filled out; he looked solid, grounded. His sinewy hands lay clasped in his lap, motionless. He looked like a man who knew exactly who he was.

A rush of recognition, frantic and joyful, surged through her. She stepped toward him before she could lose her nerve.

"Excuse me," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "Are you... Kretov?"

The man tore his gaze away from the blackness of the window. He looked up, and a slow, broad grin broke across his face.

"Oh! Hello. Talk about a ghost."

He didn't just smile; he beamed. The genuine shock in his eyes made Sveta feel seen for the first time in months.

"Wow! Sveta! How many years has it been?" Andrey shifted his whole body toward her, taking her in. "You still live around here?"

"I do. Living, working... just heading home from the office now."

She moved a step closer, the space between them suddenly charged. The words dried up in her throat, but Andrey didn't let the silence hang.

"So, what’s the story? Married? Kids? Where’s home base these days?"

"Divorced," she said, the word tasting like ash. "My daughter stays with her grandmother during the week, but I pick her up on weekends. I live in the next neighborhood. Actually, this is my stop."

She hesitated. She didn't want to walk off into the dark alone. Desperate to keep the thread from snapping, she blurted out the first thing in her head—the most mundane, stupid truth she possessed.

"The toilet’s leaking."

Andrey let out a sudden, barking laugh.

"The toilet? Well, then, let me fix it for you. Why's it leaking?"

Sveta felt a flush creep up her neck. She realized how the word "leaking" sounded—the raw, messy domesticity of it—and she instinctively crossed her legs.

"Do you even have tools?" she asked, trying to regain her footing. "Pliers, at least?"

"I’ve got a few things in the truck," he said, standing up. "Let’s go. I’ll fix your leak, and we’ll catch up. School, life—all of it. It’s been too long. You’re off tomorrow, right?"

"No work tomorrow," she said, shaking her head.

"Then lead the way."

The trolley hissed, the brakes screaming as the driver called out her stop. The doors groaned open, letting in the cold night air, but for the first time in forty years, Friday night felt like it was just beginning.

CHAPTER 2

"Look at this! Look what you did!" Nikita snarled. "Whose puddle is this? Who pissed themselves?"

He shoved his mother’s face toward the floor, forcing her nose inches from the pool of urine. She was on all fours, trembling. Nikita gripped the slipper until his knuckles turned white, then brought it down with a sickening crack against her bare skin.

"Why didn’t you ask me to take you?" he spat.

His mother let out a thin, jagged squeal. Her cheek scraped against the linoleum as she recoiled, her body betraying her again in a fresh, painful burst.

"Please," she sobbed into the floor. "Please, just take me to the bathroom..."

***

Nina had walked out on her husband nearly a year ago. Now, she and her teenage son were crammed into a rented one-bedroom apartment that felt more like a cage.

In her eyes, her husband, Oleg, had been a loser—a man who didn't work and, predictably, drowned his failures in a bottle. He was a sinkhole of depression. Yet, Nina had never intended to leave him for good. He loved her with a desperate, constant hunger. But Nina, like any woman, craved a winner—a man with a spine, not a whiner. She was simply exhausted.

Oleg still called, usually when he was drunk, or he’d haunt the sidewalk outside her office. She wasn't ready to cut the cord entirely; she still harbored the delusion that he could be fixed. Besides, her mother-in-law was kind, slipping her groceries and the occasional folded bill. This separation was supposed to be a temporary breather—a "recharge." She couldn't spend the rest of her life rotting in rentals. She just needed time to find herself.

The attention she received from other men wasn't courtship; it was the brief, transactional friction of "manly pleasure." At forty, the hunger for real intimacy was a constant ache. But she had nowhere to bring a man. Nikita had figured that out long ago, and the shame of creeping home late from those encounters tasted like ash in her mouth.

At night, she would lie in bed, masturbating while she waited for the rhythmic sound of her son’s breathing from the couch. More often than not, she’d slip out from under the covers and creep into the kitchen. There, perched on a hard wooden stool, she would spread her legs and lose herself. She’d climax with a muffled moan, her hand clamped tight over her mouth to swallow the sound.

Once was never enough. Satiety only came after the second or third time, her fingers working until dark circles bloomed behind her eyelids and her mind went hazy. Only then would she suck the salt and heat from her fingertips. Trembling, she’d steady herself against the wall and stumble back to her room to collapse into sleep.

***

“Let’s dump her in the stalls. Teach her not to act up.”

The three boys seized her arms, hauling Sveta backward.

She was eleven—a slip of a girl, too fragile to fight back against three of them. She struggled in a strange, muted panic, her breath coming in jagged, silent snorts.

The recreation room was a vacuum; no teacher, no authority. Even if there were, she wouldn’t have screamed. It wasn't out of pride or the cold contempt she felt for those three—Anton, Sashka, and their lapdog, Vadik. She was simply paralyzed.

Under the mocking stares of her "friends" huddled by the hallway window, they dragged her toward the boys’ restroom. They pulled so hard her hair came undone, her dress riding up shamefully to her underwear as she clawed at their thick arms, her sandals screeching against the linoleum.

“They’re going to lock me in,” she thought. “It’s Anton. All because I wouldn’t let him cheat on the test. Whether I banged on the door or screamed until my throat was raw, it wouldn't matter. No one would come. They’d just laugh. They’d give me a nickname—something filthy, something about the toilets. They’d stop speaking to me.”

This was the end.

They shoved her inside with a violent heave. Sveta hit the wet tiles hard, the floor teeth-chattering cold as the skin peeled away from her knees. The door slammed, followed by a chorus of jagged laughter and muffled jeers from the hallway.

The room smelled of stale tobacco and sour urine. Three stalls stood with warped, doorless frames and lidless basins. A fourth, used for mops and buckets, was secured with a heavy padlock. Opposite them, three urinals gurgled incessantly. A group of boys perched on the peeling windowsill like crows; another stood at the urinal. A golden stream, spiraling like a drill from his hand, splashed against the white porcelain spacesuit in a fine, misty halo.

“The shame”, she thought, her face burning. “The absolute shame.”

"Dammit. Get up. You okay?"

A boy she didn't know—thin, with a wild nest of hair—reached down. He took her hand with a confidence that felt surprisingly gentle.

“He’s from the other class. What is his name? It doesn't matter.”

"Go on, wash your hands," he said. "Wipe your knees. There's a first aid kit in the main office."

He flicked the faucet on, then turned and hammered his fist against the door.

"Antokha, you moron! Open the damn door!"

The tension in the door gave way instantly, leaving a narrow, jagged crack of light. The laughter in the hallway died into a hum.

"Don't sweat it," the boy muttered. "Nobody’s gonna say a word. They won't mess with you again."

He vanished when the bell rang, his friends trailing behind him like a wake. Sveta was left in the silence.

The memory of it took root in her. Anton and his crew did leave her alone, and her girlfriends remained pointedly silent. But the image stayed—the powerful, drill-like stream, the halo of golden spray shattering against the milky porcelain. It haunted her.

A month later, after finishing her cleaning duties, Sveta found herself at the end of the deserted hallway. As if pulled by an invisible tide, she turned. She didn't go into the girls' room. She stepped into the men’s.

She slipped into a stall, leaving the latch undone. She pulled down her floral panties and hovered over the basin, her breath hitching as she tried to keep her bare feet from touching the damp floor. She began to pee, every nerve ending strained, listening for the ghost of a footstep. No one came. If they had, she felt she might have simply ceased to exist.

She trembled for the rest of the day. The act—inexplicable, dark, and private—stayed with her for a long, long time.

***

Living in a one-room flat with a teenage son was an exercise in shrinking. Privacy was a luxury Nina couldn't afford. Her sanctuary was the shadow of an open wardrobe, a makeshift screen where she dressed under the weight of Nikita’s unabashed gaze. He watched from his computer desk, his eyes tracing the silhouette of her body, hungry for the forbidden sight of a breast or the curve of a hip.

Dawn brought a temporary truce. With Nikita still buried in sleep, Nina felt the freedom to stand exposed, weighing her choices of silk and wire in the quiet light. But the nights were sharp and hurried. She’d strip with a desperate efficiency, tossing clothes onto a chair and snatching her robe to cover herself, her hand a frantic shield over her heart. Sometimes, when his stare became too heavy, too brazen to ignore, she’d retreat to the bathroom, though her bones ached with fatigue.

“Stop staring,” she’d say, the words thin and worn.

He’d just smirk, that low, masculine drawl of

“Give it a rest” hanging in the air.

He had his father’s frame—raw muscle and a quiet, provocative confidence that seemed to fill the small room. It was a strength she admired, but one that left her feeling trapped. There were moments, as she sat on the sofa lost in a story, when she would look up to find his eyes fixed on the sliver of skin where her robe had parted.

He wouldn't blink. He wouldn't turn. He waited for the blush to burn across her face, watching as she squeezed her legs shut and retreated once more into the safety of her layers.

Nina’s body—willowy, small-breasted, with the soft curve of a belly—was never her primary currency. Her sexuality lived elsewhere, rooted in a raw, reflexive shyness that bordered on humiliation.

Men had sensed it since she was a teenager, a magnetic vulnerability that drew them in. And Nina, sensing their hunger, never fought it; she simply obeyed. She lived in a constant state of apology for her own mind, terrified by thoughts that felt depraved, even unnatural.

“But isn't that true for everyone?” she’d tell herself.

She lived in the shadow of a recurring fear: that if someone ever caught her in the middle of these deviant fantasies, the sheer weight of the exposure would paralyze her, leaving her utterly at the mercy of their power.

It was like a clockwork ritual. During the day, the dirty thoughts were mere flickers—vague, easily brushed aside by the sterile demands of work, housework, and the mundane dream of rest. But as soon as the sun dipped and the house went dark, an invisible timer began to count down.

In the silence, lying under the covers, her hand would act of its own accord, sliding beneath the hem of her nightgown. But the fear of waking her son, a restless sleeper, usually drove her from the bed. She would slip out, a ghost on tiptoe, retreating to the kitchen. There, in the narrow space between the table and the refrigerator, she would take her place, hiking her nightgown over her stomach and bracing her legs wide against the stools.

She would tell herself Nikita was asleep. But how deeply could he have fallen in those ten minutes she spent shivering under the covers, tracing the skin of her own thighs, pinching her nipples through the fabric? Was he ever truly asleep?

Sometimes, on the verge of a climax, she would freeze, listening for the telltale creak of a floorboard behind the closed door. But the tide of an orgasm is impossible to stem. She would surrender to it, trying to drown the image of her son standing just outside the door, listening, his own hands busy. She would climax again and again, swallowing her moans until she choked.

The root of it—the anchor—was buried in a single, searing childhood memory.

She was thirteen, the night after a boisterous family celebration. The day had been a whirlwind of attention and overwhelming emotion, leaving her raw. That night, she woke to the sensation of warmth spreading beneath her. She was wetting the bed. She lay there in a hot, blooming puddle, the sharp, fresh scent of urine rising from under the blankets.

Cowering in a cocktail of shame and terror, little Ninochka didn't stop; she kept going. When she finally finished, she curled into a tight ball, waiting in the dark until the liquid turned cold and the sheets began to cling to her skin like a shroud.

Her mother never said a word—she simply stripped the bed the next morning and threw the laundry in the wash. But the shame didn't wash away. It stayed, a fever in Nina’s blood.

Soon, the memory transformed. Under the covers, she began to imagine herself squatting in front of a group of boys. In the fantasy, they would mock her, their voices loud and cruel as they watched the yellow streams lick her legs and splash against the ground. And Nina, burning with a delicious, agonizing humiliation, would instinctively spread her knees wider, offering them a better view.