Lost Russian Luna

Chapter One

The first thing that happens is the bleach. It chews through the back of my nose, a stubborn ghost, searing away anything that’s left of me that isn’t human. I douse the tile until my reflection in the wet floor is blanched into a wraith, arms folded and knees crooked, brown hair drooping in sickly triangles around my face. The new girl on the earlier shift called me Slenderman once, before she saw me snap a mop handle in half.

At three a.m., the casino’s underbelly belongs to me. No more lost Midwesterners dropping chips, no angry couples breathing vodka at each other in the corner booths, no camera-eyed supervisors in their well-cut navy suits. Just the humming, all-pervading white noise of the HVAC, and the little aftershocks the building makes as it settles into itself. I push the bucket in its old cart and move from stain to stain, careful to keep the scarring on my neck hidden by the collar of my uniform, though there’s nobody left to see. It’s only the hardcore gamblers remaining.

The uniforms are the color of dirty ice, which the manager told me would “hide grime and stains and stuff.” Mine hides my body, mostly. The sleeves are too short, and every time I reach up, the fabric rides up my forearm, exposing skin so pale and thin it looks like a paper cutout. My shoes don’t fit either, but I jam cotton balls in the toes to keep them on or double-layer the old socks. I keep my head down and my hair lower, uneven and blunt from the hack job I had done to it a week ago to keep it short because there’s nothing in the world as dangerous as someone remembering your face.

My cart squeals with every turn. I try to walk less so I don’t wake the lone pit boss slumped at his console, and more so, I don’t attract the eyes that live in the cameras. They probably have a whole file on me: the girl who never talks, the one who never clocks out until everything’s raw and gleaming and new.

A winning noise erupts from the main hall; a slot machine hits the jackpot, all digital bells and metallic coins, bouncing around the empty room. It felt like a threat. I flinch. My hand flies to the side of my neck, fingers pressing into the scar tissue. I know, on a rational level, that no one is watching me right now. That it’s a couple of software routines running themselves into oblivion. But I still hunch lower. Muscle memory is a b***h.

I tip the bucket, slosh out another bleach tidal wave, and scrub the streak of old blood from the linoleum. It’s real blood, some managers’ nosebleeds, already turning brown at the edges. Not dangerous blood, not the blood of a hunt, nor the blood of death. I watch it dissolve, foam, and vanish, and think about how easy it is to erase the evidence of pain if you keep moving.

My throat feels tight. I hear a door slam, somewhere in the service corridors, and for a second, everything inside me tightens to a pinpoint. I’m a teen again, in the freezing dark, claws scraping at the steel hatch above my head. The heavy air is thick with musk, s**t, and the coppery tang of hot blood—boots crunch in the snow outside. I can’t breathe, but my heart thrashes, a fox in a wire snare, and when the lock clicks open, I know it’ll be teeth and hands and something so much worse.

The mop handle splinters in my grip. My hands are shaking. For a second, I see the hallway splashed with red, like it was on the last night, the one where I stopped being a daughter and became “the problem.”

I force my head down, counting the rhythm of my breath. Inhale the chemicals, damp rags, and plastic. Exhale the nothing. Inhale the bleach, ammonia, a trace of something sweeter beneath it, the burned-sugar stink of a cocktail spilled hours ago. I scrub harder and harder, until my palms ache and the mop head turns gray. It was meditative.

When I finally look up, the floor gleams. The air is cold and dry, and nothing stirs. I let go of the handle, and the sudden absence of tension leaves me woozy. If I close my eyes, I know I’ll see snow, fangs, a flash of russet fur, and dead wolves, worse. So I don’t close them. I reach into the pocket of my apron and dig out the little notepad the manager insists I use to log everything.

Nothing to log tonight, unless the dead want their dirt tracked. I scribble in the box, then tear the page out and crumple it.

The uniform still smells faintly of someone else, someone who didn’t survive her first week. They give you a new name when you start here, but it’s always someone else’s. They can only recycle so many identities before the edges begin to fray. It was a great way to hide in plain sight.

My shift doesn’t end for another hour. I spend it in the back hallways, listening for footsteps that never come, the echo of my cleaning like waves against the hull of a sinking ship.

If I could scrub myself raw, bleach my whole existence clean, I would. But for now, the only thing I can do is keep moving, keep working, and pray nobody ever looks too close.

The locker room is colder than the rest of the building, sealed behind a fire door that never fully closes. The cleaning staff gathers in clumps: the gossipers, the smokers, the grandmothers in paisley scrubs and fake pearls, all of them winding down on hard benches as they peel away their layers. I time my entrance for maximum privacy, slipping through the far door just as the last cluster of janitors is filtering out.

My uniform peels off sticky; a second skin comes loose. I drop it in the communal bin, even though I know they never really wash out the stains. There’s a cracked mirror above the sink, taped at one corner to keep the glass from falling out. I stare into it and see the outline of a girl who doesn’t quite exist: translucent skin, lips gnawed ragged, eyes brown and tired to the bone. My mother always said I looked like her, but her eyes never had this hollowness, this cave-in quality. But it didn’t matter; she was long dead and burned.

The scars on my neck look whiter than ever, little ridges puckering from ear to collarbone. I touch them to feel the shape of what’s left. The memory is a constant phantom limb, itching and tight, and sometimes I think if I scratch hard enough, I’ll peel it all away.

I rinse my hands twice and then splash water on my face. The chill is a shock, which is the point. If I start to feel too real, too present, I run the tap until it gets ice-cold and force myself back into my body. The water beads on my skin but doesn’t sink in.

At my locker, I dig out the canvas messenger bag I bought for three dollars at a church sale. The clasp is broken, so I loop a rubber band around it and hope no one notices. My tips for the week are folded in a neat stack: tens, fives, and ones, the edges warped from damp. I count them twice, then again, running the numbers in my head. It might cover groceries, maybe one-third of next month’s rent if I cut out dinner for a few nights. I turn the paycheck over and squint at the stub, but the numbers don’t change. They never do.

The locker room empties. I’m the last one. Perfect. I swap out the casino shoes for my old sneakers, the soles flapping where they’ve split. I would have to attempt the shoe glue again to save them. The only thing I keep from the uniform is the lanyard ID, which I slide into my pocket. A name that isn’t mine in block letters, a face that’s barely recognizable unless you squint.

On the way out, I check every exit. It’s not paranoia if you’ve lived in fear long enough for it to be a habit. I press my ear to the fire door, listening for footsteps in the hallway, and only move when I’m sure nobody’s lingering outside. In the main corridor, I pass the dimly lit security office. I can feel the guard’s eyes on me before I even see him.

“Burning the midnight oil, Valerie?” He says it slowly, with a grin he thinks is fatherly, but just sets my teeth on edge. He was hair too close to creepy, like he was on a list somewhere.

I freeze, shoulders tensing hard enough to rattle my spine. The name is wrong, and right, close, I could remember it. I remember to keep my mouth shut, so I nod, eyes on the dirty beige carpet.

He stands up, stretching, with a gun holster riding up his hip. “You ought to get some sun, kid. Looks like you’ve been living in a crypt.”

I want to laugh, but it would sound too much like a snarl. “Y-yeah,” I manage. It’s barely a sound. “Good night, sorry morning.”

“You be careful out there,” he said. The guard watches me until I’m out of sight. I keep my eyes on the floor, tracing the patterns in the faded carpet, and will my breathing to slow down.

At the service exit, I punch the time clock and listen for the click that means it’s official. Nobody else clocks out this late. I imagine a file on a manager’s desk somewhere, with my name circled in red pen, maybe an asterisk next to it: “doesn’t talk, always alone, something off.” If they ever ask, I’ll say I needed the overtime. They always believe a story that makes you smaller.

The world outside is worse than the casino. The loading dock is a valley of concrete, ringed by dumpsters and chain link. The sky above is a smeared gray, stuttering with the pink and blue glow of hotel signs. Even the darkness here is artificial.

I cross the lot, hunched into myself, eyes darting from the shadows near the trash bins to the scuffed asphalt in front of my shoes. The air is fake wet from the pools and full of neon electricity, but it doesn’t feel alive. Nothing in Vegas ever does.

I take the long way home, past the row of pawn shops and drive-thru chapels, even though it adds twenty minutes. My mother once told me you can lose anyone if you change your route enough times. I do. I cut across parking lots, under broken streetlights, through alleys where the walls sweat with runoff from busted pipes. Each time a car passes, I flatten myself against a dumpster or slink behind a dumpster and hold my breath until the lights fade.

There’s a bus stop on the corner, but I never take the bus. Too many faces. Too much risk of someone staring too long, memorizing my walk or my slouch. The only thing worse than being seen is being remembered.

By the time I reach the apartments, the night has curdled into pre-dawn. I climb the stairs, skipping the ones that creak, and slip my key into the lock without turning on the hall light. The door sticks, but I don’t force it. I wait, ears straining for any sound from inside, any hint that someone’s gotten in while I was gone.

Nothing. I let myself in, deadbolt sliding into place behind me. Add the weak chain, but it would make a noise. I slid over the planter, which was heavy and would trip someone, and felt safe, for now.

My apartment is a casket, just the way I like it. There’s a mattress on the floor, two milk crates stacked for a table, and a black plastic chair I found in a dumpster. It was hosed off before bringing it inside. The walls are empty. I tried to put up a poster once, some band I liked back in Russia, but I tore it down the next day when I saw the way the eyes followed me around the room.

I dump my bag on the mattress and sit, listening to the hum of the fridge in the kitchen. I can still smell bleach on my hands. It lingers, a shield and a warning both.

I count my tips again, to be sure. I hide the bills under the mattress, alongside a single photo of my family, cropped so you can’t see anything but brief bits of them. I smooth the edge with my thumb and tuck it back away.

If I ever start to think about the future, I stop. The only way to survive is to stay invisible, keep moving, and never let yourself hope. Hope is the kind of thing that gets you killed.

Still, some nights I feel the moon gnawing at the edge of my skin, a pressure building in my chest that even bleach can’t wash away. I press my hand to my neck, to the scars, and remember what it cost to get here.

Outside, the city is waking up. I listen, counting the sounds: the garbage truck rumbling past, the scrape of a neighbor’s shoes on the balcony above, the dry hiss of tires on the street. Each one could mean nothing, or everything.

I lie back on the mattress, stare up at the cracked ceiling, and imagine myself smaller and smaller, shrinking into invisibility until I’m nothing but a rumor in the night. It might not be what I was trained for, but I was alive and not in the pile of corpses of my family like my Alpha had meant for me to be when he destroyed everything when he tried to kill me.