Lost Russian Luna

The chill of the mop handle bites against my palm. It grounds me in the fluorescent half-light. For a moment, it’s nothing but plastic and sweat, the texture uneven beneath my skin. Then the first thing that happens is the bleach. It chews through the back of my nose, a stubborn ghost. It sears away anything that’s left of me that isn’t human. My grip tightens by reflex, just shy of crushing the plastic handle. A faint crackle runs through the mop as if it can sense the strain. I douse the tile until my reflection in the wet floor is blanched into a wraith: arms folded, knees crooked, brown hair drooping in sickly triangles around my face. There, in the warped shine, for a split second, my eyes catch a gleam that doesn’t belong—a smudge of silver flickers where my pupil should be, then fades and leaves only me. The new girl on the earlier shift called me Slenderman once. That was before she saw me snap a mop handle in half.

At three a.m., the casino’s underbelly is mine. No more lost Midwesterners dropping chips. No angry couples exhaling vodka in corner booths. No camera-eyed supervisors in crisp suits. Just the static hush of the HVAC and the tremors as the building settles. Tonight, all I want is to erase the patch of blood near the roulette tables, unnoticed. They told me to handle it quietly—no questions, all traces gone by sunrise. I push the bucket in its battered cart, moving from stain to stain. I keep the scars on my neck hidden under my collar, though no one’s left to see. Only the diehards linger.

The uniforms are the color of dirty ice, which the manager claimed would “hide grime and stains and stuff.” Mine hides my body, mostly. The sleeves are too short. Each time I reach up, the fabric creeps up my forearm, exposing skin so pale and thin it looks like a paper cutout. My shoes don’t fit, so I cram cotton balls in the toes or double up worn socks. There was a time, before this, when I wore my old jeans and a faded green sweater my mother knitted—soft, heavy, safe, and with seams brushing my wrists just right. Now, everything feels borrowed: too tight, too loose, never mine. I keep my head and hair low, uneven, and blunt from a rough chop last week. There’s nothing riskier than someone remembering your face.

My cart squeals with every turn. I walk less, trying not to wake the lone pit boss slumped at his console, or draw the cameras’ eyes. They probably have a file on me: the girl who never talks, who never clocks out until everything gleams, raw and new.

A winning clamor erupts from the main hall. The slot machine hits a jackpot: digital bells shrill, metallic coins ricochet in the empty room. My skin bristles. A chill knife from nape to spine. My chest seizes, like waking from a nightmare. It feels like a threat. I flinch. My hand snaps to my neck, fingers digging into the scar. Rationally, I know no one watches now—just software routines spinning into oblivion. Still, I shrink lower. Muscle memory endures.

I tip the bucket, spill another wave of bleach, and scrub an old blood streak from the linoleum. It’s real blood, a manager’s nosebleed, already brown at the edges. Not dangerous. Not the blood of a hunt. It foams, then vanishes down the drain. I keep moving.

My throat feels tight. Then it hits: a sharp, metallic tang as bleach mixes with something older—a ghost of blood under the chemicals. A door slams somewhere in the service corridors and rips me loose from the present. It’s always the slam. The sudden noise is a trigger. Memory floods in: I am a teen in the freezing dark, claws scraping at the steel hatch above my head. Even now, I feel the prickle of fur from a hand not quite human, the animal stink of breath too close. Heavy air presses in, thick with musk, shit, and hot blood. It nearly chokes me. Boots crunch in the snow outside. My heart thrashes—fox in a snare. Above me, the cage shakes with fury. I know what waits on the other side of the lock. When it clicks, there will be claws and teeth, the pack circling in, each pair of eyes hungry for the ritual’s end. I jolt back to the present—hands gripping the mop, jaw clenched. The air is thick with chemicals and memory.

The mop handle splinters in my grip. My hands shake. For a second, I see the hallway splashed with red, like that last night. That was when I stopped being a daughter and became “the problem.”

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

When I look up, the floor gleams. The air is cold and dry. Nothing stirs. I let go of the handle, and the sudden absence of tension makes me woozy. If I close my eyes, I’ll see snow, fangs, russet fur, dead wolves—worse. So I don’t. Instead, I reach into my apron and pull out the notepad the manager insists I use.

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

The uniform still smells faintly of someone else, someone who didn’t last a week. They give you a new name here, but it’s always recycled. They can only reuse so many identities before the edges fray. Sometimes the paperwork catches up—HR once called me the wrong name, pushing a timesheet at me while eyes flicked between my badge and the whited-out file. I pressed my thumb to the form anyway, pretending not to see the error, but my heart pounded. It would only take one person noticing to shatter the illusion. The risk lurks like mildew in the seams. That’s how it is for all of us who can’t pass for normal, who live by the First Rule: Hide in plain sight. Never draw another’s notice. I’ve seen others slip—a sudden outburst, a flash of eyes in the wrong light, a trace not quite human. They vanish, and nobody talks about it. It’s the perfect way to disappear, until you do.

My shift drags on for another hour. I pace the dim back hallways, straining for footsteps that never arrive. The clang of my mop echoes like waves battering a sinking hull.

If I could scrub myself raw and bleach my existence clean, I would. I want to scrape away the shame, the coiled fear, and the grief that sticks like a second layer. These aren’t just emotions; they’re the residue of a life in hiding. Each stain marks the cost of survival in a punishing world. All I can do is keep moving, keep working, and hope my need for invisibility offers cover. Concealment is both refuge and constraint.

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

My uniform peels off sticky—a second skin coming loose. I drop it in the communal bin, though I know stains never wash out. A cracked mirror above the sink is taped to keep the glass from falling out. I stare and see the outline of a girl who doesn’t quite exist: translucent skin, ragged lips, eyes brown and tired. My mother said I looked like her, but her eyes never had this hollowness. It doesn’t matter; she is long dead and burned.

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

I rinse my hands twice and splash water on my face. The chill is a shock—on purpose. If I begin to feel too real, I run the tap ice-cold and force myself back into my body. Water beads on my skin, but doesn’t sink in.

At my locker, I grab the canvas messenger bag I bought for three bucks at a church sale. The clasp is broken, so I hold it closed with a rubber band. My tips are stacked: tens, fives, ones, edges warped by damp. I count them twice, then again. It might cover groceries, maybe a third of next month’s rent if I skip dinners. I pause, picturing the sky blue sneakers at the gas station—the kind my mother called hopeful. I almost see them at the edge of my tally, a flicker of newness, but I do the math and shut the thought down. I turn the check over, squint at the stub, but the numbers never change.

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’ll have to try 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. It shows a name that isn’t mine in block letters, and 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 become a habit. I press my ear to the fire door, listening for footsteps in the hallway. I 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 drawls it, with a grin he thinks is fatherly, but makes my skin crawl. He’s a shade too close to creepy, like he should be on a list.

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, my name circled in red pen, maybe an asterisk next to it: “doesn’t talk, always alone, something off.” Some rumor once told me that every file with an asterisk gets pulled up for review every three days, a countdown ticking somewhere in the background, and when your name comes up twice in a month, someone actually checks. I picture the page shuffling forward, ticking closer to that line, the deadline pulling tighter each shift. 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. The neon is everywhere tonight, smearing pink and green across the wet pavement, slithering along my arms and cheekbones like a touch I can’t shake. It blinks and hisses overhead, and I swear I can feel it trailing me, pressing up to the corners of my eyes—hungry, searching. Each time a car passes, I flatten myself against a dumpster or slink behind a dumpster and hold my breath until the lights fade, but the city keeps watching, the signs breathing and pulsing, waiting for me to step into their glow.

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 and slid the deadbolt into place behind me. Though I considered adding the weak chain, I hesitated—it would make a noise. Instead, I quietly pushed the heavy planter into position, knowing it would trip anyone trying to enter, and, for now, that made me feel safe.

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, of 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.

Whenever thoughts about the future begin to surface, I force myself to turn away. Survival depends on invisibility—on perpetual motion and the discipline to avoid hope altogether. After all, hope is a risk, the very thing that can get you killed. Yet hope finds subtle ways to intrude. On certain nights, I briefly long for trivial comforts: a song drifting from the radio, a window that actually opens, a room bathed in sunlight and filled with the aroma of real coffee. I am quick to suppress these feelings, but they persist, a pulse in the darkness—an insidious warmth I dare not acknowledge. If I allow that crack to widen, even a little, I know I might not make it to morning.

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. He was the leader of our pack—a figure both revered and feared, who embodied the uncompromising logic of dominance and tradition. His authority was absolute, maintained through a legacy of violence and an unwavering adherence to ancient laws. By destroying everything, he declared my family a threat to the integrity of the pack, a cautionary example meant to reinforce his own power and quell dissent. To him, we were never individuals, just an obstacle, a lesson, another stain to be scrubbed out. When he eliminated my family, he tried to erase me too.

Above me, the chilled air carries a faint tang of bleach, stubborn and sharp, just like in the casino. The smell burrows in, cutting through the safety of the walls and reminding me that every day is another layer I have to scrub away, another chance to disappear. Somewhere in the plumbing, I hear the dull hum of water running, mechanical and endless, washing over everything. I close my eyes and let the scent cling to me, let the hum fill my head, and for a moment, I’m neither hunted nor hunting. I am just erased, fading gently at the edges, carried into morning on the ghost of bleach. But in that fragile space between night and day, I catch the thought I keep buried: maybe something is waiting beyond survival, something more than hiding and erasing. The world outside is cold, yet the sun will rise, and someday I might step out to meet it—not as a shadow, but as someone who belongs.