Tatiana Olin

“Dirty Bad Blood, Part II of II” by Tatiana Olin

To my surprise, I did, indeed, wake up feeling refreshed and over it. I was tops in Worlds and at Trials. I was at the Olympics. I was the new it girl - the only one to ever complete a move invented by the true GOAT. Fuck that weird, unhinged wannabe. Fuck that suit that’s making me play nice with her. Let’s go.Fitz cleared me to return to training all out, and we were spending that day doing run throughs of our events with the other girls cheering us on in the stands to simulate the chaos the gym would be in when we were actually competing ...

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“Dirty Bad Blood, Part I of II” by Tatiana Olin

“You have actually got to be kidding me, no fucking way. Nope. No.” “Listen, Stacia. I don’t have a choice in the matter! WADA cleared her and the IOC looks like they’re going to approve her appeal -” “No! Why the fuck would I want to be on a team with my mortal enemy slash bitch who’s been trying to single-white-female me since the get! No!” “I told you, I don’t -“ “She dosed me, Fitz! What the fuck are we supposed to do when she’s working and living with us? How is this fair to me?! I can’t -” I lost it. Well, my version of ‘lost it’. I go...

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“The Sea is Made of Wind and Unkindness, Part II of II” by Tatiana Olin

There was a point at which we didn’t know whether it was day or night. Time became more like storm or calm, and we kept time that way. Was it a metaphor? It certainly seemed so. And with every storm came the ship with the tattered sails and all the water-bloated corpses that came with it. Did it ever get any closer? It certainly seemed so.  All the while, my husband was something he used to be - who he was before mis mother and the hardships of life cultivated his shortcomings into untamable demons. But the seventh storm set something e...

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“The Sea is Made of Wind and Unkindness, Part I of II” by Tatiana Olin

There is no noise more overwhelming and at the same time silent than the violence of the wind wrapped around this old lighthouse. Inside, I am made of muscle memory and rumination, swept up in a constant state of looking back, as if the wind is not just outside. A lifetime of lighting the tower and keeping an eye on the horizon of the sea. A lifetime of floating bodies, including the bloated corpse of my husband, who decades ago gave into the call of the salty sea wind.But this is not a love story, though at one time it might have been.—----...

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“Underneath the Mountain is Total Darkness” by Tatiana Olin

The mornings are different now. The waking, it’s no longer clear and full of light; it’s vague shapes and weak, diffused rays. I do not smell the crisp morning air or the flowers in the spring. I smell wet rock and fear. I taste starvation. I see blindness.—-----------------------------------------------------It was finally Friday. Finally spring. Finally the first caving trip of the season. I had spent the last week collecting my equipment, which had been strewn about my basement laundry room after last season ended. I’m lazy. And it’s...

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“In the Dark of the Morning” by Tatiana Olin

Waking up violently, I turn to the nightstand and tap my phone screen twice. It lights up. 5:23 AM, like it is every morning. 5:23 AM is always dark and cold, no matter the season, and the air sinks like a damp blanket until it cloaks you. At 5:23 AM, you feel everything in your bones.It’s been 4 days since he left. Another one. He lasted a few months longer than the one before, but I wore on him, eventually. Some things are too difficult to live with. And 5:23 AM is perhaps the least difficult thing about me.As I look up from my phone scree...

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“Outside of When, Part II of II” by Tatiana Olin

Things became different after that. We never left the house. We slept in the same bed. We spent all our time physically near to each other in this house that existed outside of time and space. We almost never spoke, and we drug dressers in front of a locked door before we went to sleep each night. Sometimes, we woke up covered in blood that wasn't there. Sometimes, the chandeliers were made of bones. Sometimes, the sun never rose. And in time, we forgot we had ever left. We forgot our names. We forgot ourselves. I often wondered if those t...

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“Outside of When, Part I of II” by Tatiana Olin

I often wonder what we could have been had we existed in the space we needed - a space made for us. We would have been something extraordinary. Instead, we are an ephemeral plot of a would-be love story in a book that was never written. Except that we’re dead. Ours is a story of a brutally-ordinary annihilation. The house was beautiful, on the surfaces. Mahogany, cherry, porcelain, marble - it was 120 years of heritage and history. The house was seething, underneath the surfaces. Suicides, murders, disappearances - it was 120 years of deat...

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“The Locked Door” by Tatiana Olin

It was him. It was the house. It was us. There was something wrong in the air, and each storm that rolled through the valley touched nothing inside our dilapidated fence lines. A perfectly unbothered acre of what a happy farmhouse becomes once it’s left alone too long. The house was never empty, but it was always neglected. We were never alone, but we had a hard time staying together. In our minds and with ourselves.  —------ The day we finally found the house, we’d been searching for it ever since the world fell apart 17 days ago. ...

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“Something is Wrong” by Tatiana Olin

Something is wrong. There was no wind last night and the morning sun hasn’t seemed to move since around 10. Birds were hopping from tree to tree on branches that didn’t move - not even the leaves. Above me, the clouded dome of the sky stood still. And so did I. Am I high? I run and grab my smartphone off the kitchen table. Screen on. The clock reads 10:23. But there’s no way. Unlocked. The home screen clock reads 88:88 and there’s no data or cell service. And the wi-fi’s down. Hold on, though.  What? What in the entire fuck? W...

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“The Hotel is Breathing” by Tatiana Olin

NIGHT ONE “I’m too superstitious for this,” I whispered, looking around the gilded marble lobby of The Hotel. “I’m too tired for this.” My partner for the night shift rolls his eyes, grabs two flashlights and tosses one to me. “C’mon, lemme show you what we’re supposed to be doing.” And he was off. Following him up the grand central staircase, I ponder the massive painted portraits hung throughout the walls of the mezzanine. Things look different in the dark, at night. Eyes look less dead and more angry. Buildings seem to breathe. I ...

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“Justice is Just an Idea” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #104

“Are you coming tonight?” “Nah dude, fuck that party. You hate him; why would you go?” “I dunno. It’s not like he’s going to be the only one there. We haven't so much as seen his shadow in months. And I haven’t been spending enough time out with friends. I can’t hide from him forever. We broke up a year ago and he is still controlling my life.” “This is a stupid idea,” I groaned half under my breath. She looked at me with her puppy dog eyes. They always work. “Ugghhh, fine,” I rolled my eyes at her and pried myself off the couch. “...

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“God is Not Who You Think He is” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #102

God lends no favor to the curious. He has no compassion for those who seek anything other than blind and dark solace. He does not look kindly upon those who would ask him why he burnt those Old Testament lands to the ground or why he allows his own men to harm the children they are meant to protect. He doesn’t like questions because he doesn’t have answers. But it would have been different if I had only been dealing with God. Would he have told me he was omni-benevolent? Would he have looked into my soul and called me only evil? Would God hi...

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“The Girl in the Glass” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #101

They keep telling me she isn’t real. My husband, my kids, the doctors. Especially the doctors. They keep telling me she isn’t real. But she’s all I see. She’s more real than the people here, than my own breath, than my existence. I lost her, but she never left. And if she isn’t all the places I never made it to, then she’s all of the paths that were taken from me when she went away. It’s been 6 years, 5 months and 8 days. And I am still waiting for her to walk through the door and tell me that she was wrong; it was all a misunderstanding. ...

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“Dinner Was a Mistake” by Tatiana Olin

Submitted to Contest #100

TW: domestic abuse, violence Some nights, like this night, sitting across from my husband at the small pub-style table at the window of our kitchen feels… wrong. Like it’s really familiar, but it’s almost unreal.   Lifting a piece of chicken to my mouth on a fork, I look at him looking at the food. There’s always something wrong with it; there’s always something I mess up. I watch him slowly cut through the chicken and stab the loose piece. Everything he does seems violent, even the smallest of things. Sometimes I feel like I’m always u...

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