I’ll write stories that will make them come from the ends of the earth to kill me… then at last it will be over, and that’ll be fine with me.
- Celine

I have a contract out on me. Not an employment contract with all kinds of expat benefits and a $3000 apartment-but the other kind of contract. The bad kind of contract.

At first I was told that “they,” or rather a “she” and a “he,” wanted to have me killed. Then my sentence was reduced to having my legs broken. Not as in, “Break a leg, Mark! Good luck with your new ‘paper.” But as in, “I’m a-gonna break yo’ fuckin legs!” She can have it arranged, as she let one too many persons know. See, she’s in the real estate business, which in Moscow means, flat-head central. (more…)

September 12, 1996. 2 p.m. Gogolevsky Bulvar, near metro Kropotkinskaya. I am walking alone. I am returning from a demonstration of protest against shameful, unjust Chechnya peace accord just concluded by General Lebed. Event took place near Russian White House. It was organized by my National - Bolshevik’s party. Slogans were explicit: “Lebed-The No. 1 Chechen of the Year!” “Lebed -to the jail bench!” “For what been killed our boys!” (more…)

A British expat goes down to the local kiosk to buy himself a pack of cigarettes, and notices a street bum begging for money. He hands the bum 3000 rubles, gets his cigarettes, then leaves. The next morning, passing the kiosk on his way to work, he sees the same bum and gives him another 3000 rubles. The bum thanks him, leans closer, then asks him earnestly, “Is there anyone you want me to kill?” (more…)

This is the cover of The eXile Issue #1, published in February 1997.