Ripped from the Womb

Although it’s a myth, a legend, many believed it to be true. The whispers echoed through Siberian winters, dating back to 1934. There was a small village, Tomsk, nestled in the desolate cold. Despite its sparse population, the village had its own quiet rhythms. But one of those bitter winter nights would carve its name into the dark folklore of the land.

In the biting cold, a drunken man, driven by rage, casted his pregnant wife into the unforgiving blizzard. She was six months along, carrying twin girls. Her belly swelled with life, but her heart sank with the weight of her husband’s cruelty. She begged and cried, her voice barely audible over the howling winds, but he was beyond reason. With a cruel sneer, he hurled a heavy vase at her face, shattering her jaw and leaving her to die in the merciless cold. She stumbled in the thick snow, blood spilling from her mouth and pooling in the icy earth beneath her, her jaw hanging uselessly at her left side. The pain was unbearable, but her instinct for survival was stronger. She tried to seek help from her neighbors, but the snow was thick, deeper than any human could safely traverse. As the hours passed, her body grew cold, her limbs stiffening in the deathly embrace of the winter storm.

When the sun rose the next day, they found her body, abandoned and mutilated. Her jaw, now taken by an animal during the night, was nowhere to be found. Her skin was pale, lips blue, and her blood—pooling beneath her body had frozen solid. The villagers gathered around, murmuring in fear and disbelief. Her belly was split open, an unnatural and gruesome sight. Her fetuses were missing, as if they had been ripped from the womb in the night. The authorities arrived, after much hesitation. They knocked on the man’s door, but received no reply. They circled to the back of the house. The back door, too, was tightly shut. The corpse of the woman lay waiting, but it seemed her husband's permission had already been given for her to be taken away. With a grim resolve, the authorities kicked down the door. They moved swiftly through the dimly lit house, entering the bedroom. The scene they were going to witness, would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

The man sat motionless in a rocking chair, facing the wall. The fire in the hearth had long since gone cold. The smell of stale vodka was faint in the air, but there was something unnerving about the lack of any scent of life. As they approached the man, their hearts stopped. The man’s torso and abdomen had been brutally carved open, his organs missing—there was no trace of his heart, lungs, or stomach. His ribcage had been stripped away, leaving only the naked spinal column behind. Hanging loosely from his body was his mesentery, the only sign of life remaining in him. The most chilling part? In his hollowed-out eye sockets were two small, lifeless fetuses—the same twin girls his wife had carried. They stared back, vacant and eerily lifelike, their tiny forms still. In a grotesque twist, written on the wall in a messy, bloodstained scrawl were the words, "Мы были голодны, папа."

The autopsy revealed that the woman had been hollowed out, her organs removed in some beastly manner, as if eaten from inside. Only a few of her muscles and bones remained, evidence of a twisted fate that couldn’t be comprehended. The fetuses were cremated alongside the man and woman, and the house was torn down, but the legend didn’t die.

Though the bodies were burned and the house torn, many villagers still swore they heard the unsettling laughter of two little girls in the dead of night, echoing down the cold, empty roads. Several deaths of pregnant women were reported since then. All mysterious. Now, the town is a ghost. No life in. But the legend still lives on. And the one who performed the autopsy is still alive - Dr. D.M. Krevichalstein.