“Pathetic.”
“Embarrassment.”
He had a special vocabulary for disappointment. Words designed to burrow into bone. He spoke of them as if they were unfinished products.
“Do you think champions sleep?” he asked one night when Helen dozed over homework.
“Yes,” she murmured.
“Not mine.”
He flipped the table, books crashing to the floor. Butch lunged forward.
“Don’t.”
The single word hung in the air. Vladim’s eyes shifted to his son. Slowly, deliberately, he smiled.
“You would defend her?” he asked. Butch felt something tighten in his chest.
“She’s tired.”
“She is weak,” Vladim corrected. “And weakness spreads.”
He made them run sprints in the dark until their legs buckled.
The steroids worked.
By thirteen, Butch’s shoulders had broadened unnaturally. Veins mapped his arms like rivers. He recovered from injuries in days instead of weeks.
Helen’s muscles tightened and lengthened. She moved with a mechanical precision that startled coaches.
Rumors began.
“How are they doing this?” other parents whispered.
“Natural talent,” Vladim would say, his expression serene. At home, the regimen intensified.
He measured their food on a scale. Timed their sleep. Monitored their blood pressure, their hormone levels, their heart rates. He recorded everything in black notebooks stacked beside his bed.
“Data,” he told them. “Emotion is for fools. Numbers tell the truth.”
But the numbers began to shift.
Butch’s temper flared without warning. He snapped at teammates, shoved lockers, punched walls until his knuckles split.
Helen stopped laughing. She stared at herself in the mirror as if searching for someone else.
One evening, after a grueling tournament where both siblings had won gold in their respective divisions, Vladim gathered them in the living room.
“You see?” he said softly. “You are becoming superior.” Helen’s voice surprised them all.
“Superior to who?”
“To everyone.”
“But why?” The question lingered, fragile and defiant.
Vladim’s face hardened.