â B I O G R A P H Y
When Jelenaâ Â or, as she prefers, Jelkaâ moved to Ireland, she was only seven years old. It was to start over, as her mother said, to get away from the death of Jelkaâs father. Russia wasnât a kind place, and the winter had taken him. Jelka, however, didnât see much difference in their lives. The weather was a little more pleasant, but strange men still came over each night and visited her mother, and little Jelka didnât understand it. Her classmates helped her to: taunting her for her thick accent and tatty clothes, the worst of the bullying came because her mother was a prostitute.
The bullying took its toll on her, and Jelka found comfort in food. Now much more easy to come by, she would gorge herself on fish finger sandwiches and bacon butties, and over the years her weight ballooned. At ten she was chubby, at thirteen she was distinctly fat, and at fifteen, the kids would call her Jelly and make endless remarks over her size. All Jelka wanted was a friend, and in spite of the cruel taunts, she was enthusiastic in her offers of friendshipâ - she was a pleasant girl, really, well liked among her teachers.
As far as anyone was aware, that was how you could sum up Jelkaâs high school experience. Soft spoken and keen, she was just the wrong size, with a habit of saying the wrong thing. When girls started going missing from her school, certainly nobody suspected Jelka. It came as a shock, therefore, when she was seventeen years old and found clutching an empty packet of paracetemol, with an incriminating suicide note beside her. She was rushed to the hospital in time to pump her stomach, but the letter, along with the detailed diaries that she had been keeping, were all the evidence the police needed. Envious of the pretty girls around her, Jelka had been abducting them, talking to them, getting to know them, and then slitting their throats. The expansive moors of Ireland were vast enough to hide their bodies with little risk of being found.
It was the stress that drove her to suicide, sick of the hiding and the lying. It was a relief, she said, to be taken into custody. And the court found her extremely agreeable, helping them locate the missing girls, and speaking eloquently on her reasoning and logic. Nobody was surprised when she was found guilty by reason of madness, and packed off to an asylum.
Over the two years there, Jelka was an extremely willing patient. Truthfully, she loved the attention. Finally people were paying attention to her, and they wanted to hear what she had to say. The restricted food, as well as plenty of free time to work out in, even saw her losing stone upon stoneâ now she is every bit as petite and slender as the girls she killed, though her self esteem has yet to catch up. It was a source of great upset for her to discover that, underfunded as it was, the facility she had been staying at was going to close. She would be transferred to Stonefield over in Englandâ and, as she has reasoned to herself, the change might be a good thing. Itâs a fresh start, a place where nobody knows how fat she used to be. The years under the governmentâs care havenât dimmed her sunny enthusiasm one bit, and she is absolutely thrilled to continue her rehabilitation with what she is quite sure will be a talented and kind group of doctors and patients.