Homesick for Another World

The final story of the collection is narrated by a young girl named Urszula, who believes that she comes from a place other than Earth. She knows she can’t point to this place on a map, and isn’t sure if it’s even a place, but she feels desperately homesick and longs to return. Urszula’s twin brother, Waldemar, believes that, in order to return to this better place, they must either die or kill the right person. He believes that if she kills the right person, a hole will open up in the ground and she’ll fall down a tunnel and return to the better place.

Urszula and Waldemar live with their mother, whom Urszula calls “the woman.” The twins’ father is dead, and the woman tells them that he is in a better place. Urszula wonders if it is the same place she is from. One day Urszula wakes up with an inexplicable certainty that the person she needs to kill in order to return home is named Jarek Jaskolka. She doesn’t know any such person and has never heard the name before, but she is determined to find and kill Jarek Jaskolka so that she can finally leave Earth.