By the way, in case I forgot to mention, my name is Paige Sanders. It might as well have been Nobody Extraordinaire - I couldn't have cared less. I probably would have forgotten it by now anyway, if I didn't have to write it on the top right corner of my school papers every week. People hardly ever called me by my name. In school I was usually "the girl in the left corner" for teachers and "hey, you" for classmates. Lilly referred to me as "sis", and it irritated me much, because it reminded me of how distant relatives knew me as "Lilly's sister", not even bothering to ask if I had a name or something. With my mother, I was used to responding whenever she started yelling.
I could think of only two people thanks to who I still heard my name said aloud once in a while. Our neighbour from the third floor, old Mrs. Emigh, when greeting me always used "Ms. Sanders" and I rather liked it. And there was my father, who called me just Paige.
I also hadn't really mentioned my father, had I? That's mostly because I didn't hear much of him, and I saw him very rarely too. He sent cards and presents for my birthdays, for Christmas and other important holidays; he also telephoned once or twice a month, and maybe appeared in town once in a couple of months, and that was that. But I always enjoyed the few days I got to spend with him. Now that I come to think about it, probably what I liked the most was that I was his only daughter. Yes, that makes me and Lilly half-sisters, but it's not like this matters much. It also makes my mother a very unlucky woman. She divorced my father when I was five, so I barely remembered them living together. Then, with Lilly's father it was even worse - he left her when she was pregnant with Lilly and she hadn't heard of him ever since. So, for the longest of times, it's been just her, Lilly and me, and I hardly remember it ever being different. And I thought I was fine with it, too.
Well, now I wasn't. And I especially wasn't fine with sitting on the floor in the empty apartment at five AM, staring at the ceiling, and evaluating my meaningless life. No, it didn't have anything to do with the fact that I had to handle a couple of days on my own. Of course, I was perfectly capable of doing that. No doubt at all.
Well, okay, maybe I wasn't. But, still, nothing to do with this, I wanted a change anyway, and I wanted it immediately.
I could have waited for a more reasonable hour to call my father, but I didn't. Even being so inconspicuous, I was never much of a reasonable person. I stood still, waiting for the signal and wondering what the hell I was planning to say.
Oh, voice mail. Well, what did I expect anyway? Apparently my father was not the type of person that would risk leaving his mobile phone switched on during nighttime, in case someone, say, his extremely sensible daughter, suddenly decided to give him a wake up buzz. And even if he'd picked up, how did I imagine it would go? That we were going to have a lovely early morning conversation? Yeah, right. Most probably something resembling: "Paige, darling, this is like the best possible time for phone calls. And thanks for interrupting my sleep, much appreciated!" Nevertheless, I couldn't help feeling disappointed. I really wished I could do something spontaneous that could at least give me the feeling of breaking the routine I was so used to. But hey, come to think of it as it was, I was almost certain that my sister and mother off to a hospital and my being wide awake at five AM kind of counted for breaking the routine.
Now, it would be nice if I could say that, regarding the circumstances, I didn't even think of sleep as an option - because I was worried, because I was overwhelmed with apprehension, and because I had suddenly made those great revelations about myself and I just had to think them over. After all, who on earth would calmly go to bed on a night like this? Okay, in my defence, I was hardly calm. But I did want to get some more sleep - because I was tired, because hour and a half amount of sleep was still better than none at all, and because there wasn't anything particularly helpful I could do at the moment. As the arguments sounded soothing enough for my guilty coscience, I headed for my room - then, instantly changing my mind, entered Lilly's.
In spite of my resentfulness towards Lilly, I always thought her room was charming – in the same way everyone said Lilly was. I only admitted it to myself, though, since I was so determined to prove that I’m better or at least worth it as much as she was, that I couldn’t afford throwing her compliments. It was an astonishingly colourful place, that room of hers, and this was by far the first impression one got when entering. It was chaotic too, but not messy – it was as if everything belonged where it was, and it would not look right if it were tidy. It suited Lilly, it really did.
That night there was something different about her room, and after switching on the lights I spent some time looking around, wondering what it was. Then, when I sat on her bed and shifted my gaze towards the reading lamp on her nightstand, I realized. The reading lamp was always on at night, ever since Lilly got it for her sixth birthday – she believed it chased her nightmares away. But now it wasn’t, and it hadn’t been when I found her crying in her sleep again, too. Funny, I thought there was no way she could forget it, like one does not forget to eat when hungry. Or maybe she didn’t bother with it on purpose, thinking that she’s over her past fears. Then, was she right to believe that as long as the lamp was on, the nightmares didn’t bother her? I used to tease her about this so much, I even threatened to throw the lamp away only to watch her face freeze in horror. Okay, I realize it sounds cruel and I shouldn’t have, but I comforted myself with the explanation that Lilly was so interesting to people because she had meaningless weird habits and whatnot, which she exaggerated and pretended were for real. It was a relief, it gave me just the perfect excuse to treat her as I did – well, a partial excuse anyway. I knew I acted mean, but I always felt better if I could say I had a reason. I sighed. It wasn’t easy, estimating my motives like this, it made me feel bad for myself and for the person who I was. That night, there was something different about me, and I had yet to discover what it was.
I switched off the lights, slipped under the warm blanket and wrapped myself in it. It crossed my mind whether I should leave the reading lamp on, but then I had to blame myself for being so pathetic. It wasn’t me having the nightmares issues, plus the light would only irritate me.
“Leave it on, please, it’s so dark in here!”
I frantically jumped to my feet. Lilly’s voice was so clear, and so, so scared. I shook my head. This wasn’t happening. I was tired and the situation was weird, it was normal that I freak out a little.
“Do leave it on, sis!” insisted Lilly’s voice in my head again.
“Then why didn’t you?” I snapped, completely aware that I was talking to the empty room. “Why should I, if you didn’t bother to?”
But it worked. The voice didn’t reappear. I lay down again, holding on to the blanket as if it was my only salvation. Was I going crazy, too? No… no, that couldn’t be. In fact, I was probably already dreaming. On the contrary, that meant that I was apparently wrong about the nightmare issues. But it was the better explanation, wasn’t it? The only sane one.
***
I woke up to the annoying ringtone of my alarm, coming from another room. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out that it was actually from my room, since I had slept in Lilly's. Then it took some more time before I gathered the strength to get up - or was it the fact that I'd had enough of the stupid polyphonic melody? It was still dark outside - a typical winter morning. I feebly tried to fight the exhaustion, as I was heading for my cell phone, lying on the mahogony desk next to my Chemistry notebook. I determinedly picked it up and stopped the alaram, then sat on my bed and gave myself a brief time to think over the events of that night, which, in the dim morning light, seemed distant and surreal.
So, the plan was, I was going to act as if it were a normal school day. Only, when I finished classes - or even in the lunch break, maybe - I was going to call mum and ask her how was Lilly. Right. Oh, and coffee probably would be useful for keeping me awake. Otherwise, I didn't think I could manage school, I felt like I could fall asleep any minute, and my eyelids desperately longed to closed. I was used to getting a good night sleep, so this was killing me. Not that I was going to let it, of course. Come on, I could deal with some lack of sleep, I would totally get by.
The apartment seemed insanely quiet and empty. Usually my mornings were filled with Lilly's screeching voice, asking if I had seen this or that of hers, because things in her room quite often seemed to disappear, mum urging us to hurry, and the odor of fine breakfast coming from the kitchen. And I resented it, well, except for the breakfast, but I usually wasn't hungry that early anyway. All the time, it felt pretty obvious that these frenetic mornings weren't really bringing out the best in me, and I wished I could, for once, have a peaceful and quiet one. Except that now the last words I would've used to describe the atmosphere were "peaceful" and "quiet". Try "spooky" and "deserted" - now that's more like it.
The stillness was just tensing me up, and I hated how the sounds of my footsteps echoed loudly as I walked toward the kitchen. It was almost unbearable, so I turned on the old radio beside the microwave to a random station. A soft song with catchy melody was playing and a moment later I found myself tapping with my feet to it. There, it was no longer freakishly quiet.
I cut a thin slice of bread, buttered it up and coated it with strawberry jam. Then I poured myself some orange juice. I somehow didn't feel like bringing my poor breakfast attempt to the table, so I sat on the floor cross-legged and ate it there, listening to the radio. It succeeded in helping me restore some energy - I even felt like washing the plate and the glass, but there was no time, since I had to go to school.
I was out and headed for the bus stop in no time. The morning was cold and foggy, but I somehow couldn't percieve it. I felt like the world around me and the ground on which I was stepping were just a background to my thoughts. My mind was floating and my thoughts were running through my head so fast I couldn't follow them all at one time. The misty air, strangers' unsynchronized steps on the pavement, the occasional cars passing by, yet unextinguished street lamps feebly glowing in the morning gloom - it was all a blur in my mind. My own unsynchronized steps on the pavement as I was pacing at the bus stop, I've never heard so clearly before. It was like my senses were automatically ignoring everything and everyone else but me and my own sense of space.
While I was still waiting for the bus, it started raining, and I didn't have an umbrella. I watched as the raindrops fell on me, but I didn't feel them. I knew I was all wet, but I couldn't feel that, too. Then the bus came and when I got in, I couldn't distinguish standing there among the crowd of nervous sleep-deprived people and standing outside in the rain. To my mind it made no difference. I felt detached from my body, I felt light as a feather, I felt dizzy as coke. And then I suddenly started noticing the world, but there was something insanely wrong with it.
No people on the bus - no bus either, no floor under my feet, no force of gravity. All around me there was only thick greenish mist which razed everything else off my sight. And then I heard the voices.
"See, another one of those."
"Silly ignorant girl."
"So plain. So ordinary."
"If she were to die now, she'd end up like us. Wouldn't that be lovely!"
"We'll show her then. Oh do we hate souls like her."
"Oh do we hate souls like us."
"Silly ignorant girl."
"She couldn't possibly take much more of us. It'll freak her to death."
"Let's then. Silly ignorant girl."
"Plain. Ignorant. Can you hear us, soul?"
I tried to scream, but my voice was gone. I tried to escape, but I couldn't move. The voices were getting louder now, I couldn't stand them. The mist was getting thicker, suffocating me.
"Now, how does it feel to watch your life slipping away?"
"Was there ever anything else to it, but yourself?"
I tried to inhale and I failed to breath. And the mist was getting thicker. And the voices were getting louder.
"Silly."
"Ignorant."
And I blacked out.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Over the Rainbow: Chapter 1 by Elena Angelova
"Tell me now, what do you see?" My little sister pulled my sleeve and stared at me expectantly. What the hell was I supposed to say?
Then I saw it. The rainbow. Good, I thought, but not good enough to compensate for the stupid rain that made us miserably wet, since I forgot to bring an umbrella. And not good at all, in case Lilly got sick and mom killed me.
"Yeah, Lilly. It's beautiful. Now, let's go home, I'm freezing. I bet you are, too. God, mom is so going to kill me."
"No!" Lilly squeaked, and had me look at the rainbow again. "It is beautiful, but tell me what you see over it."
You should know that my sister was kind of strange (mom said it was rude if I called her "weird"). She was nine years old and still kept "seeing" things. A couple of years ago it was okay, even adorable - and people were saying things like "What a lovely imagination has this child!" But she was supposed to grow out of it, wasn't she? What I found particularly disturbing about her so-called visions was that she was always completely serious and consumed when talking about them, stubbornly convinced that they were real. I was guessing when you were nine it was still okay to be a little crazy, but I secretly feared being known as the girl whose sister was nuts.
"I don't see anything, Lilly. And so do you. Come on, let's go, please, mom is so going to kill me!" I said, as I was trying to drag her towards home. We were only a street or two away.
"It's Pinky!" exclaimed my sister, grinning widely. "She is smiling."
Pinky was her cat. It died last month.
"Lilly, please, let's just go," I urged her, but she wouldn't listen.
"She looks older, you know. A little skinier than I remember her, too. But she is alright."
We were late. Mom was most probably going to ground me for the rest of the week. Well, damn.
"I hope they feed them Whiskas over the rainbow," Lilly added.
I hope you shut it for a while, I thought, but I didn't say it out loud in case she ratted me out to mom. Instead, I continued my efforts to get her going.
"Don't you see her?" she insisted.
"The hell I don't," I muttered, and, feeling she was finally giving up, led her down the street.
She said nothing more, and I was glad. The day was bad enough without more of her annoying blabbering.
As I supposed, mom was angry with me. How dare I take Lilly out without bringing an umbrella - didn't I watch the weather forecast, for goodness sake? I should just look at her, oh her poor baby, her hands are ice cubes, and her clothes completely wet, and it's all my fault. I had yet again proved to be the sensless and irresponsible daughter who never cares for anyone but herself. If poor Lilly gets ill I'm grounded until Christmas and I am not celabrating my birthday. Now, it's high time I went straight to my room and out of her sight. Yeah, that was so typically my mother.
I entered the room, slammed the door, and kicked the first thing standing in my way, specifically my Biology students' book. It went across the room and it's pages twisted horribly. I didn't care. I was angry with myself for forgetting the umbrella, with my mother for shouting at me and treating me like I was to blame for the hole in the ozone layer, but most of all with my stupid sister. Mom just adored her, she was her favourite. You know, if I wasn't so afraid what my acquaintances would say, I'd actually wish Lilly would be labeled mentally disabled - it was the only way I would ever stand out for mom. My sister was always getting me in trouble. She made me take her out that day, too, and then she was trying to start a lame conversation about shooting stars, but I cut her off. Then it started to rain really heavily, and I wanted us to run, but she tripped and fell near a puddle. By the time I got her on her feet again, we were both wet. Lovely.
The rest of the day went as smoothly as it could, and that was probably because I only stayed in my room. I even skipped dinner, because I didn't feel like facing my family, when I was so mad at them. I almost finished the outline of the Phyisics presentation, which was next week, but I prefered getting school stuff over with as soon as possible. After writing my Math homework too, I took a long shower and went to bed. I was so exhausted, I fell asleep almost immediately.
With a day like this, you'd think, it would be just fair to at least get a good night sleep, especially regarding the fact that you have to go to school the next morning. Of course, life is seldom fair, and the total sleep I got for the night was about three-four hours. And, guess what, it was again because of my sister. I was sure I'd dreamt of something pleasant, but when Lilly's crying woke me up, I could barely remember it. Lilly used to weep in her sleep sometimes, when she was very little, and back then I was the one who would get up in the middle of the night to wipe away her tears and assure her that, whatever it was she was dreaming of was not real. Ocassionally, I would stay with her for the rest of the night, in case she ended up crying in her sleep again. It now seemed unbelievable, that I was once well-fitting the role of the loving and caring older sister. I left it behind just about the time all my relatives started ignoring me in favour of Lilly, and I usually ended up feeling like a piece of furniture. No one ever noticed me anymore, it was all about Lilly and how cute and adorable she was, plus, an extremely bright child. Sure, a little strange, but it wasn't like that was a big deal, was it? Strange is better than dull and boring - and they all thought I was like that.
So when my sister started behaving like a weeping somnabulist for the first time in years, all I did was wish a pair earplugs would drop from, say, the ceiling. I tried holding the pillow over my head, but eventually I started struggling with breathing. So I just lay down and waited for my mother to go to my sister and calm her down, so I could get my sleep. I waited long enough to assume that my mother didn't hear anything from her room, which was on the opposite end of the apartament, while mine was just next to Lilly's. Lucky me. Finally, when I decided that the quickest way to make her stop was actually calm her myself, I got up and somehow made my way to her room without switching on any lights.
I sat on the edge of her bed and tried shaking her a little. She was still asleep and still crying, but showed some signs of consciousness, so I continued, only a little more urgent.
"Lilly, you have to wake up. Come on, it's just a dream. Like, not really happening to you. I said, wake up!"
And just like that, she did, but she didn't stop crying, and her expression was one of terror. It used to have a heart- breaking effect on me once, but no it longer worked that way.
"Oh, please. Just calm down," I told her, slightly irritated by her unfocused look. "You know it wasn't real. You're just pretending to be that scared to get my attention. Well, guess not, you're not getting it anyway, so you might as well quit trying."
"I'm cold," whispered Lilly, shivering, and one more tear rolled down her cheek.
At that point, I had to admit she didn't look okay at all and maybe, just maybe, a part of me started worrying not for the amount of sleep I would get that night, but for my sister's health. As I put my hand over her forehead, I realized she definitely had a high temperature. "Well," I thought to myself miserably, "there I go. I took her out and she got sick, and, knowing my mother, to say that I'm in trouble would be like the understatement of the year."
But I did have to go wake up my mother right now and tell her that Lilly was sick, because she would definitely know what to do about it, and, honestly, I had no clue.
"Okay, listen," I started talking to my sister a little more gently. "I'm going to fetch mom and she'll take care of you, alright? You just wait a minute."
"I am going to die, ain't I?" asked Lilly, her voice trembling. And I could see she really believed it, and at that moment, this sentence, and the desperate look on her face scared the hell out of me, and I myself felt like crying and shivering.
"Of course you're not going to die." I said quickly. "You're just a bit sick, and chances are, you won't go to school the whole week. If I were you, I'd be glad about it."
I didn't wait for her response, because I figured the quicker I told my mother about this, the better. She was going to take care of my sister, and I was going to finally get some more sleep. Or so I thought then.
Actually, telling my mother wasn't that hard. She didn't shout at me, nor did she give me an insulting lecture on my behaviour, but I was far from relieved that there would not be one at the morning.
"May I go back to sleep now?" I asked.
"Do whatever you want," was her kind answer. She couldn't care less for me, I realized. Especially when her better daughter's health was concerned. I didn't believe I had ever seen her that worried when it was me who was sick.
So I went back to my room, and tried to fall asleep again, but it was pointless. I wasn't tired anymore, and my thoughts wouldn't leave me be. Okay, so I took Lilly out, but I wouldn't have if she hadn't begged me to. It wasn't like I enjoyed spending time with her anyway. However, I thought, mom wanted us to get along well, as siblings should (according to her - but I hadn't actually heard of anyone who doesn't constantly fight with their siblings). My perfect school record wasn't even nearly enough to impress her, so I figured that acting like a loving sister for a change probably would. I wasn't sure if it would have actually worked, had it not been for the stupid rain. Then I remember how scared Lilly looked, like she really thought she was going to die, and felt a bit guilty. I decided at the moment I was only mad at my mother.
I had only started counting sheep a few minutes ago, when my mother knocked on my door and, almost hysterically, told me to get out of bed immediately. I did without hesitating, already feeling that panic was flooding me too. Was there a chance that she seemed so worried because Lilly was suffering from something more serious than a common influenza?
"What's wrong with Lilly?" I demanded.
"I don't know," my mother replied, "but I already called for an ambulance."
"You're taking her to a hospital?" I couldn't believe it. A bit of rain and cold weather weren't such a big deal for the immune system, were they? Now my conscience was reminding me of its existence. If only I hadn't forgotten the damn umbrella...
"Is it my fault? Is she going to be okay?" I asked, and my voice cracked at the last sentence. I felt like I could burst into tears any minute.
"I don't know," was all my mother said.
No one said anything for a while. The grave silence was hurting my ears.
"You can handle a couple of days on your own, right?" said my mother at last.
"You're going with her?" I asked, although I completely realized it was the lamest thing to say. Of course she was going at the hospital with Lilly. But a couple of days? "I mean, yeah, I'll be fine."
"Good."
Not good, I thought. Not good at all. I still couldn't quite believe this was really happening. I mean, except the usual conflicts with my family, my life was perfectly normal. Nothing too nice or too unpleasant ever happened, and all the days were alike. I didn't, however, define it as boring. I didn't define it anyhow. I was just going with the flow most of the time, from day to day, but I didn't mind. And the things they talked about on the news, all the great misfortunes in the world, seemed so distant. But at that very moment, they had never seemed closer, and I was scared.
I went to see Lilly again. She was sitting on her bed, with the blanket wrapped around her tight. I sat next to her.
"I don't want to go." She looked at me beseechingly, like I could prevent it somehow.
"It's only for a couple of days, " I reminded her, trying my best to sound cheerfully, but failed. "They'll heal you there, and then you'll come back home."
"You promise?"
"I promise."
She hugged me and I burst into tears.
"Why are you crying?" she asked.
"I don't know," I sobbed. "I'm sorry."
Truth is, I was perfectly aware of the reasons why I was suddenly so vulnerable. I just didn't believe I could explain them to my nine-year-old sister, especially in her present condition. Actually, I doubted I could explain them to anyone, myself included, but I tried - at least for my own comfort. The mediocrity of my life never bothered me before. Getting out of bed in the morning and going to sleep at night were usually the most significant parts of my daily routine. And I found myself wondering if I ever noticed anything at all, and if anyone ever noticed me - then, being sincere with myself, I couldn't help admitting that the answer was no. So, what if I died? Just like that, no warning, no hints, one day I'm here, the next I'm gone. No one was really going to miss me. If I were a book character, I'd be of the secondary ones, the ones who appear for a page or two at the most, performing no definite role, and by the end of the chapter you have already well forgotten about their existence, so they might as well have not been there at all. Lilly, on the other hand, was something else. She was different, and that's what made her interesting. I realized that, compared to her, I was indeed dull and boring. I didn't have the ability to make people remember me. Two weeks ago, I met my first to fourth grade teacher, and she didn't recognise me, and then couldn't even remember who I was when I told her my name. I could picture myself some years from now, returning to my high school, and everyone going like "Does anyone have any idea who that girl is?" I was no one. And the worst part is, until now, I didn't mind being no one. The only person to whom I ever tried to prove something was my mother, and I did it only because there was already someone (Lilly) proving to be a lot better than me in the art of living. Yes, my sister had a talant to value everything life could offer her, but it was never enough for her, so she invented her own worlds and universes, which she never got tired of exploring. She was only nine, while I, being in my mid-teens, was a walking background. Now I could see the contrast between us like I could distinguish black from white. That was the first time in my life when I felt completely aware of myself and my whole life until that moment, and thank god, it was far from the last.
When I was eventually alone in the apartment, it was five o'clock in the morning, and my life had just begun.
Then I saw it. The rainbow. Good, I thought, but not good enough to compensate for the stupid rain that made us miserably wet, since I forgot to bring an umbrella. And not good at all, in case Lilly got sick and mom killed me.
"Yeah, Lilly. It's beautiful. Now, let's go home, I'm freezing. I bet you are, too. God, mom is so going to kill me."
"No!" Lilly squeaked, and had me look at the rainbow again. "It is beautiful, but tell me what you see over it."
You should know that my sister was kind of strange (mom said it was rude if I called her "weird"). She was nine years old and still kept "seeing" things. A couple of years ago it was okay, even adorable - and people were saying things like "What a lovely imagination has this child!" But she was supposed to grow out of it, wasn't she? What I found particularly disturbing about her so-called visions was that she was always completely serious and consumed when talking about them, stubbornly convinced that they were real. I was guessing when you were nine it was still okay to be a little crazy, but I secretly feared being known as the girl whose sister was nuts.
"I don't see anything, Lilly. And so do you. Come on, let's go, please, mom is so going to kill me!" I said, as I was trying to drag her towards home. We were only a street or two away.
"It's Pinky!" exclaimed my sister, grinning widely. "She is smiling."
Pinky was her cat. It died last month.
"Lilly, please, let's just go," I urged her, but she wouldn't listen.
"She looks older, you know. A little skinier than I remember her, too. But she is alright."
We were late. Mom was most probably going to ground me for the rest of the week. Well, damn.
"I hope they feed them Whiskas over the rainbow," Lilly added.
I hope you shut it for a while, I thought, but I didn't say it out loud in case she ratted me out to mom. Instead, I continued my efforts to get her going.
"Don't you see her?" she insisted.
"The hell I don't," I muttered, and, feeling she was finally giving up, led her down the street.
She said nothing more, and I was glad. The day was bad enough without more of her annoying blabbering.
As I supposed, mom was angry with me. How dare I take Lilly out without bringing an umbrella - didn't I watch the weather forecast, for goodness sake? I should just look at her, oh her poor baby, her hands are ice cubes, and her clothes completely wet, and it's all my fault. I had yet again proved to be the sensless and irresponsible daughter who never cares for anyone but herself. If poor Lilly gets ill I'm grounded until Christmas and I am not celabrating my birthday. Now, it's high time I went straight to my room and out of her sight. Yeah, that was so typically my mother.
I entered the room, slammed the door, and kicked the first thing standing in my way, specifically my Biology students' book. It went across the room and it's pages twisted horribly. I didn't care. I was angry with myself for forgetting the umbrella, with my mother for shouting at me and treating me like I was to blame for the hole in the ozone layer, but most of all with my stupid sister. Mom just adored her, she was her favourite. You know, if I wasn't so afraid what my acquaintances would say, I'd actually wish Lilly would be labeled mentally disabled - it was the only way I would ever stand out for mom. My sister was always getting me in trouble. She made me take her out that day, too, and then she was trying to start a lame conversation about shooting stars, but I cut her off. Then it started to rain really heavily, and I wanted us to run, but she tripped and fell near a puddle. By the time I got her on her feet again, we were both wet. Lovely.
The rest of the day went as smoothly as it could, and that was probably because I only stayed in my room. I even skipped dinner, because I didn't feel like facing my family, when I was so mad at them. I almost finished the outline of the Phyisics presentation, which was next week, but I prefered getting school stuff over with as soon as possible. After writing my Math homework too, I took a long shower and went to bed. I was so exhausted, I fell asleep almost immediately.
With a day like this, you'd think, it would be just fair to at least get a good night sleep, especially regarding the fact that you have to go to school the next morning. Of course, life is seldom fair, and the total sleep I got for the night was about three-four hours. And, guess what, it was again because of my sister. I was sure I'd dreamt of something pleasant, but when Lilly's crying woke me up, I could barely remember it. Lilly used to weep in her sleep sometimes, when she was very little, and back then I was the one who would get up in the middle of the night to wipe away her tears and assure her that, whatever it was she was dreaming of was not real. Ocassionally, I would stay with her for the rest of the night, in case she ended up crying in her sleep again. It now seemed unbelievable, that I was once well-fitting the role of the loving and caring older sister. I left it behind just about the time all my relatives started ignoring me in favour of Lilly, and I usually ended up feeling like a piece of furniture. No one ever noticed me anymore, it was all about Lilly and how cute and adorable she was, plus, an extremely bright child. Sure, a little strange, but it wasn't like that was a big deal, was it? Strange is better than dull and boring - and they all thought I was like that.
So when my sister started behaving like a weeping somnabulist for the first time in years, all I did was wish a pair earplugs would drop from, say, the ceiling. I tried holding the pillow over my head, but eventually I started struggling with breathing. So I just lay down and waited for my mother to go to my sister and calm her down, so I could get my sleep. I waited long enough to assume that my mother didn't hear anything from her room, which was on the opposite end of the apartament, while mine was just next to Lilly's. Lucky me. Finally, when I decided that the quickest way to make her stop was actually calm her myself, I got up and somehow made my way to her room without switching on any lights.
I sat on the edge of her bed and tried shaking her a little. She was still asleep and still crying, but showed some signs of consciousness, so I continued, only a little more urgent.
"Lilly, you have to wake up. Come on, it's just a dream. Like, not really happening to you. I said, wake up!"
And just like that, she did, but she didn't stop crying, and her expression was one of terror. It used to have a heart- breaking effect on me once, but no it longer worked that way.
"Oh, please. Just calm down," I told her, slightly irritated by her unfocused look. "You know it wasn't real. You're just pretending to be that scared to get my attention. Well, guess not, you're not getting it anyway, so you might as well quit trying."
"I'm cold," whispered Lilly, shivering, and one more tear rolled down her cheek.
At that point, I had to admit she didn't look okay at all and maybe, just maybe, a part of me started worrying not for the amount of sleep I would get that night, but for my sister's health. As I put my hand over her forehead, I realized she definitely had a high temperature. "Well," I thought to myself miserably, "there I go. I took her out and she got sick, and, knowing my mother, to say that I'm in trouble would be like the understatement of the year."
But I did have to go wake up my mother right now and tell her that Lilly was sick, because she would definitely know what to do about it, and, honestly, I had no clue.
"Okay, listen," I started talking to my sister a little more gently. "I'm going to fetch mom and she'll take care of you, alright? You just wait a minute."
"I am going to die, ain't I?" asked Lilly, her voice trembling. And I could see she really believed it, and at that moment, this sentence, and the desperate look on her face scared the hell out of me, and I myself felt like crying and shivering.
"Of course you're not going to die." I said quickly. "You're just a bit sick, and chances are, you won't go to school the whole week. If I were you, I'd be glad about it."
I didn't wait for her response, because I figured the quicker I told my mother about this, the better. She was going to take care of my sister, and I was going to finally get some more sleep. Or so I thought then.
Actually, telling my mother wasn't that hard. She didn't shout at me, nor did she give me an insulting lecture on my behaviour, but I was far from relieved that there would not be one at the morning.
"May I go back to sleep now?" I asked.
"Do whatever you want," was her kind answer. She couldn't care less for me, I realized. Especially when her better daughter's health was concerned. I didn't believe I had ever seen her that worried when it was me who was sick.
So I went back to my room, and tried to fall asleep again, but it was pointless. I wasn't tired anymore, and my thoughts wouldn't leave me be. Okay, so I took Lilly out, but I wouldn't have if she hadn't begged me to. It wasn't like I enjoyed spending time with her anyway. However, I thought, mom wanted us to get along well, as siblings should (according to her - but I hadn't actually heard of anyone who doesn't constantly fight with their siblings). My perfect school record wasn't even nearly enough to impress her, so I figured that acting like a loving sister for a change probably would. I wasn't sure if it would have actually worked, had it not been for the stupid rain. Then I remember how scared Lilly looked, like she really thought she was going to die, and felt a bit guilty. I decided at the moment I was only mad at my mother.
I had only started counting sheep a few minutes ago, when my mother knocked on my door and, almost hysterically, told me to get out of bed immediately. I did without hesitating, already feeling that panic was flooding me too. Was there a chance that she seemed so worried because Lilly was suffering from something more serious than a common influenza?
"What's wrong with Lilly?" I demanded.
"I don't know," my mother replied, "but I already called for an ambulance."
"You're taking her to a hospital?" I couldn't believe it. A bit of rain and cold weather weren't such a big deal for the immune system, were they? Now my conscience was reminding me of its existence. If only I hadn't forgotten the damn umbrella...
"Is it my fault? Is she going to be okay?" I asked, and my voice cracked at the last sentence. I felt like I could burst into tears any minute.
"I don't know," was all my mother said.
No one said anything for a while. The grave silence was hurting my ears.
"You can handle a couple of days on your own, right?" said my mother at last.
"You're going with her?" I asked, although I completely realized it was the lamest thing to say. Of course she was going at the hospital with Lilly. But a couple of days? "I mean, yeah, I'll be fine."
"Good."
Not good, I thought. Not good at all. I still couldn't quite believe this was really happening. I mean, except the usual conflicts with my family, my life was perfectly normal. Nothing too nice or too unpleasant ever happened, and all the days were alike. I didn't, however, define it as boring. I didn't define it anyhow. I was just going with the flow most of the time, from day to day, but I didn't mind. And the things they talked about on the news, all the great misfortunes in the world, seemed so distant. But at that very moment, they had never seemed closer, and I was scared.
I went to see Lilly again. She was sitting on her bed, with the blanket wrapped around her tight. I sat next to her.
"I don't want to go." She looked at me beseechingly, like I could prevent it somehow.
"It's only for a couple of days, " I reminded her, trying my best to sound cheerfully, but failed. "They'll heal you there, and then you'll come back home."
"You promise?"
"I promise."
She hugged me and I burst into tears.
"Why are you crying?" she asked.
"I don't know," I sobbed. "I'm sorry."
Truth is, I was perfectly aware of the reasons why I was suddenly so vulnerable. I just didn't believe I could explain them to my nine-year-old sister, especially in her present condition. Actually, I doubted I could explain them to anyone, myself included, but I tried - at least for my own comfort. The mediocrity of my life never bothered me before. Getting out of bed in the morning and going to sleep at night were usually the most significant parts of my daily routine. And I found myself wondering if I ever noticed anything at all, and if anyone ever noticed me - then, being sincere with myself, I couldn't help admitting that the answer was no. So, what if I died? Just like that, no warning, no hints, one day I'm here, the next I'm gone. No one was really going to miss me. If I were a book character, I'd be of the secondary ones, the ones who appear for a page or two at the most, performing no definite role, and by the end of the chapter you have already well forgotten about their existence, so they might as well have not been there at all. Lilly, on the other hand, was something else. She was different, and that's what made her interesting. I realized that, compared to her, I was indeed dull and boring. I didn't have the ability to make people remember me. Two weeks ago, I met my first to fourth grade teacher, and she didn't recognise me, and then couldn't even remember who I was when I told her my name. I could picture myself some years from now, returning to my high school, and everyone going like "Does anyone have any idea who that girl is?" I was no one. And the worst part is, until now, I didn't mind being no one. The only person to whom I ever tried to prove something was my mother, and I did it only because there was already someone (Lilly) proving to be a lot better than me in the art of living. Yes, my sister had a talant to value everything life could offer her, but it was never enough for her, so she invented her own worlds and universes, which she never got tired of exploring. She was only nine, while I, being in my mid-teens, was a walking background. Now I could see the contrast between us like I could distinguish black from white. That was the first time in my life when I felt completely aware of myself and my whole life until that moment, and thank god, it was far from the last.
When I was eventually alone in the apartment, it was five o'clock in the morning, and my life had just begun.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Death Story by Nadezhda Grigorova
Riing. Smash the clock. Get up. Coffee. Running late. Mismatched socks. Sprint to the bus stop. Work. Papers. Calculations: pages long. Snappy colleagues. Blonds – distracting. In more than one way. Grumbling bosses. Deadlines – gallows loops. Ticking clocks. Sweating. Yelling. Lunch. Sandwich: rubber. More work. Piles. Night. Last one to leave. Last bus to catch. Home. Beat. TV. Sleep. Riing…
Llud never attempted to break the cycle, even though he was fed up to the brim with it. When he had a free moment to stop still, his mind, despite his zealous protests, lunged into “grading mode”, only to grade his life with an “F”: “far too meaningless”. This, of course, meant an Existential crisis. But what was worse, it meant a headache. That’s why Llud tried his best not to stop to avoid giving his mind opportunities for self-destructive reminiscences. He kept on running like a hamster on its wheel, not spinning, but being spun, until the mechanic thing was not the wheel anymore but the very hamster.
Sometimes he felt as if he was being spied on; he would squint at the inside of his wardrobe, expecting to see a hole and a giant eye peeking through it. He could see it happening: everything around him falling down to the sound of applause or of those ominous scientific utensils in laboratories. Cardboard, ha-ha. When the conductor hunting for ticketless victims catches precisely you out of the entire crowd in the bus, when she walks in precisely at the moment your face is smeared with lunch, when the TV breaks precisely when That news item is on; then all this “precision” amounts to a feeling of an evil conspiracy. During his paranoia fits, Llud felt like a puppet being thrashed about by something BIG, something incomprehensible, something…
“Nonsense,” he would snort, banishing those perilous notions as he comfortably snuggled in the cushiony ignorance inside his hard shell. He liked it in there, unbothered by any painful mental exertions. Whenever there were calls from outside that required him to remind of his existence with some reaction, he would spit out miniscule slimy balls of gray matter that would congeal in the perfect matrix of the outside world’s conventions. Every new theory, every ground-breaking discovery, every original idea, terrified him to the point where he withdrew his blind tentacle even further into the shell. Or it angered him. He would then produce a mouth of sharp teeth, ready to defend himself by biting off every irritating stimuli: everything on two legs, insolent enough to afford liberties in the way it shaped its gray matter.
Like that empty-headed blond newbie whom he had the displeasure of sharing working space with. Every day, she would babble on and on about God and the Devil, about Kabala, about Wicca, about ghosts, about…blah. He could barely stand her yapping. He would rather go on a caffeine-free diet than accept any other opinion than his own. “Own” in this case meant “the copy of the mass conviction”: the notion that nothing existed outside the corporeal, the palpable, the perceptible by the naked eye. No giant eyes beyond the cupboard, no costumed gentlemen with horns, hoofs and a greasy smile; no benign withered oldie with a halo and white beard; no green antennas and self-consuming galaxies; no blindfolded grannies spinning wool. Humans were just organs and tissues accidentally(but rather conveniently) thrown together under a layer of flesh; eventually to get busted and decay. End of story.
……………………….
The sky gaped hungrily: a black abyss luring you right into its depths. The evening was unusually cold for June.
Llud saw the last bus stopping on the other side of the road. If he missed it he would have to walk. The horror.
So he decided to run across the road, swiftly avoiding the cars.
You know that moment in the movies when the character just has to cross the road for an Important and Undelayable reason(to stop his love from leaving; something he manages to do even though the airport is on the other side of town and there are five minutes until her flight.)?
The hero steps on the road, the wind blows in his hair, giving him an air of Resolution, and, magically, the vehement chaos of the traffic suddenly freezes to let him pass like the sea opens before Moses.
Llud took a couple of steps in the racket of the buzzing vehicles…
And blacked out.
This wasn’t a movie.
…………………..
He opened his eyes and realized he was already sitting in the bus. He took a breath of relief and mentally patted himself on the back. Was he fast or what! He didn’t remember actually getting on the bus…which was weird. But then again his temples were pulsing and overheated by the pressure of the day’s work. It wasn’t unlikely for him to have blank spots throughout the day.
B__l_____k
Sp__o___s….
He waited
And waited.
He began to fidget.
What was taking the bus so long?
It was then he started becoming aware of the surroundings little by little. The bus was moving absolutely soundlessly. In silence. Creepy, Steven-King-ish, it-will-jump-out-out-of-from-behind-the-corner silence. Silence that was worse than those thin, nerve wracking tunes that titillate the edges of your sanity at the turning points in crime movies.
Outside Llud could see… nothing . They were obviously in a tunnel. There were no passengers.
Llud tried to stand up, propping himself against a wall.
He squeaked and drew his hand back, as if dropping a hot potato.
His fingers were sticky.
And red.
The floor and walls were dripping with….
And red.
It smelled of it.
…………
A brief epiphany.
In his mind, a small pebble was slowly falling…
..to unleash the Avalanche.
In his mind, stones, falling, one, the next, bigger, no, monstrous, faster, no, so fast they smeared out of sight.
Llud sprang to his feet and ran to the driver’s seat.
“Excuse me, sir, can you – “
A shocked scream escaped his dry lips and he stumbled back, holding his heart, which threatened to tear his chest apart and bounce off to join the Easter rabbit.
It had turned around and was currently regarding him in a bored, lazy manner, its eyes unblinking.
“Pathetic” , they were saying.
“Tsk, Tsk. The usual reaction. And I thought you would be different.”
It yawned to emphasize its disappointment.
Then it got up and stretched, leaving the wheel to be controlled by some invisible force that kept stirring it.
“Who…What are you?” Llud managed to utter once he had recovered from what had nearly become a heart attack…and a rabbit march.
It was leaning against the wall, watching him with the unimpressed stare of one watching an ant thrash about in a dew drop: observing its pitiful struggling, but showing neither malicious amusement, nor compassion.
Once Llud was sure it wasn’t going to pounce on him, he let his eyes wander.
It rather resembled a tall, lanky human…Except for its ashen skin, its teeth, worthy of Dracula’s envy, hair that gleamed like metal, and eyes that lacked irises.
Oh, and the pair of huge raven wings lazily flapping on its back. It wore a robe which seemed to be sewn out of night itself.
“My name is Azrael,” it offered a cold smile.
“I know you…You are the Bringer of Death!”
(A flash of blond: for once Llud was thankful that her “nonsense” had mysteriously saturated the usually non-absorbing sponge that was his brain.)
“ I prefer to be referred to as Death itself,” it straightened its shoulders with an air of offended dignity.
“But then I am…”
“Yes, you are.”
“But…how…?”
“You decided to be an idiot and run across the road in front of speeding cars.”
Llud was dumbfounded. He fell silent for a few moments and evaluated the situation. He was dead. It was over. The maddening, appalling routine was over…
The cozy, safe routine that he was so used to….
No!
Rejoice: no more alarms, work, neighbors, taxes, blabbering blonds, moody bosses…
…no more coffee, comfy slippers, pretty eyes, patting on the back, dreams of promotion, Sunday shows, a hamburger with extra cheese….
His life wasn’t that appalling. Hadn’t been.
It wasn’t that maddening either. Hadn’t been.
It was actually quite wonderful. Had been.
All it took Llud to realize this was… to lose life entirely.
Suddenly, his rock-solid confidence that afterlife didn’t exist wasn’t so solid any more. In fact it came crumbling down. Hard.
Azrael was standing there, the wolf who had managed with one breath to raze the house of skepticism Little pig Llud had been building his whole adulthood.
It was no use trying to reverse the course of things. That much he knew.
Second chances were cliché.
Endings of eternal damnation and doom were in.
(Who set the contemporary paradigm anyway, an underground organization of masochists or something?)
Still, he could make the most out of the situation…
What? Why? How?
Questions, ideas, visions sprouted in his mind. Death had been a nutritious rainfall; the fertilized soil of his mind was giving birth to …thought. Intrepid, bold, colorful, original, experimental thought.
What if?
Why NOT?
Why negate?
Everything seemed possible. His vision expanded in all directions, unobstructed by the rims of his cynic glasses that used to distort the variety and multi-layered complexity of the rainbow world into a flat, monotonous picture of black and white. A sudden curiosity and thirst for knowledge took possession of his…being(he checked himself before thinking of “body”; he wasn’t sure that term still applied). The URGE to know, no, not simply to know, to UNDERSTAND, to see through, was intense. It was breaking free, making up for all those years he had spend trying to suffocate it. Payback time.
But how should he go about it?
This was Death, the Harvester of Souls, the Bearer of the Scythe….
Good luck trying to sound casual.
“So…what is it like…when we reach the light in the end of the tunnel?”
…He did not just use that line…
“ I mean…I’ve read…People say …you know, there’s Heaven, all divinity, beauty and hymns…and angels… and the souls of good-doers and stuff…”
Curse that stuttering. He sounded like a numbskull. He discovered souls could still blush in embarrassment.
“Yes…”
This sounded… hopeful…
“…And then there is Hell, which is ruled by Satan and the wrong doers are tortured in the boiling cauldrons…”
That went more smoothly…
“Yes…”
Oh, boy, the enthusiasm.
“..And there is a sort of test, or Judgment that I must go through in order to be sent to one of those places…”
“Yes…”
Sweat – souls could do that.
“So what kind of test is it?” Llud burst out, waving his hands about in helpless anxiety.
Azrael shrugged
“’Dunno.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? If Paradise and Hell exist you must surely know about them!”
More frantic hand waving.
“First, I’m only the delivery-guy, I don’t mess with the Boss…or Bosses. Second, I never said they existed.”
Llud was fuming. Was that guy mocking him?
“But you just kept saying yes!”
“I said yes, people do say so. I didn’t say yes, that is the truth.”
Llud dropped on a saddle miserably.
He wanted to cry. Why? Had he expected anything else?
His mind was eating itself.
Having witnessed Llud’s exasperating state of confusion, Azrael sighed and took pity of the mortal.
“Look…My job is to bring the dead to the Portal. From then on, whether there is the Eden of Jesus or the Infernal of Lucifer, or Olymp of Zeus, or the Tartars of Hades, or a galaxy of aliens, or a collective consciousness of minds, or ghosts roaming the earth for unfinished deeds, or reincarnations in different bodies, or something else entirely – I don’t care. It is your problem not mine. I’m immortal, dude.”
And he flashed a smile. Celebrities had so much to learn about pose.
Llud stood there, his pupils dilated as if he was a cat at night. He was trying to imagine the scenarios. It was difficult: after all those years of treating such notions with disdain he was now experiencing a backlash of elevated reverence that allowed him only to marvel at them in a piousness, not dissect them for the sake of his curiosity. He was trying to grasp at least one of the abstract images Azrael had just showered him with, to make it work, to translate it into a perception…
It was time-consuming, challenging and strenuous, what he was beginning to undertake. For him, it was life…after-life-changing.
He felt glorious doing it.
He triumphed.
He was rising.
A whole new universe of possibilities was trembling on the tip of his conscience’s tongue, he could foretaste the endless plethora of tastes: secrets, hypothesis, discoveries…It was fascinating to reflect and wonder which one was it , to search for it again and again.
…Fascinating but over.
Llud felt a jolt: regret, the poison of the unaccomplished. He had missed out on all of this. He had not embraced the multifaceted surface of the Universal diamond. And now it was going to be no fun – he was going to find it out without having any expectations. He would not have the chance to be excited, to hope, to fear, to dig out, to delve into; he would not have the chance to live again. He would not have the chance to build his own eclectic model so he could then compare it with what was; he would not have the chance to be disappointed or pleasantly surprised.
Death was right. He really was an idiot.
Azrael grinned, as if having read his thoughts.
“You know, you humans are so ridiculous. It doesn’t matter what lies beyond. Something does, anyway. How you call it doesn’t change the fact of its existence. When no human knows for certain what afterlife is, the truth remains in shadow. It’s the only way all of the existing theories can be considered as equally true or equally false. All have a chance. But nooo, you guys don’t realize this…”
Azrael sniggered and continued:
“ You carry on creating religions that proclaim new “absolute truths” and you argue with each other and start wars and destroy each other because you can’t accept the different names of the same thing.”
Azrael’s tone had lost the tint of bemusement, it was scanting, vicious, iron.
Llud felt little.
The angel felt his discomfort and waved it off with a smirk, his acrimony evaporating.
“Don’t mind my rant; I forget you guys are supposed to be lambs by design…”
The new Llud did not like being called a lamb.
Self defense?
“It is not always the same thing that we humans are squabbling over….sometimes there really are many things, distinct and even contrasting…Sometimes the theories are too different ….or completely opposite.”
Llud noted feeling smart. That was a new feeling.
Azrael was not stirred.
“Even so…Opposites don’t exclude each other…There is white and there is black too right…? “
“And also there are all the intermediate colors and shades…,” Llud murmured philosophically.
“Exactly. Yet they are one thing: color. They belong to the same unifying category.”
Touché.
Llud sighed. He had lost the verbal duel; humans were indeed to blame. It had taken him a lifetime(literally) to cure his color blindness. Thousands of groups remained, each accepting to see only one color.
No wonder humanity could not witness a real rainbow.
Azrael slid on a pair of sunglasses
“Show off …,” Llud muttered.
He didn’t feel like he was talking to Death at all; even if he was, what did it matter?
The lack of prospects made him bold.
Azrael chuckled and flipped his hair.
Something in that motion mesmerized Llud. Flip. Away. Discard. Completely.
The light bulb flickered on and his eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
“You know…someone does turn out wrong at the end. Not all options are viable after all…”
Llud felt smug, watching the effect his words produced on Azrael. Despite the sunglasses he could see the brow rising and the angel leaning closer(Llud noticed the creature was emanating a chilly graveyard whiff).
It was time to strike.
“The atheists! Because they state that there is no afterlife. I can see there is, I’m not that idiotic to ignore Death incarnate towering over me. An atheist would tell me that I was dreaming and all of this was an illusion. So, not all opinions can be considered as true,” Llud concluded haughtily.
Azrael’s glasses glistened.
“Who says atheists are wrong?”
“B-b-but you said it earlier: something does exist beyond in any case!”
“ I did ….But you can only believe me if I exist objectively…if this(Azrael motioned at the surroundings) exists objectively in the first place. If it’s a dream though…”
“The atheists would turn out right and everything you said will turn out to be a figment from the start….” Llud muttered in a trance.
He shook his head vigorously, stomping his foot like a mulish kid.
“It does exist ! It’s happening to me, it feels real”
Eyebrow rising.
“ ‘Feels real’? Is that an eligible criterion?”
Llud’s self-importance shattered to pieces and his jaw dropped.
His mind spun forcefully.
“But how can they be right?”
“Well…”
And in a sudden explosion of noise, Llud felt something heavy fall on his head.
Piano keys.
Do-re-mi.
………………………………………………
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!
“Grrrr stupid clock! Can’t even stand upright!!”
Llud quickly realized he had condemned the clock too soon, since he himself tumbled down to the floor, head first and feet in the air.
It hurt.
He was alive.
It had been a dream.
(Yay for the atheists!)
Or maybe…?
Somehow, he couldn’t force Azrael’s omniscient grin out of his mind. It was as if he was watching him right now, as if he had transported him back and had then woken him up to have a few laughs….
He felt ridiculous, as if he was juggling under the spotlight of the circus stage…walking along a very thin rope, very high up…
Don’t look down…
Llud got up and drew the curtains back. It had rained last night. The air smelled of freshness and novelty.
So second chances were not completely outdated yet.
He wasn’t going to let this chance slide! He was given an opportunity to wake up and he was going to wake up! Heck, he was never going to fall asleep again! Life was too short and too full of miracles to pretend not to notice them.
Llud’s optimistic mood lasted exactly 3 seconds. Then he noticed the time. He was late.
……………………………
Her name was Efil. Not only wasn’t her head empty, he sometimes wondered how was that she bore the heaviness of all its contents on her neck. Her blond hair and pretty eyes were hardly the most impressive thing in her(although they remained just as distracting for him as in the beginning, if not more). Llud couldn’t imagine a more enlightening girlfriend. This was a paradox, since it was the darkness and fog of universal enigmas that were her favorite pass-time. His too. They would conduct researches in the library archives(it wasn’t the only thing they conducted in the secluded compartments; who knew dust and paper could be that arousing). They went on strolls under the stars between the graves and talked. They snuck into haunted mentions where lips would meet lips to exchange adrenaline. Llud and Efil had a rule: they never judged any mystery on the plausibility scale, they never dismissed anything as unfeasible: they gave every religion and every hypothesis an equal chance of being…or not being. “What If”. It was a game, as playful as fingertips touching under the working desk, and as somber as death crawling in the creases of the mummies’ parched skin, clattering in the symphony of forgotten bones, or clanking in unison with the shackles of Marley’s ghost.
Llud was happy. Even if what he had experienced had been a dream, even if atheists were right and there was nothing but worms and hummus beyond, he still enjoyed life a great deal more now, when he was open to new perceptions. He often joked with Efil that by opening up to death he had accepted life. And he would kiss her passionately in the dead of night to prove it.
He felt prepared for the existence of something on the other side. Even if there turned out to be nothing in the end, Llud would not be sorry for the efforts. Because while on this quest outside the shell, he had began enhancing his “here and now”. Even if there was nothing beyond Life to find, by simply searching he had found something in Life. Someone….
Just in case, however, he never got on a bus again.
Llud never attempted to break the cycle, even though he was fed up to the brim with it. When he had a free moment to stop still, his mind, despite his zealous protests, lunged into “grading mode”, only to grade his life with an “F”: “far too meaningless”. This, of course, meant an Existential crisis. But what was worse, it meant a headache. That’s why Llud tried his best not to stop to avoid giving his mind opportunities for self-destructive reminiscences. He kept on running like a hamster on its wheel, not spinning, but being spun, until the mechanic thing was not the wheel anymore but the very hamster.
Sometimes he felt as if he was being spied on; he would squint at the inside of his wardrobe, expecting to see a hole and a giant eye peeking through it. He could see it happening: everything around him falling down to the sound of applause or of those ominous scientific utensils in laboratories. Cardboard, ha-ha. When the conductor hunting for ticketless victims catches precisely you out of the entire crowd in the bus, when she walks in precisely at the moment your face is smeared with lunch, when the TV breaks precisely when That news item is on; then all this “precision” amounts to a feeling of an evil conspiracy. During his paranoia fits, Llud felt like a puppet being thrashed about by something BIG, something incomprehensible, something…
“Nonsense,” he would snort, banishing those perilous notions as he comfortably snuggled in the cushiony ignorance inside his hard shell. He liked it in there, unbothered by any painful mental exertions. Whenever there were calls from outside that required him to remind of his existence with some reaction, he would spit out miniscule slimy balls of gray matter that would congeal in the perfect matrix of the outside world’s conventions. Every new theory, every ground-breaking discovery, every original idea, terrified him to the point where he withdrew his blind tentacle even further into the shell. Or it angered him. He would then produce a mouth of sharp teeth, ready to defend himself by biting off every irritating stimuli: everything on two legs, insolent enough to afford liberties in the way it shaped its gray matter.
Like that empty-headed blond newbie whom he had the displeasure of sharing working space with. Every day, she would babble on and on about God and the Devil, about Kabala, about Wicca, about ghosts, about…blah. He could barely stand her yapping. He would rather go on a caffeine-free diet than accept any other opinion than his own. “Own” in this case meant “the copy of the mass conviction”: the notion that nothing existed outside the corporeal, the palpable, the perceptible by the naked eye. No giant eyes beyond the cupboard, no costumed gentlemen with horns, hoofs and a greasy smile; no benign withered oldie with a halo and white beard; no green antennas and self-consuming galaxies; no blindfolded grannies spinning wool. Humans were just organs and tissues accidentally(but rather conveniently) thrown together under a layer of flesh; eventually to get busted and decay. End of story.
……………………….
The sky gaped hungrily: a black abyss luring you right into its depths. The evening was unusually cold for June.
Llud saw the last bus stopping on the other side of the road. If he missed it he would have to walk. The horror.
So he decided to run across the road, swiftly avoiding the cars.
You know that moment in the movies when the character just has to cross the road for an Important and Undelayable reason(to stop his love from leaving; something he manages to do even though the airport is on the other side of town and there are five minutes until her flight.)?
The hero steps on the road, the wind blows in his hair, giving him an air of Resolution, and, magically, the vehement chaos of the traffic suddenly freezes to let him pass like the sea opens before Moses.
Llud took a couple of steps in the racket of the buzzing vehicles…
And blacked out.
This wasn’t a movie.
…………………..
He opened his eyes and realized he was already sitting in the bus. He took a breath of relief and mentally patted himself on the back. Was he fast or what! He didn’t remember actually getting on the bus…which was weird. But then again his temples were pulsing and overheated by the pressure of the day’s work. It wasn’t unlikely for him to have blank spots throughout the day.
B__l_____k
Sp__o___s….
He waited
And waited.
He began to fidget.
What was taking the bus so long?
It was then he started becoming aware of the surroundings little by little. The bus was moving absolutely soundlessly. In silence. Creepy, Steven-King-ish, it-will-jump-out-out-of-from-behind-the-corner silence. Silence that was worse than those thin, nerve wracking tunes that titillate the edges of your sanity at the turning points in crime movies.
Outside Llud could see… nothing . They were obviously in a tunnel. There were no passengers.
Llud tried to stand up, propping himself against a wall.
He squeaked and drew his hand back, as if dropping a hot potato.
His fingers were sticky.
And red.
The floor and walls were dripping with….
And red.
It smelled of it.
…………
A brief epiphany.
In his mind, a small pebble was slowly falling…
..to unleash the Avalanche.
In his mind, stones, falling, one, the next, bigger, no, monstrous, faster, no, so fast they smeared out of sight.
Llud sprang to his feet and ran to the driver’s seat.
“Excuse me, sir, can you – “
A shocked scream escaped his dry lips and he stumbled back, holding his heart, which threatened to tear his chest apart and bounce off to join the Easter rabbit.
It had turned around and was currently regarding him in a bored, lazy manner, its eyes unblinking.
“Pathetic” , they were saying.
“Tsk, Tsk. The usual reaction. And I thought you would be different.”
It yawned to emphasize its disappointment.
Then it got up and stretched, leaving the wheel to be controlled by some invisible force that kept stirring it.
“Who…What are you?” Llud managed to utter once he had recovered from what had nearly become a heart attack…and a rabbit march.
It was leaning against the wall, watching him with the unimpressed stare of one watching an ant thrash about in a dew drop: observing its pitiful struggling, but showing neither malicious amusement, nor compassion.
Once Llud was sure it wasn’t going to pounce on him, he let his eyes wander.
It rather resembled a tall, lanky human…Except for its ashen skin, its teeth, worthy of Dracula’s envy, hair that gleamed like metal, and eyes that lacked irises.
Oh, and the pair of huge raven wings lazily flapping on its back. It wore a robe which seemed to be sewn out of night itself.
“My name is Azrael,” it offered a cold smile.
“I know you…You are the Bringer of Death!”
(A flash of blond: for once Llud was thankful that her “nonsense” had mysteriously saturated the usually non-absorbing sponge that was his brain.)
“ I prefer to be referred to as Death itself,” it straightened its shoulders with an air of offended dignity.
“But then I am…”
“Yes, you are.”
“But…how…?”
“You decided to be an idiot and run across the road in front of speeding cars.”
Llud was dumbfounded. He fell silent for a few moments and evaluated the situation. He was dead. It was over. The maddening, appalling routine was over…
The cozy, safe routine that he was so used to….
No!
Rejoice: no more alarms, work, neighbors, taxes, blabbering blonds, moody bosses…
…no more coffee, comfy slippers, pretty eyes, patting on the back, dreams of promotion, Sunday shows, a hamburger with extra cheese….
His life wasn’t that appalling. Hadn’t been.
It wasn’t that maddening either. Hadn’t been.
It was actually quite wonderful. Had been.
All it took Llud to realize this was… to lose life entirely.
Suddenly, his rock-solid confidence that afterlife didn’t exist wasn’t so solid any more. In fact it came crumbling down. Hard.
Azrael was standing there, the wolf who had managed with one breath to raze the house of skepticism Little pig Llud had been building his whole adulthood.
It was no use trying to reverse the course of things. That much he knew.
Second chances were cliché.
Endings of eternal damnation and doom were in.
(Who set the contemporary paradigm anyway, an underground organization of masochists or something?)
Still, he could make the most out of the situation…
What? Why? How?
Questions, ideas, visions sprouted in his mind. Death had been a nutritious rainfall; the fertilized soil of his mind was giving birth to …thought. Intrepid, bold, colorful, original, experimental thought.
What if?
Why NOT?
Why negate?
Everything seemed possible. His vision expanded in all directions, unobstructed by the rims of his cynic glasses that used to distort the variety and multi-layered complexity of the rainbow world into a flat, monotonous picture of black and white. A sudden curiosity and thirst for knowledge took possession of his…being(he checked himself before thinking of “body”; he wasn’t sure that term still applied). The URGE to know, no, not simply to know, to UNDERSTAND, to see through, was intense. It was breaking free, making up for all those years he had spend trying to suffocate it. Payback time.
But how should he go about it?
This was Death, the Harvester of Souls, the Bearer of the Scythe….
Good luck trying to sound casual.
“So…what is it like…when we reach the light in the end of the tunnel?”
…He did not just use that line…
“ I mean…I’ve read…People say …you know, there’s Heaven, all divinity, beauty and hymns…and angels… and the souls of good-doers and stuff…”
Curse that stuttering. He sounded like a numbskull. He discovered souls could still blush in embarrassment.
“Yes…”
This sounded… hopeful…
“…And then there is Hell, which is ruled by Satan and the wrong doers are tortured in the boiling cauldrons…”
That went more smoothly…
“Yes…”
Oh, boy, the enthusiasm.
“..And there is a sort of test, or Judgment that I must go through in order to be sent to one of those places…”
“Yes…”
Sweat – souls could do that.
“So what kind of test is it?” Llud burst out, waving his hands about in helpless anxiety.
Azrael shrugged
“’Dunno.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? If Paradise and Hell exist you must surely know about them!”
More frantic hand waving.
“First, I’m only the delivery-guy, I don’t mess with the Boss…or Bosses. Second, I never said they existed.”
Llud was fuming. Was that guy mocking him?
“But you just kept saying yes!”
“I said yes, people do say so. I didn’t say yes, that is the truth.”
Llud dropped on a saddle miserably.
He wanted to cry. Why? Had he expected anything else?
His mind was eating itself.
Having witnessed Llud’s exasperating state of confusion, Azrael sighed and took pity of the mortal.
“Look…My job is to bring the dead to the Portal. From then on, whether there is the Eden of Jesus or the Infernal of Lucifer, or Olymp of Zeus, or the Tartars of Hades, or a galaxy of aliens, or a collective consciousness of minds, or ghosts roaming the earth for unfinished deeds, or reincarnations in different bodies, or something else entirely – I don’t care. It is your problem not mine. I’m immortal, dude.”
And he flashed a smile. Celebrities had so much to learn about pose.
Llud stood there, his pupils dilated as if he was a cat at night. He was trying to imagine the scenarios. It was difficult: after all those years of treating such notions with disdain he was now experiencing a backlash of elevated reverence that allowed him only to marvel at them in a piousness, not dissect them for the sake of his curiosity. He was trying to grasp at least one of the abstract images Azrael had just showered him with, to make it work, to translate it into a perception…
It was time-consuming, challenging and strenuous, what he was beginning to undertake. For him, it was life…after-life-changing.
He felt glorious doing it.
He triumphed.
He was rising.
A whole new universe of possibilities was trembling on the tip of his conscience’s tongue, he could foretaste the endless plethora of tastes: secrets, hypothesis, discoveries…It was fascinating to reflect and wonder which one was it , to search for it again and again.
…Fascinating but over.
Llud felt a jolt: regret, the poison of the unaccomplished. He had missed out on all of this. He had not embraced the multifaceted surface of the Universal diamond. And now it was going to be no fun – he was going to find it out without having any expectations. He would not have the chance to be excited, to hope, to fear, to dig out, to delve into; he would not have the chance to live again. He would not have the chance to build his own eclectic model so he could then compare it with what was; he would not have the chance to be disappointed or pleasantly surprised.
Death was right. He really was an idiot.
Azrael grinned, as if having read his thoughts.
“You know, you humans are so ridiculous. It doesn’t matter what lies beyond. Something does, anyway. How you call it doesn’t change the fact of its existence. When no human knows for certain what afterlife is, the truth remains in shadow. It’s the only way all of the existing theories can be considered as equally true or equally false. All have a chance. But nooo, you guys don’t realize this…”
Azrael sniggered and continued:
“ You carry on creating religions that proclaim new “absolute truths” and you argue with each other and start wars and destroy each other because you can’t accept the different names of the same thing.”
Azrael’s tone had lost the tint of bemusement, it was scanting, vicious, iron.
Llud felt little.
The angel felt his discomfort and waved it off with a smirk, his acrimony evaporating.
“Don’t mind my rant; I forget you guys are supposed to be lambs by design…”
The new Llud did not like being called a lamb.
Self defense?
“It is not always the same thing that we humans are squabbling over….sometimes there really are many things, distinct and even contrasting…Sometimes the theories are too different ….or completely opposite.”
Llud noted feeling smart. That was a new feeling.
Azrael was not stirred.
“Even so…Opposites don’t exclude each other…There is white and there is black too right…? “
“And also there are all the intermediate colors and shades…,” Llud murmured philosophically.
“Exactly. Yet they are one thing: color. They belong to the same unifying category.”
Touché.
Llud sighed. He had lost the verbal duel; humans were indeed to blame. It had taken him a lifetime(literally) to cure his color blindness. Thousands of groups remained, each accepting to see only one color.
No wonder humanity could not witness a real rainbow.
Azrael slid on a pair of sunglasses
“Show off …,” Llud muttered.
He didn’t feel like he was talking to Death at all; even if he was, what did it matter?
The lack of prospects made him bold.
Azrael chuckled and flipped his hair.
Something in that motion mesmerized Llud. Flip. Away. Discard. Completely.
The light bulb flickered on and his eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
“You know…someone does turn out wrong at the end. Not all options are viable after all…”
Llud felt smug, watching the effect his words produced on Azrael. Despite the sunglasses he could see the brow rising and the angel leaning closer(Llud noticed the creature was emanating a chilly graveyard whiff).
It was time to strike.
“The atheists! Because they state that there is no afterlife. I can see there is, I’m not that idiotic to ignore Death incarnate towering over me. An atheist would tell me that I was dreaming and all of this was an illusion. So, not all opinions can be considered as true,” Llud concluded haughtily.
Azrael’s glasses glistened.
“Who says atheists are wrong?”
“B-b-but you said it earlier: something does exist beyond in any case!”
“ I did ….But you can only believe me if I exist objectively…if this(Azrael motioned at the surroundings) exists objectively in the first place. If it’s a dream though…”
“The atheists would turn out right and everything you said will turn out to be a figment from the start….” Llud muttered in a trance.
He shook his head vigorously, stomping his foot like a mulish kid.
“It does exist ! It’s happening to me, it feels real”
Eyebrow rising.
“ ‘Feels real’? Is that an eligible criterion?”
Llud’s self-importance shattered to pieces and his jaw dropped.
His mind spun forcefully.
“But how can they be right?”
“Well…”
And in a sudden explosion of noise, Llud felt something heavy fall on his head.
Piano keys.
Do-re-mi.
………………………………………………
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!
“Grrrr stupid clock! Can’t even stand upright!!”
Llud quickly realized he had condemned the clock too soon, since he himself tumbled down to the floor, head first and feet in the air.
It hurt.
He was alive.
It had been a dream.
(Yay for the atheists!)
Or maybe…?
Somehow, he couldn’t force Azrael’s omniscient grin out of his mind. It was as if he was watching him right now, as if he had transported him back and had then woken him up to have a few laughs….
He felt ridiculous, as if he was juggling under the spotlight of the circus stage…walking along a very thin rope, very high up…
Don’t look down…
Llud got up and drew the curtains back. It had rained last night. The air smelled of freshness and novelty.
So second chances were not completely outdated yet.
He wasn’t going to let this chance slide! He was given an opportunity to wake up and he was going to wake up! Heck, he was never going to fall asleep again! Life was too short and too full of miracles to pretend not to notice them.
Llud’s optimistic mood lasted exactly 3 seconds. Then he noticed the time. He was late.
……………………………
Her name was Efil. Not only wasn’t her head empty, he sometimes wondered how was that she bore the heaviness of all its contents on her neck. Her blond hair and pretty eyes were hardly the most impressive thing in her(although they remained just as distracting for him as in the beginning, if not more). Llud couldn’t imagine a more enlightening girlfriend. This was a paradox, since it was the darkness and fog of universal enigmas that were her favorite pass-time. His too. They would conduct researches in the library archives(it wasn’t the only thing they conducted in the secluded compartments; who knew dust and paper could be that arousing). They went on strolls under the stars between the graves and talked. They snuck into haunted mentions where lips would meet lips to exchange adrenaline. Llud and Efil had a rule: they never judged any mystery on the plausibility scale, they never dismissed anything as unfeasible: they gave every religion and every hypothesis an equal chance of being…or not being. “What If”. It was a game, as playful as fingertips touching under the working desk, and as somber as death crawling in the creases of the mummies’ parched skin, clattering in the symphony of forgotten bones, or clanking in unison with the shackles of Marley’s ghost.
Llud was happy. Even if what he had experienced had been a dream, even if atheists were right and there was nothing but worms and hummus beyond, he still enjoyed life a great deal more now, when he was open to new perceptions. He often joked with Efil that by opening up to death he had accepted life. And he would kiss her passionately in the dead of night to prove it.
He felt prepared for the existence of something on the other side. Even if there turned out to be nothing in the end, Llud would not be sorry for the efforts. Because while on this quest outside the shell, he had began enhancing his “here and now”. Even if there was nothing beyond Life to find, by simply searching he had found something in Life. Someone….
Just in case, however, he never got on a bus again.
Destiny ≠ Fate by Elena Angelova
Despise my future, lost my past
First to dream, I wake up last
I fear the night, resent the day
Wish to stay here, yet running away
I deny the truth to accept all lies
My mind is chained, my heart still flies
It's that I like the lyrics, not the song
I'm far from right, away from wrong
Silence is dreadful, and so is noise
Screaming out loud, I have no voice
Forever is never, to love is to hate
I colour my destiny, darken my fate
01.10.
First to dream, I wake up last
I fear the night, resent the day
Wish to stay here, yet running away
I deny the truth to accept all lies
My mind is chained, my heart still flies
It's that I like the lyrics, not the song
I'm far from right, away from wrong
Silence is dreadful, and so is noise
Screaming out loud, I have no voice
Forever is never, to love is to hate
I colour my destiny, darken my fate
01.10.
The Cat and Alice by Nadezhda Grigorova
Italic – Alice thinking/talking
Bold italic – Cheshire
Insomnia – the ghost in my maze of grey matter. The bells exorcize it. They playfully jingle
The Cat has arrived. His stripes drip with Color. Me? My reflection? With whom will he mingle?
His will kiss Me.
Not the looking glass.
His whiskers will tickle my lip,
His fangs my Sanity will rip,
His mouth my Madness will sip
With a straw…
“We are all mad here.”
“Give me a color. Yours.” I asked
My eyelid is weary. He lifts it revealing an iris that’s ashen and sightless for sin
He sneers – “Ugh! So average!” – and taints me with Color, marks me with his half-mooned grin
In my lap he snuggles, his grip tantalizing. Hypocrisy. Mockery. Tenderness fake
AH! Down he pins me, subduing me under. Suddenly. Roughly. The Predator wakes.
Down the hole…
I’m thrashing about with this harrowing longing his soaring heart mine to make and to seize.
Oh, why does Normality keep me in prison, turn a deaf ear to my plea for release?
Under his caress I scream and desire, yet I remain in the stalemate of death
Under his claws I am brought back to life, under his cruelty - given a breath
“Normality…You are defiling my Alice!”
Slowly, with venom, he’s goring my eyes out, summoning Wilderness, Chaos – the Beast
I….Disintegrate. Fractured. And Scattered. An “Only”. A “Nothing”. A psychopath’s feast.
“Finally, you are back, my true Alice…my complete Alice”
“Epiphany…!!”
Nirvana! He sews me up. Zealous. Possessive. I’m Free! I am elated. I reach the Divine!
My REAL EYE opens. Beyond I am gazing. Thank you, oh feline demon of mine.
In my eyelashes the scarlet has curdled. He licks it away with obsessive devotion.
Through his saliva a skeleton flashes. Secrets illicit, arcane, in no motion.
So this is It. This is the ploy scintillating that Life hides beneath Its prosaic, parched skin
Sweaty from ludicrous running in circles in the – read label – “Normality” tin
“Don’t drink it…It’s worse than poison….”
“From the tin, Cat, you fished me! “She purred. Lunar smile. “Devour the me who is yours, your sardine!”
Her stripes and her tail with his were entwined. Ravenous, filthy, they shunned the Pristine.
Bold italic – Cheshire
Insomnia – the ghost in my maze of grey matter. The bells exorcize it. They playfully jingle
The Cat has arrived. His stripes drip with Color. Me? My reflection? With whom will he mingle?
His will kiss Me.
Not the looking glass.
His whiskers will tickle my lip,
His fangs my Sanity will rip,
His mouth my Madness will sip
With a straw…
“We are all mad here.”
“Give me a color. Yours.” I asked
My eyelid is weary. He lifts it revealing an iris that’s ashen and sightless for sin
He sneers – “Ugh! So average!” – and taints me with Color, marks me with his half-mooned grin
In my lap he snuggles, his grip tantalizing. Hypocrisy. Mockery. Tenderness fake
AH! Down he pins me, subduing me under. Suddenly. Roughly. The Predator wakes.
Down the hole…
I’m thrashing about with this harrowing longing his soaring heart mine to make and to seize.
Oh, why does Normality keep me in prison, turn a deaf ear to my plea for release?
Under his caress I scream and desire, yet I remain in the stalemate of death
Under his claws I am brought back to life, under his cruelty - given a breath
“Normality…You are defiling my Alice!”
Slowly, with venom, he’s goring my eyes out, summoning Wilderness, Chaos – the Beast
I….Disintegrate. Fractured. And Scattered. An “Only”. A “Nothing”. A psychopath’s feast.
“Finally, you are back, my true Alice…my complete Alice”
“Epiphany…!!”
Nirvana! He sews me up. Zealous. Possessive. I’m Free! I am elated. I reach the Divine!
My REAL EYE opens. Beyond I am gazing. Thank you, oh feline demon of mine.
In my eyelashes the scarlet has curdled. He licks it away with obsessive devotion.
Through his saliva a skeleton flashes. Secrets illicit, arcane, in no motion.
So this is It. This is the ploy scintillating that Life hides beneath Its prosaic, parched skin
Sweaty from ludicrous running in circles in the – read label – “Normality” tin
“Don’t drink it…It’s worse than poison….”
“From the tin, Cat, you fished me! “She purred. Lunar smile. “Devour the me who is yours, your sardine!”
Her stripes and her tail with his were entwined. Ravenous, filthy, they shunned the Pristine.
Empty World by Mihaela Zaharieva
You never saw the angel cry
You never saw the Earth die
You never saw the story end
You never stopped to pretend
Now that everything has been reduced to dust
All you have is this life accursed
All the rest is dead and gone
And around you there is no one
Searching and searching in the empty streets
As you pass the dead trees your heart beats
Fear is what drives you on
For the survival of the civilization
Nothingness stretching for miles
Surrounding you on all sides
An empty world where there is nothing
Just the road and you keep walking
An empty world surrounds you
And you cannot help but feel blue
When there is nothing to keep you optimistic
That is what they call postapocaliptic
You never saw the Earth die
You never saw the story end
You never stopped to pretend
Now that everything has been reduced to dust
All you have is this life accursed
All the rest is dead and gone
And around you there is no one
Searching and searching in the empty streets
As you pass the dead trees your heart beats
Fear is what drives you on
For the survival of the civilization
Nothingness stretching for miles
Surrounding you on all sides
An empty world where there is nothing
Just the road and you keep walking
An empty world surrounds you
And you cannot help but feel blue
When there is nothing to keep you optimistic
That is what they call postapocaliptic
The Way to Paradise by Elena Angelova
"We're a long long way, a long way from paradise..."
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say. Do you ever wonder why they don't mention the road to paradise?
Because it's paved with mushrooms.
Obviously, that's not what they'd want people to hear. You bet that's not what I wanted to find out. Damn mushrooms. They are all I ever see these days.
"Excuse me?" I hear this voice, coming from my right. Or was it my left?
I don't reply straight away. What fun would it be if I did?
"Excuse me," repeats the voice, more demanding, "how do you distinguish a dead cap from a straw mushroom?"
I shrug. "Why'd you care to distinguish them?"
You bet I am sick of people asking me about the difference between a dead cap and a straw mushroom. You don't choose the edible mushroom - you don't get to paradise. That's how it works these days. I am not everybody's damn compass after all, they should learn to pick the mushrooms on their own.
"Please, I'm starving like hell. Which one should I eat?" wails the voice once more.
"The right question is, which one should you not eat?" I yawn.
The voice is confused. The voice is scared. The voice is too demure to ask yet again. The voice makes his own choice.
I sigh. "Throw it away."
The voice hesitates.
"It's the other one," I explain for the 861st time today, "the one with the pink spore print. If the spore print is white, don't touch the damn mushroom, for it's a damn dead cap."
So the voice thanks me a thousand times, and off he goes. It's just me and the mushrooms. You bet they are not a good company. Damn Amanita phalloides tends to be pretty annoying, actually.
"Excuse me?"
There it goes again. Another clueless soul. I don't even bother with the rhetorical questions. I always tell them eventually anyway.
"It's the one with the pink spore print. Now go chase your paradise. Mind you, it may not be worth it in the end."
And this one is not even going to ask what is not going to be worth it. Why do I even bother? If they don't get the mushrooms, without me, they're doomed. And I won't be here all eternity to give directions, it's a damn waste of time. In fact, I shall take a break very soon.
How many mushrooms long is your road to paradise anyway? It's time for me to get some rest. But I'll be right back, I usually am.
Sincerely, Common Sense.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say. Do you ever wonder why they don't mention the road to paradise?
Because it's paved with mushrooms.
Obviously, that's not what they'd want people to hear. You bet that's not what I wanted to find out. Damn mushrooms. They are all I ever see these days.
"Excuse me?" I hear this voice, coming from my right. Or was it my left?
I don't reply straight away. What fun would it be if I did?
"Excuse me," repeats the voice, more demanding, "how do you distinguish a dead cap from a straw mushroom?"
I shrug. "Why'd you care to distinguish them?"
You bet I am sick of people asking me about the difference between a dead cap and a straw mushroom. You don't choose the edible mushroom - you don't get to paradise. That's how it works these days. I am not everybody's damn compass after all, they should learn to pick the mushrooms on their own.
"Please, I'm starving like hell. Which one should I eat?" wails the voice once more.
"The right question is, which one should you not eat?" I yawn.
The voice is confused. The voice is scared. The voice is too demure to ask yet again. The voice makes his own choice.
I sigh. "Throw it away."
The voice hesitates.
"It's the other one," I explain for the 861st time today, "the one with the pink spore print. If the spore print is white, don't touch the damn mushroom, for it's a damn dead cap."
So the voice thanks me a thousand times, and off he goes. It's just me and the mushrooms. You bet they are not a good company. Damn Amanita phalloides tends to be pretty annoying, actually.
"Excuse me?"
There it goes again. Another clueless soul. I don't even bother with the rhetorical questions. I always tell them eventually anyway.
"It's the one with the pink spore print. Now go chase your paradise. Mind you, it may not be worth it in the end."
And this one is not even going to ask what is not going to be worth it. Why do I even bother? If they don't get the mushrooms, without me, they're doomed. And I won't be here all eternity to give directions, it's a damn waste of time. In fact, I shall take a break very soon.
How many mushrooms long is your road to paradise anyway? It's time for me to get some rest. But I'll be right back, I usually am.
Sincerely, Common Sense.
Colour of the Soul by Mihaela Zaharieva
A red velvet dress sweeping across the floor
All eyes turn to the door
Beauty exceeding imagination
A never ending expectation
An innocent looking face
Filled with emotion that makes your heart race
Optimistic light glows in her eye
A person who doesn’t like to say goodbye
Her smile is gentle and kind
Your heart is captured and bind
When she talks
Everyone listens
When she laughs
Everyone smiles
A person filled with energy and life
For her attention there is always strife
But her kind smile cures them all
No matter how small
A person you do not want to let go
As the conversation continues to flow
Her intellect captures every mind
Such a person is very hard to find
She is a one in a million
A brightly shining brilliant
All eyes turn to the door
Beauty exceeding imagination
A never ending expectation
An innocent looking face
Filled with emotion that makes your heart race
Optimistic light glows in her eye
A person who doesn’t like to say goodbye
Her smile is gentle and kind
Your heart is captured and bind
When she talks
Everyone listens
When she laughs
Everyone smiles
A person filled with energy and life
For her attention there is always strife
But her kind smile cures them all
No matter how small
A person you do not want to let go
As the conversation continues to flow
Her intellect captures every mind
Such a person is very hard to find
She is a one in a million
A brightly shining brilliant
Aui by Mihaela Zaharieva
The light gathers up in your hand
I cannot defend
You smile to me and call my name
It is such a shame
I am forced to surrender at last
And let go of my past
To see a bright future ahead
Where there is nothing sad
You make everything shine
And everything is fine
The gates of heaven open
And everything evil is broken
My heart is free of all pain
And there is no more strain
Just the feeling of love
Free like a white dove
I cannot defend
You smile to me and call my name
It is such a shame
I am forced to surrender at last
And let go of my past
To see a bright future ahead
Where there is nothing sad
You make everything shine
And everything is fine
The gates of heaven open
And everything evil is broken
My heart is free of all pain
And there is no more strain
Just the feeling of love
Free like a white dove
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