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‘You’ve seen it, haven’t you?’
‘Entirely by accident.’
‘So, what do you think?’
‘How can I say no to you?’
Victoria stopped trying not to smile. The man walking near her, left her no choice. She liked all about him. He had no imperfections. No disadvantages. He was ideal.
‘For a long time that man was trying to get rid of the desire to kiss your lovely lips… Would you let him do it?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t love him.’
‘To love is an obligatory for kissing?’
‘Of course! How can you kiss a person whom you don’t love? I can’t even imagine someone’s mouth touching mine! Ugh! I have you to kiss.’
‘So, you mean when people date, they don’t kiss with others?’ Kharon asked, having finally understood why Vasilisa had been constantly telling about their joint bad moves.
The demon started understanding that people preferred monogamy. At least in the beginning and in reality they did. Victoria stopped and turned to pensive Kharon and looked at his eyes.
‘Is there a definition of adultery in hell?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No. What does it mean for you, people?’ he kept on walking, being thoughtful about his moves.
‘If you discover any adultery it means the end. If you don’t then it means nothing. As a rule, the end means breaking up. It’s painful for both. Someone can forgive. More precisely someone is able to say that they forgive but the thing that a beloved person did is gonna be with that couple for entire life.’
‘Would you forgive?’ the demon silly asked.
‘I’d kill.’ Victoria answered with all her seriousness. ‘I’d kill her. I wouldn’t be able to kill you but her…’
‘You’re too cruel!’ Kharon opened the door of the bookshop.
‘Thank you.’ Vic gave a seductive smile to the powerful demon and jumped into the shop under his hand, holding the door open.
‘Any adultery is always a betrayal. Betrayal is miserable and loathsome, and it hurts. All human creatures are too much twisted between each other and it goes that a thing can’t be without another one. If you don’t know what love is, you will never know what adultery is.’
Kharon was behind the girl, with the emptiness in his eyes he watched her looking through the books of the same type, seeking for the needed one. He realized that he had made a great mistake in the very beginning when his unhuman mind had had opinion of people. He hadn’t taken the people could be able to feel into account. He didn’t understand most of all what to do, how to pretend that he was able to feel also.
‘Ok, let’s go.’ Vic said sadly but fast, having put the book back at the shelf.
‘Aren’t you going to buy it?’ The demon was surprised, taking back the book. ‘You’ve been dreaming about it for a month already. What’s the matter?’
Victoria looked around. He knew already that feeling.
‘Confusion? Yes, it’s confusion. Why, dear?’
‘No, no, it’s ok. There’s no confusion…’
‘It’s a lie.’ The demon stopped smiling.
Victoria knew what it meant. In a second she turned to be in his arms and his hand carefully stroked her head. From an outsiders’ viewpoint they looked like lovers giving to each other a little of unobtrusive tenderness. But Victoria perfectly knew that the demon like a black widow was lying the threads between his hand and the human mind. In a second the spider threads turned into the most powerful wires which Kharon freakily needed when he stopped understanding the girl’s speech.
In her mind Vic pleaded the man to stop and not to get into her mind. She couldn’t stop him in reality as Kharon was too sweaty fumbling in her mind.
‘The book… is a dream,’ the demon whispered, having closed the eyes. ‘Number. Big number. The number again. The 5
of November. What’s gonna be on the 5
of Number? Vic? Come on, dear, think about it, I must understand what’s going on… The 5
of November… The 5
. Here it is – your payment day. The number is 5996 roubles…. The number is on the book. This is the cost.’
The demon opened his eyes and looked at her face definitely. She was excited. Her eyes were lowered, she had rose cheeks of childhood.
‘This book is too expensive and you’re not ready to spend that kind of money but you’re waiting for your payment and you’re gonna come here again. Have I collected right your incoherent ideas?’ he asked giving the book to the girl.
She couldn’t look at his eyes. She was ashamed. She was greatly ashamed because being well-paid she all the same couldn’t spend easily almost 6000 roubles.
‘Have I understood you right, dear?’ the demon repeated his question again, gently touching her chin, trying to catch her ashamed eyes.
She silently nodded and her eyes were dim with tears. She didn’t want Kharon to see her crying again.
‘Can I buy it for you?’ he asked, without letting the girl turn away.
He was important to look at her eyes to understand how her emotions were shown. He needed her real emotions. The demon recognized, however, rather rapidly that without reading minds he could just look at the eyes and get all the necessary information out of there.
‘No, Kharon, it’s too expensive. As all the other art books. I’ll get paid and…’
‘I’ve put it in a wrong way,’ the man interrupted her, taking back the massive book, ‘I’ll buy it. No objections can be accepted.’
He turned away and went to the checkout lane. Victoria was open-mouthed staying near the bookshelves, understanding nothing how that could happen.
‘I can hear your pulse accelerating,’ Kharon said in a low voice with the smile on his lips when Victoria came up to him in the queue.
‘Kharon…’
‘I know the reason. You’re waiting for this book! You’re glad! These are emotions of happiness and joy. I’ve rather well known these because they are the brightest, strongest and purest you can ever have.’
‘Thank you!’ Vic put her head on his shoulder, hiding her the most pleased smile.
‘What for? We’re still in the queue.’
‘For what’s gonna happen in two minutes.’
As the book was bought Vic was happy. She had tried to buy it when she was a student, she graduated and even when she got a job. She madly wanted it but every time something prevented her from buying.
They were walking down the street from Kuznetsky most metro station. Kharon was carrying the massive book packed for all of life’s emergencies. Victoria’s arm linked in his and she didn’t even try to hide her happiness and smiling like a brewer’s horse. What could go wrong but she suddenly felt woozy. A waltz. A villainous loathful waltz. There were no things static before. The building started floating down like escaped from surrealistical pictures. Concrete, brick and iron objects turned into a ductile elastic band who knows who starched it. In a flash the sky and the earth switched places. Vic sorted out the darkened cumulus and the stars awaking in the distance. The earth sprinkled with the pellets of dirty from above, the asphalt threw back lumps in people. Upside down the raced giving its light to all around, blinding the eyes. The eyes what they did! Cars like sturdy immortal bacteria divided like cells. Vic saw right before her eyes the world gathered its double-ganger and they both were so disgusting! They were too damned painful look! It was possible. With its diploid abnormality it drove the girl crazy. Her eyes couldn’t focus on. They didn’t belong to her. Everything was at sixes and seven!
Victoria couldn’t take a step forward. She just didn’t understand what was going on, where the asphalt was, where to put step. She was like an astronaut tirelessly worked on the ISS, having completely forgotten what gravity and Newtonian constant of gravitation were. There was no coordination. It absented. There was confusion and surging up fear.
The girl tried to say something, to ask the standing near demon in catatonic way for help. He only heard her like as a lonely cow in the field of thistles weakly bellowing.
Her heart was beating faster and faster. It was getting scarier and scarier. The half of the body was getting heavier as if came off and flew into the abyss. No, it didn’t hurt. It scared. The body was getting covered with a layer of something soft and disgusting, something that made you remember the true belonging of the body and didn’t allow to feel more and more.
The face. It wasn’t a face it was a mask. A cold, rubbery mask made of her own skin…muscles. Repulsive. And it scared again. Victoria fell and Kharon hardly had time to catch the girl not to let her fall. He held her, the book and got through everything inside that Victoria felt.
‘What’s it, dear?’ coming aside from people, Kharon tried to find out what was going on.
The girl mumbled something unclear and incomprehensible in return. Suddenly a smell of illness clogged his nostrils. Why? Why did that young girl, who absolutely had been healthy until now, had an illness? If it had a smell it meant something serious not just ARVI…
‘I feel ache in my heart… Pain and fear. What am I supposed to do? Vic!’ Kharon called the girl. ‘Don’t close your eyes, can you hear me? It’s too dangerous! Don’t close your eyes!’
People turned, stared, were curious, someone disapproved, others had pity and wanted to help but hesitated, some just looked away.
Kharon fell on the nearest bench, holding the sick girl. The book fell near on the dirty and trampled road. Victoria couldn’t say a single word, the man was sitting near, understood nothing and what he had to do. But he clearly understood that it shouldn’t have been what was going on to Victoria. That wasn’t neither her illness nor her disease.
Her head was lying on his knees. Her eyes were closed. No moves. The breathing was quiet. The inner pain kept on its attacking. The man was stroking over her cheek, looking at her face, at her red hair awry over his knees. Her quiet but heavy sighs sounded like moans of a drug addict who was getting through terrible withdrawals. He didn’t know what to do that he could call an ambulance, to find a doctor. He didn’t know. He was just sitting and trying to calm down and taking pity on the girl.
More than an hour had passed. Then Victoria went silent. The moans suddenly ceased. The attempts to move were gone. Silence. The sepulchral silence. Something gave a shiver in the chest of the demon, it pricked in his heart more likely. It was unpleasantly and unexpectedly. The thing that had pricked him in the heart made the man bended over her face to understand if actually she breathed and her heart beat.
Hardly had he bended over her as Vic opened her eyes. Her eyes were wide-opened. She had a scared and understanding nothing stare. She didn’t still move. The demon looked at her eyes, but Victoria seemed not to see him. She just gazed at the sky covered with the black veil.
‘Hey, dear?’ Kharon called her quiet.
The silence was the answer. Victoria didn’t hear his voice. She could hear nothing at all. She just gazed at the sky. There was the same silence but more ominous. These eyes of olive colour scared him more than when they had been closed. Then she started speaking. It was as sudden as she seemed to have been numb and speechless before.
‘It’s been a sort of horror…’ she whispered getting up from the knees of the demon who understood nothing.
He was confused. Kharon had clearly felt the smell of some incurable malady. That was Victoria who smelled of it and no one else. He had heard her heart lose the beat, running down, by whisper counting the last beats and speeding up with scream “I won’t give up”. He had heard her breath come faster but weak and hopeless. But now the absolutely healthy girl, active and strong, was sitting near him. No malady threatened her now.
‘What’s going on? What’s it with me, Kharon?’ she asked the man, carefully studying his face.
‘You won’t believe, dear, but I was about to ask you the same question.’
The girl turned away and stared at the puddle, at the dirty reflection of the evening clear sky. She was thinking. She did it so aloud that the demon could hear her for several minutes and that’s why he didn’t stop her, hopping that Victoria would be describing in her mind what an attack had happened to her. Maybe she had some malady which nobody knew of… But it couldn’t be like that. The demon started to bring himself over. He was able to expose any disease faster than any doctor with the best instruments in the world.
‘I’m freaky fed up with all this bullshit!’ Vic exclaimed, raising up from the bench. ‘Let’s go to a pub?’
‘Couples of questions.’ Kharon slowly got up as if he was afraid of something and came up to the girl. ‘What is it you’re fed up with? What a pub? Do you think you’re alright?’
‘Kharon,’ Vic smiled, ‘I’m sure it’s doing of damned spirits! They periodically show me their experiences making me experience it with them again… Oh, my God, I’m speaking about it to you… Now you’re gonna think that I’m crazy. Well what can I do then? Sooner or later you’d know about it.’
Victoria got carried away. She didn’t want to tell the demon about her still existed visions, but her tongue didn’t obey her. It wanted to tell everything. It’d been tried to hide and be silent! It wanted to cry out about all those horrors which had happened to the girl.
‘It’s ok. You see I’m of good cheer and feel well. It was just another spirit… The problem is that I’m fed up with them. Terribly fed up! Maybe do you know any medicine for them? What can I do that they stop coming to me? I can’t bear to see them all, their empty eyes and mouths with moving lips. I’m fed up with feeling their emotions, crying with them, getting rid of the lost feeling, looking at their life memories which I don’t know nothing about! I’m not into it! I don’t want to!’
The girl sank back on the bench and started crying, having put her face into her hands. The demon said nothing pretending to be sad, looking at the building in front of him.
‘What about a pub?’ Vic continued, sobbing. ‘there’s a pub not far from here. It’ll help me to distract myself and forget my problems. I just wanna drink! Do you drink? About if I’m ok – actually, I’m not sure. That’s why I need to get to a pub.’
‘Do I drink?’ Kharon distracted, having looked at the sky. ‘What am I supposed to drink? Coffee? I like coffee.’
‘No, my love,’ Victoria jumped up from the bench. ‘I’m speaking about alcohol!’
‘Alcohol?’ the man asked looking at the puzzled face of the girl. ‘Ok then. Let’s go to a pub. What does pub mean?’
‘This is the place which has no difference with a cafе. Have you never been in pubs? Are you kidding?’
‘Maybe I have. I rarely look at the titles.’
‘Well, what about bars? Clubs?’
‘I’ve been in a bar.’
‘Perfect. So, there’s nothing new about pubs for you then. Let’s go!’ Victoria took his hand and went ahead.
Kharon followed her. He had still a slight misunderstanding. It could happen to demons that managed to get involved with witches. Ten minutes before the girl, confidently and cheerfully marched before him, pulling him along strongly, had been lying on the bench and Kharon could bet that he had heard her heart stop beating. Now she was rushing forward like a locomotive with unbelievable traction. She looked like she hadn’t had any disease attack and it had just seemed to the demon to have happened.
The faded light was in a crowded place enveloped with unobtrusive music. They hardly managed to find a free table. Fortunately, the reservation was cancelled at the same second when Kharon asked about free tables.
The man looked around and yes, definitely he had been in such kind of places. What the hell difference was how to name it pubs or bars if people did the same things there especially on Fridays and weekends.
Kharon noticed people in Moscow liked having relax on Friday evenings. People got kinder, more smiled, more friendly for a while. Some fights happened at nights and some of them the demon had watched, having fun or being bored.
Despite the traditional vivacity over Moscow Kharon liked being in public places. He had always been into publicity. He was glad that Victoria changed her rules and principles to spend cosy Friday at home, saying that she needed no one and nothing else.
‘What’s your choice?’ Vic asked.
‘I don’t know. There are so many titles which I wanna try. Here is this one – “Bloody Mary”. Why’s she bloody? Why is it Mary? Who’s she?’
‘Are you ready to order?’ a waitress appeared near the table with an old worksheet and tiredness on her face.
‘Bloody Mary,’ Vic smiled at the demon, ‘Pina colada, fried potatoes and chicken barbeque. You aren’t hungry, are you?’
Kharon shook his head. He wasn’t really hungry as he had a perfect lunch with Vasilisa. The demon, who saw Victoria have not less perfect lunch with her boss, was amazed with her appetite especially because the girl hadn’t been noticed to be voracious before.
‘Your Bloody Mary’ the waitress appeared again with a small tray. ‘Pina colada is for you. The hot dishes are later, ok?’
