Unlimited

Vitoria hanged on his words, looked at him and she didn’t understand how he was capable of doing what he was doing. His voice sounded identically like hers.

‘Did she believe you? My mum, I mean.’ Vic amazingly blinked.

‘She doubtlessly did… Besides why do you report when you are going to come home? What time and with whom.’ Kharon asked, finally finished buttoning his shirt. ‘What an uneasy thing…’

‘What do you mean why? She’s my mum, she worries what if something bad happens to me…’ Vic tried to explain.

‘So what?’ Kharon gave her a predatory look behind his shoulder. ‘Ah? What? What will she do? What can you, people, do for those you love? If you were pressed with a large-tonnage slab, could she pull it off in a second to give you a possibility to breathe? Could she get you out of a sinking ship in the Indian Ocean if she were on the other end of the spectrum? What could she do if the Death came into the game?’

‘Kharon… Mother love. It is… It’s difficult to explain, I have no children, but I love my mum and if a large-tonnage slab pressed her I would turn inside-out to try to get her out of that… And I can imagine how much a mother loves her child and for what she is ready to do for him or her…’

‘I am sometimes glad that I communicate with living people. You are so funny! Especially your philosophy! None of you could do anything, but the grief is a good start to shed tears over. You have a bad headache, Victoria! What can you do with this?’

‘How do you know…? Jesus, I’m asking this again. I can’t get over the thought that you know everything. To live like this seems to be dull.’

‘No, it isn’t. I told you, people amuse me. So, what are you capable of doing to your headache?’

‘Take a medicine.’

‘Then take it.’

‘I don’t have any.’ Vic got what he was driving at. ‘But you can help me, can’t you?’

The demon smiled. The girl was staring at him, remembering each line, trait and dimple of his. His face was beyond compare, she couldn’t help but look at him.

‘Help me,’ Vic whispered tenaciously, feeling her temples become clenched more and more.

‘Take away your pain?’ he was near the girl, stroked her hair. ‘Make you free from this feeling?’

‘Yes,’ Vic closed her eyes and like a kitten, almost began to purr because of his gently touches.

In a second pain drew off, the warmth spread over the head vessels, enriching the brain with new power.

‘What else, my little mistress?’ the demon cynically asked, holding the girl in his arms.

There were his lips again. His lips were on her neck. The small lightning jumped through her body in reply to his kisses, hotness of his hands, his palms. Passion burnt an insane fire and Vic didn’t have even a drop of water to put out it. Just to agree the deal and her body would get what it was yearning for. But neither her heart nor her soul would get the love, which was described in books, discussed by multimillion budget actors on the world TV. Her soul wanted more than just the lust of the flesh. Vic didn’t want to think for a moment that the demon… Did he know what love was? Was there a germ of the truth in that sharp word for him?

‘Shall I go on?’

His whisper cut through the night, made it scream, growing faint from pain. Victoria opened her eyes.

‘No. I gotta go…’

The girl grasped her head and with horror she remembered her doing. Kharon didn’t control her. He was silent, folded his arms and watched the girl. He didn’t understand her. But what? If there was a great desire, then why didn’t she want to satisfy it? Why didn’t she want to pay and then to get what had been driving her crazy every night?

‘Where’s my shoe?’ the girl asked in a big hallway.

Kharon appeared in the doorway and smiled, languidly gazing at Vic.

‘Shoe?’

‘Yes!’

‘The one that you’ve lost in the bushes?’

‘In the bushes?’ Vic looked in the demon’s eyes in surprise. ‘You couldn’t have taken it with you, could you? How am I supposed to go now?’

An unexpected complaint struck down Kharon. He gave the slightest twitch of one eyebrow, astonishingly looked at her olive coloured eyes.

‘What am I supposed to do, Kharon?’

The empathic voice cut into the head. The demon was silent, with no stopping burning the girl with his amber eyes.

‘You aren’t supposed to leave today…’ he said finally.

‘It’s perfect and wonderful but you didn’t answer my question. How am I supposed to go in on shoe? How couldn’t you have guessed that I’d need both of them? People usually use both. Simultaneously! On both feet! Moreover, you saw it in the bushes! I don’t understand was it really so hard to take it with you?’

Kharon was black as sin and there was a reason for. Women had never ever talked to him in such a way. Dream always obfuscated the reality that all of them were ready and said the only word “yes”. That’s all. They didn’t need to talk further. Then the body language and mind-blowing games came into reality at the forefront of catharsis. But to blow up Kharon for the lost shoe…It was a nonsense!

‘Fine.’ Vic took a sigh, being in a shoe. ‘You have to bring me home. I don’t know how you do this, but I have to be at home.’

‘Are you sure about “I have”?’ the demon boiled over when his mind was slowly coming back.

‘Absolutely. I can’t go barefooted. And I’m barefooted by the merit of you.’

‘Okay!’ the demon snapped his fingers before the girl’s nose and between one breath and another they both turned to be at Vic’s small room. ‘You’re at home.’ Kharon confirmed the obvious fact.

Vic looked round, trying to get all that surrounded her was real or it was a made-up world where the demon put her into.

Evert thing was in its place. It was all still there. There were piles of pencils and paints, album pages and map papers. Her mother was coughing in the bed behind the wall. Not a hint that the reality was made-up.

‘Is these all real?’ Vic asked in a whisper.

‘The price is the same. When you calm down your passion collywobbles and it stops irritating beneath your stomach, call me and I shall remember you how it could have been, if you had paid.’

Kharon disappeared and Victoria, failed to manage her feelings, burst into crying.

What was she supposed to do? She fell in love with a monster, completely forgotten that it didn’t have any definitions of a human life. The creature, in love to whom the girl was bogged down in, suggested to have a deal and to all horror Victoria got that if she saw him once again, if he touched her once again, and if his velvet voice sounded in her ears again, she wouldn’t be able to say that impossibly sick word “no”. Damn it for a night Kharon would belong to her and only to her. The girl was almost ready to cry “yes”, when an idea came across his mind.

‘I’ve come, mum’ Vic said quietly looking into her mum’s room.

‘Vic? Is that you?’ half-awake Olga Vladimirovna didn’t understand what was going on. ‘What time is it?’

‘It’s early. Sleep. I’m going to bed.’

When Victoria opened her eyes, the day was running under the pressure of the evening. The girl jumped from the bed and went to freshen up, have breakfast and tell her mum what was at the exam and what happened after.

‘What’s your next exam?’

‘That’s all. It was the last one. Then I’ll have a critical design review and voila I am a licentiate and you’ll be happy for me.’

‘When’s the review?’ her mum was drinking coffee.

‘In two weeks and a half. I’m ready for it. That’s not a philosophy.’

‘Fine, then I gotta go to work.’

‘Now?’

‘Sveta’s ill, I’m covering her. And our chief of department is leaving, and his position will be opened. I want to try.’

‘Sure, mum, you’ll get there. Look how many different rewards and recognitions you have. I think you the best resuscitationist!’

‘It’s very cool when you’re supported!’ Olga Vladimirovna kissed her daughter on cheek and went to gather.

Victoria went to her room under colour of preparation to the project review. As soon as the door was closed and her mum left for work, the girl started to make ritual.

She was going to call for Lucifer and went balls to the wall. If Kharon refused then Lucifer would help.

Everything was ready except an agreement and time. The hands of the clock have to point to three am. It was an important condition described in the book. If there was no problem with time, all she needed just to wait, but agreement problems were indeed.

Firstly, Victoria thought of the agreement content. Could it be any legal one? Maybe just a text? Table format? How should it look like?

Secondly, the price. What could she suggest to Lucifer in charge for his services? Victoria couldn’t give her soul. If she gave him her soul it meant she would die and wouldn’t be able to be with Kharon. Then what?

Two questions which the girl was thinking over the whole evening and a half of the night. Finally, she decided to prepare a formless agreement. She just took two pieces of paper and wrote that she would give her voice for Lucifer’s services.

Victoria decided to give her voice to The Lord of Hell. She couldn’t give her ear because she wanted to listen to tender words which Kharon would be whispering to her. To give her eyes was out of the question. Victoria was going crazy just because of looking at the man. She had nothing else of value.

The girl knocked out a simple agreement, pricked her finger and sealed her fingerprint with her blood. She read the text several times, calculated appropriate time to read the spell and three minutes to three am she switched off the light.

There was a burning candle in the middle of the room. There was a pentacle, symbolizing Lucifer and the agreement, enveloped in a thick cloth in the centre of a drawn equilateral cross.

Vic was very nervous, her body became clenched like the universe before big bang, looking forward to meeting the great person. Fear wasn’t far also. To call Lucifer to home and stay calm with no fear would be an impudent lie. If Vic could pretend that Morningstar were her childhood friend, then she couldn’t hide inner panic.

The girl finished reading the spell at three am sharp. She turned around. There was nobody at home. The last candle died out in a second and the room immersed into impenetrable darkness, lightened with barely visible night light from the window.

It was silence.

Vic seemed that an unfeeling wind and some shadows crawled across her room. Steps, a sigh… The girl was turning like a humming top seeking for the invited Lord…

Nobody appeared in ten minutes, in fifteen minutes and even in a half of an hour. Vitoria was alone in her room.

Within three hours, she tried to make the ritual, read the spells with different times and stresses, lighted and extinguished the candles. But nothing happened, nobody appeared. It was about 6 am. Vic was sitting on the floor and looking nowhere. She couldn’t no longer conceal that she was too upset and couldn’t hold back her tears. There was only one question: why didn’t he come? Then another one: what should she do to make him come?

Being depressed, crying, having a devastated hope, Vic was wiping away the pentacle from the floor, cleaning the wax traces, hiding the spell which didn’t work. She didn’t want her mother, holder of Habilitation degree in Medicine, to catch any little hint at something supernatural in her daughter’s room.

At 11 am Vic was awakened by the cell calling: Vasilisa was going to walk over the city and she wasn’t going to walk alone but with Victoria.

However hard the girl tried to refuse to walk, Vasilisa wasn’t going to get back off Vic and she had to agree.

The girl felt terribly bad, slept badly and broken. Only Kharon and all that connected to him lived in her head. Like a zombie, Vic, with half closed eyes, went to the bathroom to freshen up in some way. In a half of an hour Victoria appeared at Tverskaya Street, where Vasilisa had been waiting for her.

‘It’s been a long time and finally we’ve met!’ her friend began to speak loudly. ‘Vic, I’m so happy!’ she started embracing her friend in shock and with no stop to chatter eternally about her doings.

‘How did you pass, Vic? You didn’t tell yet!’

‘I got a good mark. There’s a project review left and I’m ready to work… My life has almost stopped. How’re your exams?’

‘Mine? I’m on thin ice. С is on C and C drives on them. But to tell the truth I don’t care. I want it to finish soon.’ Vasilisa closed her eyes. ‘I’m hungry, let’s go to eat something!’

Victoria shrugged her shoulders. She actually didn’t care where and with whom to go. Vasilisa noticed Vic’s indifference later.

‘Oh, don’t worry about it. He’s not the last man on the earth!’ suddenly Vasilisa said.

Victoria looked at her with blank stare.

‘Whom are you speaking about?’

She knew. Where from? The thoughts were running around in her head, awkwardness was coming closer and her consciousness was getting ashamed.

‘About Daniel, whom else! You’re not yourself after you broke up with him. You’re not that Vic that you were! You were energetic, you laughed and lived and now a pale-faced it is sitting before me. Forget him.’

‘Uh… Daniel has nothing to do with this. I didn’t think of him until you remembered that he actually was.’

‘Say it more often to yourself and you’ll really forget him.’

Victoria took a sigh. How was it possible to speak with people who didn’t hear you? They didn’t want to hear you.

‘Well, it seems you’re right…’ Vic thought of Kharon. ‘Maybe I better let him go.’

‘That’s right! You don’t need him! You’re ok now but you’ve been still moping. Vic, you can’t do this. I know what to love means and how it’s difficult when you’re not loved…’

“If you were, this conversation wouldn’t have taken place now…” Victoria bitterly smiled.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it over. But I haven’t tried all…’

‘What do you mean?’ Vasilisa glanced over her friend in surprise.

At that moment Vic understood that she had put her foot on it.

‘Nothing. What about your new boyfriend?’ to change topic that was Vic thought about.

Fortunately, Vasilisa was so ditz even inconsiderate that’s she quickly switched to a new line of topic, completely having forgotten about her friend.

Victoria didn’t listen to Vasilisa, her attention-getting exclamations and yelling. All she could think was why Lucifer hadn’t come? All had been done correct: agreement in any form, blood, seal, text… What had been wrong?

Vic started suspecting her being normal again. Maybe no Lucifer existed at all? Maybe she made up everything that happened to her?

In the evening, having told her mum a beautiful lie, creating a perfect illusion, Victoria went to her room. The door was locked, and all hell broke loose again: pentacles, candles, spells.

Victoria looked up and down all the books, internet and did everything that was written. But nothing happened. Nobody came. Why? Why not? Kharon did appear immediately even when he hadn’t been waited, he stuck into her heart and then he was sitting there and tearing it from inside. Why didn’t Lucifer come?

2

nd

September 2013 (Monday)

The days went by as weeks and months did. Victoria got her project review with an excellent mark and felt down completely in seeking for Lucifer. She looked very bad, she ate almost nothing, just drank, mostly strong coffee. Her eye pits were almost seen, coloured in black by weakness. Her red hair, her flecks once having resemblance to the Sun and giving warmth to others died out and grew dim.

For a long time, Victoria hadn’t slept well. She spent most of her nights for seeking for Lucifer. She tried to get him in any way and that was possible only at nights as all spells talked over.

In the mornings Vic had to pretend to be a healthy, sane person. Her mother was prudish and if she noticed that her daughter wasn’t sure in her own mental health, she would treat her.

Of course, at times when her mum was at work, Vic was sound asleep, setting up, but it wasn’t enough anyway.

In addition, she had to look for a job, to pretend that she was looking for it. Moreover, she had to pretend to live and rejoice that fact. To tell the truth when passion and love settled in heart and soul, the desire for living became almost impossible. Everything that had been done, heard and looked, turned into one continuous suffering.

‘Hi, Vic. Being up long?’ mother’s call was sometimes worse than fire.

‘An hour ago. Eating now. What’s the emergency?’ Vic asked, chewing a miserable cucumber.

‘I’ve forgotten papers on the table. See them? Can I ask you to bring it to me at work? I need them.’

‘Mum…’ Vic sighed.

Vic had planned her day different. She was going to some book stalls near the MRHW. She had no time to rush over hospitals.

‘What mum?’ a severe voice asked. ‘You have no interviews for today. I need those papers.’

‘Fine. Fine! I’m there in an hour and a half.’

‘I’m in       resuscitation department. Running the operation room.’

‘Ok, I got it. Order the pass for me.’

‘Already done. I’m waiting.’

Hating the whole world and most of all her mother forgetfulness, Victoria went to the hospital.

Vic hated hospitals and never understood how people could work there. The place was full of pain and desperation. People cried and begged there. A believe in supernatural was born and doctors’ help was forgotten instead. Too much suffering and worries. Her heart hurt too much looking at what was going on there.

Vic was going along the resuscitation department and there were ten or fifteen meters left to get the staffroom, when she heard a weak sound, a voice asking for something unintelligibly.

The girl turned to the open ward and from the first bed something strong got her by the hand. That was an old lady who had a healthy man grasp. Victoria was nervous, trying to free her hand, but the woman was holding it fast. Her whitish eyes, having no life in, pierced into the girl’s face.

‘You will take it. I chose you.’ The crone wheezed in a sepulchral whisper and squeezed her hand stronger, no matter stronger seemed impossible.

‘What’re you talking about? Let me go!’ Victoria was almost fighting with a “weak and ill” old lady.

The crone answered nothing. She lay back on the pillows, closed her eyes, kept on holding the hand.

‘You will take it…’ she repeated again and finally left the numb hand.

The old woman looked peacefully like if she had been sleeping and dreaming of something beautiful.

“Crazy bitch”, Victoria thought and ran out of the ward and made a little distance she turned out in the staffroom.

‘You’re fast’ her mum looked out of the case. ‘Vic, I’m really sorry but I gotta go, I have a planned surgery now. Leave the papers on the table, will you?’

‘No problem.’ The girl sighed in replay.

‘No offence?’ the woman stopped in the doorframe and looked at her daughter. ‘What’s up with you? Are you ill?’

‘No, I’m fine. I’m tired…a little.’

‘Damn it! The most terrible sound for any resuscitationist!’

They both heard an argute sound line, affronting the ear. Olga Vladimirovna jumped out of the staffroom, Victoria followed her.

In the same ward the peacefully sleeping old lady’s heart stopped beating and the apparatus rang about it through the whole department, calling for the doctors to resuscitate.

‘Defibrillator, epinephrine…’ the doctors cries, nurses were rushing near, answering all the orders.

Victoria leaned on the wall, looked and worried about the poor old lady.

‘Time of death is 7 past 7…’ she heard the sentence after that you exactly understood the deepest and, perhaps, the most heartless meaning of the phrase “that’s all”.

The old woman was connected from the apparatus, the data was being written and the doctors were upset.

‘Sveta, call her relatives, they have to call to Pathology lab…’ Vic’s mother ordered to the nurse.

‘Olga Vladimirovna, she had no relatives.’

‘No one?’ The doctor surprised.

‘No one. Then shall I do as usual?’

‘Yes.’ Olga Vladimirovna looked at her daughter, ‘you shouldn’t be here. Go home. I’ll be at home after dinner. Thanks for bringing the papers.’

The girl took a deep sigh, turned around and left. She was a little bit sad because her mother had made a doctor way in life and she still kept on doing it. It was clear, that she did it successfully and by now she gained a reputation of a God-given doctor. The only pity was that when people did their career, they couldn’t do their family at the same time.

Victoria came back home dropped off to sleep…

In the middle of the night, she opened her eyes and with no understanding why, she started whispering something in unknown language.

Ebenus, opprobrium, conticinium, lacrimose, venetum, abominamentum, reflabriventi, basiator, zodium, horripilato, perfluus, flammosus, universus, gloria, tabifluus, damnatio, martyrium, infidelitas, securitas, necrosis.

As she said the last word, the killing silence came. It was too silent so Victoria could hear her blood stream rushing inside. The breeze was blowing, also silent as well as everything was around. The girl was so much scared that her breathing almost stopped. You shouldn’t be a wiseman to understand that something was going wrong. When everything that had moved in chronical way, suddenly got frozen in a paralytic horror was strange at least.

Victoria was in her bed and kept her eyes wide open, looking at the ceiling, with no idea what was going on. She was afraid of even moving.

‘Within two months and a half…’ she heard a heavy man voice, throwing out imperturbable power.

Despite of its heaviness and powerfulness the voice was hypnotically attractive and so pleasant as if it had touched a back with silky flaps. One could listen to that voice for hours, could fall in love with it and lose mind. But Victoria, on top of every sweet feeling, had an animal fear: the voice had nothing to do with Kharon.

‘Yes, for two months and a half,’ the man confirmed, ‘I’ve been listening to you summoning me.’

Victoria finally pulled herself together and lifted up her head to look at the guest. The man silhouette was sitting at her computer table.

‘So, I am here!’ the man sharply bounced out of the chair and rushed to the scared to death girl. Victoria gave a start and covered herself with the blanket. A second silence and a laugh could be heard. The girl closed her eyes and whispered the same pray, the only one she knew.

‘That’s funny… “hallowed be thy name…”’

The voice was under her blanket. Victoria understood that it didn’t come under the cloth, but she was sure for 380 percent that whom voice belonged to, was with her under the blanket.

Victoria screamed with all her might, flew out of the bed and tried to run out of the room. Near the door in thick darkness she bumped into a tall man and fell with crash on the floor.

‘No, please!’ the girl closed her eyes, trying to calm down the starting hysteria.

She’d never been so scared in her entire life. Even that first time when Kharon came to her she hadn’t been scared so much.

Suddenly, through her closed eyes, Victoria felt the room getting lightened. It was not like during the day, but it wasn’t so dark that you could hardly see your hand before you.

Praying, crossing herself, begging not to touch her, Vic opened her eyes at her own risk. Too close to her face she saw a man face. In surprise she stepped back, asking her heart beating not so fast. The green-brown eyes with barely noticed burgundy were staring at her.

Victoria saw nothing but those terribly beautiful eyes. About two minutes later the girl dared to range her eyes round the guest: light-brown hair was on his eyes, scarcely noticeable squint, his lips were curled in an engaged smirk, straight nose like if it was artificial. His face was too ideal.

The stranger was burning the girl away with his heavy staring.

Victoria was silent, hypnotized by his piercing stare. The drop-in creature was silent, too, carefully examining the girl’s freckled face.

The man moved and Victoria shivered, before she could bat an eye his hand was touching her hear.

‘What an unusual ginger colour…’ he whispered seeing the strand of hair in his hand. ‘A setting of a dying sun… He was good to create such beauty… Why have you stopped whispering your funny pray?’