The Tallest Story Ever

Bookoff

_

02

First thing in the morning he had to rip-open his eyes. The past night left them filled with sand, not natural, but something like it, only finer. While under the cover, Bookoff began to scoop with his fingertips the weensy prickly fragments from out the corners of his eyes, brushed the crusty specks from in between the dozen of still remaining lashes, and drew their mass from under the eyelid flaps. An attempt at raising the eyelids brought up a burning sensation. The eyes resorted to tear secretion in self-defense, and Bookoff stumbled into the corridor, where he blindly turned right, to the shower room. He didn't lean onto the walls, but his hands just checked his location on the route.

The water from the tap woke him right off and washed his eyelids. And then in the course of the day winking his eyes was not over-painful.

In the middle of the most spacious room of the big house stood an old chair, turned away from the black oval table at which Bookoff ate from another chair. Always that way only. Such cunning course of action cancelled turning the central chair to the table and back.

The black oval of the large table-top was surrounded with four chairs but only the mentioned pair was put in use by Bookoff.

Because of its dimensions the room allowed for giving place to both the kitchen and the living room at once. The invisible frontier between the two evaded the clear-cut guess at its line. An inhabitant could decide it following their private preferences ast to what was what. Or according to their mood. One even could avoid the hassle altogether by calling the whole room “the kitchen” and that it was entirely. And if you named it “the living room” – so be it till your other moods. In short, whatever was the first to roll of the tongue. Anyway, the people who lived in the big house got it at once.

When of all the population in the house remained only Bookoff, he turned one of the chairs about without moving it away. The item that had lived thru half a dozen repairs, leaned its back against the black oval and became the part of the living-room. That’s where he always sat, waiting for the end of his stay in the room? In the house, and anywhere at all.

Before him, in the left corner from the window, there stood a rocking chair, which he never used. Getting seated or climbing out of it presented too many problems for him.

After finishing his meal, he accurately brushed the crumbs into a cupped hand from that part of the black oval he always ate at. Not that he could see them those crumbs, yet he knew they should be there. Then there remained nothing more to do, but to sit with his back to the table and the kitchen, that started across the border-line run over the table-top.

The motionless eyes in his head were directed to the green of the garden thru the wide window. The wind on the other side of the glass panes noiselessly moved the boughs and foliage in the apple trees, pear trees, and other plants habitually there, year after year. Bookoff’s eyes directed outside from the middle of the living-room couldn’t see what part in the mass of green belonged to which plant. Yet with his inner sight he clearly saw them as skinny saplings, and sometimes as trees waste-deep in snowdrifts, or in the white blossom canopy.

Besides those imaginary visions he could see little, he just kept to his chair seat, waiting.

The garden went on living its usual life separately from Bookoff, unassisted by him. It got filled with grass, dropping into it round-sided apples, yellow pears, feeding the black birds, the rippers of soft King-apples’ flesh innumerably hanging in all of their tree.

The stray dogs, who’s packs returned to feral way of life, tread shortcut paths in the grass for their wild needs. He had nothing to do with that. Not anymore. His intention was to reach what he was waiting for. Otherwise, it would get dark again making him to go to bed to find out which of his sides was less achy to lay on. And the next morning would introduce another day of that same waiting.

There was a hope, of course, to die in sleep. Yet Bookoff didn’t believe in being so lucky – the hell-bent bitch of life was too dogged.

Vasiok

_

03

My memory is flawless, which makes it so invaluable. Yep, I mean exactly that, it is just priceless, and no reservations. I easily can angle out of it the things unreachable for mediocre specimens from among the humans. Possessing such a faculty remains beyond the limits of a mere mortal.

For instance, I recollect the times when life consisted of just only pleasures. Some endless joy. An ocean of sweet bliss. The cozy warmth, illuminated with pleasant twilight, the ocean of affection, wherein I splashed together with my constant playmate – Serpent.

We were inseparable – me and my partner. We played, tumbled, fooled around, did everything together in a world created just for us, full of soft rosy twilight. The world of comfort and caressing care. Ah, if only so would go on and on…

But all is over, that world is lost, it’s no more there. The harbinger of the world end became the terrible, powerful tremors that shook it time after time. The prior epitome of pleasure, it turned hostile, aggressive, started to constrict me, as if preparing to strangle. A caustic poison spilled all over the ocean, unbearable, deadly, threatening to annihilate all life.

Seized with a horrid panic, my whole body a-shiver, like a school of fish caught in a net, I struggled for my life, kept looking for deliverance, some way of escaping this painful horror.

A never seen, raw, coarse light at the end of the appearing tunnel seemed a salvage, some chance to give a slip to this poisonous trap. The narrowing walls in the passage were squeezing my head so too tightly, but I continued to struggle for life, pushed thru and further, thru and further, pressing ahead striving only forward…

I was delivered into hands covered with overthin slippery rubber. And those very hands – OMG! – clipped off my partner, who, as it turned out, was part of me! I hollered, and the first air intake inundated my whole lungs.

O, yes, I remember all…

And I didn’t forget what happened in half a year. It was dark late night about. Mom and I were lying on a dealboard bed. The yellow light entered thru the doorway from the next room to stick still up into the ceiling. Mom was asleep, while I sucked her tit with rapture. It was my favorite pastime, and I did it whenever I felt like that, which happened pretty often. I liked the taste of her homemade milk< but even more enjoyed I the yielding nipple of her warm tit.

The rubber covered hands scooped me away from Mom and her tit. I was ready to cry at the top of my lungs, but suddenly my mouth got filled with yielding rubber somehow reminiscent of her tit. My gums squished the tasteless counterfeit, and I withheld crying…

‘The boy will make a good Janissary,’ said a voice above my head. The sound was screechy, like rubbing rubber gloves against each other. ‘How are you going to baptize the brat, Doc?’

‘Nothing to rack one’s brains about. The regulation is short and clear – to use the date. “March, 7” goes for “0-7th Marchiuk. “April, 1” becomes “0-1st Aprilian”, and so on,’ replied someone calmly from the immobile yellow light.

And then I never saw my Mom. Never again…

Bookoff

_

03

In his past lives, where he was a growing kid, a fair youth, a dextrous man, Bookoff did not have a body. Well, that is, he never noticed it. His responsibility was only deciding: where to get, what to take, to hoist, to tump, and so on, realization of plans was his body’s business.

Now everything, was turned over. His body became his jail, the of incarceration cell. He served his time under an extremely strict regime with the freedom of movement limited to the utmost. An abrupt sway, a sharp turn, or a too deep tilt were punished on the spot, severely.

In general, his body was holding him in an iron grip now. And though he behaved, it constantly tormented him with pain even for doing nothing wrong. It ached from the feet up to the small bones in the neck.

The body was taking its revenge for the callous exploitation in the past life. Get your payback, please, from the completely destroyed musculoskeletal system.

He endured – nothing doing, although, to quote a famous comedian from Hollywood – he had never signed for such a treatment. And the old movie star, after his sage statement, all of a sudden married. Probably, he wanted to drive the wedge of aging out with another wedge, the one which stimulated most, when the actor was a young man.

His fortune after a prolonged successful career on the silver screen also allowed for the stunt. However, before the honeymoon end, presenting no explanations to no one, nor even to his young wife, he hanged himself at his estate. Like, saying, sorry for the slipup, babe.

The cute guy forgot to take into account that incentive stimuli also have an expiration date. The omission left his young life partner alone and inconsolable, right? Well, she knows better…

Under the yoke of his eternally aching body, Bookoff turned into a stern, unyielding old man. He didn’t resort to the services of noose though, didn’t dance jig in it to entertain idle jeerers. Nope, M’am, that’s not like him. A sheer neatlessness it would be, and turning a laughing-stock for do-littles.

No, he simply switched to the mode of waiting for a natural demise and, in stern silence, dragged his pains on…

Vasiok

_

04

The passport dropped by Petyikka Tractor into the side pocket of my jacket, in spite of the silly fashion flap, did prove it was alright. Not even half a blip chirped at passing the boarding control for the flight 0244.

However, what’s next? In a couple of hours I smoothly arrive by this here stagecoach, made of the best of the best duralumin in the market, into a block-lettered TLV, marked as my destination. Hippity-hip (3) hooray, (2) chears, and (1) wow!

But – what then? No safe-house, nor contacts, neither cell phone. Not even a mission assigned! Seems like the Center went jogging after the March Hare or sniffing flowers together with that nifty railway carriage in gaily blue paint coat.

And here am I stepping out onto the gangway to suck in, with all my chest width, my just share of smog endemic to the TLV atmosphere: well, hello, my pleasure, TLV bro! May call me Senia Nulin! Where’s the nearest municipal garbage bin? I’m pretty hungry, you know…

Okay, come what may. As my last resort I can always start a career of bouncer in any bar of murky repute. From Tractor’s clue, I’m 0-7th, which implies being trained in at least some judo or aikido. The martial art details are still evading after the slumber in a bench stall, but no worry! I surely can rely upon the body memory. The stock of reactions stored in it are screaming for a tone-up! So I hope… All those deadly dodger tricks honed to automatism needful for a special agent at special missions, und so weiter…

Geez! What kind of automatism have I blurted right now out? The special trainer in special aikido arrived in our special Academy from Bad Bibra, Germany, and there’s no doubt about it.

Ho-ho! Just stumbled at another of my assets. May come handy. When in need, I always can pick up the position of a teacher of German in this or that eine schule.

He’s a good guy, Petyikka is, though under-educated to a certain degree. Never reads anything but comics. Fills his gray matter with only “Khrumps!”, “Bzdyntz!”, “Pizzzz!” and all that jazz. Yet, well schooled in terms of polite manners. Never forgets to add my honorific patronimic after my first name: “Vassilly Ivvahnych! Take your shit stompers off! The foocking floors’ve been presently washed up! It is a special hostel for foocking special agents here and not a drifters’ den.”

Wow! They’ve started the best part in any flight – the demonstrative show by flight attendant gymnasts. Teaching the technique of puffing your life jacket up if drowning in the Sahara sands. What the hell! Which language do they use for the PA instructions? It sounds like some Zulu variant of English. Shucks! My special lingo instructors schooled me mostly for the Oxfordian dialect of Britons.

‘It’s Middle English, young man, the Northumbrian dialect of it before the reduction of adjective-verbal inflections on the eve of the Great Vowel Shift.’

I glanced at my fellow traveler to the left, in between me and the porthole, and got fu_ fully, I mean, shocked… fully, and unquenchably to the highest degree of comparison.

[–]

Most Briton-Oxfordians use mostly “most” for the purpose…

[–]

Yet, I was lucky, and the safety belt, already fastened for takeoff, withstood the crazy force of my involuntary jerk in an attempt to jet off to I don’t know where just to be away from that… well… ghoulie, shaitan, werewolf, troll or whatever the hell it was…

A barrel within a sweater was sitting next to me. The abundant stream of salt-and-pepper beard disappeared into the low-cut. However, not tacked in tight enough, it left a circular hair fold beneath his mug, a kinda nappy napkin or, sooner, a neglected Ruff collar around the neck of a bum aristocrat from the end of the Reconquista period. Which impression was immediately upheld by the flaming hew of alcoholic origin in his face.

In fact, of the whole face there remained only saggy-lidded eyes on the show framed with shaggy eyebrows and a gray tousled mane. The balaklava-hat-like opening in the hair around the bird’s eyes contained also a pug nose of a lively monochrome color.

As for the beard, it was obviously looking for adventures – the end, or rather the rest of it, sticking out from under the edge of his sweater stretched on the protrusion of his belly, crawled on between his jean-clad thighs to somewhere else under the seat. How does he tame it, when facing a urinal in the restroom, that jerk?!

‘Ghoulan Jerkych Uncleton-Blackseasky, an expert in Linguo-Mystics. I take the liberty of introducing myself, so as to avoid unnecessary irremedial cases.’

‘Nom de guerre, 0-… Ahem… that is… How have guessed I don’t know about the Great Shift?’

‘No sweat at all. Everything is written, Vassia, in your face. It wouldn't be a bad idea to somehow screen the stupid bazaar-rap within your head, so as not to traumatize the decent public with naked text. Why not to grow a beard, like a more intelligent sapiens’? I mean, if you’re not looking for extra problems and a bumper short circuit across a not too long lifespan, already. Here, take a look at your stark naked thought-texting!’

The thick blunt fingers dived into the hair-stream beneath the Ruff hair-collar. His move triggered off the reflexive stance of my body, trained to snap trap a pistol with a silencer pointed at my face. Come on, bastard! I’m ready!

However, from his hair-covered bosom, the fellow traveler jerked out a circular mirror, whose mercury gloss bore a sharp-angled zigzag crack, and thrust the whole contraption under my nose.

‘Easy, you kooky windmill… Wow! So that's me? Well, hello there, Vassilly,’ streamed down my reflected cheeks toward the hung jaw before flawing into my mouth open like widely amazed “O”.

Luckily, the textual flow did not glow in the manner of light-up running ads luring film-goers to a forthcoming blockbuster. The letters sooner resembled shadowy rows of insects, trotting, yet not breaking their formation, into the grotto… Oh, damn! I mean the mouth which I hurriedly slammed shut.

However, the shadow theater did not stop. The critters switched over to running over my cheeks in circles. While the most vulgar words floated leisurely across my forehead, from temple to temple. Like in the ribbon of a kamikaze on his last visit to a geisha’s house. It's free for him. Paid by the state at war. His last time on the dry land. The next orgasm against the starboard of an aircraft carrier…

‘See? Got it now, young man? Lucky you, it's written in Etruscan, which is unreadable to the untrained eye. Except for the swear words in the forehead, one's roots are sacred; they can't be masked.’

He grabbed the mirror back and drowned it under the waves in the streaming beard.

Full of dull disbelief, I once again ran thru the pockets in my jeans and jacket checked too many times for one day. They were as empty as expected.

Only the left inside pocket contained 2 items: the passport; the ticket. The rest of containers beggarly queuing in the dole line. Frantic plans of buying a nose-rag at the first antique shop I came across rode a jerky carousel in my head.

Oh, yes! Hiding the face! Like an under-liberated Orient woman. Beneath the burka or inside the anti-Covid muzzle propagated by WHO the prostitute (nothing in common with the famous band). Finding a hanky became as problematic as zeroing on holy grail these days. The global community has switched over to paper tissues; even the zoo inmate primates gave up blowing their noses into anything shorter than Scarlet and Cleopatra's Nest. For the wind to have something to blow playfully away…

Meanwhile, the rubber in the landing gear tires rattled dryly over the concrete runway, and the Airbus took off. There started the nastiest stage in any flight: the climb. A gigantic swing carried me forward and upward, irrevocably, to hurl into the following lap there ready for the next climb.

It’s when the body's memory went loose in unwelcome recollections. How motion-sick it had been in my early childhood. Just an hour's train ride along the smooth iron rails was enough to turn it into a non-transportable sack of sickness.

Dry land rats are not denied a chance to get see-sick too.

Antihistamines and anticholinergics don't work on me. Yes, I could fly in synchronous autonomy mode, plunged in a flight of my own, strapped to my seat just to conform to the environs, because of my inborn politeness. Yet, the Center got into a mean habit of having express blood tests zeroed in on substances in the inner world of the special employees.

The dearest care, of course, for those who managed to come back alive after a field job. Or from a vacation.

Only total wankers could come up with such a mean thing.

For that reason I ward off the nausea with a remedy demanding a bit of individual customization. My home-made invention substitutes for imported analogue goods. Keeps you afloat, when overseas buccaneers brandish their cutlasses of sanctions at this here side stiletto sporting pirates… The objective is not to let the bitchy nausea realize I even feel it.

Through the entire relay race of climbs replacing each other after the takeoff of flying machine, I sit keeping a blank kisser referred to among professional preference players as “frying-pan”.

Even when your ears feel plugged no one would guess about your current state. A nice side effect bonus for your gambling addiction. After learn to sit tight and keep the appearance of a dead insect letting no one know what a crappy hand was dealt to you.

Now, coming back to the bloody body memory, I block it out with a fixed gaze at anything in the surroundings. Anything at all. That black dot on the endless ceiling light stretched endlessly tail-to-nose in the airliner’s passenger cabin above the travelers’ heads, would also do.

The engine hum floats following a sine wave shape: from infra-roar to ultra-squeal in the half-plugged ears. At any rate, the dammed off hearing average is not above 92 %. That doesn’t matter much when having this here pretty dot, which I’m staring at to keep on the safe side.

Gimme me a single dot plus a foothold, and all the world wouldn’t turn my stomach. Go fly a kite, nausea-bringing climbs and swings! I hold on bravely, like Icarus in his famous test flight…

For Petyikka’s sake! But that's not cricket. No! It’s a darn mean low blow. My supporter dot moved suddenly and went into crawling spirals. Oh, dang it! That was a fly all the way! Son of a bitch fly… Freak you! Freak you! Cheater fly!

Without the dot to fix my stare at, I'm forced to change the strategy, to retreat and take defense position in a deep trench of meditations on the unloyal dot, aka fly.

The trick isn't new, but it just works. And I don't know why. I haven't yet Googled properly to get a clearer idea – what the heck meditation is. Still, I've cutely noticed that anchoring your thoughts to some object helps. Even if you concentrate on a spiraling travel fellow fly, though in essence it’s a stowaway, more of a jumper than a fly.

Without a ticket, ignoring any registration, it trots the globe, from one end of the world to the other. Today it's buzzing by the heap of melon rinds in an Oriental bazaar, tomorrow enjoying the cool breeze from Scandinavian fjords. On Wednesday, it’s on a date with the Times Square flies in New York, then off it is to the straight-jacketed, toeing the orthodox line Talibanstan to lay there its godless eggs on the sly.

Along the way, it pulls off any prank popping to its mini brains. Right now, if you please, the cocky fly switched over to flying in circles within the straight-line-moving airliner. And that presents such a mess of relativity that Einstein himself would hardly puzzle it out. The fly’s aerobatics combined with the plane’s zipping thru the skies…

Shplumbzz!

All of a sudden, like jack-in-the-box, an old hag from across the aisle darted up in the manner of a surface-to-air missile. Her uniform – a gray, straight-cut, sleeveless dress (!) – modeled to increase the range of missiles effective radius.

My meditation crashed into pieces, the deep trenched defense’s gone. Just a single slap, and the hit fly corkscrews downwards under the heart-rending howl of the fly’s engines. Here you are – another Junkers downed by a Spitfire machine guns,

[–]

M1919 Browning, special modification for the .303 caliber used by the British RAF.

[–]

but I can't hear the falling Junkers with my plugged ears – our airbus continues to gain altitude.

The air defense missile specialist proudly stroked her bob haircut helmet, henna camouflaged with deep, dark copper color. The wretched dot plopped to the floor, kicking her right hind paw. Could the fly still wake up?

But no way! Vain are all hopes. The wide as the tracks of Mark I,

[–]

that lovely unforgettable hunk of metal that was the first to iron out the battlefields in the world slaughterhouse number one

[–]

heel on an-like- endless, like by a basketballer, foot of the flight attendant clanged on the floor squish-ending the fly's final agony.

A control stamp in passing, like a control shot in the brow, is a humanitarian act of mercy.

Game over. The bitchy insect’s flights are done with. No more smuggling of subversive eggs that inspire dissenters and threaten the very foundation of police states.

The balled fist crowns the arm, triumphantly thrust high into the air; the wrinkly tight skin, alike both to old parchment and dried date rind wrap the gesture of the witch-winner . She withdraws to her firing position behind the rows of seat backs across the passageway.

‘Good job, Nemesis,’ mutters Uncleton-Blackseasky. ‘Fit as a fiddle, the Kuril archipelago population have all the right to be proud of islanders like you!’ The visible bit of his countenance shined from under his shaggy eyebrows hanging over his face with the sham delight of a bootlicker.

My ears don’t feel like plugged any more. It seems our celestial craft has climbed at last the altitude assigned for its air corridor, and we've settled into cruising speed.

‘My respect, Chronosovna!’ He still went on with his unaddressed praises.

To whom? About what? I wondered. There were just three of us there: the praiser, me, and the porthole, but none of us female.

‘The interception, I mean,’ explained the Linguo-Mystic, without waiting for me to repeat my questions aloud. ‘Clean job, two moves – snap! – and the bastard's gone. As the whore nonnarias at Colosseum used to say: “Do ut des,” meaning, “give it to me, and you'll get me"’.

‘You mean, she's a prostitute or something?’ I didn't get it. ‘That jumping old junk? Or are you talking about the flight attendant?’

‘Shut your yap!’ Hissed the fellow traveler, without moving a hair about his lips, ‘And pray to the immortals she’ll never know about your brainless sputter. Otherwise, it'll be the end of both the one who blurted it out and everybody else been within the earshot.’