The Tallest Story Ever

I could respond with just a shrug – damn lucky, I was flying with a lunatic on his run from the madhouse. However, I shrugged with only my right shoulder, saving the left one for judo, which I couldn't recollect, even at that moment: my neighbor wasn't just crazy, he was barking mad.

A barrel-shaped, sweater-clad torso rolled in abrupt jerks to and fro across the seat next to me. The eyes in the hairless quarter of the face kept firmly closed. Something like a death mask made of crimson plaster span in counter direction to the barrel, emitting senseless cries:

‘Chronosovna, please! Come on, Okeanovna! Don't! I and your dad… Even with both of your dads… It's not my fault! A random ticket from the box office… Seeing this half-wit, for the first time in my life… Fate was bribed!’ He started shrill shrieks, his eyes still shut, then grabbed the roots of the beard oozing from his scarlet cheeks and howled in a register inaccessible to human vocal cords. ‘No! Anything but that!’

My ears felt plugged again. The roar of the turbine engines outside the Boeing interior swayed to the squeal of circular saws. Gigantic ones. Rasping shrilly, at times in unison, then each one at its own pitch.

The worst news though the sways of immense swing were back. However, this time in reverse: back and down, back and down… And faster with each sway…

The Boeing obviously fell out of the flight allocated corridor…

Bookoff

_

04

A shadow from the other side of the window pane flitted across the iris of Bookoff's frozen gaze. His eyes, on this side of the pane, blinked, losing their stillness. He fell out of being a part in the old chair. He winked.

Bookoff missed catching what exactly had interrupted his furniturized state. The twinkle had been too brief for the flank of a cloud to accidentally touch the sun's disk. However, its duration overshot that of a random hoopoe flight, their family were the largest birds that had taken up residence in the neglected garden.

Possibly, another of the measurement visits by civilian citizens of the state that had won the upper hand in the hang-fire armed conflict.

Leaning forward, Bookoff planted his hands upon his knees and helped his body get up from the sitting position. On leaving the kitchen, aka living-room, he turned right, toward the door leading into the garden, where from the tour group – the real estate appraisers – would come in to wander around the big house. He didn't care, but it was still unpleasant. It would be better they wait until it’ll happen, what he waited for.

His ears were bursting with a noise that only Bookoff could hear. They'd got plugged from the morning, and he'd be half-deaf all day long, carrying the ringing hum within his ears. Bookoff didn't beef of it before anyone, like of everything else. And had he even someone to complain to, he wouldn't. What’s the use?

The fact of the outside span about the backdoor being paved with fragments of marble tiles had to be known beforehand and kept in mind. Tufts of tall weeds, breaking through the seams between irregular pieces of divers thickness hid it with their lavish growth. A stray throwaway piece of paper dropped by the wind lingered atop a goose-foot stalk to the right of the door.

Bookoff didn’t know why he took those three steps to the throwaway. Of course, it was not a premeditated move, just an instance of mistake resulting from absent-mindedness which no one was there to blame for.

The steps were taken not by Bookoff from the past life, but by the old man with his head half-switched-off in endless waithing. However, the body used to serve Bookoff, the knit-picking Bookoff, tilted and reached for the paper piece to take the trash from before the door to the trash bag in the kitchen.

Pain sliced sharply across the spine of both Bookoffs: the neatness upholder and the absent-minded ruin.

[–]

Absence of guilt does not exclude punishment. Especially for those immediately nearby the scene of wrongdoing. And it does not matter aware or otherwise they were then. Bad luck, Mrs. Surratt, yes, you were in the kitchen and the conspirators in the living-room, yet, the gallows at ready, the pablic a-waiting for the show, follow the hangman, please…

[–]

Bookoff and his state of waiting broke up. He was rudely woken up. And his body simply fell to its knees. A reflex, triggered by the fall, thrust his hand forward, toward the thick rebar pole, to grasp it. The knees didn't reach the marble rubble under the grass. The man froze in a semi-squat, waiting for the wave of pain to whoosh off.

The pain did not subside, and Bookoff began to carefully straighten up his back. The muscles in his strained arm helped the knees to heave the body…

The pole had been planted by Bookoff many years ago. Driven into the ground at the request of his wife. Next to a bush of climbing roses. Though the plant hardly deserved to be named a bush – just a trinity of grass blades stuck out of the dirt.. The support looked an overkill for them.. Bookoff said, ‘For their future grows, I’ve got no other darn thing to hammer in.’

Now a mesh of wiry stalks braided the iron pole up to the top. From there, hanging from the attached linen cable, a gigantic openwork tube of lacy walls braided of impenetrable twigs and leaves reached the next support. In how many years it followed the first one, Bookoff could no longer remember.

Still later, along the following steely cable, the tube crawled farther, around the corner of the big house to where it had its blind wall of no windows.

In summertime, for half a week, small roses of tenderest shades set the openwork of interwoven stems abloom. It created the effect of a rozy cloud whiff puffed out across the garden at about 2 m height from the vegetable beds.

In those weeks, even the boor knit-picker happened to stop on a paved (in those days cleared of weeds) marble span, and murmur under his nose, who knows who to and what about: "Well, sure"…

The remaining 350 days, he simply tolerated the openwork model of a prehistoric anaconda in the backyard, and annually trimmed its scales with garden shears. When reminded by his wife, it should be done…

The ungrateful plant scratched his hands, but he didn't want to spend on welding gloves for a couple of days a year. Besides, the shears were unWhieldy for thickly gloved hands…

Bookoff finally straightened up. He took his hand off the rebar pole.

‘Age brings no joy, eh? Old man?’

Those two were not appraicers. Both in light shirts with short sleeves. The one with a big stomach wore even a necktie, plus rimless cheaters.

Apparently, they descended into the garden by the side stairs from the gate, along the blind wall.

Without a wince, Bookoff indifferently plucked a flat thorn from his palm. Crooked like a guirza viper's tooth, it was green. One of the mature stems had turned up under his hand as he was grabbing the rebar.

He dropped into the grass the souvenir from the bush. The blood from his hand was wiped off with the piece of paper he still managed to collect while standing up. The smeared, crumpled throwaway was stuffed into the hip pocket in his jeans. Then Bookoff answered to the fat-guts with the nasty rasp of his voice, which had long since got unused to speaking.

‘Live on and check it. If not burst with fat on the way’.

"You old stump! You don't know who you're yapping at!" Yelled the one without much of a belly, but whose beefy arms bulged out of his shirt sleeves, the bullish neck started all at once from the shaved back of his head.

Bookoff sighed slowly through his nose, but continued to stare at the fat man. He'd silently endured the kid's antics at the supermarket – that was the winner's territory, but here, albeit neglected, was his garden. The civilian appraisers had behaved with restraint here; it was obvious the man had invested his life in these six hundred square meters and the roughly built, yet big house.

‘Call your dog off,’ screeched he.

‘Well, bastard, that was the last of your…’ exploded the muscleman.

‘Оghrush!’ tamed him with a master’s air the tie-dandied fatty, ‘I am who does the talking here. Better go polish your steering wheel, we're leaving soon.’

Left alone with Bookoff, the fat man asked:

‘Are you alone in the house? Was there a man asking for a hideout? An eye-missing man?’

‘I’m bored to death with all of you,’ Bookoff replied listlessly. ‘Both with or without eyes.’

He turned toward the backdoor, but by the time he reached it, the nudnick in cheaters had already disappeared around the corner, from where started the side stairs along the blind wall, leading up to the dead-end lane beyond the gate.

Bookoff returned to his chair in the living room to his waiting.

Vasiok

_

05

The rubber clad hands that kidnapped me off the dealboard bed moved no longer. The squeaky voice had also fallen silent. It was comfortable enough to lie there, but I didn't feel like sleeping and opened my eyes.

No, my memory didn't fail me. Not even by half a micron. The back of my economy class seat holds me in that very position as the anonymous hands years ago after separating me from my mother. Once and for all.

Now, having since long been big and strong, I lie on my back at the exactly same angle to the absolute horizontal that everyone feels even with their eyes shut.

Yes, of course, the angle’s matched perfectly, which is probably why I feel the whiff of sterile, slippery scent of alien hands. The back of my head is 2.5 cm higher than my tailbone, just like it was that midnight hour, although everything else not exactly… Yep, the surroundings have changed drastically.

There remains nothing of the yellow swath in the dark ceiling, painted with the light from the table lamp in the next room. Instead, I have a visual impression of a well mouth magnified to a much wider circle plumb upward above my face.

The night sky peers in thru it, hung with ample festoons of stars aglimmer. I can't recall any like them; by the size they surpass any of those stored in the casket of my long-term memory, LTM. And they're not like pin-pricks or dots winking leerily, but sooner resembled smallish balls of yarn, or glossy billiard balls affixed to outline contours of constellations never seen. A kinda vinaigrette of gleaming combinations spread over velvet brick-red space.

[–]

Vincent, a multiple world champion in carom, lowers the well-worn butt of his cue, while the Dutch challenger van Gogh carefully rubs in rosins in the end of his…

[–]

Clews of dissimilar starlight shimmer in the wide well mouth above. Where did flight 0244 ZRH TLV take me? How? And why?

Once again, I’ve rammed into a mound of unanswerable questions. Whoosh! Like a pod of whales in some lost latitudes, with noisy snorts, splash-breaks to the surface, blows up a-cackling sprays. The calm of the latitudes is broken, stirred, tossed with unexpected currents in the whirled surface.

What's the point? No answer… Silence is the only response to them…

Inhale as deep as will keep your lungs, bro whale, and dive back into the sea abyss. The program laid out for you and your kin by Creator remains precise and clear: graze, graze, and graze some more of top-tier plankton brimming with beneficial effect on proliferation. I'd eat it myself, were I not busy to so extreme an extent – there's so much more else to do!

No answer again? So be it. Even the silence of a soundproof chamber won't frighten me anymore. Besides, from plentiful experience, I’ve long since learned – you'll jolly well find a comprehensive answer you seek. And that's a 100 % fact. Perk up, don’t get crest-fallen, spare no selfless efforts. Never give in and sooner or later you'll find the answer! Of which you’ll bitterly regret. As always.

Yes, the answers pop up inevitably, provided you’ve wiped off your worldview and mental makeup the trite, obnoxious, irrational, and opportunistic formula: “Why the hell did I even need it?”

Of course, no one is immune from creepy trends in their private life. Especially those, who’ve ever tasted Petyikka's fish soup. However, posing the question in such a way deviates from honest logic. The answer implicitly sits in the first argument. "Bitchy cheating and freeloading," Petyikka would say.

Whereas, if you adhere to the rules of building syllogistically balanced statements, you come to the unequivocal conclusion that the pop-up pod of marine mammals to represent "hows?", "whys?", and other question words is the evidence of seriously weak short-term memory, STM. More evidently, when compared to its counterpart, LTM, retaining both feeding tits, and the umbilical cord, and the light at the end of the tunnel, preferably not within it (you don’t care for a rendezvous with a hungry primeval tribe, right?) but from the outside.

However, I don't see any particular problem here. In 20 years, which stretch inevitably turns into STM into LTM, I'll recollect everything – ha! my long-term memory always was the second to none. And then I'll know in minute detail what happened there, in the passanger cabin of the flight 0244, under the screech of circular saws…

And also, why and how the airliner got squatted in penguin-like attitude, tail down… And where – donnerwetter! – had half the fuselage gone, together with the nose and the crew cockpit?

Quite a lot of things I would have asked my STM about, whose testimony breaks off at the moment filled with the screech of circular saws along the backward swaying of the Airbus, tail-first and dropping down like a sack of hammers.

Yet, as said, it’ll take another 20 years for STM to fully mature and swap its S to L in the anti-alphabetical sequence STM → LTM.

For someone, it's "O-o! 20 years!", while for some other one, it's "Ha! 20 years!" All depends on your precise location. If your short-term memory has just waved after your spaceship at the launching pad, then, traveling at the speed of light, you won't even notice your separation with STM. But when, the space voyage at the cruising speed of 300,000 km/sec is taken not by you but by your STM, that's a different kettle of fish. The roles are swapped, as well as the locations.

You're scrolling through the entire twenty-year stretch in slow motion, from jingle-in to jingle-out. Yeah, bro…

And you may safely throw all your backup "plan B’s" on the scrap heap. They’re useless trash, when from a shitty yet partly understandable situation you land into a planetarium of strange stars.

The tour guide is off work, so there's no one to introduce us, and I, as a refined gentleman and impeccable, in my opinion, personality don't pester strangers with queer inquiries until they give a wink. They do seem to be winking, but, unfamiliar with the rules and criminal etiquette at this little joint, I am not particularly keen on looking like a slob in their opinion.

More so since the night sky hue remains firmly stalled in the orange-reddish range of the spectrum. And that quite possibly, goes for "whoa!" signal in terms of aboriginal astrology.

In short, if you suddenly find yourself flat out (no matter what's underneath you: mats, tatami mats, or the synthetic upholstery in an economy-class passenger seat), the best course of action is to relax and obtain as deep satisfaction as possible. At least from the depths of your LTM casket, since no trace of STM is there…

The twinkling starlight tempts to meditate on other tits that became frequently available after the puberty completion, when milk determined their attraction no more. The present situation prompts to audit the deposits in LTM… while stretching on my back… No, not what some sad sack could have imagined but hands off. Moreover, since the treasures out there stay ghostly intangible. And that’s a shame, really – such a wonderful illumination wasted to no gains.

Glancing at the wordless though generously promising kaleidoscope, I felt eager to share my impressions. My head turned to the left, until the same side ear pressed against the faux leather seat back.

Nope. Uncleton-Blackseasky was clearly not the type to let himself be pinned. He simply slid away from that defeated stance. However, the back of his seat is far from being empty. A vague resemblance of a pail made of, half a dozen coiled rope rows. The coils rise around a dark, hole in between of the pail’s walls built up from that same rope spirals wound upon each other.

The rope pop art bears an aspect of a bucket belonging to a long-established group of fishing enthusiasts.

[–]

Bucket, considered as an object, is a sure sign of a cohesive fishing group, and also a hint at their rich collective history. Myths, tales, and endless group yarn might spin forever. But unless you're Brothers Grimm engaged in the field of folkloric exhumation, then the practical side of the matter – specifics about the bucket – is, of course, more important and dear to you.

Now, the object is used when cooking fish soup for all their legendary shobla-vobla mob. Noteworthy that plastic or tin bucket can't withstand the heated courtship of fire, its licking tongues also combined into grouped flames.

That's why experienced fishermen cook their fish soup in a cauldron: cast iron one stays the constant choice of seasoned fishermen, copper would do for novice wet behind their ears, and an aluminum thing is for the complete idiots…

But let's get to the recipe!

The first stuffing to put into a water-filled cauldron are small fish no larger than a middle finger, which is also a handy tool used to gut the catch. Once the boiling has reduced the small fish to flakes, the broth is strained into a group bucket (yes, the legendary one), then poured back into the turf rinsed cauldron: cast iron, copper, or aluminum, depending on the status of a particular group.

The broth is touching stone of the fish soup perfection, namely, by the stickiness of it. (Firm adhesion is the key to the cohesion of anything.)

The broth glueyness is readily enhanced by adding chunks of larger fish.

The over-boiled ide-carp-perch-&-Co are simply scooped away (attentive cooks have already figured out what into and how far). The mentioned carp-at-al. ingredients are ousted from the cauldron to be replaced with sliced carrots, onions cut up to half-rings, black peppercorns, and salt to taste.

For the next half hour, make sure the licking fire doesn't get overly excited under the cauldron hanging above it. Let the brew simmer tamely, without excessive splashes or scenes of ecstasy…

And finally, the most crucial stage in the process – the concluding 30 minutes, when the cauldron cools off on the ground, and the fish soup pricks its ears to the tall stories the men around it know by heart already.

And… (the timpani roll, the lid is off, the fish soup sniffed at from all the quarters) – Enjoy!

[–]

However fleeting, my glance did notice a certain hairiness in the walls of the pail-shaped contraption. The hoary growth didn't allow me to classify the coiled boa constrictor as a subspecies of Jungle Kaa Kiplinganus. (The scruples of a self-made scientist, you know.)

No, it rather looked like… Ha! I recognized the beards of Uncleton + Blackseasky, none of who was anywhere near there.

A thin leather strap interweaves the salt-and-pepper curly coils to form the round walls, whose rim is fixed with that same strap bearing a plastic suitcase handle.

The trick of the fakir-faker exposed! The bugger obviously After pulling his beard down under his sweater, and letting the end, exit at about his crotch, the bugger pleated a kinda travel bundle to haul around as carry-on luggage. Like, here's my ticket, please, but this is just a bag woven from a piece of hoary Manila rope. Handmade, by the by. A note to those willing to support third-world manufacturers.

What's more, the beard is removable! After all, going thru boarding security, baggage and passengers are scanned separately. And once on the Airbus, he slips his contraband under the seat and perches on it like a hoopoe on the spotty eggs. Oh, what a cunning beaver! And a very strange fellow indeed, this Middle English Lingo-Mystic.

Alerted by the deductive discovery, I involuntarily listened up, just in case. A steady ticking sound came from the hairy nest. The stars, above the well-mouth hole left by the missing part of the fuselage, wide opened their multicolored eyes framed with the tangled fuzzy prominences in their crowns.

0-7th’s reflexes, honed by endless special training for impossible special missions, told me at once: ‘Vasya, it's better get going!’

Tearing off the steel buckle of my seat belt, I darted upward in crazy leaps of a panicked chimpanzee. Without any safety cords or vines, to and fro across the aisle, zigzagging thru the air from a slippery armrest to a seat back in the otherwise side…

In an eye-blink, I sprinted outa the well mouth onto the thin-lipped orifice produced by the transverse section of the giant fuselage tube.

Oh wow! It's not an only well here! A similar tube pressed affectionately to the one whose orifice I erupted thru. The nose part of the airliner, cut off by the cross-section, stretched vertically downwards fringed with its duralumin rim like a bottomless well, revealing the back view of the cramped, diminishing rows of passenger seats, empty and silent.

The situation left no time for a detailed study of the perspective to the bottom of the gloomy tube. There wasn't even time to ponder more deeply the incredible discovery of ultra-short-term memory, USTM (!), made just a moment ago.

Eureko! Memory has three types! Who would have thought… But no… The ominous "tick-tock!" sounds incessantly in my ears. The bloody reflexes tripped my mind. Prevented grasping in full the epochal significance of the USTM discovery. Yet, who, if not the ultra-short-term memory, drives and spurs me to further the armrests jumping, down, and down, and down… . And even in the business class parts, there's no safety cords, not a single vine in view…

Through the overhead hatch for emergency escape of pilots from the cockpit, I hung out at arm's length and unleashed the grasp of my fingers to pass over into free fall. The flat surface, barely touched by the nose of the airliner, looked thru the hatch so close.

The moment, when my shoes’ soles made contact with the surface, the trained body flawlessly fell on its side, and a split-second later jumped up to dash away, just in case.

My body and I don't need unnecessary risks – there definitely was a ticking sound from the shorthair beaver’s hair Manila purse. I can swear, it tick-tocked. An old good C-flat in the second octave. That sound is still fresh in my memory.

And when if you doubt your own perfect pitch, and USTM, who else can you trust then?

Bookoff

_

05

The evening had already become a night, but Bookoff was in no hurry to go to bed. He still sat in his chair, even though it had turned clear already that one more day of waiting was spent to no avail.

The light in the living room was on, reflected murkily in the pitch-black pane glass. The back of the chair got to his skinny sides and shoulder blades, but Bookoff somehow gave in to it, not wanting to let them ache or disturb any other bones by rising on his feet.

He wasn't particularly keen on going to bed. It would be his usual, boring, known to the last detail routine. He'd squeeze into the space between the wardrobe and the nightstand, pull down his jeans, and lean his butt freed to the trunks onto the stand to pull the jeans completely off, one leg after the other. They would be hung over the back of a chair put nearby. The vest knitted by his wife would cover the jeans and in its turn be covered with a shirt.

Then he’d make for the bed in the corner by the door, next to it there stood a chair with a light bulb clasped to it. Beside a plastic pin, the buld had a long flexible neck. The thing was borrowed from his daughter’s room some time ago to be used as a pin-clasped long-necked night light. His daughter kept, when she lived in the big house. Some time ago… But, maybe, long stretch back…

From his bunk, for a couple of minutes he'd watch the spherical, shade woven of linden splint rind dancing under the ceiling. The lamp in the shade was too bright and Bookoff left it unlit, so the dancer was watched in the light shed from the chair by the goose-neck fixed with a pin.