Awakening.
The awakening was difficult, the head was buzzing like a blacksmith shop, the eyes did not open, and from the feeling of what was going on in the mouth, one could conclude that yesterday was good, even too much. I tried to open the swollen eyelids with my fingers, but damn it hurt, hot tears poured out of my eyes, you see, it was too much fun. But what’s coolest, I don’t remember anything, nowhere and with whom and in honor of what, in my head there is a rumble, crackling and emptiness, utter emptiness. Drink like you want to drink, the tongue is cracked and looks like sandpaper, there is not even saliva. Due to the inability to look at the world around him, he returned his head to its original place. Damn, what's so hard, where I settled down at least. He began to feel the surrounding space with his hands, without raising his buzzing head, all around there was high, stiff grass and bare earth, not some kind of mattress or something like a rag. What a shame, it’s not clear where I passed out, although wait, I don’t drink at all, I only know about the morning symptoms from the stories of my friends. Cold goosebumps ran down my back, I began to feel my beloved, oh no, this can’t be me naked, completely naked. Really undressed, though, what was to be removed from me from a beggar.
I took a deep breath, exhale, inhale, exhale, nothing helps, no enlightenment. Total darkness. Although my head began to calm down, I would wash and drink, maybe then my eyes will open, probably, they put something on my head and it’s not weak to see. I began to feel my head, but no, everything seems to be intact and there is not even a bump and it doesn’t hurt, only something is wrong, but I don’t understand what. Once again he began to feel his skull, bald, completely bald, no hairstyle, no eyebrows, nothing, everything below the body is also bald. What kind of perversions are happening here, I listened carefully to my body, everything seems to be fine, and my head even stopped hurting, instead of the hum in my head, external sounds returned. Well, there the birds are croaking, the bees are buzzing like airplanes, their eyes are slightly opened, I saw the sunlight and then, as through a cloudy glass, everything floats. He strained his hearing, the murmur of water was heard nearby, from this sound he wanted to murmur himself, jumped to his feet, fulfilled the requirements of the body, a buzz.
Putting his hands out in front of him, he went to the sound of water, gently feeling the road in front of him with his feet. His foot stepped into the water, it was cold, the bottom seemed to be sandy, he went into the water up to his waist and began to wash his eyes, the cold tingled pleasantly. The pain passed, the colors of the surrounding world began to appear, but still blurry. I dived headlong into the water and quickly ashore, settled down on the shore, the sun began to warm my body, nonsense. I even dozed off under the sun, woke up this time like a normal person, it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t buzz and it doesn’t cut. He began to look around, intensively turning his head with wide eyes. And the opened picture at the same time struck with its riot of colors and at the same time frightened.
In the skull, as in a closed cage, questions were crammed, where I am, how I got here, and in general who I am. To all the questions from the abyss of the cranium, not a single answer surfaced, silence and smoothness. I got up and once again carefully looked around not far away, about a hundred meters away from me, a forest began, but such that horror takes, trees similar to ... . And they don’t look like anything, I have never seen anything like this, mushrooms are gorged on fertilizers and very gorged on. Thirty meters in height, and the leg of the trunk is eight meters in girth, sort of blue columns, and at the end of the crown in the form of a dark green mushroom hat and not a knot, not a twig, a smooth trunk to the top. But in the clearing, flowers were seething with a variety of colors of all kinds, only this kind was not pleasing to the eye. If I have not lost my mind, then this should not be at all, there are no such trees and flowers on Earth, a flower cannot be larger than my muzzle. Somewhere out there, in South America, in the jungle, there is a flower that stinks of rotten meat, and these, the smell that just sway. Or maybe I really am in the jungle, how should I know what they look like, I only saw them in the pictures. That's just how I got here from Siberia, and even more so naked and bald, various thoughts began to swarm in my head, one more fantastic than the other. And that they are filming some kind of reality show, and in general, understand what the hell.
All my thoughts were interrupted by the loud call of my stomach, as they say, the trumpet is calling, we must look for something to eat. He began to wander around the clearing, looking for something to eat, at least something, just to drown out the hunger that had developed. I found something that looks like our strawberries, only much larger, almost the size of a chicken egg, but the taste is mmm .... Kiwi, pineapple and banana in one bottle, I ate about ten, it didn’t fit anymore. I went to the river to wash, without thinking for a long time, with a running start I flopped into the water. The water pleasantly tingled with needles of cold the warmed body, snorting and rubbing his eyes from the water, his glance casually caught on some snag on the opposite bank. I rubbed my eyes and focused on the snag, oh, my dear mothers. This snag had a length of seven meters along with the tail, a huge, toothy mouth and a body armored with scales. All this I managed to consider in a matter of seconds, before the bullet darted out of the water, as this crocodile began to slowly crawl into the water.
Awakening.
The awakening was difficult, the head was buzzing like a blacksmith shop, the eyes did not open, and from the feeling of what was going on in the mouth, one could conclude that yesterday was good, even too much. I tried to open the swollen eyelids with my fingers, but damn it hurt, hot tears poured out of my eyes, you see, it was too much fun. But what’s coolest, I don’t remember anything, nowhere and with whom and in honor of what, in my head there is a rumble, crackling and emptiness, utter emptiness. Drink like you want to drink, the tongue is cracked and looks like sandpaper, there is not even saliva. Due to the inability to look at the world around him, he returned his head to its original place. Damn, what's so hard, where I settled down at least. He began to feel the surrounding space with his hands, without raising his buzzing head, all around there was high, stiff grass and bare earth, not some kind of mattress or something like a rag. What a shame, it’s not clear where I passed out, although wait, I don’t drink at all, I only know about the morning symptoms from the stories of my friends. Cold goosebumps ran down my back, I began to feel my beloved, oh no, this can’t be me naked, completely naked. Really undressed, though, what was to be removed from me from a beggar.
I took a deep breath, exhale, inhale, exhale, nothing helps, no enlightenment. Total darkness. Although my head began to calm down, I would wash and drink, maybe then my eyes will open, probably, they put something on my head and it’s not weak to see. I began to feel my head, but no, everything seems to be intact and there is not even a bump and it doesn’t hurt, only something is wrong, but I don’t understand what. Once again he began to feel his skull, bald, completely bald, no hairstyle, no eyebrows, nothing, everything below the body is also bald. What kind of perversions are happening here, I listened carefully to my body, everything seems to be fine, and my head even stopped hurting, instead of the hum in my head, external sounds returned. Well, there the birds are croaking, the bees are buzzing like airplanes, their eyes are slightly opened, I saw the sunlight and then, as through a cloudy glass, everything floats. He strained his hearing, the murmur of water was heard nearby, from this sound he wanted to murmur himself, jumped to his feet, fulfilled the requirements of the body, a buzz.
Putting his hands out in front of him, he went to the sound of water, gently feeling the road in front of him with his feet. His foot stepped into the water, it was cold, the bottom seemed to be sandy, he went into the water up to his waist and began to wash his eyes, the cold tingled pleasantly. The pain passed, the colors of the surrounding world began to appear, but still blurry. I dived headlong into the water and quickly ashore, settled down on the shore, the sun began to warm my body, nonsense. I even dozed off under the sun, woke up this time like a normal person, it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t buzz and it doesn’t cut. He began to look around, intensively turning his head with wide eyes. And the opened picture at the same time struck with its riot of colors and at the same time frightened.
In the skull, as in a closed cage, questions were crammed, where I am, how I got here, and in general who I am. To all the questions from the abyss of the cranium, not a single answer surfaced, silence and smoothness. I got up and once again carefully looked around not far away, about a hundred meters away from me, a forest began, but such that horror takes, trees similar to ... . And they don’t look like anything, I have never seen anything like this, mushrooms are gorged on fertilizers and very gorged on. Thirty meters in height, and the leg of the trunk is eight meters in girth, sort of blue columns, and at the end of the crown in the form of a dark green mushroom hat and not a knot, not a twig, a smooth trunk to the top. But in the clearing, flowers were seething with a variety of colors of all kinds, only this kind was not pleasing to the eye. If I have not lost my mind, then this should not be at all, there are no such trees and flowers on Earth, a flower cannot be larger than my muzzle. Somewhere out there, in South America, in the jungle, there is a flower that stinks of rotten meat, and these, the smell that just sway. Or maybe I really am in the jungle, how should I know what they look like, I only saw them in the pictures. That's just how I got here from Siberia, and even more so naked and bald, various thoughts began to swarm in my head, one more fantastic than the other. And that they are filming some kind of reality show, and in general, understand what the hell.
All my thoughts were interrupted by the loud call of my stomach, as they say, the trumpet is calling, we must look for something to eat. He began to wander around the clearing, looking for something to eat, at least something, just to drown out the hunger that had developed. I found something that looks like our strawberries, only much larger, almost the size of a chicken egg, but the taste is mmm .... Kiwi, pineapple and banana in one bottle, I ate about ten, it didn’t fit anymore. I went to the river to wash, without thinking for a long time, with a running start I flopped into the water. The water pleasantly tingled with needles of cold the warmed body, snorting and rubbing his eyes from the water, his glance casually caught on some snag on the opposite bank. I rubbed my eyes and focused on the snag, oh, my dear mothers. This snag had a length of seven meters along with the tail, a huge, toothy mouth and a body armored with scales. All this I managed to consider in a matter of seconds, before the bullet darted out of the water, as this crocodile began to slowly crawl into the water.
Tatiana Stepanova
The Ghost of the Nameless Lane
Oh close your pale feet
Valery Bryusov
© Stepanova T. Yu., 2016
© Design. LLC "Publishing house" E ", 2016
Lye, lavender and fat
All this polyphony of the night...
If that's not music, then what is? Dream?
It's too early to talk about nightmares.
Pills sometimes help with nightmares.
But sometimes they do not help, alas ...
The most deaf dark hour, but Moscow does not sleep. Moscow is full of advertising lights, lanterns, autumn rain, clouds torn to shreds by the wind, stars that are not visible.
It's like a huge orchestra is tuning instruments - the noise of cars from Andronievskaya Square, the roar and ringing of a tram, strainingly going up the hill of Andronievskaya Proyezd. Music on TV, turned on somewhere on the lower floor of a brick house, where old people do not sleep, suffering from insomnia.
The cries of crows nesting in the crowns of old, as if unkempt, shaggy poplars in the garden of the church.
Or maybe it's a cough behind the wall...
And ringing. Light, thin, like the sound of a celesta, the ringing of crystal.
Crystal pendants on a chandelier? Yes, and they - sound, barely noticeable trembling. This is due to the fact that the tram, clanging and clattering with wheels, again climbs up the hill from Volochaevskaya Street to the monastery.
Volochaevskaya street - all in gray apartment buildings, courtyards are closed with barriers. The lanes are as quiet as dead at this hour. And the light burns only in rare windows.
And the pendants of the chandelier under the high stucco ceiling are ringing, calling into the night.
And not only them. Graceful antique crystal perfume bottles, collected and displayed on the shelves of a French display cabinet, give their voice - a ringing every time a tram rumbles along Andronevsky Proyezd.
When in this room, on the parquet covered with varnish, children jumped, danced, played catch-up, the bottles behind the glass of the display case also began to dance.
Multi-colored glass - pink, blue, golden, transparent. But it's just an empty container. These bottles have never been filled with real perfume.
Because the FACTORY has not created its own perfume.
The factory made soap and cream. Produced medical cosmetics.
And then a lot of other things, because time passed, everything changed, including demand and market conditions.
On the shelves of the display cabinet, you can still see lovely tin boxes for soap, decorated with plump cherubs, captivating puffy ladies with bouquets of roses and just flowers - a cascade, a waterfall of flowers, painted directly on the tin.
Chrysanthemums... This is Geisha soap.
Roses... This is Shiraz soap.
Lilac ... Oh, these are competitors - Persian Lilac soap, Brokar's factory.
Brocard in these walls always wanted to strangle himself in a soapy noose. Only now that the soap for the rope was his own, factory. Then it, however, became irrelevant, because Brocard disappeared on his own.
Violets... This is Parma soap.
Wormwood ... Yes, yes, wormwood, such prose, grass ... But this is the famous Meadow soap, the most democratic and popular after the “dandruff soap”. It was once bought by everyone: high school students, officers, young ladies, dignitaries, merchants, burghers, and actors of the Bolshoi and Small Imperial Theaters - and even Khitrovka was brought to Khitrovka for charity purposes, and to common people's baths.
There is such a green tin box and on it is grass - wormwood. And for the poor, it was generally wrapped in rough paper.
Cloves ... Soap for gentlemen "Osman Pasha".
Poppy ... Laudanum soap.
Later they wanted to withdraw it from production with a scandal, because opium is opium, even in soap.
Lavender ... Provence soap.
And it, this soap ...
Oh, don't, don't, don't, there's no more strength when it's a dream!
Oh, please don't, I'm begging you, I'm begging you! It's so scary.
These nightmares... Here again...
Crystal sound.
The roar of the tram.
Dark night.
The woman in the double bed, as wide as the sea, tossed and turned on the pillows. She moaned, almost screamed in her sleep. She screamed in fear and pain.
The electronic alarm clock on the wide marble windowsill read 3:33.
Magical time, when all night monsters, all fears, all our most secret nightmares and phobias open their eyes. Creepy, yellow eyes burning in the darkness... And staring, staring out of the darkness, grinning with bloody fanged mouths.
These creatures...
Nightmares…
The woman in bed rolled over on her side, pulling her knees up, writhing, huddled in a fetal position, as if trying to hide, to burrow into pillows and mattress. The blanket hung to the floor.
Empty dark bedroom. Uncurtained window. On the carpet, in the very middle, dropped Chanel boats. The Chanel bag, open, as if they were frantically looking for something in it before going to bed ... What? Of course, pills, damn pills...
A blue dress made of thin cashmere, a lace bra, panties - everything is lumpy on the floor. Right next to the bed is an empty bottle of Chablis white wine.
All this is the most common picture for this bedroom. Like a bottle, like pills scattered on the parquet.
But these funds have not helped for a long time. It doesn't help a damn thing to be screaming and moaning and writhing in your sleep like that because...
He is so cuddly...
He is so real, so tangible.
So hot, hot like a var.
Var and steam. Lye and grease. And lavender, that damn lavender, it smells so good, it stinks!
It stinks so much of this fragrant lavender - the pride of Provence, that your eyes water and your throat tickles.
And it seems like nothing is visible at first in this nightmare. Because steam... Acrid steam filled the factory floor.
Iron beams under the high ceiling of the workshop, not yet touched by rust. And on them - steel chains with hooks to hook the molding containers and send them along the beams, as if on rails, to the molding shop.
The floor is paved with solid stone tiles. The tiles are all wet. Because the vats are full, everything boils and boils in them and splashes out, as if from a witch's cauldron.
Three huge bowls. Lye, grease...
Grease, lye ...
The lavender briquettes are right there in the iron wheelbarrow, but lavender has not yet been added to the vats. This is later.
There is nothing to breathe from the all-pervading stench. How can I describe this stench better? After all, a nightmare is all woven not only from visual images, but also from smells. And this is the worst. When a woman wakes up with a scream of horror, she can still smell it, like a taste on her tongue.
Lye - the smell of ash, diluted in boiling water.
But here it is more difficult. Because the stench is like strong broth is being brewed. Some meat is being cooked in one of the bubbling vats.
Stepanov Nikolai Yurievich
Nameless
Awakening.
The awakening was difficult, the head was buzzing like a blacksmith shop, the eyes did not open, and from the feeling of what was going on in the mouth, one could conclude that yesterday was good, even too much. I tried to open the swollen eyelids with my fingers, but damn it hurt, hot tears poured from my eyes, it was too much fun to see. But what’s coolest, I don’t remember anything, nowhere and with whom and in honor of what, in my head there is a rumble, crackling and emptiness, utter emptiness. Drink like you want to drink, the tongue is cracked and looks like sandpaper, there is not even saliva. Due to the impossibility of looking at the world around me, I returned my head to its original place, what the hell is it so firmly, where I settled down at least. He began to feel the surrounding space with his hands, without raising his buzzing head, all around there was high, stiff grass and bare earth, not some kind of mattress or something like a rag. What a shame, it’s not clear where I passed out, although stop, what are you talking about, I don’t drink at all, I only know about the morning symptoms from the stories of my friends. Cold goosebumps ran down my back, I began to feel my beloved, oh no, this can’t be me naked, completely naked. Not really undressed, although what was taken from me from a beggar.
I took a deep breath, exhale, inhale, exhale, nothing helps, no enlightenment, solid darkness. Although it began to calm down in my head, I would wash and drink, maybe then my eyes will open, probably they put something on my head and it’s not weak to see. I began to feel my head, but no, everything seems to be intact and there is not even a bump and it doesn’t hurt, but something is wrong, but I don’t understand what. Once again he began to feel his skull, bald, completely bald, no hairstyle, no eyebrows, nothing, everything below the body is also bald. What kind of perversions are happening here, I listened carefully to my body, everything seems to be fine, and my head even stopped hurting, instead of the hum in my head, external sounds returned. Well, there the birds are croaking, the bees are buzzing like airplanes, their eyes are slightly opened, I saw the sunlight and then, as through a cloudy glass, everything floats. He strained his hearing, the murmur of water was heard not far away, from this sound he wanted to murmur himself, jumped to his feet, fulfilled the requirements of the body, a buzz.
Putting his hands in front of him, he went to the sound of water, carefully probing the road in front of him with his feet. His foot stepped into the water, it was cold, the bottom seemed to be sandy, he went into the water up to his waist and began to wash his eyes, the cold tingled pleasantly. The pain passed, the colors of the world began to show through, but still blurry. I dived headlong into the water and quickly ashore, settled down on the shore, the sun began to warm my body, nonsense. I even dozed off under the sun, woke up this time like a normal person, it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t buzz and it doesn’t cut. He began to look around, intensively turning his head with wide eyes. And the opened picture at the same time struck with its riot of colors and at the same time frightened.
In the skull, as in a closed cage, questions were crammed, where I am, how I got here, and in general who I am. To all the questions from the abyss of the cranium, not a single answer surfaced, silence and smoothness. I got up and once again carefully looked around not far away, about a hundred meters away from me, a forest began, but such that horror takes, trees similar to ... . And they don’t look like anything, I have never seen anything like this, mushrooms are gorged on fertilizers and very gorged on. Thirty meters in height, and the leg of the trunk is eight meters in girth, sort of blue columns, and at the end of the crown in the form of a dark green mushroom hat and not a knot, not a twig, a smooth trunk to the top. But in the clearing, flowers were seething with a variety of colors of all kinds, only this kind was not pleasing to the eye. If I have not lost my mind, then this should not be at all, there are no such trees and flowers on Earth, a flower cannot be larger than my muzzle. Somewhere out there in South America in the jungle there is a flower that stinks of rotten meat, and these smell that you just sway. Or maybe I really am in the jungle, how should I know what they look like, I only saw them in the pictures. That's just how I got here from Siberia, and even more so naked and bald, various thoughts began to swarm in my head, one more fantastic than the other. And that they are filming some kind of reality show, and in general, understand what the hell.
All my thoughts were interrupted by the loud call of my stomach, as they say, the trumpet is calling, we must look for something to eat. He began to wander around the clearing, looking for something to eat, at least something, just to drown out the hunger that had developed. I found something that looks like our strawberries, only much larger, almost the size of a chicken egg, and the taste is mm. Kiwi, pineapple and banana in one bottle, I ate about ten, it didn’t fit anymore. I went to the river to wash, without thinking for a long time, I flopped into the water with a running start. The water pleasantly tingled with needles of cold the warmed body, snorting and rubbing his eyes from the water, his glance casually caught on some snag on the opposite bank. He rubbed his eyes and focused his gaze on the snag, oh my dear mothers. This snag had a length of seven meters along with the tail, a huge, toothy mouth and a body armored with scales. All this I managed to consider in a matter of seconds, before the bullet darted out of the water, as this crocodile began to slowly crawl into the water.
I ran in the dusk of the forest until I stumbled on the root of a tree, furrowing about five meters with my nose the soft forest soil, which greatly contributed to the integrity of my schnobel. Squatting down, he began to pick out the local land from his nose, a hissing sound was heard from behind from a small height. Like a frightened rabbit, I jumped in the opposite direction from the sound. Carefully peeking out from behind a tree trunk, I began to look out for who hissed, if I had hair they would stand upright, I stumbled not on the root but on the tail of some creature. A huge snake hung around the trunk there, I would go to her as a snack. While I was looking at the monster, she rushed at me, her speed was incredible, but the speed of my fear was greater. Now I was flying faster than the wind back to my clearing, in the forest I was suddenly overwhelmed.
Running back to the clearing, I collapsed on the grass dead, not alive, not dead. My heart was pounding somewhere in the area of my ears, my lungs sucked in air with pain, my legs seemed to be filled with lead, my hands were shaking. Yes, I didn’t run like that for a long time, probably the last time in a physical education lesson, about five years ago, and then before that unfortunate incident. When we played football and I was lying in a cast for a year from hitting an opponent, some kind of unfortunate fracture that because of him I was categorically forbidden to load my left leg, it still looks like a dried prosthesis. After that, I was not taken into the army, all that remained was to gnaw at the granite of science, which until recently I did successfully. Well, at least I remembered it, but who I am and where I didn’t remember. The heart gradually began to let go to its rightful place, but then the leg began to protest against such loads, turning blue and swollen in protest.
After lying around for about two hours and having refreshed myself with fresh berries, I tried to get up, an unbearable pain went through my spine, screaming, I again fell on four bones. Get hurt, no one knows where, no one knows who, all around are cute little animals with fucking teeth and I am a cripple. After lying on the fragrant grass for another half an hour, feeling sorry for my beloved, I repeated an attempt to get up, gritting my teeth from pain, I managed to get up. After massaging the sore spot a little, I hobbled along the river, at the same time trying to stay at a distance from the river and the forest. We need to look for people, I really hope that everything we were taught will turn out to be true. Well, there that people settle on the banks of the rivers, and if you go with the flow, you will definitely come to the settlement. Along the way, he picked large leaves of something similar to our horseradish, only soft ones, then weaved a long pigtail out of elastic blades of grass and already made a skirt out of this to cover himself at least a little, and without further ado put a local burdock on his bald head. And then it painfully shines in the sun, God forbid there are any big birds here, and protection from the sun, otherwise it will knock, God forbid.
