Fear of the Dark

Though the lamps in the coastal park were deployed densely, they formed blurs in the thick tree crowns under which nothing but the vague outlines of the dark trunks could be seen.

“Why should we leave the car?” – Yana whispered while hurrying on the alley.

She knew that the creepy creatures go out only at night and felt the cold sweat on her back just when thinking what could happen if they smell her. She had met them not only once and those meetings were not very pleasant. Moreover – they could be deadly to her though she had escaped them so far.

“Calm down” – Gennady answered. – “We haven’t noticed them so far, even you.”

“Quiet” – she strangled him but it was clear that those creatures were not affected by noise, sounds, even a human voice.

They were moved by another thing and she knew very well what it was. The smell of blood. That impalpable and almost mysterious smell that attracted the bloodthirsty scum that was her hell.

“It’s just your imagination that makes you think you’ve been marked in any way.”

“My imagination?” – she raised her voice but continued silently – “You want to tell me that what has happened to me so many times is only in my imagination?”

Her eyes shone in the dark and the boy felt her anger but only chuckled:

“No, but perhaps it has already been blown over. Even if you had been marked, as you think, even if they had pointed you out as their victim, maybe it’s over because of aging.”

“No way!” – she snapped at him. – “It’s over! I wish it could be over like that.”

“And where do you know it from? Here, I’ve been knowing you for two years but nothing happened to you” – the boy insisted and spread his arms. – “Well, some of those vampires have appeared but nobody attacked you in a way you describe it.”

“Fluke!” – she shook her head and started walking even faster.

They turned on another alley and heard the silent murmur of the brook that passed through the park and down, through the bleak beach flowed into the sea.

“Well, yes. Probably when you age, your blood isn’t as attractive to them as it used to be” – he tried to calm her down.

“You want to tell me that I’m old, don’t you?” – she looked at him.

“Oh... no!” – Gennady sighed and put his arm around her shoulder. – “Why don’t you want to accept what is obvious? They don’t chase you anymore. Probably, they have found another victims who…”

“Don’t explain it to me!” – the girl interrupted. – “Instead of clattering, you had to take the car and not to make us pass through such a wilderness. You know that such places are full of them.”

“Well, we both decided to walk some to that bar on the beach and to shake a leg.” – the boy spread his arms. – “And why didn’t you take…”

Noise spread above them. They raised their heads but saw only the shadow of a little bat who flew in the darkness.

“You don’t know what it is” – Yana sighed. – “You don’t know what it is to feel how they attack you, how you run but they follow you, how they stuck into you, to feel your own blood running down your skin, to feel suffocated to death, how you die but you can do nothing...”

“Well, well, I believe you” – the boy felt almost physically the goosebumps on her body and decided not to contradict her.

He only teased her in that way and that did not make the situation better. He wished he could find a way to make his girlfriend relax and calm down at least a little. “And there’s a chance she doesn’t imagine it and what she tells me to be the truth?” – he thought while walking by her. They crossed the little bridge almost running when suddenly she froze.

“Here they are” – she whispered. – “I can hear them. They’re coming.”

“I can hear nothing” – Gennady lowered his voice.

“Of course you can’t. You’ve never been like me” – she was looking around nervously. – “I’ve developed almost supernatural senses for all those years.”

The boy tried to answer something but Yana ran down the alley. He hardly reached her. She was running to the lights of the roadway beyond the park.

“Not there!” – he yelled. – “Probably the light attracts them.”

“No, it doesn’t” – Yana was out of breath. – “The light has nothing to do with them. They follow me. They’re a lot” – she looked around.

Gennady took a quick look back instinctively but it was pointless. He knew that they were invisible. The girl had already started running through the meadow.

“Don’t! There could be more of them here” – he cried out after her but she did not pay any attention to him.

He was running over the meadow, his ankles were caught by weeds here and there, he stepped on the roots shown above the ground and managed to hold her when she tripped over. They kept running to the roadway – the parking-lot was beyond it.

He shuddered when she crossed the road without looking around. Fortunately, there were not any cars but after all he took a look aside and then he saw them – enormous and scented blood. He reached Yana, opened the car door, they slipped into the car and slammed the doors.

“Awfully!” – she was breathing heavily. – “Finally! And we had to go by car not to leave it at the parking-lot, really.”

“Agree but you don’t forget your bag next time” – the boy answered while she was going through it.

He leaned back and turned on the player. They heard from speakers:

Fear of the dark, Fear of the dark,

I have a constant fear of something’s always near.

Fear of the dark, Fear of the dark,

I have a phobia that someone’s always there.[1]

“Take that song off. It’s nasty” – Yana snapped, took out a flask, threw her bag on the backseat, opened the cork and passed it to him.

“The song is nice” – Gennady chuckled while she was squirting her skin hard. He looked at the little bottle and sighed: – “Well, the allergy, however, isn’t.”

The label said: “Mosquito repellent”.

---

[1] Fear of the Dark – a song from Iron Maiden.

~~~~~~~~~
Translated by: Vessislava Savova

The Demiurge

The Demiurge was looking carefully at the world he had created. That fabulous world, born by his mind and will, sculpted pedantically till the least possible details, with an endless love and diligence. Vast plains, yellowing fields, lush valleys through which sparkling streams that started from the bowels of the high mountains and their hackly rocky spires to gather together into abounding rivers were spread in front of him. He was staggering the world around and watching his creatures: people who had settled it thinking their cities were built by them without having any idea that all those things were his deed. Everything, till the last grain of sand: the roads, the automobiles that they drove, the different installations that improved their lives. Little ones, fragile and defenseless, depending completely on his will. They did not realize that he was above them, taking care for each one of them and it was in his power without any effort to mow down as a separate human, as the whole that small, refined universe. They were walking, rushing to and fro, staying at a place, sitting in the sun, meeting each other, talking to each other.

The Demiurge remembered the difficulties he had had while he was sculpting that world, the problems he had met, the ways he had solved them in, so everything to be at its place, to be separate and meanwhile inseparably connected with everything else and to be realized as a whole, complete creation. Of course, the Demiurge was able to see the small bugs he had not avoided, discovered some imperfections, trying to eliminate them; he exulted when he managed to do it and suffered when it did not work but he realized that those small imperfections were too exiguous to be noticed by the people, by those ones who did not have his eyes.

He was observing the movement in this world of his. The perfect dance of that amalgam of organisms and mechanisms; he was amazed by the beauty he discovered even into the machines which people rarely paid attention to as if they were some kind of granted thing. He was admiring the automobiles and airplanes, that gave them freedom but mostly to the beautiful trains that were curving around valleys and hills. He had been shivering in front of the ebullience at the railway stations – one of his most favorite places – that were holding into them both history and modern time, journeys to the new places and coming home still since the time of the steam engines far to the slim, drafting high-speed trains. He was enjoying the travelers who were getting on and off them, some of them indifferent by the gathered habit, others, still joyful because of the travelling, the welcoming people who were running to their closest ones, the people, accompanying the departures, waving with a bit of sadness. He was keeping an eye whether everything was alright though people thought they ruled over.

A sudden rumble sniffed him out of his contemplation. The error in the system had missed a freight train running over the passing counter express-train through the railroad switch. He switched the power off instantly but the inertia of the heavy cistern cut the diesel locomotive into the long passenger carriages. The first ones had derailed, the third and the fourth were inverted by the machine which had hit them and the rest of them were stacking up one above another, the cisterns were turning over. The Demiurge shuddered. He was looking at the descended chaos and was checking for damages.

“Daddy, what happened?” – his curious son, who always helped him with an interest, shouted.

“Don’t ask!”

“Is anything broken?”

The Demiurge was looking carefully at the layout.

“Fortunately, there’s nothing damaged” – he sighed.

He started arranging the wagons carefully without paying any attention to his wife who had peeped behind the door and ticking her tongue graciously:

“Are you playing model trains? Kid stuff...”

He was amused but did not answer: she could not, she would never realize the beauty of his hobby. The Demiurge reversed the time, arranged the two compositions again and let them move so that to pass along each other and he did not feel that somewhere above him God was looking at him, smiling and remembering: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

~~~~~~~~~
Dedicated to all the railway nerds :)

Translated by: Vessislava Savova

Madness

The young woman was stepping tiredly through the thick fog that made the dry, grey trees merge with the pewter sky. The man was looking at her sadly, with his lips split. She was scratched, bruised, with a crumpled, dirty dress.

“Didn’t you make it?” – he asked silently when she stood in front of him and looked at him.

She shook her head, without answering. The man sighed and put his hand on her shoulder. 

“I don’t know what you had expected but… you’ve always been a daredevil. Come on, come here.”

He snapped his fingers and they found themselves into a vast room in which a few lost in patina candlesticks and the blaze in the big stone fireplace were throwing glares and penumbras on an antique bookcase, pictures with mythological scenes, carved desk. Two glasses appeared in his hands, he nodded at a massive armchair and leaned back on the other one by it.

“That will warm you up” – he passed one of the glasses at her.

“I’m not cold” – the woman murmured.

“I know it. It’s just a habit” – the man shrugged and waved in the air. – “Just as all of that here.”

“I’m not cold, it doesn’t hurt” – she kept speaking as if she had not heard him. – “Or, rather, it hurts because people are so blind!”

“I told you but you didn’t believe me.”

“I had to convince myself” – the woman answered.

A dull roar came from outside, the windows jingled silently in the night and the woman startled.

“The rock” – the man said blankly. – “It collapsed again.”

“What’d we do wrong?” – she looked at him.         

“I don’t know… I don’t know if we’re wrong at all or we don’t have any chance fundamentally.”

“Did you give up?” – she stretched out. – “Could you give up?”

“You heard the rock, didn’t you? I didn’t give up but sometimes even I lose hope.”

“We shouldn’t, dad. You can’t afford it! I’m sure there’s a way!”

The woods in the fireplace were cracking silently.  

“What happened down there?” – he turned to her a little.

“Nothing” – the woman sat more comfortably and sighed. – “Or, to be more punctual, I achieved nothing.”

The man was looking at her in silence.

“I tried to make people go out of their lethargy” – she started speaking. – “I saw no another way and used all of my skills to provoke different situations, different events which could make them move, see through the truth how much they’ve gone with the flow but whatever I did, everything went wrong. Or not.. it did not go wrong but people reacted so unexpectedly that the result was terrifying…”

Her eyes were gazing at the flames in the fireplace.

“I suggested them they should change the order they have created by themselves and which had put chains on them though they had never made an use of them; to find a way to build a new life which could give them more freedom but everything, absolutely everything I achieved every time was anarchy… I suggested them a sense of goodness to each other but they turned it into a fight; I wanted to help them live together but they found a reason for struggle…”

The man shook his head.

“Some of them realized that life could be better but they were just a few. The rest either denied everything and dedicated themselves to depravity or sunk into despair because they did not understand how to achieve it, or they started wars with those who did not understand them and everything led to troubles, conflicts, riots…” – the young woman leaned back and took a sip. – “Everybody who was able to hear me was announced to be mad… and that… that was a real madness..”

“And what did you expect?” – the man raised his eyebrows. – “As if you don’t know that I’ve ever tried whatnot. As if I haven’t told you how I wanted to give them life that could rationalize the knowledge and they accepted the knowledge but got afraid of life; they said I was a snake, they blamed me for their own sins and figured out their own usurpers they filled the sky with and chased me away of there by chained me to a cliff. After that they sent that eagle to chew my flesh. It was good I got rid of it…”

The man laughed at himself.

“And with all the ignorance of theirs, they called me, who gave them fire, Lucifer – The Light-Bringer!”

The young woman was nodding thoughtfully while the man kept speaking:

“I told you how I wanted to give them life I had thought they deserved. I descended again among them, destroyed death and in result – here, you heard it by yourself, the cliff outside…I should push it up again tomorrow. And I went back one more time to tell them that the Kingdom was inside them, that they were free but they distorted everything and crucified me because I had broken the laws of their God and afterwards turned me into God just not to be responsible for their lives, purging with me…”

            “Stop it” – she interrupted him. – “I believe they deserve it. There’s got to be a way.”

“Maybe but they are not ready yet, my girl. You can’t give, you can’t teach people to something they’re not ready to hear, to accept it.”

The young woman kept gazing at the fire but suddenly she winced and turned to him sharply.

“And maybe that’s where we both are wrong: people! We always think about people but we miss the person!”

The man looked at her in surprise.

“You see, dad, we want to help people just like that, at once” – she kept speaking excitedly. – “And maybe we should help to a certain person.”

“A person by person? And how do you imagine it?”

“I don’t know but I feel like… no, I’m sure that’s the way!”

“That would already be a madness” – the man tightened his lips but saw that there was no trace of her scratches and bruises.

“Madness or not, I’ll try it!”

The young woman clapped her hands, the fire flashed for the last time, the furniture dissolved in smoke, the stone walls spilled into a vanishing dust.

A young man was looking tiredly at the sunset behind his desk at the end of the work day and asked himself what had happened to his dreams. He had wanted to travel all over the world, to see unknown lands and eventually he turned out to be dozed off with accounts, reports, and statistical data. The sun was going down behind the distant mountain picks and something forgotten stung him. Suddenly he turned around to the computer, wrote an email and while he was gathering his things, his supervisor busted into the room.

“What does it mean?”

“I quit.”

“But how’s that … overnight?” – the supervisor roared, putting his fists on the desk. – “How can you imagine it? There’s a period of notice!”

“I haven’t used my annual leave and if you want, you might put me on disciplinary leave” – the man answered calmly.

“And you’ll give up your salary? Did you go crazy? What are you going to do unemployed?”

The man was going downstairs without hearing his supervisor’s fading voice. He took his necktie off still while he was going into the street where he bypassed a bright girl. He did not know that she had just finished her first painting after she had postponed her dream to draw for a long time. She had always found some excuses and hardly now she realized they were just such. The girl smiled at a woman who was pleased that finally she signed up for an Argentinean Tango Lessons. The woman knew it she had lost her youth grace but though everybody at home had accused her that she was mad, she was about to make her dream true – to learn at least a few steps of that refined dance.

The fog had lifted and a few green blades, stretching to the sky, could be seen among the dry grass. The father was observing the invisible shadow of the wings flying from a person to a person from above and was murmuring:

“Madness! It will take her centuries but maybe she will turn out to be right…”

He kept observing a while more, scratched the healed scar by the eagle’s beak and laughed:

“Mine is madness, either but let’s see which and what.

He rolled his sleeves up and started for the cliff that had rolled down the hill.

~~~~~~~~~
Translated by: Vessislava Savova

Theseus

Theseus was stepping slowly ahead through the narrow, dark, stone corridors. He was walking as if of habit, as if he was wakeful. He remembered he had to kill Asterius, Pasiphaë’s spawn – she was Minos’ wife – but he ain’t seem to care if he would fulfil the task he had taken on willingly. He was squeezing the sword – that sharp sword that was his power, his victorious flag, his thirsty for blood gonfalon and that had turned into a fond relic, the only warm reminder about his happiness.

He was walking and harking, stumbling over his countrymen’s skulls, the ones he had not managed to save. He had been walking for a long time – a whole eternity – and could not remember when he had started off. The thread in Theseus’ hands was hanging sluggishly, dragging behind him, dead like his thoughts. He kept repeating to himself that he had chosen his destiny when he had left Athens, without expecting anything else but to find his end, though the king – his father, the old Aegean – had bid if he turned alive to put up white sails on his ship. But the sword he had taken from two flattering hands, that cord that was connecting him with the only two warm eyes in Crete through the covered in mold corridors, in this unfamiliar island land, in this world, that sword and that cord had given him the enormous will to win and the confidence that he would overcome the taken with ease ordeal. But the hope had left him at the moment when he felt that the cord, secured by his only daydream’s hands, tensioned by the one who had stayed to wait for him, whom he had trusted to, had hung in the wet, trampled dust and had turned into a simple muddy fiber.

Theseus was walking at random. He did not try to remember the road – it was meaningless. He stepped carefully, almost gropingly through the black corridors of the endless stone Labyrinth in which here and there, too rarely, some crack, some batter between two stones, squeezed the daily skylight. “Shame on Daedalus!” – Theseus whispered to himself. – “They have overpraised his mastery. Both his and Icarus one!” Just the quiet slow steps responded to his thoughts. He felt the tiredness, his dry tongue stuck on his droughty palate, the sword was too heavy in his sweat palm, the scratched by the roughly hewn stones feet hurt at each step. His eyes, gone blind by the oppressive darkness, almost could not tell apart the corridors in front of him, when after the next turn in a raw it seemed to him that the echo of his steps changed, becoming more distant. Theseus stopped and carefully reached out his hands. He found a wall neither from one side nor from the other one. He froze immovably and listened at the distance carefully.

He heard a quiet but deep breathing. His back shivered. His tense look started distinguish unclear outlines, chiaroscuros, drawn by the little light squeezing through a slight gap. He felt the fear like a stone. He could not swallow but his power had come back again. He felt each muscle of his body tight. There was no escape out. He could not run away. He made a step ahead, then one more and the powerful figure, the terrifying torso of the fierce monster raised in front of his eyes.

“Minotaur!” – Theseus pronounced deafly.

“Never call me like this!” – the monster growled. – “I am Asterius!”

“I know it.”

“You know nothing!” – his throaty roar thundered.

They had been looking at each other for a while without moving: the tense eyes of the man, who had gained back his daring shine and the deep hatred pushing to go out from the abysmal pupils of Minotaur.

“Why are you with a sword?” – his voice spread around.

“To stop this nonsense” – Theseus answered firmly.

The monster against him, tight and ready to attack, did not move.

“Why didn’t you kill Minos, the king, the great, because of whose greediness Poseidon drove my mother crazy and she gave her away to the sacrificial bull; because of whose greediness I live like that?”

“Another one will come to the throne and nothing will change, only your death is going to save my people.”

Asterius was looking at him with his shiny eyes.

 “It would be a benefaction for the evil that the cursed Poseidon damaged me with.”

“Do not curse the gods!”

“Do not tell me what to do!” – Minotaur roared. – “They cannot harm me more than this. You will have to fight my death!”

“Your brutish life is precious to you, right?”

“If you beat me out, at least I will die honorably as I have not lived” – the mighty torso raised suddenly, the horns flashed creepily and the degenerate monster rushed over the Athenian.

That was the last thing the man could remember from the struggle.

 

Theseus was stepping slowly ahead through the narrow, dark, stone corridors. He did not know where he was moving to but he felt inside of him the road to the exit. He had finished his mission but that had not made him happy. He was dragging back through the tunnels and kept thinking about the woman who had left the cord she had given to him with love. He felt himself heavy, massive, clumsy, the time had vanished, maybe he had stayed in these dungeons a day or maybe a week. He had thrown the sword away – unneeded, needless. He felt nothing, he thought about nothing. An enormous emptiness was growing up inside of him – the same emptiness that the struck monster had felt all his life long. Gradually, as if he had gotten to know Asterius in those corridors, he started understanding the endless grief gathered in his fierce temperament, the loneliness of the rejected one, he felt him close as if he was his brother, as if they were a whole, as if he was Minotaur himself.

Suddenly he felt a fresh whiff, the stench of the tunnels descended and not long time after, the stars flashed above him. Theseus took a deep breath but did not feel any relief. He stopped at the entrance where she had promised to wait for him till he did not come back, where she had given him the braveness to fight and where he had entrusted her his life. He was alone. He was staying there trying to understand, when the bushes aside started moving.

“Ariadne?”

She went closer and smiled at him.

“What happened? Why did you abandon me?”

“I didn’t. I have heard that the Labyrinth is enormous and the cord would never be long enough.”

“And me? What if I had not found the way back?”

“I knew it you would find it. I left another, a true cord that would always lead you to the exit.” – Ariadne answered and touched his chest. – “Over here.”

~~~~~~~~~
Translated by: Vessislava Savova

The Kiss

        The neon advertisements were reflecting into the polished by the drizzle asphalt. It was rippling and the wet was permeating everywhere but he did not feel it. The tiny drops that were alighting on his face as if purified him and the man wrapped in his leather coat with lifted collar with his hands in the pocket, slightly smiled.
        “It is time to kiss you,” – the woman by him whispered. – “We have known each other for years.”
        “It is so. It was a good time and I was always ready for you.”
        He was calm. There was no even a sign of the airily embarrassment that he had felt each time when he met her warm sparkling look somehow mysterious above her naughty smile. He was calm because this night all the conventions that had been chasing them for those long years, all the obstacles he had been waiting to melt, finally disappeared for good. Everything between them had already become clear.
        “What are you thinking about?” – She asked.
        He stopped and looked at her. He could not look away from her face.
        “I think that I love you. Indeed.”
        “You love me?” – She smiled. – “Isn’t it a bit weird? Nobody had loved me up to now... or at least, not indeed. In contrary...”
        “People do not know you,” – he interrupted. – “They are hectic in their daily routine, they are chasing life and they have no time to look at you and feel you because of their wild ride. And you are not a kind of a person who obsesses, who stamps and looks for attention.”
        “Yes,” – replied the woman and became thoughtful.
        It was silent as if the city had fallen asleep soundly. They were walking calmly in the empty street without touching each other – he, because he was making decision and she, because she was awaiting still.
        “Most of the people are blind for the beauty,” – the man continued. – “One needs a bravery to accept it.”
        “But you did it. You have accepted me for a long time. Why?”
        “Do not you deserve it?” – He wondered. – “But you have always been by me, you have helped me so many times!”
        “No-o-o... I was by you just sometimes and I haven’t helped you. I used just to come from time to time to see you.”
        “Despite of this, your presence helped me. Maybe, you haven’t always been by me but I felt you there. The feeling was so vivid as if you had never separated from me.”
        “I know it. It is pleasant to know it that I have helped you in some way.”
        “And not only once!” – The man said and raised his head indulged in his memories. – “When my career that I had worked for years failed, you were the one who didn’t let me sink and you again gave me a will to live; when my wife left me and I was on the edge, you were again the one who helped me to get on my feet; when friends betrayed me, exactly you helped me not to get mad and to keep going... I dare to say that I do not desperate easily but when we met each other it was hard to me to overcome life’s obstacles and it was also hard to me to stay upright, with my head up and I kept living with a smile and with zeal only thanks to you.
        “Thank you.”
        The woman bent her head and looked at the colorful reflections on the wet asphalt.
        “Do you remember how we met each other?”
        The man smiled.
        “How could I forget how you stayed at the end of my bed in the hospital when it was not clear if I would survive?”
        “Yes, it was so. But I knew it you would survive.”
        The rain kept sprinkling tiny droplets – light like a vapor.
        “It is time,” – She said silently and looked at him with his warm eyes. – “I am about to kiss you. Are you ready?”
        “You know it. I have been ready for years.”
        Their intertwining eyes did not leave each other. She ran her hands on his shoulders, stroked his hair, embraced him slowly and very carefully as if even hesitatingly, touched his lips with hers. They were staying in the middle of the street, sunk in the most tender kiss which both of them had ever experienced.
        When they started walking again, inseparably embraced, the world did not exist for them anymore. They did not notice the red lights of the ambulance that were nervously twinkling somewhere behind them. They did not feel people’s hesitation, they did not hear their voices:
        “Nasty rain! Bring the stretcher and let’s load – we are wet all over!”

        “Hour of death 11:15 pm. Close the doors and let’s go.”

~~~~~~~~~

Translated by: Vessislava Savova