Сергей Огольцов – The Tallest Story Ever (страница 1)
Сергей Огольцов
The Tallest Story Ever
Epigraph:
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Vasiok_01
The fog shuffles off in wearily rotating curls. Looks like it’s gonna grow thinner… Nope. Just a weeny whiff of a fleeting illusion. The sticky gloom is back again as thickly opaque as before. Still, some clandestine activity is felt within, a life invisible swathed in the coils of all-engulfing shroud. Who’s cocooned under the wrapping cover? Why hiding themselves away?
And also the sea is there, quite nearby, for sure closer than at a literal stone throw. A low wave splash runs up onto the shore spread flatly, runs to reach the self-elimination, to fall and roll back mutely hushed… The clocklik slow breathing of a mighty giant who doubts not his strength even in sleep. The intake then flowing back to be replaced by the next exactly same wave in their Indian file, the wave delivering the inevitable exhale…
A seagull squeak pierces the hum of calmly breathing abyss…
Whoa! Slow down, man! Are you gonna invent a brand new Mobile-Dick or something? Had a nasty fall from too high heels, ain’t it? Someone’s landed on their head, for sure. Gulls are cute enough to shun blind flying. Both dark or mist would keep them safely home. Birds never developed a radar in their system and bats are domineering in that line, they find their way in the most raggy surroundings by catching echoes of the ultrasonic peeps which they produce.
[–]
An utterly unknown ornithologist Dr. Horst fon Holtzschnabel maintains that a number of winged species did reach the gray zone frontier about possessing radar-like equipment and some of them (i. e. Colibri) even crossed over and use the gizmo at their household in undercover manner. He argues the reason for the situation lies in the cocky attitude distinguishing the whole of Aves class. Enough to mention their ostentatiously pretentious aristocratism. Any commonplace sparrow would claim their kinship to Condor, the Czar in the Realm of our Feathered Friends. They would loudly chirp and swear with the most solemn oaths stating their kinship to the Royalty by their great-grand-auntie Blue Bird lineage…
(A between-the-lines note in the manuscript found in Saratoga, Saratov State, and lost irrevocably at the secret testing grounds in Tomsk-4.)
[–]
Basta! Enough of egg-head blabber! Open your eyes and view the boundless expanses of the sea. No more wobbling…
The mist peels off the rising eyelashes.
Surprise! Instead of oceanic vistas, my eyes got opened to the gullibility of my sense of hearing. This here couple of my ears, though never spurred in any way, was too quick at jumping to conclusion. Over-zesty tandem of two smarties. Quick does not mean right you, silly organs! Too shoddy an interpretation of the soundtrack.
But then it’s my fault also, in part. Not fully awaken, I eased control and – here you are! – missed by a mile. Limitless horizons surely make a rare commodity hereabout. And no mistake.
Wherever directed, your glance gets parried off by one or another plane junction. Even Mr. Vius with his ability to watch the both worlds at any given moment would hardly account for all the details of the interior design. And here comes that big-big “if”: If he’d manage to unclasp and raise his 2-meter-long lashes. Some uphill trick in his state of eternal hangover. Moderation is the ticket to a healthy happy life, Mr. Vius, the obnoxious blood-sucker you!
As for the surf its sound was provided by the completely dry crowd. Except for perspiration drops condenced on this or that block in the multitude astur within the spacious architecture.
Seems like my agenda for tonight includes “sleepover at the airport”? Yoy! Who’d ever suspect any quirk to romanticism in me? Or had some petty deuce seduced me to tank up above my parametric limits?
Nope. The guess is turned down by the symptoms’ absence. No sloppiness in none of the eyes. Neither Sahara-desert-like dehydration has invaded my oral cavity. Hence: I’m sober as a babe unborn and go under any name but Vius.
But what then? What makes me sleeping on this varnish? By the by, a rather prudently designed piece of furniture, this bench is. A well-thought-out gadget of the projected capacity up to 3 sitters. Handrail restricted sections for keeping each user separately. The mankind’s being broken in for the comforts in the future they are making for. No chance rubbing shoulders; not a glance away from your phone screen; you’re held in your cell safely and with the utmost care. Speaking up to a stranger may happen only in old movies fragments: black-and-white, naive, nostalgic. But so what? The trade is real smart, you get relieved of that freaking load of Homo sapiens, you’re freed from thinking!
The bench stretch allotted to a single sitter is generous enough to allow for the ongoing growth of weight as well as volume, globally, in an average bench user. The trend shows steady similarity in rate for both transit and stick-in-the-mud sitters.
However, don’t count on a cozy sleep inside a personal closure over such a bench. Nope, M’am, no go. However tight you curl up and stick your nose between your knees. The galvanized handrails, aka armrests, would gloss with the indifference of distant stars and never let you stretch your legs into the neighbor’s corral.
On the whole, the benches give you a righteous tip-off: there’s no sleep like at sweet home or in your castle, a terminal would only provide you with a portioned rest in a seated position upom no more than ⅓ of a bench.
Ahoy! Observe the gull who woke me up with her high-volume squeal over the fake surf. What a prominent plumage sports she! The copper-and-gold cloud of Afro makes a dandelion of her head. The hazardous flight thru the mist over, she’s landed on the floor surface tiled in milk-white. Her back is leaned against a bench-leg over the glossy tile stream. No attention whatsoever paid to the thicket of shanks hustling by. The heels of her shoes wedged under her buttocks to prevent slippage upon the over-smooth floor. So the knees have no other option but to stick up. Just so modestly. Completely submerged is she in a gaudy accordion-folder book put over her knees parted in quite decent way, discreetly. A grasshopper in orange hose. The picture-crammed book folds open full length hang down from over the two orange stalks waving in metronome-like motion to and fro.
Armadas of sundry footwear speed up in both direction, tramp the hard smooth surface past the pair of picturesque steamers made of the bright Afro-dandalion’s book winking to me from the other side of the stream of legs never at rest, hasting along the milky riverbed between the banks of varnish.
Amid the tumult of milk striders there strikes a melodious PA gong splash demanding attention of all who might be concerned, to the unyielding dragonfly sputter.
But wait-wait-wait! Slower, please! What language is that? And where am I at all?!
By the looks of public around, neither Sherlock nor Holmes would deduce where exactly they got stranded. The usual mixture of transit crowds. Skin pigmentation in the throng is a wide stretch from glossy coal to albino glitter. A multi-racial mass of extras, where each nomad speaks their personal Mutter sprahe.
Under the like circumstances, the question word “where?” just doesn’t click. Repeating it just grows the pool of “oops!” There-there! No need to get upset, though. With an adroit turn of a steer wheel we’ll substitute the question word and ram the problem from another angle/ Let us surprise it with: “what for” am I there I don’t know where?
There followed a prolonged pause and indistinct clapping of the eyelashes. Soundless. However, the urge to scratch the back of my neck was held in check successfully. Simply nipped in the bud. Just in case. What if I was born and raised in a civilized class of society? Ain’t it a shame to let your side down? But then who knows… I could as easily originate from among drifter bums… Wild guesses are of no use for finding out the details of the matter in hand.
And at that very point my toes curled up, the glutes contracted, and I clawed the bench section armrests to gain a steady foothold for self-defense. Because my enclosure got blockaded by the necessity pitiless and having no mercy just as a pack of wolves, the must to ask myself the main question stared squarely into my face. No shilly-shally tricks would help out. Yes, I have to. The moment when the shocking crash of my 2 fallen thru attempts dies out would flag off the decisive try. Silly slyness doesn’t work in serious matters.
The chills sent forth by the cold-blood fingers of despair ran over my skin. The epidermic cells were quick to understand that the main question in any, however audacious, form would bump into the same silence. Scornfully haughty. But try I must. At least to try: