Сергей Огольцов – The Tallest Story Ever (страница 4)
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
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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
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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.