“I was fascinated by your movie about Lucifer’s rebellion,” Nikita confessed.
Athenais must have thought he was flattering her on purpose.
“It wasn’t the movie that impressed you,” she protested. “You were impressed by Lucifer’s beautiful face.”
That’s true! It wouldn’t have looked as good as it did without Athenaïs beauty. But she was perfect for the type. After all, Lucifer (his Old Russian name was Dennitsa) was revered as the most beautiful angel in heaven. It was his beauty that became the apple of discord. The angel became proud and decided that he had to have the world by himself. After all, his beauty was the brightest thing in the world. Because of it, the angel had to lead.
According toВ the Bible, Lucifer lost his beauty after he fell. But inВ the movie, the angel remained beautiful. The screenwriter rewrote the Bible quite successfully.
Nikita never would have thought that movies based on the Bible could impress him so much. He thought the Bible was very boring, and suddenly it became vivid. All thanks to the Lucifer episode that was brought to the forefront. The whole history of the world, judging from the movie, revolved around Lucifer’s fall into the sands of Egypt.
In Nikita’s memory, a phrase he had heard somewhere long ago resurfaced:
“How thou hast fallen from heaven, Denitsa, son of the dawn, to become king of the earth…”
Where had he heard it? Something here seems toВ have been paraphrased, as inВ the movie. The history ofВ the world has been rewritten inВ favor ofВ the fallen angel.
Who came up with this? You have toВ read the credits.
“How does it feel to be a star? Are you very proud of yourself? Do you feel on top of Mount Olympus? Are you looking down on ordinary guys like me?”
“That’s not what you wanted to ask.”
“How do you know?”
“You’ve got other things on your mind.”
“Like what?”
Does she really think she can read minds? That’s too much.
Suddenly Athenais typed out the questions that had really been plaguing Nikita ever since he’d logged on to the website with notes about how crowds of fans had gone berserk after a visit to a movie, staged massacres and acts of vandalism, killed and burned temples, made sacrifices. That’s what he wanted to ask about.
Athenais caught the trend and repeated his own questions:
“What was really going on in the temples? Why had Lucifer rebelled? What made the most beautiful angel of heaven became the devil?”
“I can answer,” Athenais typed at the end of a very long list of shocking questions. “Only you won’t like the answers.”
“Why is it not?”
“You’re human.”
Nikita felt a slight shock. Was the word human a sort of insult? Like, you’re not of the angelic kind. You don’t understand me.
“So what if I am only human?” He got angry.
“There’s a lot that people don’t understand.”
“So tell me! What was going on in the temples your fans destroyed? Why did Lucifer rebel? And, after all, what exorbitant ambition drives movie stars to trade their bodies to get to the top of show business Olympus through the beds of their directors and producers?”
The last question was an insult. The chat broke off instantly. Nikita waited for a complaint to be made to a moderator and to be temporarily blocked. Nervous girls complained even about a compliment if it came from a different user than the one they wanted to chat with. Athenais didn’t complain. She did the meaner thing – she cut off communication with him for the rest of the night. That turned out to be the worst punishment. Nikita had become accustomed to communicating with her as a kind of drug.
Athenais would appear after midnight, like aВ fairy tale genie released from aВ bottle, and entertain him with tales half the night like Scheherazade. But now the chat room was empty and boring. The annoying girls that Nikita used toВ chat with from nothing toВ do had long since forgotten about him. Too carried away byВ the movie star, he lost all his girlfriends.
All that was left was toВ be amused byВ movies starring Athenais. Nikita clicked the link again. The familiar video file popped up on the credits. Nikita was taken aback when he noticed that both the director and the screenwriter ofВ the film were Athenais herself. He seemed toВ have insulted her for nothing.
InВ the Horror Genre
Athenais had toВ wait an unbearably long time, but eventually she returned toВ chatting.
“Are you bored without me too?” Nikita teased her.
“I’m not bored at all. I’m in a really depressing place.”
“Are you making another movie there?”
“Movies aren’t the most important thing in my life right now, so I started going out to chat.”
“Are you looking for friends or one friend?”
“I’ve already found one so far.”
Nikita felt involuntary joy. Responses from Athenais were coming very quickly. That meant she was really communicating with him alone. If she had been distracted byВ someone else, the answers would have come very slowly.
“I’m looking for a girl, not just a girlfriend to chat with.”
“I know.”
“So what do you say? Do I even get one date?”
“We’ll see in time.”
Athenais’ answer wasn’t particularly encouraging, but it’s a good start. She doesn’t say no right away.
“Are you available?”
“It is not really.”
“You mean you’re married? Or engaged? Or have a boyfriend…”
“That’s what you mean.”
“What were you thinking?” Nikita couldn’t understand her. When a woman is asked if she is available, it means that they want to ask her to marry her. The words “free” or “not free” are synonymous with married – not married. Slaves and serfdom do not exist now. In what other sense could Athenais have understood the word “free”? Her mentality can’t really be shaped from the era of the pharaohs, when slavery was in vogue.
“There’s one place I can’t leave yet,” Athenais typed. “It makes me feel not completely free.”
“So do you have some kind of contract?”
A star can only be kept in a particular shooting location by some kind of contract that can’t be terminated without paying a hefty penalty.
“Did your friends help you to make a career in film? Or do you really edit films with your own hands?”
“I prefer to do everything myself.”
“And you do everything yourself?”
“I am guided by the principle: if you want to do something well, do it yourself.”
The phrase flashed through his mind again: “how you fell from heaven, Dennitsa, son of the dawn, to become the king of the cinema and the earth.
Stop! This is some kind of modernization of a biblical saying. Nikita frowned. He felt as if someone’s black claw was writing this phrase in red paint right on the keyboard.
“Do you like horror movies?” The question came out of nowhere.
Nikita didn’t even know what to answer. He decided to come clean.
“When I was a kid, I loved them.”
“Why did you love them?”
“I don’t even know.”
“Do you like to tickle your nerves? Do you like to be scared?”
“It was sometimes.”
“Does the horror genre help you get through a storm of thrills?”
“Like that?”
“Would you like to be in a horror movie yourself?”
“Not as a victim.”
“What part?”
“I don’t know. I prefer to watch. I liked your movie a lot, too.”
“Would you like to be inside it?
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Would you like to join the legions of demons fighting against the Almighty?”
“I don’t know… maybe… yes!”
“Aren’t you afraid of being burned alive so that you can gain immortality later?”
The eerie questions poured out of a leaky sack. Athenais was testing her partner’s strength. Nikita almost gave up. Each line is one scarier than the next, the mouse moves like a wind-up. This is no longer a chat room, but a duel. Who will drive who crazy first?
There was definitely someone in the room behind Nikita’s back. Someone’s claws were scraping the linoleum. The sound was quiet, but unpleasant.
Nikita didn’t risk turning around, though a low growl could be heard behind him. His nerves gave out.
“Let’s not discuss horror movies anymore,” he asked his chat companion.
“Don’t tell me you’re more attracted to magazines with lecherous pictures than to classic horror,” Athenais said.
Nikita had a few pornographic magazines lying around, but how would she know that? You can’t look into his desk drawers through the chat room and check what’s in them.
While Nikita was thinking about what toВ answer, Athenais had already received the next question:
“Which is safer: pornography or horror movies?”
“Pornography molests,” Nikita typed diplomatically.
“And horror movies can make you go crazy,” Athenais parried.
“They are not mystical ones, thrillers about maniacs. For some reason, they’ve started calling them horror movies in modern distribution, even though the genre is more of a criminal one. There are no ghosts, no vampires, no demons, just violence and carnage. These films used to be called thrillers. They could make you sick. And beautiful demons are romance. Like Lermontov’s poem of the same name.
“Called “The Demon”?
“Yes, it is!” Nikita was pleasantly surprised that Athenais knew Russian classics. For a star, she is unusually educated and literate. Her text comes out without a single mistake and a typo. Miracles in a sieve! Or rather, miracles in the chat room!
“And do you want me to prove to you that mystical movies about demons can make it worse than violent thrillers?” Athenais asked a question that sounded like a trick.
“In what case is it?”
“It is in case the demons come off the screen.”
“Like you did?”
“Yes, it is”
“Is it only in the chat room? It’s safe. Even if you are a demon, you can’t hurt me through chat.”
Nikita remembered a sadistic movie where the victim’s ghost killed through a chat room. Athenais died in a terrorist attack, too, after all. What if her soul had mastered the same technique as in the movie? What if mystical movies are just a cast of reality?
There you go! She’s confused him. How can you believe that a star has become a ghost or a demon. No matter what the star says. When have actors ever been sincere? And why is he so eager to believe in Athenais’ honesty? All she does is play with him at night. In a chat room!
“Where are you now?” He typed out the question.
“I am on the Internet.”
