“Isn’t that what I mean? What country are you in? America? Europe? Russia?”
“Is the fan interested in my geographic location?”
The question sounded like aВ joke.
“I am not a fan!”
“Then what are you?”
She roused his conscience.
“I’m a fan of your beautiful pictures,” Nikita confessed.
“I need an interlocutor, not a fan.”
There you go! She’s got him stumped again. They go around and around. But the chat is interesting, you don’t want to turn off. Even if an ugly picture of a monster popped up instead of Athenais’ face, it wouldn’t cool him off. He’s communicating with a mystery.
“I’ll be your interlocutor, your friend, your personal free psychologist… whatever you want.”
“Even a victim?” Athenais teased him.
And that’s for his sincere confession! When you tell a pretty girl what’s in your heart, she’s bound to spit in it.
“So you want to be my victim?”
Nikita fell into aВ stupor. AВ noose tightened around his throat.
“You’d make a wonderful victim,” Athenais continued.
What aВ joke! Or isВ it?
“What really happened at the Blue Lotus Cinema?” Nikita typed.
There wasn’t an answer for a long time.
“Tell me about the terrorist attack. Or what happened there? How did you survive? And why were your fans burning temples? I mean, you played a deity. Aren’t deity worshippers supposed to respect temples?”
“Gods come in all kinds of ways.”
Over the top of the chat room, the message about the call buzzed. Athenais called. Nikita responded instantly. The video chat opened. Athenais appeared to be looking at the laptop that lay in her lap. The image was slightly shifted upward. The winged beauty looked down at Nikita. The dark wings, interwoven with glittering chains, were most likely held on those chains. They couldn’t have been real!
Behind Athenais loomed the same walls painted with hieroglyphs. The room she was inВ was very dark. The only light came from the laptop.
“You have nice watercolors on the walls,” Athenais remarked.
“They’ve been here since high school,” Nikita muttered. He was embarrassed by his drawings. How come Athenais noticed them and didn’t notice the large claw scratches on the wallpaper next to them. Or had she deliberately missed them? After all, they had strangely appeared in the apartment at the same time Nikita had engaged in a chat with her.
Is it possible to hurt her physically through a chat room? He guesses he can, if there’s a real angel or demon sitting on the other side of the chat room. Can you kill through chat? It’s definitely possible to seduce. Nikita gazed greedily at the gentle angelic face in the video window. Athenais had golden eyebrows and eyelashes, graceful cheekbones, a regular facial oval, lips as delicate as rose petals, and lingering blue eyes. Or were they emerald eyes? They seem to change color from time to time.
“You don’t have any icons in your room,” Athenais pointed out.
“No, I don’t. They were left by my grandmother, but I gave them away to the needy.”
“Did they make you feel negative?”
“No, I’m just an atheist. I don’t like to keep religious symbols at home just as a souvenir. My mom brought a statue of goddess Kali from her business trip to India. She must still have it in her bedroom.”
“I knew Kali.”
“So you’ve seen her statuettes, too?”
Athenais suddenly laughed softly.
“You’re funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are very naive.”
“And you are very beautiful.”
“I know!”
Athenais had a rigid self-esteem with no pluses and no minuses. Compliments couldn’t buy her off. How would she feel about a bouquet of roses?
You couldn’t buy roses on a student scholarship, but Nikita worked as a courier during the summer and saved up some money. He would gladly spend it on a lavish bouquet and a box of chocolates for Athenais, if she would agree to a date.
She went out on video chat. That’s already progress. Probably the next step will be a date. All we have to do is get her talking, and maybe she’ll set a date herself.
Athenais looked about sixteen or eighteen. He wouldn’t want to get a felony conviction for seduction of a minor. Nowadays a lot of people look out of their age. Judging by the biography posted on the Internet, Athenais had already managed to act in dozens of movies, where she played not a child, but an adult heroine. So she is definitely twenty to twenty-five years old.
“I wish I were a poet, or I would have written poems about your beauty.”
“Many have been dedicated to me: sonnets, odes, madrigals, ballads, even chants and prayers… More valuable than odes to me is communion with you, a living person. Thank you for your friendship.”
Athenais put her hand toВ her lips and sent him an airy kiss. Her fingers slid right across the screen.
That’s how the Orientals, like the Arabs, thank you for your friendship on Facebook. Nikita was told about their way of communicating by her neighbor, who learned foreign languages well. She conversed with people from the Emirates, Indians, Turks, and guys from Sri Lanka. It was all for an opportunity to practice linguistics. She was the one who told Nikita that he could find a girlfriend on international sites.
Athenais looked something like aВ character from an Oriental fairy tale. She looked like an angel, but she reeked ofВ the luxury ofВ exotic palaces, golden deserts, and magical oases.
It seems that inВ fairy tales, the beautiful djinn are usually called peri.
“Athenais…” Nikita addressed her by name.
She grinned as if he were calling someone who didn’t exist, and suddenly she beckoned him toward her, into the darkness of the room painted with hieroglyphics. As if he could walk through a computer screen and get straight to her!
“Living people are rare here,” Athenais suddenly admitted. “It’s a very desolate place around here.”
“Don’t tell me you’re in the Valley of the Kings, surrounded by the Sahara.”
After all, aВ room with walls painted with hieroglyphs could be the inside ofВ aВ pyramid. Few actors or archaeologists could have been stranded inВ the desert byВ unforeseen circumstances.
“I’m not far from Moscow. You could say, in the far suburbs of Moscow. But there are no dacha plots here, just wastelands all around.”
“Can I get to you by train?”
“No, the railway line is too far. But sometimes I hear trains rumbling on the tracks.”
“So it’s not too far. Otherwise you wouldn’t hear it.”
“I have better hearing than people.”
There she goes again, flaunting her oddities! How hard it is toВ communicate with actresses!
“So you’re an angel?” Looking at her, it was hard not to believe it. Even Athenais’ skin was as delicate as lily petals. Only angels could have such delicate skin.
Nikita smiled at her through the chat. AВ smile helps smooth out any awkwardness.
“Don’t get excited! Angels really are creepy creatures.”
There was someone behind Athenais’ back. Or was that her wing moving? Nikita squinted, trying to see. He needed to get up from the table and light the chandelier. Then it would be brighter and he could see it. Only by the time he reaches the switch, Athenais will have left the video chat. She’s nervous enough as it is, like she’s going to end the dialogue.
“Swipe your finger across the screen,” Nikita guessed to ask.
“Why?” Athenais was surprised.
“Just do as I ask.”
She leaned over and traced some kind ofВ hieroglyph on the screen with her finger.
“Shall I wave my hand at you too?”
“Don’t do that! I’ve already made sure the video of you wasn’t pre-recorded. Otherwise you wouldn’t have fulfilled my request.”
“Are all Moscow guys so suspicious?”
“Are all angels so mysterious?”
Nikita could have admitted to the fact that he’d already picked up a few jokes in the chat room, but it wasn’t comfortable. Athenais was looking at him with serious, wise eyes that changed color every minute. She must have special color lenses with a chameleon effect.
“You’re alive! You didn’t die in the terrorist attack! I’m glad.”
“What if you’re glad for nothing?”
Athenais waved her hand, which was studded with fancy rings.
“Good night!”
“But it would soon be morning.”
But AthГ©nais had already passed out, moving her winged shoulder smoothly one last time, as if inВ flight. The chat went out, but the feeling that the angel was still around remained.
Demons come along with the angel
Nikita dreamt ofВ aВ golden winged statue, devoutly worshipped byВ priests inВ scarlet robes. It stands on aВ pedestal inВ the center ofВ aВ stone hall, and the crowds ofВ idolaters around it somehow resemble modern fans. Nevertheless, they do not behave inВ aВ modern way. They fall down inВ front ofВ it, they bow down, even smash their foreheads on the stone floor. Only people from ancient times can worship aВ deity inВ such aВ way, so why does he associate the ancient statue ofВ the goddess with aВ modern movie star, and the priests with her fans? Is he going crazy? Or is it impossible toВ go crazy inВ aВ dream? After all, it is aВ dream!
Nevertheless, the feeling inВ the dream is so realistic, as if the dream is happening inВ reality. It seems that if you stretch out your hand, you will touch the golden goddess. The statue shines like the sun. It hurts his eyes.
Nikita has the feeling that he is inside a movie, not a dream. It’s unaccustomed, like a movie set, but there are no cameras around. The priests are beating their bows, surrounding the statue. And suddenly the statue comes to life, steps down from the pedestal, tearing apart the people who were brought to sacrifice to her. The goddess is not an idol, but a living being.
The dream ended abruptly. Nikita was disappointed to see the dirty ceiling of his apartment instead of the magnificent vaults of the ancient temple he had dreamed of. He wanted to go back to the land of dreams. The dream ended just as the deity’s golden fingers reached for his own throat. Nikita didn’t even realize who he was in the dream: a victim, a priest, or a bystander.
For the first time he had the feeling that he was watching aВ dream, as if it were aВ movie.
The apartment was empty. His mother would not return from her business trip for a long time. She rarely called, so as not to waste long-distance calls. His father had started a new family long ago, but at least he was paying his son’s education bills. And that’s good.
But the bills from Moscow Power Supply Company would have to be paid he. The month’s debt would probably turn out to be considerable. The computer was on all night, waiting for another chat with an angel.
Nikita woke up toВ find that he had forgotten toВ turn off his computer, and it had been on all night. He wished it had not broken down altogether. He certainly did not have enough money for aВ new computer this semester.
Actually, the computer was needed toВ type essays and term papers, but it was not used for its intended purpose. Why write aВ term paper when you can chat.
There was aВ real angel inВ the chat room. Athenais is an angel. Just as religious people wait for divine visions, Nikita waited for aВ chat withВ her.
How nice it would be if she were really winged and could fly toВ him right now, knocking on his apartment window. He lived so high up that only an angel could reach his window.
Nearby, the wings rustled. This is no longer aВ dream! Someone winged nearby, and not inВ the window, but right inВ the apartment.
“Athenais!” Nikita lifted his head from the pillow and groaned. Someone’s creepy shadow rushed across the room. A floor lamp fell and went out. Someone was treading on the carpet quietly, like a cat.
“Who’s there?”
The question must have sounded silly. Who could break into aВ locked apartment? He just seems to. Athenais movies gave him an imagination.
The familiar scraping sound reached his ears again. That was the sound ofВ claws scraping against concrete walls.
Nikita tried to see something in the darkness. He should have kept the curtains drawn. Then the glare from the lanterns and the neighbor’s glowing windows would have been enough to see who was in the room.
Nikita didn’t believe in ghosts. Besides, there was no room for a ghost in a cramped Moscow apartment. The room barely had room for a sofa and a closet. The guest would have nowhere to go.
Probably, the guest decided so, because he suddenly sank down on the couch. Nikita shuddered, he could not breathe. Someone heavy covered him with his body. Someone’s claws squeezed his throat. It would have been better if they had left their fingerprints on the furniture, the refrigerator, and the plywood walls, just like before. The walls would take the damage, but a man’s throat was so easy to cut.
“What do you want?” A helpless croak came from Nikita’s lips instead of words.
