The Place Where

by Rodion Pretis

  Having reached the water border, cockroaches did not hesitate for a second. In a continuous, even stream, without a single break, they unrestrained flowed into the ocean. Calm water on the shallows was completely dotted with dark dots and islands, which, apparently, consisted of hundreds or even thousands of cockroach bodies. Marvin remembered a joke heard somewhere: if you build all the Chinese in a column and march into the ocean, this will never end, because they multiply too quickly.

  When Marvin moved back across the beach, the old man said something.

  “He says he will leave it until the morning, in case you have rats or mice,” the guy translated.

  “Does that affect them too?” Asked Pamela.

  “Of course,” the guy nodded. - No extra charge.

  “But what the hell?” - Marvin was surprised. “What, you mean to say that you had no rats or mice here until Columbus came?”

  - No, some species, of course, were - forest and field mice, water rats. But the usual domestic mouse or the gray Norwegian rat, or these black rats, which are now full in cities - they all sailed on ships.

  “I don't see any here,” Pamela remarked.

  “Oh, it's too early for them.” The larger the animal, the more time must pass for the product to begin to act. It depends on body weight. Take some really big gray rat - it may not feel anything until the very end of the night. But by morning she will definitely come here and will try to sail back to her place in Norway or somewhere else.

  The old man spoke again.

  “My grandfather says he'll be back tomorrow to end the slander.” It must not be left too long. And then, you know ... anything can happen.

  The cockroach river at their feet flowed quietly forward, into oblivion.

  Marvin did not sleep well tonight. He was tormented by an obsessive nightmare in which he fled in terror, over an endless bare plain under a dark sky. A group of Indians chased him, giggling, brandishing tomahawks and knocking on drums, while cockroaches the size of a man stood on their hind legs, lined up in rows on both sides of his path, and shouted something to him in Spanish. Pamela appeared before him, naked. “This is your karma, Marvin!” She cried. He saw that a long antennae were growing from her head, and where there should be breasts, an additional pair of hands was located.

  He sat in bed, shaking and sweating. The smell of smoke in the room was so intense that he could barely breathe.

  - Ha! He gasped, struggled out of his crumpled blanket and got out of bed. For some time he stood in the dark, trying to stay on his unsteady legs.

  - Marvin? - muttered Pamela from the other end of the bed, but didn't even turn to him, and he realized that his wife was talking in a dream.

  He went down the stairs, holding on to the railing, pulled out a bottle of Johnny Walker from the bar. Opening it in the darkness of the living room, Marvin took a long sip, followed by another - right from the neck. The first sip almost came back, but from the second he felt much better.

  Together with the bottle, he went upstairs to the guest bedroom, where he opened the window wide, turned on the large fan under the ceiling and fell onto the bed. He still smelled smoke, but another gulp of tape fixed the problem.

  For a long time he lay, drinking a little from the bottle, until finally the whiskey relaxed him so much that Marvin could plunge into dull unconsciousness. He dreamed again, but this time there were no Indians or cockroaches; on the contrary, it was a beautiful, soothing vision. In it, he strode along slightly hilly pastures; along the path along which he walked, mighty oaks grew, overshadowing it with heavy branches covered with thick spring foliage; sheep grazed on the near slope.

  In the distance, on the crest of a high hill, stood the gray battlements and towers of an ancient castle. A winding dirt road came up to its gates, and now it was clear that a detachment of soldiers in red jackets was marching along it, moving towards Marvin. “Pu-un, pu-un, pu-un, pu-un,” their drum sounded, reaching through the fields; Marvin heard them tighten the song:

  Hey ya hey yo hey ya

  Yo hey ya hey na way

  Ah ho ha na yo

  Ho ho ho ho ho!

  He woke again; the sun was shining through the window. For a long time he lay, covering his face with a pillow and knowing that he was unlikely to like to get up.

  When he finally appeared at the door of the guest bedroom, sweaty and unshaven, it was almost midday. Walking past the bathroom, he heard the sound of flowing water. Pamela must have been up for several hours already - she always got up ridiculously early in order to have time to do her idiotic meditations and yoga exercises on the terrace along with sunrise.

  Marvin was sitting in the living room drinking coffee when the doorbell rang. He jumped to his feet, grunted: “Damn it!” And went to open it. Sunlight dagged into his eyes as he opened the door; Marvin covered them to deal with the pain. When he opened his eyes again, two Indians stood on the porch in front of him.

  “Sorry if we arrived a little early,” the guy said. “I'll be back to work soon.”

  Marvin looked around them without much warmth.

  “What the hell do you still need?”

  “Well then, Mr. Bradshaw ... well, you understand ... My grandfather did the work for you. ”

  Marvin nodded. That was a mistake. When the ocean of pain in his head subsided again, he said:

  “And now you want to be paid.” Wait here a minute.

  These two clowns could not confirm their claims in any way, but he was now in no mood to cause a scandal. His wallet was upstairs in the bedroom, but he knew that Pamela was holding some little things in a vase on the mantelpiece to pay the boys-deliverymen and a similar riffraff. He pulled out a stack of bank notes, peeled off twenty pieces of paper, and returned to the front door.

  - On, take it, leader. Buy yourself a new feather.

  The old man did not even touch the money.

  “One hundred dollars,” he said firmly. In English.

  Marvin laughed sarcastically.

  - Dreaming is not harmful, O Sitting Bull! Say more thanks that I generally give you something after you stink me the whole house. Take twenty, or forget about money.

  The old man gulped something at the guy in his own way, not taking his eyes off Marvin. The guy said:

  “If you don't pay, he won't take away the slander.”

  “Do you think that bothers me?” Even if I at least for a penny believed in this shit, I still would not want to be taken away. Let it be for yourself! At least I'll never have cockroaches.

  “It doesn't work quite like that,” the guy answered. - Hex has no effect on anything that was outside the house at the time when it was imposed.

  Marvin thought about something.

  “Listen, I know what we will do.” You give me some of this potion that you burned yesterday, right? And I'm writing you a check for a hundred bucks, right now, is it coming?

  In the end, if you discard all this superstitious rubbish, there must have been something in this smoke that drove out cockroaches better than any other remedy on the market! Maybe they really fly off his coils, who knows? Take a sample to the laboratory, make an analysis - yes there could be a product for several million dollars hiding! It was worth risking a hundred. By golly, maybe he won't even suspend payment by check. May be ...

  But the old man shook his head again, and the guy said:

  “I'm sorry, Mr. Bradshaw. ” This is a secret composition. And in any case, without a song, he will not work.

  Marvin's eyes were covered with a red veil, even thicker than before.

  - Well, to hell with you! He yelled. “Get out of my porch, and don't forget that rusty piece of crap standing on my driveway!” Come on, get your red-skinned asses out of here! - The guy opened his mouth, intending to say something. “Do you want trouble, Tonto?” Do you have a license for your pest control business in this country? No? That's it. Come on, come on, move!

  After waiting for the crack of the silencer of the broken pickup to cal
m down in the distance, Marvin returned to the living room. Pamela in a white bathrobe stood on the stairs, her hair wet after a shower. She looked disgustingly cheerful.

  “I thought I heard voices,” she said. “Who was it, those two Native Americans?” I hope you generously paid them?

  Marvin sank heavily onto the couch.

  “I gave them what they asked for.”

  - I am so upset that I could not see them again! It is such an honor to see a real shaman in your house! And with such an inspiring ceremony! Remember that sweet little song he sang? It still sounds in my mind, over and over, like a mantra. Isn't it wonderful?

  And she jumped up the stairs back to her top, humming cheerfully: "Hey-ya, hey-yo, hey-ya!" “Pu-un, pu-un, pu-un, poo-un,” Marvin tapped the drum in her head.

  He spent the rest of the day lying on the sofa in the living room, mostly with his eyes closed - wishing he could fall asleep. He made no movement toward the bar. A glass would have come to him just right, but his stomach could not stand it.

  The hangover did not go away; sometimes it seemed to Marvin that his skull was about to crack like a digested egg. His whole body ached, as if he had fallen and rolled down the stairs. Even the skin on his face seemed too tight.

  Worst of all, he continued to continue to hear Indian music, which now sounded even louder, clearer, and more insistent than before. Until now, it has been nothing more than an annoying hindrance, one of these annoying tricks that the brain sometimes ejects when a topic from Gilligan Island [52] gets stuck in your ears for the whole day. Now it has turned into an incessant noise, filling the entire inside of his skull with the primitive rumble of a drum and the wild howls of an old man's voice; from time to time Marvin could not help but clutch his ears in his hands - although he knew that nothing good would come of it. He was not averse to screaming, but that would be too painful.

  Pamela disappeared around noon. “I went to visit one of my moron girlfriends,” thought Marvin sullenly, “and spit on her unfortunate, god-damned husband.” However, at about four o'clock, when he stumbled to the kitchen - not that he really wanted to eat, but perhaps a small fraction of the food would calm his stomach - and accidentally looked out through the glass door, he saw it. She didn't get anywhere, here she is, down on the beach. She was wearing a long white dress, and she seemed to be dancing in the sand, moving back and forth along the very edge of the approaching tide. Her hands were raised above her head and she clapped her hands.Marvin did not hear the sound, but his eyes caught the rhythm: "clap-clap-clap-clap" - in full accordance with the drum beating in his head, and with a thump of blood in his throbbing temples.

  The sun has finally sunk over the horizon. Marvin did not turn on the light - the darkness calmed the pain a little. “Interesting,” he thought, “is Pamela still on the beach?”

  - Pamela! He called. Then he called again, but there was no answer, and Marvin decided that it didn't care so damn much to go look for her.

  However, time passed, and Pamela was still not visible. In the end, Marvin got to his feet and shuffled toward the door. It could turn out to be unsafe - a white woman is alone at night on the beach ... Besides, he just needed to take a breath of fresh air. The stink of this smoke was so sticky that it seemed to have eaten into the skin itself; his whole body was itchy.

  He slowly descended the wooden stairs to the small beach. The full moon was already hanging in the sky and the white sand flickered brightly. Marvin could see the entire beach, all the way to the silver strip marking the receding edge of the ocean.

  Pamela was nowhere to be seen.

  He moved further down the sand - without any definite thought of what he expected to find. His legs seemed to set foot on their own, without asking for his permission, and he let them do it. His body no longer ached; even the headache has gone. The drum in his head sounded very loud now, deafening “PU-UNG, PU-UNG, PU-UNG, PU-UNG”, but for some reason this did not bother him anymore.

  On the wet sand below the high tide line, a trace of traces from small bare feet was visible, leading away to the water. Marvin followed in the footsteps - without haste and without much interest. Ahead, something was whiter, brighter than sand. Having reached the place, he was not very surprised to recognize Pamela's dress.

  At the water's edge, the tracks were cut off. Marvin stood there for a while, looking forward at the moonlit expanse of the ocean. His eyes were fixed somewhere in the distance, on an invisible horizon. His leg knocked out a crisp rhythm in the wet sand.

  Marvin stepped forward.

  At the top of the cliff, sitting on a large boulder, the Indian guy who served with Antonio said:

  - There he goes.

  His grandfather, who was sitting next to him, giggled quietly.

  - How long did it take?

  “Ever since she entered?” - The guy checked his cheap electronic watch. The backlight did not work, but the moon shone quite well. - Hour and a half. Beside that.

  - Hmm. It seemed to me that he was not so much larger than her.

  - She had brittle bones.

  - Yeah. - The old man grinned. “I saw you when she took off her dress.” I thought you would fall off a cliff.

  “She had a beautiful body,” said the guy. - For a woman of her age.

  They watched Marvin Bradshaw purposefully enter the ocean. The water reached him already to the waist, but he continued to move forward.

  “Most likely, he cannot swim,” the guy said.

  “He would not be very helpful if he could.” Come on, son. It's time.

  When they returned to the pickup, the guy asked:

  “Will you teach me this slander?”

  - Someday I will teach. When you will be ready.

  - Is it called something? What we ... what did you do there in their house? What do you call it?

  - I call it launch.

  The guy laughed. A moment later, the old man joined him, echoing the young voice with his dry, rustling laugh. They were still laughing when the pickup truck started up the coastal road, heading towards the distant highway lights.

  Behind them stretched the vast expanses of the ocean; its flat, sparkling in the moonlight surface was broken only by a single small dark spot - these were the head and shoulders of Marvin Bradshaw, wading along towards Europe.

  Michael arsenolt

  The most common halloween

  As always, on Halloween, I wandered the streets, doing what I always do.

  I hunted for vampires.

  I waited for the hours when it would be completely dark, when the last rays of life-affirming sunlight faded completely, and then I got out. There was no point in leaving earlier, while they were still sleeping in their dwellings with their unclean sleep of the undead.

  God damned creatures! What price will they pay!

  I tirelessly circled and circled the streets; I knew that they were somewhere here, I knew that only I could find them, and only I could destroy them.

  Under the flashlight, I hesitated - I checked the weapon and double-checked the equipment. I was ready. I'm always ready.

  I smiled. On Halloween, vampires become arrogant. They weaken their defenses. They think that they can, so easily, mix with us, that we will not be able to notice them, we will not be able to calculate them.

  But they are wrong. They try to quietly glide along with the crowds, hide among the "treat-and-not-frighteners", all kinds of costumed sweets hunters - but still they stand out. I can figure them out.

  My detour lasted two hours, when at last I saw one of them. He nestled in the company of loud-voiced and annoying fun, trying in vain to become invisible; however, I almost immediately entered under his mask. Approaching the company from behind and trying so that my presence would not attract attention, I followed them and studied it until I was finally convinced. They walked along a long apartment building, not paying attention to me, laughing and scattering empty beer cans, not knowing that there was a demon among them.

  I approached
a sufficient distance and made my move.

  - Freeze, the fiend of hell! I cried out.

  Then they all stopped and turned to me - obviously not knowing what to do. There was a pause; in silence they measured me with their eyes. I don't know if they felt the aura of piety surrounding me or had already managed to fall under the hypnotic influence of a vampire. One way or another, their lives would never be the same.

  “Excuse me,” said the plump man dressed as a clown, “but we have no trifles.” We can't give you anything.