They couldn't but like the story, because he won the competition - but I don't think that they understood something in it.
“He has so much fiction,” said my mother. “And as soon as all these names came to your head with your girlfriend?”
“Your metaphors are very beautiful,” said Miss Parsons. In class, she constantly talked about metaphors. “But I would still like you to show me the story before sending it.” I think I could help you soften it a little.
We let Gus read the story.
“The energy of youth is seething in him,” he said. - Great thing!
When I went home that evening, he said:
- My respect to the evil king!
Of course, my mother immediately began to make plans. She insisted that I give her the phone of Fox, and she called Gus.
“I thought I should go shopping with the girls, buy them some dresses for the ceremony,” she told him joyfully. - This is such a special case - I am sure that they will want to look their best!
The fox did not want to go, and Gus did not force her. After talking with Gus and Lisa on the phone, my mother said that she was very proud that I had the patience to work with this girl, and that maybe I should write my next story without her.
She and I went to the store, and she made me try on a dozen dresses that, in her opinion, were suitable for such an occasion. They all seemed disgusting to me, but in the end she settled on a bright red blouse, under which she should put on a black sweater with a high collar.
“It's not too elegant,” she admitted. “But very stylish.”
That evening, when the ceremony was supposed to take place, we drove to San Francisco, just an hour's drive from where we lived. My father was on a business trip, so he could not join us. My mother insisted that Gus and Lisa go with us.
The Fox was wearing a dark blue dress. Gus wore a gray suit, but with a large Harley-Davidson belt buckle, which was a little comforting.
Gus kept telling us with Lisa how everything would turn out great, but I still felt a little uneasy. This story was ours, only ours! And now my mother thought he belonged to her. And Miss Parsons thought that he belonged to her, and I had no doubt that people at the competition would also think that he belonged to them. Everyone was sure that they owned a piece of us. They tattered us, seized them into pieces.
Lisa and I were left to wait behind the stage of the big theater, along with all the other children who were supposed to read their stories. Four high school students sat in one corner of the room, pretending to be talking about the books they had read, but actually trying to prove to each other how smart they were. The children from elementary school were in a different corner, they had to read first. A young woman was sitting at the door - I decided that she must be in college. While I was looking at her, she pulled a makeup bag from her coat pocket and began to paint her lips. I thought about how stylish and flawless she looks. This is how my mother would like to see me.
For several minutes we sat with others, feeling awkward and stupid.
“Let's get stuck,” the Fox said quietly to me.
- What?
- Let's get out of here. Anyway, nothing good will come of it. This is no longer our story.
I looked at the door.
“But we cannot do that!”
- Even as we can! - Appealing notes were heard in her voice. - What is stopping us? We are wild! - She looked down at her hands. She was no longer a Fox. She was Sarah, and she was unhappy. “Damn it all went wrong!”
“It's all clothes,” I said. “How can we be wild if we are dressed like that?” It just doesn't happen that way.
“They don't want us to be wild,” she said sadly. “The savages have dirt on their faces.”
“Or war paint,” I added.
At that moment, the college student rose from her seat and went out into the corridor, heading for the toilet. She left the coat thrown over the handle of the chair. For a few moments I hesitated, then stood up.
“Let's go,” I said to Lisa. She followed me to the chair. I quickly put my hand in my coat pocket, pulled out my makeup bag and went on until I noticed a scene behind the scene where no one could interfere with us.
Lipstick was a very nice shade of red. The fox closed her eyes, and I painted her forehead with wavy lines and dots, stretched out jagged lightning across my cheeks, and drew stripes on my chin. Then we changed. The touch of lipstick on my face was cool and soft. She drew circles on my cheeks and stripes on my forehead, and drew a long line along my nose. I braided my hair - my mother braided my neat tight braids at home. The hair was scattered around my face with a cloud of small curls.
“Well, now we are ready,” said the Fox. She smirked again.
The elementary school students left the stage, and the female host announced our names. At that very moment I grabbed Lisa's hand and together we went to the microphone. The woman on the podium looked at us with all eyes - but I did not hesitate. I took a microphone from her hand and for some time just stood looking at the audience. Then I said the first line of the story, which I learned many months ago:
- We are wild; we live in the forest. You are afraid of us. You are afraid because you do not know what to expect from us.
“We didn't always live in the forest,” said the Fox, picking up the next line. - Once we lived with people, like all of you. But we broke with this life and left it behind.
I remember this moment. The hot glow of the lamps on my face, the sweet greasy smell of lipstick, the frightened faces of the audience. The feeling of power and freedom when my voice, breaking out of the microphone, rolled down the hall.
I looked at the sea of faces in front of me - so many people, and everyone is looking at us. I saw Gus's face, he smirked. Miss Parsons sat next to her mouth open; my mother frowned angrily. They were shocked. They were angry. They were scared.
It was we who were savages living in the forest. We won the contest, we put war paint on our faces - and nothing will be the same as before. We were wild, and they did not know what to expect from us.
Ray vuksevich
Jump up
We stand waist-deep in a green silty cattle pond. There are seven of us - boys and girls. Not one has turned eleven. Everyone is standing motionless.
“Leeches,” Carly said at breakfast. - Leeches are the way out.
- And who wants out? “I could ask, because I always felt good in the mornings, when the sun had not yet boiled all the juices out of the day, my stomach was full of pancakes and fresh milk, and from the long night there was only a fading memory . Not bad, not bad. Ask me how you are doing. Well, how are you? Not bad.
Carly gave me her blue-and-blue look, as if saying "don't show off, you brown moron." She swept the dining room with that look. Such a look from her can say a lot, for example: “Of course, you got your pancakes and your milk, but what do you think, is it really long before dark?” Not to mention the cows. Oh, forget about it. Don't even think better. Whatever you do, I don't give a damn.
I felt leeches sticking to my feet. In my head I had a feeling of lightness and tightness; I thought that perhaps the time has come to take a nap: close your eyes, lie down and fall asleep. Maybe just go down under the water, beat a pillow out of soft silt, pull green mud to the chin, swim away and wake up somewhere else? Is this the way it should work?
“Listen, Carly,” I called to her, “how the hell should this work?”
“Leeches,” she said, “take you from inside out, this is interdimensional movement, if you know what it means: one piece after another you move to another world.” And in that world, at first you are just blood, then you have muscles, and bones, and skin, and everything else; and then you are you again, and you are no longer here.
“Come on, let me bleed, cutie,” I said, but no one laughed. “Are we already there?” “Again no response.” We plunged so far that only our heads were visible in the middle of the pea-green sea.
“It looks like a picture of hell,” I sa
id.
“Children are not sent to hell,” someone said.
“They're being sent to camp,” Carly said.
Yeah. There, where before letting you ride a pony for some five smelly minutes, you are forced to haul cows with super-duper-shovel shovels all day. Just take a look at us! Dozens of little assholes dot the fields - we follow the cows with our dark green shit bags!
How are you, Aunt Cow?
All is well: to bathe naked with Carly, to lazily kick up and not care about anything.
But here it comes - the moment of movement ...
Or not? Because the next thing I realize is that I'm lying on my back, on the shore, and the naked Carly is sitting on my stomach and is wiping the leeches from my legs. She looks back at me over her shoulder.
“Idiot,” she says.
I look at her ass, but I see the future. Op-hop, round bean - the clouds open, the angels sing, and I see how we dance, eat linguine, drink white wine and look at Paris.
Maybe Rome. What could I know about distant cities that summer?
“And what if I suddenly take it and decide to jump off a cliff,” she says, “will you follow me like an idiot?”
She does not know that I can see the future. She does not know that she will be empowered to suck blood from my brains at any time at will: a squint, a wry smile, a weightless touch on my hand; and one day she will drop the keys and bend to pick them up, and I will know that she is doing this on purpose, but it will not mean anything.
“Yes,” I say. “I will jump after you, Carly.”
Laurent McAleister
Capuchin and the wolf
Edifying tale
Do not be alarmed, children. We live in a world where all stories end happily.
And therefore - listen, and listen carefully ...
In the suburbs: a decent life
In the good old days, although not so long ago, on the outskirts of the city, which was a forest, there were two sisters in an abandoned apartment building. The oldest was Marin Rotritter, and the youngest was Capuchin. The elder sister kept an exemplary economy, everything she had was impeccably clean and absolutely sterile. The younger sister was only twelve years old. She spent her time playing with old cars, running along long corridors or exploring the surroundings.
For Capuchin, there was nothing more beautiful than the view from the window of their kitchen - streets with rows of rusted skeletons of large trucks, a jagged line of dilapidated factory buildings against the sky, endless brick facades of other apartment buildings, a handful of windows that remained full of gold for a long time at dusk light burning like bonfires. Her heart rejoiced, as ours would have rejoiced, at the thought that she was surrounded by a man-made landscape, where man is the measure of everything.
However, she avoided leaning too far out of the window, because to her left a neat angular line of the horizon, like a green growing ulcer, spoiled a cluster of leafy buildings - it loomed the bulk of the City of Hundred Waters ... Kapucina seemed to know what a terrible fate awaited her there - although her disgust was just the normal reaction of the daughter of the suburbs, put face to face with the unbridled nature.
She was a very sweet girl, and all the other dissidents loved her - all those who were hiding among concrete floors, burnt shops and rickety cottages after the Revolution came and the Gardeners came, driving all the inhabitants of the big city into the tight borders of the Ring, where the streets streams fled, trees grew from the windows, and people lived in slavery to nature. Most of all, Capuchin loved umbrellas [76], when her sister drove her around the suburbs in an old electric car - Marin charged him all week with batteries torn from the remnants of the old power grid. It reminded the girl of those stories that her sister told about the good old days - when you could drive a car to astore on the corner and buy food there, wrapped in a smooth shiny plastic bag or packed in colorful cans and boxes.
This method looked much nicer than looking for crumpled tin cans in ruins or bargaining with farmers, who sometimes drove up to the outskirts of the city, offering their mud-stained products. In the holy of holies of her heart, Capuchin sincerely and ardently wished for the return of those wonderful times when unlimited consumption was the law of life.
Well, it so happened that the beloved Marin turned out to be the valiant Lumberjack from the City of Hundred Waters - one of those who fought with the treacherous Wolves scouring the streets inside the Ring. Whether Marin liked the case more than a person, or a person more than a case - this is not mentioned in this story. But we can assume that she loved a person because of his dedication.
Be that as it may, her love was great enough to contain both, and she swore an oath to help him in his struggle. Using materials from the abandoned factory, she made a bar of plastic explosives for the Lumberjacks, which they could hardly have done inside the Ring, in the heart of the City - where even the chemicals necessary for household needs were given out by Dogs and Foxes sparingly and reluctantly.
In order to deliver the Lumberjacks explosives without undue risk that the case would be solved, Marin decided to use Capuchin. Her little sister was just at the right age: old enough to be entrusted with a serious business, but still small enough not to be suspected of anything more than childish prank. Marin explained to her what she should do.
- Here look. Capuchin, ”she said. “You will take this basket to the City.” To let you into the Ring, you will say that you want to visit our grandmother Kunigunda - that you bring her the food that we baked for her.
Do not get me wrong: Capuchin was a brave little girl, but the City terrified her. She refused. Let her older sister go herself - she already goes there quite often, almost twice a month, to hug her lover. Why don't she go this time too?
Marin patiently explained that she herself was under surveillance. Wolves have already grown her face on the leaves of their file trees; she is suspected of having connections with Lumberjacks. If they see that she is going to the City with a package in her hands, they will search her right there, find explosives and arrest her. Capuchin, on the other hand, has never been inside the Ring, and it is small enough to weaken the wolves' vigilance. Once is enough - having received a sample of a new explosive, Lumberjacks, making sure of its effectiveness, then they will take care to transport the rest to the City.
“But the City ...” protested Kapucina. - It's so dark there; and then, all these trees and greenery ...
“You're old enough not to be afraid of the vegetation,” Maryn said firmly. - Remember one thing: under all this grass and ground lies asphalt, concrete and paving stones - strong and reliable, like buildings; just like here. Once, before the Gardeners took power, the City was exactly the same as the suburbs - clean, strict and solid. And he still remains that way - down there. You should always remember that.
“What if the Wolves grab me?”
Marin grunted with displeasure, and then insinuatingly told her sister:
“Listen, Capuchin, I swear to you that everything will turn out just fine, so don't worry.” And if you do this for me ... Do you remember, I always said that I would not allow you to smoke until you are thirteen?
“Yes,” answered Capuchin with growing excitement.
- So: if you do this for me, you will smoke your first cigarette as soon as you get home.
- Oh, Marin! Is it true ?!
So Capuchin finally allowed herself to be persuaded. Until late at night, her sister bombarded her with warnings and advice, and then sent her to bed - only a few hours left until the time when the girl was supposed to leave.
Into the City: a Dangerous Way
Capuchin set off early, before it got too hot. She walked along a cracked asphalt road leading to the City; the slopes of the embankment on both sides were littered with rusty skeletons of wrecked cars, but the road itself was in good order. The girl hung the basket on her hand, trying to look cheerful and innocent, as her sister had punished her.
She was told so much that her head was buzzin
g. Marin warned her against the Hawks and Dogs on guard at the borders of the Ring, against the Foxes and Wolves, who could stop and interrogate her when she was inside the Ring. The older sister explained how she should respond (politely, so as not to look scared and not show too clearly her antipathy to the regime), how to choose the right side streets, how not to get lost in the maze of buildings overgrown with shrubs , so similar to each other in their revolutionary green dress ... Capuchin hoped only that she could not forget anything.
By the middle of the morning she reached the City. Other travelers flowed from the suburbs and to the suburbs, crowding among the temporary buildings that camped on the outer edge of the Ring. Here, far from the stern eyes of the Dogs, people traded, gambled, and were engaged in other, hardly legal, affairs. Capuchin was so fascinated by all this (do not forget that she was just a little girl) that she lingered there for almost an hour, moving from tent to tent and looking inside to find out what each of them hides.
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