Ten years passed since the time when her country where she grew up and spent her life and which she loved was captured by a many-headed dragon. He tore the country into parts, by a piece for every head, ruined, defiled, defamed and befouled all things around. He gorged one and all: warriors, adult bread-winners, old people, virgins and children. He gorged not only bodies but souls, forcing them not to serve high ideals but making them food for his insatiable many-headed lust. The dragon infected the country with his bloodlust and people gladly snatched up leavings of bloody food from the master's table, not supposing that it was blood of their neighbors. They even gorged these neighbors by themselves.
She got used to the dragon, to his invincibility and to seeing that his victims quietly were digging their own mass grave, only imploring to pay for digging, so that they could have means for drinking alcohol and eating before their death. She got used to seeing that perjurers were becoming saints and those faithful to death were becoming traitors, that everything was now wrong, that artillery fired at our own soldiers, that white swans became black ones at the sight of everybody, a lion surrendered to a gnat and the head voted for its separation from its body. Money turned into dead papers, half-naked women of all ages in wheels or without them were moving around the city, and nobody now paid attention to all kinds of extrasensory individuals. Planes fell to peoples' heads, our bombs fell to our peaceful houses, and old women, coming out of its ruins were interested not in the destiny of their neighbors but in the end of one more episode of the film 'Santa-Barbara'. Heroes of films whom young people formerly imitated live out their days as court jesters and many Ivan Besdomnys with candles and in underwear pursued black cats around the Patriarch's Pools. She got used to seeing this embodied absurdity and that all sensible and reasonable was impossible from now on. She convinced herself that this entire Apocalypse was foretold in the Bible, that it was impossible to withstand the wheel of history and that Yegor Zlatov with his wonderful 'Association of the Heavenly Law Confessors', the son of Varvara and Gleb, only existed in some other dimension, inaccessible for the dragon where the way for the dragon was prohibited.
She knew from the very beginning that nothing could happen with Yegor. God's Intercession protected him because the Lord didn't send trials beyond measure and not by chance gave Yegor to her hopeless perishing country "Not an hair of your head perish", she convinced and persuaded herself but for some reason couldn't go away.
'As usual, they shoot at the entrance door when a victim gets into a car or in the entrance itself, or plant a bomb, or fire through a telescopic sight from lofts of adjacent houses... the boys surely checked the entrance... no, she will wait in any case; she will go to her cottage, and laugh at her fears. If only our people didn't notice from the window that she, stupid woman, sticks here. It is good that it is becoming dark.'
In the boring 'The News World' it was now impossible to discern any line when they at last went out: Yegor, Iris and Varya. They kissed each other. Iris sat in front near the driver. Yegor with bodyguards sat behind. She bent down for every case and heard a noise of departing car.
The entrance door banged behind Varya.
There now, she could get under way. She turned the ignition key and at the same moment saw in the mirror crawling black Mercedes with its headlights, swinging in the twilight: white and yellow ones.
'O Lord, it can't be, it shouldn't be...' But it was happening. As in a nightmare the Mercedes with different eyes coming from unknown place crawled from the black abyss of the arch and turned right. She immediately understood, growing cold with terror, that there at the chemist's it would turn around and go just under her along the road under the embankment and like a black different-eyed demon swiftly follow Yegor's car rushing to the airport. In her enlightenment as quick as lightning she saw the Mersedes coming close to them, hitting the wheels of their car and piercing the driver, Yegor and Iris with the future baby, a girl by the name of Maria, the most honored in both sides of the ocean, with a burst of machine-gun fire. The motor would roar, the different-eyed headlights would flash and the unpunished, not caught and not judged Mercedes would rush into the night winning as ever. And there would be no Maria, no Iris, no Yegor; only the night and this black Apocalypse...
And there was nothing she could do.
'Not if I know it. Never!' Violent superhuman fury, all hatred of this decade accumulated from day to day, which was formerly supressed by her mind, caution and instinct of self-preservation, suddenly exploded inside her like a dense nucleus, similar to that primordial and cosmic one, from which all galaxies spread in every which way with a speed of light. It was a point of monstrous density ready for an explosion. The hatred to this many-headed dragon's spawn all-defiling and all-gorging: Homeland, sacred things, purity, destinies, bodies and souls.
'Not if I know it!'
She knew what to do. She had no fear, no hesitation but only thrill and delight when she planned to stop them and fly into their stinky and voracious throat as a deadly gag and tear them into pieces. Maybe, in the same way people went to embrasures and ram attacks. 'To stop up! From far away, from her childish past, maybe from some film, a light and pure call of trumpet was heard. 'Arise, drummer!' and something powerful 'Stand up and go'.
The blood in the temples of her head strictly counted out seconds. 'She must go down from the embankment as carefully as possible - what happiness that she put her car by the head towards the road! - and then push gas pedal.'
'My dear, wait for one more moment!' It seemed to her that her Zhiguli car trembled with impatience preparing for a jump; they were now like one body. Different-eyed Mercedes didn't see a danger yet. Turning around, it rushed right to her, roaring with its powerful motor and picking up speed; its headlights became blinding. It was the wheel of history that she was called to stop. 'O Lord, help... That's all. It's time.'
The car jumped on the embankment, the steering wheel began to twitch in her hands; the motor roared. The heartrending wail of the klaxon on the right, the headlights beginning to rush about, brake chatter. 'That's all, boys, it is finished.'
"Gorge, monster"! She shouted or thought with delight, throwing this triumphant shout of hers into approaching open fire-spitting mouth. Everything began to whirl around her together with her flesh, consciousness and soul: iron and horrible apocalyptical crash, fire and ruin of the whole lot.
His teeth pierced her but horrible pain soon calmed down, the world turned over, something flashed and banged and fiery reflections began to rush about in the whirling world.
"It's them, them!" She understood by her weakening consciousness. "Now they won't reach Yegor. It's finished!" all her nature sang and shouted perishing, crushing and whirling together with her car, and inexpressible unearthly delight was in this deadly agony. 'Maybe, in the same way grain dies turning into other dimension. It wins after being perished. I have done it. Is it really so?'
And when everything stopped, became silent, calmed down, when she being squeezed, crushed from all sides, a small part of consciousness sinking in a large ocean, feeling pain as if it were separated from her, managed to think one more time that yells, flashes, and roar of fire were left at their Vampiria. And her vision of Yegor's car rushing along the highway and arriving in due time for a midnight transatlantic flight was blissful and paradisiacal.
"Stop, o moment... In this beautiful moment in the pre-war blue sky a kite launched by her father flew eternally, she eternally danced with Ganya on fluffy Regina's carpet without her shoes, and Yegor's car eternally rushed along the highway in eternal safety, hastening to midnight transatlantic flight.
That time everything was happening in other dimension. Somebody's voices and touches, responded in her with the same pain 'that was not hers', anxious but more often curious spots of faces, a stretcher and blinding lamp over her head... Then the lamp turned into the moon or the sun; it couldn't be discerned because of clouds crawling from everywhere. The clouds closed up and it rained, the drops were sharp, scorching; they mercilessly pierced her. Joanna could hardly save herself from them in a half-dark and stuffy orchard or gallery where one could move only along narrow boarded path. When she moved aside, drops-needles again pierced her face, neck, hands. Joanna tried to go only forward, paying no attention to tubs with dried stems or empty picture frames along a pavement.
How stuffy it was; it was harder and harder to breathe, planks creaked under her feet but she didn't feel her feet. And all of that reminded her of something very old and horrible. It was a woody brown rectangle, to which she is inevitably came. Four rhombuses with peeled paint, a crookedly nailed handle...
'It's the door with rhombuses! O Lord, please no. Now she will wake up and this old childish nightmare will become a simple bogeyman story that was lost in the time.'
But she couldn't wake up. She went back, right and left but everywhere fiery needles pierced her neck and hands.
She gasped and had no strength to struggle. The door was slowly opening. Joanna was pulled into it like into a black crater; black water half and half with black clay stuck her eyes, nose, lips...
And the door banged with a boom.
Behind her there were no gallery-orchard, no fiery piercing needles, no black water half and half with black clay, no Joanna herself. There was only final Joanna's thought. It stopped like a freeze-frame in a desperate "It is finished!"
From now on his motionless thought was Joanna herself. That was all left of her now and ever, and unto ages of ages.
"That's all." The film frame stopped forever. Eternal Joanna - a thought by the name 'That's all'.
It was the end of the film where she played her life. The light was turned off, the audience went home. Everybody went away except her.
'That's what the hell is. No scorching pans, no nonexistence. Only immortal dark thought that nothing will ever happen. And somewhere there is Eternal and Beautiful 'Everything', from which she is separated forever.'
"Why are you yelling and lamenting"? flattering whisper penetrated into pitch darkness. 'Joanna, you still have a chance to come back. You will only drive past the temple, and there will be no Uzbeks with different eyes and no Mercedeses... You will wake up in Luzhino with a light headache, and that's the end of the matter. Agreed?
'But what about Yegor?'
What do you need Yegor for, we will dispense with Yegor," the Whisper tenderly rustled.
We will turn your film back and add two more episodes with a happy-end. And Yegor will be left in the previous episode, can't it be so? A sudden death of an actor, unintentional correction...
You are a professional film maker, Joanna, aren't you?
Joanna-thought said 'no'.