© Vladislav Cross, 2019

ISBN 978-5-4490-3619-3

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

“Rejoice, o young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thee heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring you into judgement.” (Ecclesiastes, 11:9)

This story does not propagandize drugs and does not call to their use! Description of the use of drugs, and of euphoric feelings and visions, is exclusively an instrument of implementation of a creative conception which puts as its goal demonstration of some of the “honey traps” by means of which Satan catches human souls! Do not fool yourself and do not be mistaken! Consumption of drugs leads to premature death and, in the final result, into the boiling waters of the really existing, always waiting hell!

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner!

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, glory to you!

1

He has got high at once and forever! Though they say that a junkie has no fate, it has been the fate, love at the first sight! As hot as heat of the sun rising above the horizon, enveloping the earth with a cotton blanket of midday July fever! And simultaneously, like breath of cool breeze on a quiet summer evening impregnated with fragrance of field grasses and flowers, when the orange globe leisurely crawls to the edge of violet sky.

Nah, well, surely, they had to wait for about an hour for arrival of the “trip”, till molecules of “Kremlins” and ‘Magicians” soaked into cerebral cortex and broke through a tunnel in it, into the Universe, having let to know about the contact of naked nerves with outer space, by the after-taste of a battery on tongues.

Suddenly there appeared an ancient Egyptian Sphinx in front of Volodya, dizzily pulsating by colorful vibrations of headily uncoiling colored films! Remaining the only spectator at a night cinema performance, having unriddled all the mysteries of phantom’s existence in a split second, he merged with it in blissful ecstasy, started to uncoil further on, not the spectator and not the Sphinx any more, but the liquid film drowning in myriads of sweet flowers whirling away into distance along the tunnel, with speed of light!

“My soul has melted as if a candle, in the middle of me,” a panel with lines which flamed in memory, darted away somewhere into distance, and there came ecstasy of ETERNAL LOVE OF THE UNIVERSE, gaining momentum and increasing with every moment, the ECSTASY of JOYFUL SWEETNESS gushing from emptiness, like a fountain, shouting in affectionate whisper of OMNISCIENCE about ABSOLUTION!

Unexpectedly, a cry of cranes reached his ears, and a flock of amazingly live cranes from an animated cartoon, which turned up on a shimmering screen, in mind’s eye, flied skyward, into a tunnel full of sunshine, rising along a spiral, carrying him away with it by its shrill cry and by soft whirling, twisting off the top of the head which had turned into soft rubber, like a tap from a bottle of “Sprite”.

Again he sensed the after-taste of vitamin C on the tongue and having opened his eyes, looked around a sunlit park with endlessly blue sky overhead. Happy shouts and laughter of children reached his ears through a quilt of deafened quietness, having reminded of the careless insouciance of childhood.

And at once he turned into this laughter, and into these self-forgetful children enjoying warmth and fullness of life, and into this Sky, and into this Sun, and into this Heat of UNIVERSAL LOVE, into the SKY of the OMNISCIENCE and of the ABSOLUTION!

Volodya looked down towards the earth. He was sitting on a bench, the Earth was located beneath and far away, at his feet, in the Parallel Universe, but sunshine flowed down from his eyelashes in drops and fell down into abyss, like raindrops, from a skyscraper or from a star, from the Kremlin star!!! Volodya felt how in his breast, by soft foamy wave, raised triumph of the God reposing after His Works, on the Seventh Day, but maybe, the solemn uplift of a hero invited to the Kremlin for awarding by the “Star of Hero”? The pills had namely such a title, “Kremlins”!

“Who has called them like this?! Some kidders!” – in a split second, he amusedly appreciated such simple and so funny meaning of the title which has comprised into a single word the whole solemnity of the mood of the perceived Universe. And then he thought that pills, rolls, eggs, blotter papers – all of these words were absolutely irrelevant and infinitely distant, like a piece of a newspaper carried by free wind among spacious fields under boundless sky.

Slavka, his brother, kept silence and there was no necessity in any words. Volodya knew it himself that Slavka unconditionally shared all of his feelings, that they saw one and the same movie, whirling away on one wave into endlessly delightful realization of the BLISSFUL ETERNITY, which would never go away anywhere and would not cease to caress soul by its LOVE!

“But what if it does go away and stop to be?”

A bitter thought, by force of habit, tried to find its way through skin of consciousness by an agile embittered little worm of doubt.

But there was no skin, inasmuch Volodya had turned into the skin, into the little worm, into the ETERNITY, into the children, into their laughter, into the puddles on asphalt, into the solar drops dripping from eyelashes, into the Sun, into the Moon and into Multicolored Star Galaxies, into the Milky Way and into the whole Universe! He forgave everybody, and everybody forgave him, but the thought powerlessly slipped down, carried away by merrily growling waterfall of the deafening delight!

He conceived in the instant, actually felt wholeheartedly, that a reverse side of bitterness was sweetness, and vice versa, and it was as inexpressibly good as cotton candy melting in a mouth of a child, on a sunny summer day, on the merry-go-round in the Luna Park!

“Saluuute!!!” anthroposphere cried out to him loudly, incessantly falling into pieces, in front of his eyes, by bright multicolored sparkles, in an exhilarating greeting!

For a moment, Volodya kind of returned into the ordinary reality.

“Salute!” he pronounced by unfamiliar voice, humming, like a swarm of bees, as if he was in a spacesuit. Slavka looked at him and told prosily,

“Let’s go to a caffice?”

Volodya loved him for this commonness of expressions as though chaining to the surrounding reality by steel-wire ropes, but maybe, making fun of it?

Volodya stood up from the bench, and they went to a café, along the street flooded with sunshine, through enfilades of the Universe, under bottomless blue heavenly dome, two almighty warlords, two all-knowing sovereigns of the world.

They walked ceremoniously on multicolored and light, ravishing in its inaccessibility Moon Valley, nescient of the law of universal gravitation and force of gravity, on tasty and autocratic desert Sahara, slightly powdered with sugar sand of nocturnal frost, out-of-range of sensitive antenna tunings of eternally apprehensively-vigilant creatures from a specie of Homo Sapiens. No Homo could share with them the magic of weightlessness of sensations and of ponderability of feelings, probably for this reason, floating above the sidewalk of an absolutely empty street, on their way to the café, they never met a single passer-by.

There was nobody in the café itself either, where Slavka had worked as a loader once upon a time, besides aunt Nastya, an elderly charwoman, and Natasha, manager of the café, standing at the moment behind the counter.

She merrily and quickly glanced at them and asked a rhetorical question,

“How are you?”

Having flashed with a meaningful grin to Slavka’s reply,

“How are you? We’re fine! Natasha, make us two teas, please!” she got lost in resolving some book-keeping problems.

The café was not big and composed of a shop trading with all sorts of food and drinks in a front room, and of a small room for libations, on the right side of it, with approximate dimensions 3 х 3 m., into which an arched door led and in which two tables stood with four plastic chairs, at the given moment it was absolutely empty.

The cramped room suddenly gladdened eyes, as if emphasizing by its cramped spaces, the irrepressible freedom of the Universal Ecstasy which could not be limited by walls any more!

Volodya was perfectly sober, concentrated, joyfully ready to speak with any man and about anything at all, indeed the word “to speak” stemmed from the word “to leak”, and words leaked, splashing out of him like water! He could fly away into distant fairy expanses, behind the stars, and to return at once to give an absolutely correct answer to any question, because he had no questions any more, only answers!

Natasha brought two glasses of tea, put them on the table, looked by glimpse on Volodya and Slavka, smiled and having asked, “Are you still making merry? Well, well, well, have a fun!” walked away.

“Natasha, switch on music!” Slavka shouted after her, and soon there played quiet music in Haus style.

Slavka offered, “Let’s drink some tea.”

Volodya thoughtlessly took the glass and made a gulp.

“Baaammmm!!!”

Hot wave poured him over from head to feet, having expanded to feeling of coolness, his body became as resilient as caoutchouc, swayed and hummed soundlessly, like a mute cast-iron bell into which somebody, having taken a swing, pounded with a rubber sledge-hammer.

“Baaammmm!!!”

His palms became as humid, sensitive and pure, as they, probably, may be only at infants. Volodya pressed the palms to cool surface of the table, relishing pureness, strength and freshness of tactile perception!

“Baaammmm!!!”

The melody soaked him up, as though a whirlpool, and he turned into the melody, into each of its notes, splashes, rhythms, vibrations, flows, into all of its waves!

Volodya danced amidst the small room, having shut his eyes, having entirely surrendered to the music, but under closed eyelids, in front of the mind’s eye, flash-like colorful kaleidoscope of otherworldly geometric patterns was speeding by, myriads of continuously changing and unique colorful spaces, various forms, constellations, now expanding, then suddenly contracting, vibrating on ultra-short waves, spreading with speed of light somewhere in ultraviolet!

The rhythm started to breath with his body, or his body began to breath with the rhythm of the music, and they became the unity in new Fabulous Reality! Volodya’s hands and feet moved absolutely freely in all directions, with phenomenal quickness and accuracy drawing a wizardly and incomprehensible, for outside observer, pictures!

“Baaammmm!!!”

For a moment, Volodya opened his eyes. It seemed to him that the whole eternity had passed, being sated with creation and destruction of myriads of galaxies, but a certain stone-cold sober point in him, something like an anchor, tenaciously and reliably seated in the bottom of generally accepted collective actuality into which one might always to return for determination of the material reality, knew that there still had not passed even five minutes!

Slavka sat behind the table, having hidden his eyes behind dark lens of sunglasses and blissfully smiled. Volodya sat down behind the table too, beside him and made one more gulp of tea.

“Baaammmm!!!”

The soundless humming of the invisible soft bell resounded again in whole of his body, communicating him its softness, tenderness and love!

It was such feeling as if he had just drunk a bottle of vodka in one gulp, but at the same time he had remained absolutely sober! And not simply sober, but he had turned into similarity of an Astral Galactic Supercomputer, with lightning speed calculating all the possibilities of existence, automatically programming it in the most advantageous for Volodya way, knowing everything in advance, all-encompassing, all-powerful, all-merciful, looking down on earthly surface from unearthly, lying beyond all bounds, height of the OMNISCIENCE!

Perfectly sober and adequate in the external world, inwardly he was altogether liberated, boundless and infinitely multicolored – a brilliant bee or a pearly-gold-ruby-sapphire-emerald butterfly???!!!

Volodya closed eyes. Smileys were falling in great numbers, from all sides, on a liquid-crystalline light-yellow screen in front of him, such as they are depicted everywhere – thoroughly drawn little yellow globes-giggling balls with two black points instead of eyes and with black arcs of mouths wreathed in smiles!

“They launched the smileys,” noted Slavka at once, as a matter of course.

At these words Volodya jumped out from the chair, as though thrown up by an invisible spring, and once again entirely surrendered to the music, movement of rhythms and colors. Everything around and inside raved, spinned, sparkled, extended and contracted! Time contracted and turned into distant silver fiber, under feet of the Сreator, everything disappeared in sweetness of the come true Paradise!

He sat down on the chair again and took a gulp of warm tea. Aunt Nastya came into the room with a mop and a bucket in hands, opened doors of a toilet and put them down there.

“Goodbye, guys!” Aunt Nastya told.

“Goodbye, aunt Nastya,” prosily pronounced Slavka in reply, in ordinary, a bit muffled voice, nonchalantly, just as nothing was happening, indeed, inwardly and all around, sparing Volodya from necessity to open his mouth. The scrubwoman walked out.

Slavka smiled and looking directly in front of himself, asked,

“Well, bro, do you have any suggestions?”

Volodya doubted in rationality of his suggestion at once, hardly he had vocalized it,

“Maybe let’s do the second and go into La Rocca?!”

Slavka tried to laugh instead of reply, but his parted lips delivered something only vaguely resembling laughter, but sooner sounding like humming of high voltage wire before arrival of an electrical train, “Aaaa-haaah!”

“Let’s pill up before entering!” Volodya corrected himself.

“Aaall riiight, juunkie, heeere we gooh!” Slavka creaked, having thrown his head back and staring into the ceiling with the dark lens of the sunglasses.

“They open up at eleven o’clock only, slow down!” Volodya reined his brother and having taken a pause, offered, “Let’s walk along the Oldie, maybe we will meet some acquaintances?”

La Rocca was a title of the night club in the center of the city, but the Oldie – The Old City. Volodya had not been going into night clubs because he had not liked and had not known how to dance, until this day!