Unlimited

In her mind Vic pleaded the man to stop and not to get into her mind. She couldn’t stop him in reality as Kharon was too sweaty fumbling in her mind.

‘The book… is a dream,’ the demon whispered, having closed the eyes. ‘Number. Big number. The number again. The 5^th of November. What’s gonna be on the 5^th of Number? Vic? Come on, dear, think about it, I must understand what’s going on… The 5^th of November… The 5^th. Here it is – your payment day. The number is 5996 roubles…. The number is on the book. This is the cost.’

The demon opened his eyes and looked at her face definitely. She was excited. Her eyes were lowered, she had rose cheeks of childhood.

‘This book is too expensive and you’re not ready to spend that kind of money but you’re waiting for your payment and you’re gonna come here again. Have I collected right your incoherent ideas?’ he asked giving the book to the girl.

She couldn’t look at his eyes. She was ashamed. She was greatly ashamed because being well-paid she all the same couldn’t spend easily almost 6000 roubles.

‘Have I understood you right, dear?’ the demon repeated his question again, gently touching her chin, trying to catch her ashamed eyes.

She silently nodded and her eyes were dim with tears. She didn’t want Kharon to see her crying again.

‘Can I buy it for you?’ he asked, without letting the girl turn away.

He was important to look at her eyes to understand how her emotions were shown. He needed her real emotions. The demon recognized, however, rather rapidly that without reading minds he could just look at the eyes and get all the necessary information out of there.

‘No, Kharon, it’s too expensive. As all the other art books. I’ll get paid and…’

‘I’ve put it in a wrong way,’ the man interrupted her, taking back the massive book, ‘I’ll buy it. No objections can be accepted.’

He turned away and went to the checkout lane. Victoria was open-mouthed staying near the bookshelves, understanding nothing how that could happen.

‘I can hear your pulse accelerating,’ Kharon said in a low voice with the smile on his lips when Victoria came up to him in the queue.

‘Kharon…’

‘I know the reason. You’re waiting for this book! You’re glad! These are emotions of happiness and joy. I’ve rather well known these because they are the brightest, strongest and purest you can ever have.’

‘Thank you!’ Vic put her head on his shoulder, hiding her the most pleased smile.

‘What for? We’re still in the queue.’

‘For what’s gonna happen in two minutes.’

As the book was bought Vic was happy. She had tried to buy it when she was a student, she graduated and even when she got a job. She madly wanted it but every time something prevented her from buying.

They were walking down the street from Kuznetsky most metro station. Kharon was carrying the massive book packed for all of life’s emergencies. Victoria’s arm linked in his and she didn’t even try to hide her happiness and smiling like a brewer’s horse. What could go wrong but she suddenly felt woozy. A waltz. A villainous loathful waltz. There were no things static before. The building started floating down like escaped from surrealistical pictures. Concrete, brick and iron objects turned into a ductile elastic band who knows who starched it. In a flash the sky and the earth switched places. Vic sorted out the darkened cumulus and the stars awaking in the distance. The earth sprinkled with the pellets of dirty from above, the asphalt threw back lumps in people. Upside down the raced giving its light to all around, blinding the eyes. The eyes what they did! Cars like sturdy immortal bacteria divided like cells. Vic saw right before her eyes the world gathered its double-ganger and they both were so disgusting! They were too damned painful look! It was possible. With its diploid abnormality it drove the girl crazy. Her eyes couldn’t focus on. They didn’t belong to her. Everything was at sixes and seven!

Victoria couldn’t take a step forward. She just didn’t understand what was going on, where the asphalt was, where to put step. She was like an astronaut tirelessly worked on the ISS, having completely forgotten what gravity and Newtonian constant of gravitation were. There was no coordination. It absented. There was confusion and surging up fear.

The girl tried to say something, to ask the standing near demon in catatonic way for help. He only heard her like as a lonely cow in the field of thistles weakly bellowing.

Her heart was beating faster and faster. It was getting scarier and scarier. The half of the body was getting heavier as if came off and flew into the abyss. No, it didn’t hurt. It scared. The body was getting covered with a layer of something soft and disgusting, something that made you remember the true belonging of the body and didn’t allow to feel more and more.