Contents

TALES of GHOSTS

                              (Moscow City Organization

ABOUT the BOOK

English edition No.2

The booktrailer: https://youtu.be/L4Oyw98pgaM

The original:

“СКАЗКИ ПРИЗРАКОВ”, ISBN 978-5-0056-2207-5.

The bilingual:

“СКАЗКИ ПРИЗРАКОВ / TALES of GHOSTS”, ISBN 978-5-0059-2520-6.

Amazon.com, Aliexpress, Litres.ru, Ozon.ru, Wildberries, etc.

Thanks!

The author expresses her great gratitude

to all the characters and prototypes of these stories,

including

                                    numerous ghosts

                                 and everybody else!

D. Nemelstein, “About Love and Death from the LAND of MISTS”

The book of philosophical and mystical stories by Alexandra Kryuchkova “Tales of Ghosts” (about Love and Death from the Land of Mists) is like a jewel box: each page contains something unique, and trying the stories on, the readers will surely find their own! Even those, who are not burdened with a passion for mystification and take with skepticism talk about the Other World, will be charmed by the meanings, skillfully woven by the author into the fabric of a fascinating narrative. These stories not only reflect a high degree of writing skills, they radiate the Light of hidden wisdom and are filled with Divine Love.

Oddly enough, I met the author of “Tales of Ghosts” during the poetry seminar of Eugeny Rein[1] at the Booker Laureates School in Milan 2012, where, as a result, E.B. Rein announced Alexandra Kryuchkova the winner in the poetry class with the award of Sergey Yesenin ‘Golden Autumn’ order decoration and a certificate for free edition of her book from the Moscow city organization of the Union of Writers of Russia. In the same place, in Milan, Alexandra was also marked in the prose course by the writer Viktor Erofeev[2], who singled out for the seminarians her novel “The Book of Secret Knowledge”, which opens the author’s “Playing Another Reality” series.

“Tales of Ghosts” harmoniously complement the series. The idea of assembling these stories into a book is admirable: all the main characters are already ghosts. Having moved to the Other World together with the author, they find themselves in a long and slow queue to the Heaven Chancellery, located in the City of the Sun, where everyone will be informed about one’s further destiny. To pass the time and warm the soul, the ghosts light up the fire, throwing into it their earthly lifetime stories. By the will of Lord, the author, in fact a listener of the stories, eventually returns from the City of the Sun to Earth in order to write down “Tales of Ghosts” by heart and pass them on to people.

It is no coincidence that the book consists of several parts. Arranged according to the principle from Earth to Heaven, it slowly leads the reader further and further into the Subtle World, to the place where the planet Earth is seen as a barely distinguishable point in the Abyss of the Cosmic Mind.

Part I. “Love me now!” is a collection of philosophical love stories, united by the regret and remorse of the main characters that they could not live for real the opportunity of given to them Love. The reasons are different, but the result cannot be changed: unexpressed love ‘gnaws’ the souls, pulls them into the past, where they can never return. Is it possible to make dreams come true in a posthumous reality? The story “A Cats’ Name” from this collection deserves the highest praise: it is not just touching – the reader won’t doubt a bit that it is being told by… a dog devoted to its owner!

Part II. “The Master of Fates” contains shocking stories about those who imagine themselves to be God: perverted maniacs and quite on their minds – cold-blooded and prudent killers – commit crimes without a twinge of conscience. The author’s incredible ability to penetrate the mind of maniacs culminates in the chilling, purely Hitchcock-like story “Cranberries” and strikes the reader on the spot, causing him to fear not only the swamps, but also the cranberries!

Part III. “Restless Souls” are mystical stories in the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe about ghost apparitions, each one strikingly unpredictable in its plot. The geography of phenomena is vast: London, Paris, Rome, Prague, Moscow, New York… Wherever the ghosts appear – in modern offices or in condemned houses, whether they are walking in the park near the Louvre or unwinding in a seaside resort in Italy – they are looking for an opportunity to complete some unfinished situation during their earthly lives, which haunts them after death, or they come to the aid of still alive relatives and beloved ones. The stories are so touching that they will not leave the reader without empathy: he involuntarily seeks a way of salvation for the main characters, finding it together with them and for himself. And here is another masterpiece – a heart-warming story “The House by the Station” about an abandoned wooden house, in which more than one generation of ghosts gather to drink tea, play chess and relive happy moments of the past. It is the third (central) part of the book that is the doorway to Another Reality.

Part IV. “Nostalgia for the Body” and Part V. “The Land of Mists” contain stories of the inhabitants of the Subtle World: souls not yet incarnated, but preparing for incarnation; disembodied, but longing for physical, as well as stories of other creatures, for example, like the Black Raven, who serves as a Guardian in the Land of Mists, and characters of fairy tales and other thought-forms. Here the influence of H. Chr. Andersen and E. T. A. Hoffmann, O. Wilde and A. S.-Exupery is captured, and the pearl of this collection, in my opinion, is the fairy tale “Water Lily”, by the way, reprinted three times and beloved by readers. The story “A Guest” explodes one’s mind with a trivial tea-party… with Death.

The book “Tales of Ghosts” includes both new stories and previously published ones (from the books “Do You Believe in Ghosts?” and “Water Lily”), which received positive reviews from literary critics even after their first publication. The famous poet and writer Alexander Karpenko[3] rightly compared Kryuchkova’s short stories to the mystical thrillers of Edgar Allan Poe (Poetograd, No. 12 (113), 2014).

The stories from the book “Tales of Ghosts” got the following literary awards: “Shadow of a Bird” after Edgar Allan Poe and “Case No…” 2021 in A. Hitchcock nomination (the Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia, NP “Literary Republic”, 2021[4]), H. Chr. Andersen and E. T. A. Hoffman “Tales for adults” (Open Literary Club “Response”, 2022[5]), “Literary Olympus” (League of Eurasian Writers, 2012).

A striking feature of Kryuchkova’s prose is the complete absence of a line between earthly and the Other Realities: while reading, we sometimes don’t even notice that the hero or heroine has already passed into the Other World! And all the characters – decisive and not so much ones, romantic and prudent, loving and hating, smart and naive, happy and unhappy, rich and poor – have one thing in common: they are mortal and, basically, suddenly.

The mystical spirit is masterfully matched by the author with the daily routine and real events of the era. Thus, behind the plot of the “The City of Rains” there is an ominous panorama of the crash of the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001. The story “Stuck Pluto” is about an epidemic of coronavirus. In the story “Disembodied” we hear an echo of the Great Patriotic War. The ghost of a woman, a member of an intelligence network settled in Italy during the war years, with motherly persistence for half a century, has been looking for her son, evacuated to Siberia with an orphanage.

The short novel “Good Night” recreates a picture of the frantic rhythm of life and rotation in the business circles of Moscow in the sinister 1990’s, when there was a demand for such unscrupulous people as Sackman, who robbed the owner of a furniture company, and the lovesick Oksana, ready to do anything for money, who easily sold her friend to the customer of the murder.

The image of Mr. Piggins (in the story “A Photo film”) is also quite remarkable, convex and brightly drawn by the author with obvious sarcasm. We see a state official, who has successfully moved from the Soviet era into the era of radical changes: as he received his “tips” in the form of interest, bribes and kickbacks, so he continues to receive them. And he will never die, because the Piggins are immortal…

It is surprising that many of the works gathered in this book were created by Alexandra when she was a teenager, they are so well “faceted”. Written in pastel colors, lyrical and tender, they contain a slight sadness and a non-childlike understanding of the world beauty, in which Divine Love prevails over everything. A considerable portion of it is produced by the author herself, as if she remained to live on Earth at the age of a teenage girl. However, the character of her “Farewell to Childhood” is right,

“Time doesn’t exist. It is conditional and relative. You will learn to manage Time when you realize that it doesn’t matter how old you are on Earth, the main thing is who you feel you are …”

Yes! To look at the world through children’s eyes, being an adult, is a gift from the Creator.

After reading the book, one gets the feeling that the author is constantly and intently watching her characters – and even the reader! – not from the side, but as if from Above, from different heights, now approaching them, then moving away, but never leaving them … like their guardian angel.

However, answering the question “Do you believe in ghosts?”, I will quote the wise “A Letter from the Astral Tablets”, included by the author in “Tales of Ghosts”,

“Certainly, my dear friend… in my life, there have been also other inexplicable cases related to those who passed into the Other World, but I should confess to you that most of all I have always been concerned about the relationship of living people, because it is what turns some of us into ghosts…”

Dmitry Nemelstein,

poet, writer, historian,

member of the Union of Writers of Russia,

laureate of literary awards

The magazine “CHILDREN of RA” No. №1 (194), 2022,

Magazine’s Hall “Gorky-Media”.

https://magazines.gorky.media/ra/2022/1/aleksandra-kryuchkova-skazki-prizrakov.html

https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30279

http://detira.ru/arhiv/publication.php?id=30279

A. Karpenko, “Do you believe in GHOSTS?”

The lyrical novellas of Alexandra Kryuchkova can’t leave anyone indifferent. They tell about the most vulnerable and fragile thing in human destiny – the formation and collapse of relationship between a man and a woman, about different faces of this and Other World life. Kryuchkova’s stories are quite short, no more than two pages, but how many experiences fall to the lot of their characters!

The writer uses the effect of a ‘detective’ ending: everything, as a rule, doesn’t end the way the reader expects. The aerobatics of the dramaturgy of these stories is when one emotion interrupts another and reverses the outcome. Such an inverted outcome sometimes evokes in the reader directly opposite, overwhelming emotions.

The second and third parts of the book are written in the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe’s mystical thrillers. Nowadays ghosts, of course, don’t appear in old Gothic castles, but, for example, in the fashionable offices of well-known firms (the story “A Letter”). You see, they, the ghosts, absolutely don’t care where to appear. The surroundings don’t interest them at all. As in the works of past centuries, they are spiritually bound to the premises in which they died. Although, to tell the truth, I prefer stories outside the Otherworld – “A Piano”, “A Cat’s Name”, “See you Tomorrow”.

Without exception, all the short stories of Alexandra Kryuchkova are written at a high artistic level of narration and dramaturgy.

Kryuchkova’s creative biography is full of surprises. She began writing poetry and prose at the age of 11. And not just began, because some short stories were included in the book, which is the subject in my note. This is evidenced by the dates under the works. These stories not only entered the book, they took their rightful place in it. The old works of the child prodigy Kryuchkova, included in her collection, were written by the hand of master. And they say that there will be no more Lermontovs because of the supposedly “slow” maturation of modern youth. However, it is not so! When you read Alexandra Kryuchkova’s stories, you don’t even think that they were written by a teenage girl.

I think that such an early maturation of Kryuchkova, as in the case of Lermontov, is caused by the premature death of both her parents. The tragic orphanhood could not but affect the child’s psyche. For Alexandra Kryuchkova, this resulted in a genuine interest in the Other World. The drama of life entered her soul early. As in the case of Lermontov, everyone learned about the prodigy Kryuchkova in retrospect, when she had already grown up and became a famous poet.

Although the stories, presented in the book, were written by Alexandra at a young age, they have not lost their original value even today. And yet, it’s a pity that our country didn’t care about its brilliant children in the nineties of the last century. And that Alexandra Kryuchkova’s early stories were published only two decades after they were written.

Alexander Karpenko[6],

poet and writer

The newspaper “Poetograd” No. 12 (113), 2014

https://www.reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=9499

http://www.poetograd.ru/arch.html

 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Рейн,_Евгений_Борисович

 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ерофеев,_Виктор_Владимирович

 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Карпенко,_Александр_Николаевич

 The newspaper “LITERARY NEWS” (“Literaturnye Izvestia”) No. 11–12 (197–198), 2021, “The results of the literary awards 2021” by the press-secretary of Moscow City Organization of the Union of Writers of Russia http://www.litiz.ru/arch.html https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30044

 The newspaper “POETOGRAD” No. 1 (397), 2022 “The results of the Open Literary Club 2021” by L. Koroleva. https://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=30303 http://www.poetograd.ru/arch.html

 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Карпенко,_Александр_Николаевич

TALES of GHOSTS

As well as to:

Part I. LOVE ME NOW!

0. Bonfire

I walked for a long time somewhere far away, in an endless thick fog, until I suddenly came upon a Man.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, trying to move on, but realized there was someone there, too.

“Follow me,” the Man said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The queue…”

“What are you queuing for?”

“Everyone gets their own.”

“And how long do we have to wait?”

The Man shrugged. The queue moved a little further. I began to distinguish some voices.

“Do you know what is there?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” the Man replied indifferently. “They say, there is the City of the Sun beyond the fog. However, not everyone can reach it.”

“Are you from the City of the Sun?”

“I don’t think so,” the Man grinned. “More likely, from the Land of Dreams’ Dungeon.”

The queue moved forward a little.

“So, are you an atheist?” I supposed.

“Not anymore,” he sighed.

Suddenly, a girl of about five years old emerged from the fog. She ran between us and immediately disappeared.

“Are the kids in the queue, too?” I wondered.

“I guess so,” the Man replied and shrugged.

The Girl emerged from the fog again, but from the other side. For a moment she stopped next to us and then turned to me.

“There’s a cat waiting for me there! And who is waiting for you?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged.

“Weird!” the Girl said thoughtfully. “There must be someone waiting for you! If there was no one waiting, you wouldn’t be here!”

I smiled, and the Girl disappeared in the fog at once.

Soon we reached a bonfire on the side of the road.

“Well, we can relax until morning,” the Man said.

A shadow of a woman separated from the fire and approached me and the Man.

“Join us!” she suggested.

The Man and I sat down by the bonfire. How many of souls were there? Anyway, I couldn’t count, Mr. Fog clearly didn’t want us to see each other …

“What are they throwing into the bonfire? There is no wood at all!” I asked the Man in a whisper.

“Stories!” he smiled.

“And you both will definitely tell us yours, too,” the Woman smiled, handing cups of tea from a thermos to me and my neighbor.

“What for… tea and thermos?!” I asked the Man, without ceasing to be surprised at what was happening, when the Woman left for the fog.

“It’s more familiar,” the Man answered calmly, and at the same moment a sad female voice sounded out of the fog.

“He told me, ‘See you tomorrow!’…” I heard it and regretted I had nothing with me to write down the stories thrown into the bonfire by ghosts that night …

But… if I ever come back…

1. See you tomorrow!

Natasha adored the theater since childhood and went to premieres almost every weekend. A tall, slender, blue-eyed blonde, with an uncommon power to attract men, she had just graduated from the best Theatre Institute and decided to devote herself to the stage. Late autumn, Natasha played her first major role. Tired but happy, she was walking to the dressing room, when suddenly someone caught up with her and took by the hand.

“Congratulations! You were great!” Sergey, the theatre director, said enthusiastically.

“Thank you,” Natasha replied calmly. “I don’t like compliments. See you tomorrow!”

…Sergey returned home and, as soon as he crossed the threshold, he heard the usual words.

“Try walking in my shoes! I’m so tired of your nightly returns!”

“We had a premiere tonight. You knew about it. I offered you to come, but you refused! Natasha was amazing! A really talented actress. Not what I thought of her.”

“That bitch must have already confessed her love to you, and you hung up your ears, idiot!”

“Don’t talk like that,” he asked wearily.

“The theatre became everything to you! You care as hell for me and our son! You live your own life in which there is no place for us! And you appear and disappear like a ghost!”

“You’re wrong,” Sergey tried to argue.

“I’m right! Theatre is an entertainment for idlers, a waste of time! Lazybones! You adore doing nothing, and the theatre is your shelter!”

Sergey silently turned around and walked off into the night.

…It was snowing outside. Immersed in heavy thoughts, he wandered along the road, wherever his eyes looked. He had loved his family. And his wife, he had loved. Sergey for the first time realized the gravity of the past tense verb! Yes, he had loved, once upon a time, because everything was long gone. Flat – cottage – flat. To plant potatoes. To buy groceries. To take them there. To pick up from here. To fix the faucet. To give money for a fur coat… When he tried to talk with his wife about something unearthly, she was completely uninterested. So, he withdrew into himself, and the only outlet for his soul became that small experimental theater he had recently established. The theatre was the only thing that kept him on Earth. He plunged into his brainchild and lived in the theatre for real. Sergey caught himself thinking that everything had been turned upside down: he was himself in the theatre, while he became an actor in real life…

Turning automatically to the right into a small lane, Sergey reached the playground and sat down on a swing. Suddenly, as if sensing something, he turned around. Behind him, a girl was sitting on exactly the same swing.

“Natasha! What are you doing here?”

“Don’t you know I live there?” pointing out the house across the street, she asked in surprise.

Sergey remembered that he had paid attention during the interview to the address, indicated in her CV, although said nothing about their shared neighborhood.

“Sorry, I forgot,” he apologized embarrassed, “but why aren’t you at home?”

“I slammed the door outside and then realized to have left the keys inside. The neighbors are asleep, and it’s still a long way till morning. I’m sitting here wondering what to do…”

“Do you live alone?”

Natasha nodded. He wanted to ask something else to keep the conversation going, but…

“When you don’t know what to talk about, it’s better to keep silent,” she suddenly said. “Listen, how quiet it is! What stars! We’re always running and looking down at our feet. And they’re always up there, so beautiful. They are looking at us… There’s the brightest one! When I die, will I reach that star?”

“Yes, you will, surely, but you’ll become a star in your lifetime! Why don’t you ask me how I ended up here?”

“And why should I know that?”

...Sergey opened the door lock with the help of some iron they had found on the road and … returned to his home, having refused even a cup of the kindly offered tea.

“See you tomorrow!” with bated breath he whispered to Natasha at the door.

...And all week they returned from the theatre together, talking about everything and nothing. They seemed to be on the same wavelength, to communicate ‘the same language’ and to understand each other perfectly. However, as usual, all of a sudden, something that would have made Sergey glad just a little while ago, happened, and…

He entered Natasha’s flat for the first time.

“I’m sorry to be uninvited,” Sergey said with a heavy exhale.

She didn’t seem surprised to see him in doors and with a gesture invited him into the kitchen. Sergey sat down on a stool and didn’t know where to start.

“Today I dreamed of my mother,” Natasha turned to him first and, as always, in a completely calm voice. “She told me to live ‘here and now’.”

“Today, the doctor told me… it’s cancer.”

“Tea or coffee?” Natasha asked still calmly.

“Coffee.”

She was standing by the stove with her back to him. Sergey came over and put his arms around her.

“We all will fly to the stars one day, darling,” Natasha said quietly, addressing him as ‘darling’ for the first time, and added, “There’s a great mystery in it, that you’ll discover soon.”

“It’s funny! My wife started screaming, my friends expressed their pity for me. You are the only one… If you only knew…”

“I know…”

“I would like… the rest of my time… Well,” it was hard for Sergey to speak, and he thought, “God, how much of the precious time we waste in life on all sorts of nothing!”

Natasha held out a cup of coffee.

“I promise you that since tomorrow,” she said slowly and clearly, as an oath, “all the following days will be the best of your life!”

Sergey took a sip of coffee and smiled. It was a childish smile. Open. Kind-hearted. Happy…

At that moment Natasha’s phone rang. Her friend was leaving for a business trip and asked to shelter the black cat for a couple of days.

“Cats are great! Especially black ones! As long as they don’t cross your path! Okay, honey, I have to go,” Sergey winked at Natasha, putting the cup on the table. And already at the door he stopped and asked again with hope in his voice, “So, see you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow!” she nodded and smiled.

Sergey left, singing some children’s song. He suddenly felt completely happy for the first time.

They never saw each other again.

That night he was hit to death by a car while crossing the road on his way home…

February 11, 1994

2. A white dance “Ladies’ Choice”

Ivan invited Inessa to a cafe. He was the CEO of a famous company, and she was just a fifth-year student, though, of one of the best universities in their country.

“I’m sorry, I don’t believe you!” Ivan ended their conversation categorically. “Maybe in five or ten years…”

“And what then, in five or ten years?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, okay!” she grinned. “I’ll become CEO as well, to prove to you that I’m not about your money. And then, if you want, you will find me yourself…”

And in a bright red dress, so beautiful, daring, young, Inessa left him.

***

He saw the same snow and a grey, hopeless sky outside the window. It was very cold, although on TV they had promised a sharp warming. Ivan was out of any mood. That used to happen when the Sun disappeared, and life had made no pleasant surprise for a long time.

As usual, being late for work, Ivan started the car, drove through the archway to the exit to the embankment and turned on the signals, waiting for an opportunity to squeeze into the continuous flow. Yawning, he habitually glanced at the billboard and… couldn’t believe his eyes!

Ivan got out of the car, forgetting to turn off the signals, took out cigarettes and lit up one, staring at the poster “I LOVE YOU!” on the billboard – just that inscription and the familiar face of the girl in a bright red dress! He looked at her, and five years flashed back in the blink of an eye. Ivan had turned gray and was no longer the CEO of either that famous or any other company, meanwhile Inessa had blossomed…

He found her without any difficulty.

Inessa invited Ivan to a restaurant.

“That’s how I became the CEO,” she summed up, not without a sense of pride. “Now I have everything. Except for the man I love…”

Ivan couldn’t believe her incredible success story.

“Let’s get married!” Inessa said finally.

“And where are we going to live?” for some reason he asked, being dumbfounded.

“I was thinking of a flat with some veranda on the roof to buy. Do you remember tales about Carlson?”

“The haunted roof?” Ivan smiled.

“Surely, why not!” Inessa laughed. “Where do you want it, here or in Europe? Or… would you prefer a cottage?”

“An uninhabited island,” he smiled again. “And a private jet as a bonus!”

“Not bad for a start!” Inessa was full of enthusiasm and energy.

“Well done,” Ivan summed up and sighed heavily. “However, I’m no longer the boss, and I don’t have the funds to make your life beautiful. In a couple of years you’ll think, ‘What do I need him for?’ You’ll be still a young, successful, prosperous lady, and I…”

Ivan walked her to the car. The road became a skating rink. After a sharp warming in the morning, it got cold again in the evening.

Inessa was leaving, and he felt that they would never see each other, but at the same time he wanted to see her again and again.

That night Ivan was overcome by insomnia. Reflecting on whether he had been right allowing her to leave, he realized that, on the one hand, he certainly liked Inessa a lot, and he would like such a woman to be next to him. On the other hand… if some years before Ivan had looked at her from the top down, that day – from down up, just as at her billboard at the embankment…

“There is something wrong, unnatural about it. Although, perhaps, I simply wasn’t prepared for her crashing down on me as a sudden snowfall… I’ll call her. Tomorrow…” he decided.

Ivan didn’t want to give Inessa to anyone else. At the same time, he couldn’t overcome his fear and call. So ‘tomorrow’ was postponed for another three days. That night Inessa came to him in a dream, waved her hand with a bitter grin and silently disappeared into the mist.

In the morning, after listening to ‘The subscriber is temporarily blocked,’ Ivan dialed her office number, thinking about the best way to introduce himself to the secretary so that she would connect them instead of answering something like, ‘She is busy, call back later!’

However, the secretary’s answer was unexpected.

“She left us.”

“What do you mean? Did she change job?”

“A dead car crash three days ago.”

...She was gone, but for a long time, every morning and evening, when Ivan left for work and returned home, on that very poster on the billboard at the embankment, Inessa met Ivan and saw him off, smiling and repeating, “I LOVE YOU!”

He saw the same snow and a grey, hopeless sky outside the window. It was very cold, however, on TV they no longer promised any warming.

December 2003

3. God, Barsik and Borsch

Three women were talking in a hospital room. One of them, Lyudmila, a young and beautiful girl, had just been brought in by ambulance for an urgent surgery under general anesthesia. Lyudmila settled down on the bed by the door and didn’t even bother to put out the things, hastily gathered at home, leaving the packages at the bedside table.

“Don’t worry, Lyudmila,” Galina, already operated on, encouraged the girl. “Everything happens to us once for the first time! My first anesthesia was like a dream without dreams! Nothing interesting! And the second one… I relaxed, I thought, ‘I won’t see God, and thank God!’ An-no! Imagine, I found myself flying at a high speed in a dark corridor, like in a pipe. As soon as I noticed the Light at the end of the corridor – at the most interesting moment! – they woke me up!”

“I don’t remember how many times I’ve been under anesthesia,” said Valentina, whose bed was located right by the window. “Each time it was some kind of a new experience. Yesterday I felt as if in reality. There was a light, but such a muffled one, and some voices were heard. Were they calling me? Maybe. The grass in the field was fresh and bright, of emerald color, there were a lot of flowers and beautiful butterflies there. I felt so good, so easy, walking across the field into the distance. As if in my childhood, with parents nearby. I raised my head and saw them waving to me and saying, ‘We love you. We watch you from here, and we know everything about you, and we’ll always help you!’”

“Why on earth didn’t you stay in that Paradise?” sighed Galina. “Anyway, it’s easier there than here!”

“It seemed to be a border there,” Valentina replied. “Right in the fields. An invisible one. As I reached it, I just couldn’t go further, that’s all.”

“I believe neither in God nor in Light,” Lyudmila said smiling. “Even if a million people swear on the Bible. I will never believe it, until I see it myself!”

After the surgery, which was a success and didn’t portend any complications, anesthesiologist began to wake Lyudmila up, but she remained unconscious. Her heart slowed down and… stopped. The girl’s face expressed neither sadness, nor pain, nor joy. It was mysteriously beautiful in its unearthly calmness. The anesthesiologist ran out of the room for the resuscitators. Lyudmila’s roommates remained speechless.

An Angel appeared in the room. Lyudmila, sitting by her body on the edge of the bed, involuntarily smiled.

“Wow! So, do angels exist?! Have you come to take me away?”

“Hello, my soul! In fact, everything exists, both real and once imagined by humans. Now you will be taken to the intensive care unit and returned to your body.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Lyudmila. “I feel great here! I see no reason to return! No one needs me on Earth, and I’m completely un-adapted to life! Everything fell out of hand! I was always approaching some goal, step by step, and bang! – at the last moment! – the world used to collapse!”

“Every soul has its own mission on Earth. If you don’t complete it, you won’t be able to continue your journey in Heaven.”

“And which one is mine?”

“Just to serve God and people.”

“To serve? What do you mean?” Lyudmila asked, having understood nothing.

“One day you will be a famous nun. Right because you are un-adapted to live as common people.”

“Me? A nun?!” Lyudmila cringed at the mere thought of it. “Are you saying that I am not destined to find earthly love? If you promised me now that I would become the happiest woman in the world, I would probably return! But to become a nun?!”

A Demon showed up in the room.

“Let’s go!” he smiled, holding out his furry paw to Lyudmila.

“Where?” the girl involuntarily moved closer to the Angel.

“Where? On Earth, of course!”

“Have you both agreed beforehand?! I’ve already told that I’m not going back to my body to become a nun!”

“No, no! Come on! Not to your body! And I’m not about the nun!” the Demon chuckled. “Let’s move into a bum!”

“A homeless bum?!” Lyudmila cried out, mentally picturing herself freezing in the slushy mud on the street outside the grocery shop.

“But you don’t want to be a nun!” the Demon laughed.

The resuscitators rushed into the room and took away Lyudmila’s body, while her soul with the Angel and the Demon followed the body to the intensive care unit to continue the conversation there.

“Listen, Valentina,” Galina turned to her neighbor, “our unbeliever must have seen the Light! She liked it there, in Paradise, so much that she decided not to come back! Oh, thank God, I didn’t get to Paradise yet! I might have been a fool to stay there, since I have four grandchildren, they will be lost without me here! Who will cook my borsch for them?”

Valentina sighed, silently nodded in response and looked out at the street through the dusty hospital window.

She had heard the conversation of Lyudmila’s soul with the Angel and the Demon, though she hadn’t seen them in the room.

Valentina had no one left on Earth long ago, except for… the red puss Barsik she had saved last winter.

“Perhaps serving Barsik is my mission on Earth. Isn’t Barsik the reason I am still alive?” Valentina pondered. “Or maybe… serving the Barsiks? I wonder how many cats I could save during my life, while I saved only one … How is he now, without me? Does the concierge remember to feed him? Probably, he has already broken a few pots of flowers, my little prankster!”

Valentina smiled, and she wanted to return home as soon as possible to express her love and gratitude to the red puss, even if he had nothing to do with her mission on Earth…

March 1994

4. The Wind of Changes

“The 1^st April street, building 77, entrance B,

the 5^th floor…”

I knew that address by heart, having worked for over four years as chief accountant in the office of a small company, located there. The company, which I loved very much, became my almost second home, but it was going through hard times, if not to say ‘its last hours’. The Swiss owners postponed until Monday the release of the already taken decision on liquidation, that would start the painful process of dividing assets, including money, of course.

The working day was already over, but the financial director, George, and I were sitting in his office enjoying a melon.

“Well, tell me, Arisha, have you been conjuring?” George asked, referring to our future.

“Yes, of course,” I muttered grudgingly, aware of his skepticism.

“What way this time? Solitaire or coffee?”

“You see, cards and coffee, and all that stuff are just kids’ play if there’s nothing behind. The Subtle World is called so for being immaterial; its door can’t be opened with earthly keys only, such as cards or coffee. If you can’t read signs, feel with your soul, hear your inner voice, no cards will be useful.”

“Well, okay, let’s say so. What are you feeling right now?”

“A Wind of Changes.”

“Good or bad?”

“Cardinal ones!”

“Anything more specific? Will you finally get rid of the fear of getting fat after childbirth and agree to become my wife?”

“Olga is coming, cut her a piece of melon,” I said calmly, not reacting to his skeptical jokes.

In a couple of seconds, there was a knock on the door, and a cheerful and blooming Olga, the HR manager, appeared on the threshold.

“Hello, friends!” she said and took a seat next to me.

“From our table to your table,” I handed her a piece of melon on a plate.

“Thank you, Arisha! And I have some news for you!”

“Good or bad?” George asked to clarify.

“I’m looking for a job… If we are going to be liquidated, there’s nothing else to wait! It’s better to prepare a straw in advance! So, I noticed a vacancy, published by some recruitment agency. In fact, as it turned out, they have two vacancies!” Olga said enigmatically.

We exchanged glances with George.

“Well, it’s getting more and more interesting!” he grinned.

“In brief, a foreign company with the same sphere of activity needs a financial manager and… chief accountant!” Olga summed up in a solemn voice.

“Wow!” I exclaimed in surprise and exhaled deeply.

“It’s not just ‘wow’! ” said Olga offended. “It’s a sign from Heaven! Destiny! Where else will you both find such a fateful combination to work together further?”

“Perhaps,” George agreed without much enthusiasm. “However, I would prefer not to work with Arisha, but to live! Happily and forever!”

“One doesn’t exclude the other!” I declared. “So, Olga?”

“Yes, yes, Arisha, I’m about to sell you both! With giblets!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “No names yet, of course! I called that agency, without specifying our company. I asked if there was anything for me as well, throwing the ‘fishing rod’… Well, their HR specialist will contact the customer and let me know the result for you! I’ll tell you then! Just don’t forget to take me there when you get the job.”

“Agreed!” George promised.

Olga finished her melon and went home. I washed the plates in the kitchen, anticipating the Wind of Changes, when a strange thought suddenly pierced my mind, and I flew back into George’s office.

“Isn’t it strange that another foreign company appeared in our narrow sector, when…”

I didn’t finish the sentence, as the lights went out throughout the building.

“What difference does it make now?” George sighed, hugging me gently, but…

…the front door to our floor slammed loudly, heavy steps were heard, and my heart began beating with a strange premonition, since no one usually was there at such a late time, except for Olga and us…

“A security guard, probably. Because of the electricity,” George supposed and decided to make sure he was right…

…That evening, saying goodbye – and obviously forever – to my almost second home, regretting only that the first one would never see my babies, which I naturally dreamed of, but constantly put off for ‘tomorrow’, because of my own complexes and fears (what if it didn’t work out, or the child would be born unhealthy, or I would really turn into a fat cake, and George would start cheating on me), I stopped at the ajar door to Olga’s office. She had forgotten her phone on the table, and it beeped, informing about a new message received.

Oh, curiosity!.. I went over and read it.

“Your candidates are welcome tomorrow at 2 pm,

floor No. 5, entrance B, building 77,

the 1^st April Street.”

“Oh, my little witch! You were as always right,” George grinned. “And what Wind is blowing now?”

“The Wind of Love,” I laughed, detaching myself from the situation.

Having drawn, like in childhood, two hearts pierced by an arrow, with dripping blood, on that date page in Olga’s business diary, I took George by the hand, and we went out through the window into Heaven, without any desire to think about who had