Nikita felt involuntary joy. Responses from Athenais were coming very quickly. That meant she was really communicating with him alone. If she had been distracted by someone else, the answers would have come very slowly.

“I’m looking for a girl, not just a girlfriend to chat with.”

“I know.”

“So what do you say? Do I even get one date?”

“We’ll see in time.”

Athenais’ answer wasn’t particularly encouraging, but it’s a good start. She doesn’t say no right away.

“Are you available?”

“It is not really.”

“You mean you’re married? Or engaged? Or have a boyfriend…”

“That’s what you mean.”

“What were you thinking?” Nikita couldn’t understand her. When a woman is asked if she is available, it means that they want to ask her to marry her. The words “free” or “not free” are synonymous with married – not married. Slaves and serfdom do not exist now. In what other sense could Athenais have understood the word “free”? Her mentality can’t really be shaped from the era of the pharaohs, when slavery was in vogue.

“There’s one place I can’t leave yet,” Athenais typed. “It makes me feel not completely free.”

“So do you have some kind of contract?”

A star can only be kept in a particular shooting location by some kind of contract that can’t be terminated without paying a hefty penalty.

“Did your friends help you to make a career in film? Or do you really edit films with your own hands?”

“I prefer to do everything myself.”

“And you do everything yourself?”

“I am guided by the principle: if you want to do something well, do it yourself.”

The phrase flashed through his mind again: “how you fell from heaven, Dennitsa, son of the dawn, to become the king of the cinema and the earth.

Stop! This is some kind of modernization of a biblical saying. Nikita frowned. He felt as if someone’s black claw was writing this phrase in red paint right on the keyboard.

“Do you like horror movies?” The question came out of nowhere.

Nikita didn’t even know what to answer. He decided to come clean.

“When I was a kid, I loved them.”

“Why did you love them?”

“I don’t even know.”

“Do you like to tickle your nerves? Do you like to be scared?”

“It was sometimes.”

“Does the horror genre help you get through a storm of thrills?”

“Like that?”

“Would you like to be in a horror movie yourself?”

“Not as a victim.”

“What part?”

“I don’t know. I prefer to watch. I liked your movie a lot, too.”

“Would you like to be inside it?

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Would you like to join the legions of demons fighting against the Almighty?”

“I don’t know… maybe… yes!”

“Aren’t you afraid of being burned alive so that you can gain immortality later?”

The eerie questions poured out of a leaky sack. Athenais was testing her partner’s strength. Nikita almost gave up. Each line is one scarier than the next, the mouse moves like a wind-up. This is no longer a chat room, but a duel. Who will drive who crazy first?

There was definitely someone in the room behind Nikita’s back. Someone’s claws were scraping the linoleum. The sound was quiet, but unpleasant.

Nikita didn’t risk turning around, though a low growl could be heard behind him. His nerves gave out.

“Let’s not discuss horror movies anymore,” he asked his chat companion.

“Don’t tell me you’re more attracted to magazines with lecherous pictures than to classic horror,” Athenais said.

Nikita had a few pornographic magazines lying around, but how would she know that? You can’t look into his desk drawers through the chat room and check what’s in them.

While Nikita was thinking about what to answer, Athenais had already received the next question:

“Which is safer: pornography or horror movies?”

“Pornography molests,” Nikita typed diplomatically.

“And horror movies can make you go crazy,” Athenais parried.

“They are not mystical ones, thrillers about maniacs. For some reason, they’ve started calling them horror movies in modern distribution, even though the genre is more of a criminal one. There are no ghosts, no vampires, no demons, just violence and carnage. These films used to be called thrillers. They could make you sick. And beautiful demons are romance. Like Lermontov’s poem of the same name.

“Called “The Demon”?

“Yes, it is!” Nikita was pleasantly surprised that Athenais knew Russian classics. For a star, she is unusually educated and literate. Her text comes out without a single mistake and a typo. Miracles in a sieve! Or rather, miracles in the chat room!

“And do you want me to prove to you that mystical movies about demons can make it worse than violent thrillers?” Athenais asked a question that sounded like a trick.

“In what case is it?”

“It is in case the demons come off the screen.”

“Like you did?”

“Yes, it is”

“Is it only in the chat room? It’s safe. Even if you are a demon, you can’t hurt me through chat.”

Nikita remembered a sadistic movie where the victim’s ghost killed through a chat room. Athenais died in a terrorist attack, too, after all. What if her soul had mastered the same technique as in the movie? What if mystical movies are just a cast of reality?

There you go! She’s confused him. How can you believe that a star has become a ghost or a demon. No matter what the star says. When have actors ever been sincere? And why is he so eager to believe in Athenais’ honesty? All she does is play with him at night. In a chat room!

“Where are you now?” He typed out the question.

“I am on the Internet.”

“Isn’t that what I mean? What country are you in? America? Europe? Russia?”

“Is the fan interested in my geographic location?”

The question sounded like a joke.

“I am not a fan!”

“Then what are you?”

She roused his conscience.

“I’m a fan of your beautiful pictures,” Nikita confessed.

“I need an interlocutor, not a fan.”

There you go! She’s got him stumped again. They go around and around. But the chat is interesting, you don’t want to turn off. Even if an ugly picture of a monster popped up instead of Athenais’ face, it wouldn’t cool him off. He’s communicating with a mystery.

“I’ll be your interlocutor, your friend, your personal free psychologist… whatever you want.”

“Even a victim?” Athenais teased him.

And that’s for his sincere confession! When you tell a pretty girl what’s in your heart, she’s bound to spit in it.

“So you want to be my victim?”

Nikita fell into a stupor. A noose tightened around his throat.

“You’d make a wonderful victim,” Athenais continued.

What a joke! Or is it?

“What really happened at the Blue Lotus Cinema?” Nikita typed.

There wasn’t an answer for a long time.

“Tell me about the terrorist attack. Or what happened there? How did you survive? And why were your fans burning temples? I mean, you played a deity. Aren’t deity worshippers supposed to respect temples?”

“Gods come in all kinds of ways.”

Over the top of the chat room, the message about the call buzzed. Athenais called. Nikita responded instantly. The video chat opened. Athenais appeared to be looking at the laptop that lay in her lap. The image was slightly shifted upward. The winged beauty looked down at Nikita. The dark wings, interwoven with glittering chains, were most likely held on those chains. They couldn’t have been real!

Behind Athenais loomed the same walls painted with hieroglyphs. The room she was in was very dark. The only light came from the laptop.

“You have nice watercolors on the walls,” Athenais remarked.

“They’ve been here since high school,” Nikita muttered. He was embarrassed by his drawings. How come Athenais noticed them and didn’t notice the large claw scratches on the wallpaper next to them. Or had she deliberately missed them? After all, they had strangely appeared in the apartment at the same time Nikita had engaged in a chat with her.

Is it possible to hurt her physically through a chat room? He guesses he can, if there’s a real angel or demon sitting on the other side of the chat room. Can you kill through chat? It’s definitely possible to seduce. Nikita gazed greedily at the gentle angelic face in the video window. Athenais had golden eyebrows and eyelashes, graceful cheekbones, a regular facial oval, lips as delicate as rose petals, and lingering blue eyes. Or were they emerald eyes? They seem to change color from time to time.

“You don’t have any icons in your room,” Athenais pointed out.

“No, I don’t. They were left by my grandmother, but I gave them away to the needy.”

“Did they make you feel negative?”

“No, I’m just an atheist. I don’t like to keep religious symbols at home just as a souvenir. My mom brought a statue of goddess Kali from her business trip to India. She must still have it in her bedroom.”

“I knew Kali.”

“So you’ve seen her statuettes, too?”

Athenais suddenly laughed softly.

“You’re funny.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are very naive.”

“And you are very beautiful.”

“I know!”

Athenais had a rigid self-esteem with no pluses and no minuses. Compliments couldn’t buy her off. How would she feel about a bouquet of roses?

You couldn’t buy roses on a student scholarship, but Nikita worked as a courier during the summer and saved up some money. He would gladly spend it on a lavish bouquet and a box of chocolates for Athenais, if she would agree to a date.

She went out on video chat. That’s already progress. Probably the next step will be a date. All we have to do is get her talking, and maybe she’ll set a date herself.

Athenais looked about sixteen or eighteen. He wouldn’t want to get a felony conviction for seduction of a minor. Nowadays a lot of people look out of their age. Judging by the biography posted on the Internet, Athenais had already managed to act in dozens of movies, where she played not a child, but an adult heroine. So she is definitely twenty to twenty-five years old.

“I wish I were a poet, or I would have written poems about your beauty.”

“Many have been dedicated to me: sonnets, odes, madrigals, ballads, even chants and prayers… More valuable than odes to me is communion with you, a living person. Thank you for your friendship.”

Athenais put her hand to her lips and sent him an airy kiss. Her fingers slid right across the screen.

That’s how the Orientals, like the Arabs, thank you for your friendship on Facebook. Nikita was told about their way of communicating by her neighbor, who learned foreign languages well. She conversed with people from the Emirates, Indians, Turks, and guys from Sri Lanka. It was all for an opportunity to practice linguistics. She was the one who told Nikita that he could find a girlfriend on international sites.

Athenais looked something like a character from an Oriental fairy tale. She looked like an angel, but she reeked of the luxury of exotic palaces, golden deserts, and magical oases.

It seems that in fairy tales, the beautiful djinn are usually called peri.

“Athenais…” Nikita addressed her by name.

She grinned as if he were calling someone who didn’t exist, and suddenly she beckoned him toward her, into the darkness of the room painted with hieroglyphics. As if he could walk through a computer screen and get straight to her!

“Living people are rare here,” Athenais suddenly admitted. “It’s a very desolate place around here.”

“Don’t tell me you’re in the Valley of the Kings, surrounded by the Sahara.”

After all, a room with walls painted with hieroglyphs could be the inside of a pyramid. Few actors or archaeologists could have been stranded in the desert by unforeseen circumstances.

“I’m not far from Moscow. You could say, in the far suburbs of Moscow. But there are no dacha plots here, just wastelands all around.”

“Can I get to you by train?”

“No, the railway line is too far. But sometimes I hear trains rumbling on the tracks.”

“So it’s not too far. Otherwise you wouldn’t hear it.”

“I have better hearing than people.”

There she goes again, flaunting her oddities! How hard it is to communicate with actresses!

“So you’re an angel?” Looking at her, it was hard not to believe it. Even Athenais’ skin was as delicate as lily petals. Only angels could have such delicate skin.

Nikita smiled at her through the chat. A smile helps smooth out any awkwardness.

“Don’t get excited! Angels really are creepy creatures.”

There was someone behind Athenais’ back. Or was that her wing moving? Nikita squinted, trying to see. He needed to get up from the table and light the chandelier. Then it would be brighter and he could see it. Only by the time he reaches the switch, Athenais will have left the video chat. She’s nervous enough as it is, like she’s going to end the dialogue.

“Swipe your finger across the screen,” Nikita guessed to ask.

“Why?” Athenais was surprised.

“Just do as I ask.”

She leaned over and traced some kind of hieroglyph on the screen with her finger.

“Shall I wave my hand at you too?”

“Don’t do that! I’ve already made sure the video of you wasn’t pre-recorded. Otherwise you wouldn’t have fulfilled my request.”

“Are all Moscow guys so suspicious?”

“Are all angels so mysterious?”

Nikita could have admitted to the fact that he’d already picked up a few jokes in the chat room, but it wasn’t comfortable. Athenais was looking at him with serious, wise eyes that changed color every minute. She must have special color lenses with a chameleon effect.

“You’re alive! You didn’t die in the terrorist attack! I’m glad.”

“What if you’re glad for nothing?”

Athenais waved her hand, which was studded with fancy rings.

“Good night!”

“But it would soon be morning.”

But Athénais had already passed out, moving her winged shoulder smoothly one last time, as if in flight. The chat went out, but the feeling that the angel was still around remained.

Demons come along with the angel

Nikita dreamt of a golden winged statue, devoutly worshipped by priests in scarlet robes. It stands on a pedestal in the center of a stone hall, and the crowds of idolaters around it somehow resemble modern fans. Nevertheless, they do not behave in a modern way. They fall down in front of it, they bow down, even smash their foreheads on the stone floor. Only people from ancient times can worship a deity in such a way, so why does he associate the ancient statue of the goddess with a modern movie star, and the priests with her fans? Is he going crazy? Or is it impossible to go crazy in a dream? After all, it is a dream!

Nevertheless, the feeling in the dream is so realistic, as if the dream is happening in reality. It seems that if you stretch out your hand, you will touch the golden goddess. The statue shines like the sun. It hurts his eyes.

Nikita has the feeling that he is inside a movie, not a dream. It’s unaccustomed, like a movie set, but there are no cameras around. The priests are beating their bows, surrounding the statue. And suddenly the statue comes to life, steps down from the pedestal, tearing apart the people who were brought to sacrifice to her. The goddess is not an idol, but a living being.

The dream ended abruptly. Nikita was disappointed to see the dirty ceiling of his apartment instead of the magnificent vaults of the ancient temple he had dreamed of. He wanted to go back to the land of dreams. The dream ended just as the deity’s golden fingers reached for his own throat. Nikita didn’t even realize who he was in the dream: a victim, a priest, or a bystander.

For the first time he had the feeling that he was watching a dream, as if it were a movie.

The apartment was empty. His mother would not return from her business trip for a long time. She rarely called, so as not to waste long-distance calls. His father had started a new family long ago, but at least he was paying his son’s education bills. And that’s good.

But the bills from Moscow Power Supply Company would have to be paid he. The month’s debt would probably turn out to be considerable. The computer was on all night, waiting for another chat with an angel.

Nikita woke up to find that he had forgotten to turn off his computer, and it had been on all night. He wished it had not broken down altogether. He certainly did not have enough money for a new computer this semester.

Actually, the computer was needed to type essays and term papers, but it was not used for its intended purpose. Why write a term paper when you can chat.

There was a real angel in the chat room. Athenais is an angel. Just as religious people wait for divine visions, Nikita waited for a chat with her.

How nice it would be if she were really winged and could fly to him right now, knocking on his apartment window. He lived so high up that only an angel could reach his window.

Nearby, the wings rustled. This is no longer a dream! Someone winged nearby, and not in the window, but right in the apartment.

“Athenais!” Nikita lifted his head from the pillow and groaned. Someone’s creepy shadow rushed across the room. A floor lamp fell and went out. Someone was treading on the carpet quietly, like a cat.

“Who’s there?”

The question must have sounded silly. Who could break into a locked apartment? He just seems to. Athenais movies gave him an imagination.

The familiar scraping sound reached his ears again. That was the sound of claws scraping against concrete walls.

Nikita tried to see something in the darkness. He should have kept the curtains drawn. Then the glare from the lanterns and the neighbor’s glowing windows would have been enough to see who was in the room.

Nikita didn’t believe in ghosts. Besides, there was no room for a ghost in a cramped Moscow apartment. The room barely had room for a sofa and a closet. The guest would have nowhere to go.

Probably, the guest decided so, because he suddenly sank down on the couch. Nikita shuddered, he could not breathe. Someone heavy covered him with his body. Someone’s claws squeezed his throat. It would have been better if they had left their fingerprints on the furniture, the refrigerator, and the plywood walls, just like before. The walls would take the damage, but a man’s throat was so easy to cut.

“What do you want?” A helpless croak came from Nikita’s lips instead of words.

The creature, nestled imposingly on top of him, descended as if from the ceiling. It was heavy, clawed, and seemingly winged. Something like wings fluttered precisely behind its back.

Something crumbled on Nikita’s cheek. It tasted like ash! Where would ashes come from in a room with no candles, no matches and no lighters? It’s not like an old palace with a fireplace and something was burnt recently. The ashes must have fallen from an unknown creature.

The computer screen, long ago switched to economy mode, suddenly lit up, as if someone had moved the mouse. In the glare from the glowing screen, Nikita saw a hunchbacked or winged creature pressed against the sofa.

It was a demon with wings, burnt and crumbling with ash. At least, that’s how demons are depicted in scary trial paintings and horror movies. Several more of the same creatures wandered around the room. Somehow there was enough room for them. Two of the demons sat on top of the closet, clawing at the teddy bear that had been left as a memento of their childhood. The other demons were tearing off the wallpaper with their claws, as if they were looking for something underneath it. They did not speak, only hissed. One demon’s claws scratched at a keyboard. It looked as if it and its companions had emerged from inside the computer.

How was it that the demons came after the angel? Nikita had been waiting for Athenais, and here they were.

“Young, handsome, not burnt…” the demon’s voice suddenly hissed above him.

Could the creature really be talking?

It ran its claws across Nikita’s chest, leaving holes in his pajamas.

“I was like you, and then I met her,” the demon whispered, leaning very low over Nikita.

Hell was breaking loose in the demon’s eyes. His eyes were red as coal in a furnace and creepy, but there was a modicum of intelligence in them. Somehow that was what made the demon so frightening. If he were just a monster, dumb as an animal, he wouldn’t be so scary. The very fact that an ancient mind was trapped in a mutilated, burnt body was frightening.

The demon’s claws gripped Nikita’s throat again, but for some reason they couldn’t strangle him, only briefly rendering him unconscious.

Nikita woke up quickly, but the words, hoarse from the ashes, were still ringing in his ears.

“I believed in angels. I fought the devil, but the devil became a movie star, and I loved him.”

How strange that sounds! Nikita looked around. There was no one in the room again. The uninterrupted power unit was beeping alarmingly, which meant that the power had been cut again. He should get up and turn off the computer, but he had no strength.

Nikita felt as if he had been put through a meat grinder. There are scratches on his body, scratches on the walls and closet, too. Overall, the room looked normal without the nocturnal guests, but the scraps of gutted bear crumbled from the closet. And why would anyone want to destroy Winnie the Pooh. That, he thought, was the name of the toy when he was a kid.

The room was full of stacks of discs in plastic cases and old-fashioned videotapes. No one had touched them, and for nothing. He had nowhere to put the tapes, but it was a shame to throw them away, too. They had interesting covers on them. Even though the video player had been out of order for a long time, he kept the tapes at home as souvenirs. They are the memory of a bygone era.

His parents had gramophone-type records and players, Nikita accumulated video cassettes as a child, DVDs came to replace them, and they will probably be replaced by something in the future. What else is needed, though, if there’s the Internet. It’s easier to find everything on the Internet than on store shelves. You don’t have to buy cassettes or disks, you just have to click the keys and you’re done.

Nikita downloaded Athenais photos. He is lucky that his girlfriend is an actress. Otherwise her beautiful photos might have disappeared with the deleted account. Any Internet user can delete his account at any time, along with all his photos, but photos of the actress will stay online forever.

“They can change and burn like her servants?” Someone whispered in Nikita’s ear. There was no one behind him, but there was the sensation of a sharp claw pulling his hair away from his ear.

He probably had wax plugs in his ears. They’re the only reason whispers and whistles can be heard. We’ll have to go to the doctor.

For a moment, Nikita thought the downloaded pictures were blackening as if they were burnt.

“What if she’s already burnt and blackened like us? Then would you admire her so much?”

“Yes, I would!” Nikita replied, like a lunatic, to the emptiness.

“And if you find out that the contemplation of fallen angels makes people blind?”

Someone laughed deafeningly above his ear. And that was it! There was no more whistling or noise in my ears. So he didn’t have to go to the doctor. But that didn’t save him from the demons.

Ominous hobby

Demons live in the computer? Or they live in his head?

Nikita examined the scratches on the closet and the wallpaper as carefully as if that would make them disappear. It looked like we’d have to make repairs. The plaster was beginning to chip away, the telephone wires appeared to be chewed up.

Someone had spilled flour in the kitchen. Cracks appeared in his mother’s china that hadn’t been there before. A distillery pot, a thermos, and a set of silver spoons had disappeared. Mom will be very angry about the missing turkey. The arabesque-engraved turkey was a gift from someone important.

The salt-cellar and sugar bowl were cracked, the crystal irons were shattered, and the pots and pans were shattered, as if a giant had stepped on them.

Could it be that the devil had arranged a coven in the kitchen?

Nikita had to take up a broom and dustpan. Only after half an hour of cleaning the kitchen began to become more or less clean.

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