Unlimited

The terrible agony of fear consumed her, as Victoria realized: it was something before her. Was it alive? What kind of substance was it? How to accept the creature? An animal? A human?

‘What are you?’ she whispered not wanting to ask anything.

The man was like a stone sculpture. Was he capable of speaking? What if he had a special alien language? The girl kept on sitting under the table and built the guesses.

‘Whom have you conjured up?’ he asked in a low but secure tone.

‘Me?’ her voice trembled. ‘No one. I’ve conjured no one.’

‘Kharon!’ he said loudly.

‘Kharon?’ the girl re-asked, got surprised as if she had heard the name for the first time.

The man smiled, with impressive walk he came up to the girl, sitting on the floor, took her hand and clasped in his arms, held her close.

‘You don’t know whom you’ve conjured up, do you, Victoria?’ he whispered in her ear.

The girl was captured by a strange feeling. She had never felt before. Something was embracing her, touching her, speaking with her but the primal instinct to be feared was gone. She suddenly became so light and easy. She just wanted him to go on holding her closer to him… Idiot!

‘No’ Vic said softly.

She didn’t know what was going on with her, why she became flabby like a washed handkerchief, in some demonic creature’s arms.

‘Oh, Victoria’ he said, pulling her closer to him, ‘An incubus is in your flat and you seem to have no idea what you’ve done, girl, have you?’

She shook her head, but the fear wasn’t coming back for some reason. In the embrace of the man she felt so peacefully. The creature smelled of sex…

‘You’ve called a demon to you, Victoria… With your blood. Why?’

‘With my blood?’ like being high Vic re-asked without understanding anything.

She didn’t cut her veins and let the blood run. Could the demon miss the flat?

He let her go and followed her leg with his eyes. There was a cold single track of blood on her ankle. Where was it from? Victoria exactly remembered not to cut there… Suddenly she got why the blood was there. While she was taking a shower, she could cut with the razor by accident and didn’t even notice it.

‘You don’t remember why the blood is there?’ he asked slyly.

Then Kharon appeared near her. All it took was one soft, but rapid hand movement and the girl turned out to be in bed. The demon stroked her leg, rained kisses upon her inner side of thigh. Vic was hardly capable of managing invading emotions.

‘…Victoria…That was the steel…the sharp one…Cut your little leg when you were in the bath’

The man touched the cut with his lips. She could read a craving in his eyes, but the girl didn’t understand the craving for what? She wanted to wave him away, but her hands didn’t listen to her. On the contrary they embraced the man, wanted to be touched. The warmth of his lips touching went through her body like electricity with a minimum voltage.

But Kharon stopped. Having gazed the girl with cloudy eyes he got up and stared at her again. He was serious.

‘I can take your life for one millisecond’ he grabbed the girl and she slung in his hands like a kitten. ‘Do you need your life?’

Fear came back imminently. Her body was numb, horror paralyzed her mind. The girl stopped getting what was going on: firstly, she was starving with an idiotic desire to bed with the mystic man, secondly, she was in cold sweat because of fear.

‘Yes, I do’ she answered under breath.

‘Do you?’ he whispered being surprised.

His face expression was changing and frightened her, Victoria couldn’t follow up any exact emotion. She got the feeling that Kharon didn’t know how to rule his face as if he put on masks and observe his body and mimic abilities.

‘If your life is so precious then why did you read the text on the paper?’

‘I didn’t believe…I didn’t know you…You exist. That you would come’

‘You? Me?’ Kharon laughed.

He let the girl go and walked around the room, casting treacherous glances at Victoria.

‘Have I frightened you, human child?’ Kharon came up and took the girl’s hand. ‘You should not be afraid of me. I’ve been created to bring great pleasure… at a price. Are you ready to pay me?’

Kharon gently kissed the girl, investigating every inch of her neck with his lips. Vic closed her eyes and left the reality again. The demon didn’t stop driving her crazy, burning her skin, charming with his words. She was almost choke because of unexpected pleasure and enjoyment which the creature was bringing to her, when Kharon stopped.

‘Are you ready to pay me?’ he asked the question again. ‘I shall keep on… I shall show you these things none of men will be ready to show you. I shall open the arras into light-hearted enjoyment, that you will never be able to come up from. I shall present you a light and shining which will never leave your mind. There will be no pain, fear and melancholy… Only the desire… Unrestrained, full of madness, destructive, drying and reckless one… The desire which you will be spluttered in and accept it with all the gratefulness in life. You will get a hidden part of your consciousness, look at yourself in a different way… Are you ready to pay?’

Kharon stopped, took his hand out of her shorts. Victoria opened her eyes and amazingly stared at the man. She couldn’t understand why she allowed him to do what he was doing.

‘Pay you?’ she re-asked without getting what was going on in her crazy head.

‘A night costs your life’ he smiled.

‘Are you sure that it’s worth it?’ Vic spewed out with no thinking.

‘Worth it?’ Kharon fluently looked at the street and then shifted his gaze on the girl again.

Her hair was in badly messed batch, there was a frustration in her eyes, her clothes were wrinkled, and her naughty hand was smoothing out the shorts. There was fear and misunderstanding on her lips and a wild desire to be kissed by a part of hell. She had a vandalizing love to life, saying “run”. The girl was in prostration.

Kharon lowered towards her, snapped his fingers before her nose and Victoria shuddered.

‘No, no, no. Don’t do. I don’t wanna anything’

‘Lying to the demon…oh, that’s so bad. Well, you know how to find me. I’m not saying farewell. We shall see… Victoria’

The man kissed her cheek and disappeared.

Victoria was sitting like a statue for a long time trying to find out what had happened in her flat. But she couldn’t get her own feelings and emotions.

On the one hand she was scared catastrophically. She couldn’t still believe that the real mysterious creature had visited her house. Her scepticism became a silent cropper. Vic didn’t even try to get a little part of it back.

All that she had believed for twenty years now was gone. Demons? Witches? Vampires? Could it really exist? Living in secret from people, from their minds and perception… Maybe it wasn’t a secret. Maybe people were so interested in their own stormy lives that even during breaks between identical hours they didn’t see what was happening before their eyes. Perhaps, today all the supernatural creatures didn’t have to hide. Because now, living in the modern world you could stand among crowd during rush hour, plaintively crying in voice not your own because of pain, calling for help and in response you would be pushed away and someone would say: ‘why the fuck are you standing on the road, freak?’ Sliding around people, like a snake in grass, a demon, of course, in a human shape, would be unnoticed. The girl was shocked, having realized how many things were unnoticed and lost in that world.

Victoria was sitting at her table, looking at the symbols, drawn on the desk top. What was it? Was it a dream and she was about to wake up and breathe a sigh of relief? Kharon… The demon. A phone call interrupted her reflections. Her friend was going to come to Victoria.

The girls were in the room. Vasilisa was twittering about what had happened while she’d been dating her boyfriend, describing animal lust and platonic love. Vic still had been thinking of the mysterious guest, his face, which was before her eyes, his hands, smoothly sliding down her waist into the shorts… his lips, almost touching her lap and words that they were whispering… his winy, foggy and deep voice… his amber-brown gaze. Voluptuousness. Was Vasilisa able to distract her friend from those recollections?

‘What’s wrong with you, Vic?’ Vasilisa bumped on the chair, aggrievedly stared at her friend.

‘What?’ Vic came back to the reality again, having sunk next paranoid part of fantasy.

‘Are you listening to me? I’ve come to you to share my emotions and feelings, I wanted you to be happy for me… but it seems that you don’t care.’

‘No, Vasilisa, no, I do… I just…’ Vic stopped speaking.

‘You just what?’

‘I’ve had a bad dream’

‘Really? You’re worrying about something, but not looking sleepy. Will you tell me this story? Is that because of Daniel?’

‘What’s up about him?’ Vic was surprised.

‘You don’t know, do you?’ Vasilisa asked.

‘What I don’t know?’

Vasilisa looked away. She blabbed out and it was obviously.

‘I was told that he left with a girl…’

Finally, Victoria abstracted herself from recollections and surfed into the present imminently.

She didn’t love Daniel. She could speak about love when they had started dating but it was too long ago. The feeling faded away, love fell asleep, then died. Everything was trite and simple like everything else about others. However, she didn’t want to be kept in reserve: go on vacation with another but bed with Victoria? Rubbish!

Before making a scene, Victoria wanted to wait for Daniel to come back from his so-called business trip. What if someone made balls of the truth? What if someone overlooked or overviewed? Maybe someone shouldn’t poke their nose in someone else’s business. She hated all those gossips and people who were savouring them, wanting to find out who did and what that night. If you did nothing, they would always make up something.

Victoria wanted to ask Daniel face to face what was going on in very deed and see if he was brave enough to confess the truth.

‘With a girl? He’s on business trip…’ Vic said, seemed off, understanding in horror that such sensitive matter was displaced by epileptic morning recollections.

At that time the girl got she didn’t actually care whom and where her boyfriend was spending his time with. She just decided that apart from the truth they were going to break up.

Yes, they had two perfect years. There were two years of egoism, self-absorption and self-development. They had a perfect beginning. Victoria often remembered the beginning.

A long time ago they went to common parties. He opened doors for her, gave his jackets to her when she was cold, held her hand when she was walking over kerbstone imagining herself a funambulist, carried her in his arms over the puddles.

A long time ago they laughed looking at each other, holding hands, kissing in the parks… A long time ago and it had already passed.

It seemed to them it was love, that they would be together till the end of life, that no one and nothing would be able to part them. No one and nothing would be, but time did.

Having felt the other man’s touches Victoria realized that she didn’t want to feel Daniel’s anymore. Even in the very beginning she hadn’t felt with Daniel what she felt in ten-minutes communication with Kharon. He was the one who made a decisive end to her thoughts to be or not to be.

Now Vasilisa was re-telling gossips and Vic was trying to exorcise the demon out of her mind.

Olga Vladimirovna came back in the late evening and focused on her own business. Victoria was having a burr under saddle.

I gotta speak to him. No matter what will happen, but I have to…

The girl told her mum that she was going to take a spin on a bike, took it and rushed towards Serebryany Bor.

Vic was cycling through the evening park looking for a quiet corner. She didn’t need any witnesses. What would people think if they saw a girl in twilight with candles, drawing something on the ground and whispering Latin words? They would laugh at best… What would people think? What would people say? Those synonymously bloody questions made others impossible to live. Why did you need to think what people would think of you? Why couldn’t you just live without thinking of public opinion? Those people didn’t even know you personally so what’s the difference what they would think of you? Why did you need to be an object that sweetened someone’s glimpse? Was that all for five-seconds glimpse of a stranger?

Vic didn’t want to make a fool of herself. Before the incubus visited her, she would have laughed with pleasure at a person calling for rain in a forest.

A little connecting thread was nicely floating between oneself and others: we didn’t want to be treated in the same way as we treat the others. I didn’t want to be mocked in any situation but if I were to be behind these situation frames then I could afford myself to mock others.

After re-drawing signs on the ground that was getting cold after the hot day, Vic took a razor tip. The demon said there should be blood… It meant if she wanted to see him again, she needed to spill her blood. But here everything stopped. The girl couldn’t pull herself together to cut and hurt herself. She was frightened. But the desire to see Kharon overcame the fear for cutting herself.

Having closed her eyes Vic slit her finger and cried in pain at once. Dark-red blood was dropping on the ground, the faltering voice was reading the spell.

After having read the girl looked over her shoulder: nobody was there. Convulsively remembering everything that she had done before, she was looking for mistakes. She started reading the spell again. In response nobody appeared.

Something went wrong… Why didn’t he come? What was wrong? The signs, the numerals, the circles, the triangle, the blood, the spell were the same as in that morning. Why? The girl was tortured by questions which she had no answers for.

She had been in the park for an hour and a half, waiting but nobody appeared, and Victoria went home. She was slowly riding the bike, sorrowfully looking at the road, trying to get through her emotions.

Firstly, she was scared as she understood the words “I can take your life in one millisecond”. The creature that appeared in her flat was capable of everything. He was unpredictable and whatever he would do nobody would be to blame but herself… if life stayed near.

Then she was suffering from curiosity. She wanted to know everything that was left naked after lifting the curtains for a half of an inch. Victoria craved to open it fully, go backstage and find out ins and outs. But Kharon didn’t come.

‘Where’ve you been?’ her mum was standing in the hall, hands akimbo. ‘I’ve been up half of the night, waiting for you to come back! What’s the matter, Vic?’

‘Mum…’ Victoria unlaced her gumshoes. ‘I’ve been cycling, thinking that you’re sleeping already’

‘Vic!’ her mum said in a severe voice.

‘Mum, I’ve got it. I’m sorry that I made you worry; I didn’t mean to.’

‘What time do you get up?’

‘At 7 am… I’ve got a preparatory meeting before the exam. You?’

‘At 6 am. I’ll be out at 7 am. Shall I call you or you’ll get up?’ the woman softened.

‘I’ll get up. Don’t worry, mum. Go back to bed’

“Why? What did I do wrong? I did the same process exactly to a T, but the place was changed… I don’t believe that he can appear only inside houses! I’m sure that a place doesn’t matter… Then what?”

Almost about an hour Vic was thinking of her actions, trying to find a mistake until she fell asleep. She dreamt about nothing but blackness and silence.

In the morning, Victoria felt low as she didn’t get enough sleep. Of course, night races through the park had taken much strength and time.

She took off the house like a shot from a gun and headed towards Ulitsa 1905 metro station. The weather was good. The sun was behind the clouds and the warm wind was blowing.

Vic was going with half-closed eyes, trying to catch a little sleep. Her subconsciousness convinced her that she was mentally deficient. Being in a depressed state the girl was thinking only of the previous night. She was afraid for her mental state – whether she was healthy? Maybe there was no demon there? Maybe everything that she saw, felt and heard was just a mind game? A dream? Maybe she made up everything and didn’t know how to forget it?

Vic got into the underground, crowded into the third train. It was too crowded, and she couldn’t turn out to be in the carriage without making an effort. Vic held on the hand-rail and closed her eyes, setting her mind on three-hours preparatory meeting before the exam.

‘How’s your finger?’ suddenly a quite whisper penetrated her ear.

It gave her a pretty good jump. Of course, she guessed who was behind her. Her guesses were confirmed when his hands embraced her, giving no chance to turn to him.

‘Hash, don’t be nervous’ Kharon swarmed in her hair with his nose.

Victoria didn’t breathe. Fear conquered her completely. She glimpsed angry faces: nobody paid attention neither to the strong hands, firmly holding the girl nor to her sudden fright, solemnly walking in her eyes.

‘You were summoning me yesterday evening’ the man whispered, holding her tightly. ‘I heard you saying the spell… Blood was on the ground… Fear of cutting your little finger was within you. Schizophrenia diagnoses… Melancholy’

Victoria didn’t blink. Dream, slumber, wish to close hey eyes and all other physical desires disappeared. She got awaken but her mind was glassed. Vic got who was near her and that was all. She couldn’t say a single word, a lump of nerves was in her throat, passion started getting into mind slowly. Through the fear and consternation Vic felt enjoyment. Jesus, she waited for his embrace so much and she feared to confess it.

‘I was busy. Too busy. Victoria, it is Kuznetsky Most station. Shall we go? Here’s a change of line…’

Kharon took her by the hand and led her to the crossing passage.

‘Wait’ Vic finally said something.

‘I am listening to you’ Kharon had a firm hold over her hand and looked into her eyes. ‘Your eyes are of very beautiful olive green. Intense. There is so much life in your eyes’

‘That’s not what I mean!’ Vic interrupted him without expecting such severity from herself, ‘What’s going on?’

The demon withed his head down but kept his eyes on the girl, still holding her hand. They were standing in the middle of Kuznetsky Most metro station. It was rush hour. People hated them. They were pushed and called bad names. They were an obstacle for everyone, but she didn’t care neither did he.

‘Fine,’ Vic insisted, ‘Let’s go’

They left the metro and went to a café. Victoria decided to speak to the man… the demon.

‘Two coffees, please’ Kharon said to the first waiter he came upon and went to the table, leading the girl.

‘But…’ the waiter tried to explain something, and nothing came out of that.

Kharon stood up, looked at the man and repeated his order again, added compulsion into his voice.

Vic was at the table, staring at the man in front of her. His amber-brown eyes opalesced and it didn’t matter, that surrounding colour was dull; dark-brown, almost black, hair covered his forehead, he had thick black eyelashes…

Five minutes passed before Vic started speaking.

‘Okay. That’s okay, isn’t it? Is it okay that we’re here just like nothing has happened? Is that okay that some creature from hell is gonna drink a cup of coffee? Would you like a cigarette, maybe?’

‘With pleasure’, Kharon smiled, ‘but no smoking is allowed in the café’

‘How do you know? Oh, what a nonsense I’m talking… you know everything!’

‘You know, Victoria, I’m glad that today I’m in Russia, in Moscow. I’m glad that no smoking is allowed in the café’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You have to understand you aren’t the first woman in my arms for all these centuries that I have been living’

‘And I do’

‘I heard your voice yesterday, but I couldn’t have dropped everything and run to you… I was adorning a dream of a very sweet madam’

‘You couldn’t have dropped everything?’ Vic grabbed the cup of coffee, hoping that caffeine would wake her wisdom up. ‘I suppose demons must show up as they’ve been summoned.’

‘Oh, no, Dear. We show up to whom we want to. If I’m in a bad mood or busy, or have no desire, I won’t come even if you cut a head of a black rooster’

‘Why did you come to me?’ Vic smiled.

It was her first smile for the last two days. The first smile was in the seducer’s presence from tartar.

Kharon grinned, took the chair and sat closer to the girl. He embraced her a little bit, kissed her lips unceremoniously and smiled again. The demon behaved as if they had been married for a long time already.

Victoria was sitting without moving. The man’s effrontery astounded her as well as her behaviour: why didn’t she put off his hands? Why did she allow him to kiss her? What was going on with her mind?

‘You’re a great interest for me. Your diffident voice, disgusting Latin, cut leg… It has been a while since I saw such an awkward magician’

‘I’m not a magician!’

‘I know. You are a nice, red-haired girl, last-year student. You have got a boy whom you don’t love. You live with your mother and that was the reason why you went to the park yesterday…’

‘So does a demon control his presence? If he wants, he comes, if he doesn’t then he won’t come?

‘Absolutely’

‘Why did you come to me again? I told you I don’t agree to the deal’

‘That remains to be seen. Hm, I am glad that you have stopped being afraid of me, finally’

‘Damn it all!’ Vic couldn’t take it anymore, ‘How’s it possible?!’

‘By the way, every time when you say damn it all, a deuce takes three days out of your life. Be careful with what you’re saying, Babe’

She had a lump in the throat again. Deuces? Were they real?

‘You see, Victoria, deuces don’t take the highest hierarchy step of Hell and do thankless job. They have to please themselves at least’

‘Kharon… Honestly I’m out of sorts. It seemed to me just an illusion, a hallucination. It can’t be. There are no demons and deuces! You’re just kidding me’

‘Oh, really? Then I shall show you what an illusion is’

Kharon took her hand and whispered: ‘Close your eyes’. Vic did and silently was sitting with her eyes closed.

There was a noise of wind. The air was warm. Waves were crushing against the rocks. Victoria opened her eyes. A scared scream came out of her because there was a beautiful sheer drop under her feet, the sea was beneath, maybe it was an ocean, crashing against the highest rock bottom on the top of which the girl was staying.

‘Oh my God!’ Vic screamed, staggering and grabbing Kharon, ‘What the hell, Kharon! I’d have fallen down!’

‘Yes, you would, but you didn’t. Do not forget, it is an illusion. Everything you are looking at, doesn’t exist! All of these is my imagination’s projection. These lovely, ominous waves, churly blasts, messing up your hair, seagulls, a heart-rending screaming and floating in the sky do not exist! Give me your hand’

Kharon smiled and jumped down, dragging the shrieking girl. Vic was considerably scared with her fellow-traveller’s actions. She was afraid of falling, tried to realize that everything was an illusion, but her mind refused to believe in it. Everything looked so real and could be felt. What kind of illusion could it be if there was a salty air in her nose and sounds of nature in her ears and bared feet felt exactly sharp stones of the rock…?

Suddenly Victoria felt her feet buried in burning sand like if she had been put on a spit. Having looked around Vic saw a desert flooded with the sunlight.

‘Ah!’ she cried, shifting her feet.

It was hot. Too hot. Victoria burst herself into Kharon’s arms, stepped on his feet.

‘Hm’, he grinned, embracing and supporting the girl. ‘An illusive desert full of mirages, doubled illusion… Let’s go further!’

Milliards of needles pierced her skin, pain locked her body, fading away, fog was before her eyes. She didn’t feel any life. It was cold. An unbearable cold. There was snow, snowdrifts and ices everywhere and no living soul. It was frozen emptiness…

‘I can’t bear it!’ Vic said chattering, ‘Kharon, please…’