BOOK of KNOWLEDGE,
a novel by Alexandra Kryuchkova
in the “PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY” series
PART 1. PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY, or the WAY to the LIGHT
Chapter 9. EXAM of LIFE
I was woken up by a call from the Creepy Woman’s assistant, who specified the time of the performance at the Passage Court and reminded me about the shocking way I should come. I said I would come as I was. The girl didn’t agree. So I proposed them as a compromise option to write and cast spells instead of me. The girl was unsatisfied, so she invited me to the Creepy Woman for face-to-face negotiations. The Woman had my phone number, but apparently considered herself too cool to call me directly. I didn’t want to meet her again, so I asked the girl to tell the Woman that I was waiting for her call. The Woman called only on the eve of the performance and, barely hiding her anger, demanded to appear at least in a hat.
Until recently, I was considered a trendsetter. I could afford to dress myself on the most expensive streets of Milan and Venice. Brother trusted no one but me to choose his clothes. I never wore the same evening dress twice. I gave it as a gift after going out in it. I could go for a walk and return home with diamonds, because butterflies were fluttering on a random ring, and I really loved butterflies. I always made spontaneous purchases because I had everything and didn’t need anything. However, I didn’t attach any importance to clothes, rings and other decorative nonsense, because I looked at people through their bodies and expected the same in return. The words of the Creepy Woman awakened in me the desire not to wash the time left before the performance and to take a bath in the garbage in order to appear at the Passage Court in the guise of a homeless person. Wouldn’t it be shocking? I never planned my clothes for the next day, dressing according to the mood of the morning. However, I wanted to come to the Passage Court in the dress of my official initiation into the Spell-casters, the MWWN had barely touched my back then, but I immortalized His touch in my «Dress» spell. So I asked if it would suit Him if I came to the Passage Court in That Dress, and He answered, «Of course.»
Of course, I was very worried, not about the casting of the spells at the Passage Court, the spells all written to Him, because of Him and for Him. I felt nervous as everyone before meeting the person one loved. He would be there, nearby. He promised to come. The only person, the virtual presence of whom in my life kept me on Earth.
I came to the Passage Court to meet Him. He was absent. The Blue Book with my spells, promised to be published, never came out. The girl kindly offered me coffee, I agreed. There were ten minutes left before the performance. The Creepy Woman appeared with the same doll-like smile. Rolling her eyes languidly, she burst into exclamation to the entire Passage Court, theatrically holding out her hand to me,
«Oh, thank you!!!»
«For what?» I asked, trying to restrain myself and, as always, already knowing the answer in advance.
«You did as I had asked and came looking like this!»
«I’m always looking like this,» I said calmly and turned away.
«First, you cast spells for half an hour, then questions. By the way, have you brought a list of questions for me to ask you?»
I wanted to dematerialize her, I couldn’t stand the presence of the Creepy Woman in my personal space.
It was uncomfortable for me to cast spells while sitting in their chair, moreover, casting spells for half an hour without a break, as the Woman ordered, was stupid. I got up and started as I should at that time in that place. He was absent. I was casting. He was absent. They were asking me questions. He was absent. I even managed to answer something and smile. To all of them. Someone came up and asked to sign my White Book. I signed automatically. Someone took a photo of me. I was already somewhere very, very far away. I was leaving. The girl asked me to stay for ten minutes to wait for the flowers, which they suddenly thought of and decided to gift me. She promised coffee and ran away. There was no place to sit down, I had to settle, like a poor relative, on the edge of the aisle, where I was constantly getting in the way. People around were talking about something, but I didn’t hear them.
Suddenly the MWWN called. He said that he hadn’t managed to come because of something. I actually didn’t care why. I didn’t know what to tell Him. Or rather, there was too much to tell, and also… I just wanted to see Him. That potential meeting, I was looking forward to, and maybe the last one, looked like a ray of Light, but someone extinguished the Light, and the black tunnel of the Void was absorbing me again.
15 minutes passed, I constantly got in the way to all of them walking back and forth. The coffee was never brought, although I reminded the girl of her promise. The black walls of the Passage Court seemed to be about to collapse. I couldn’t stay there any longer, some Force pushed me out to run, run, run away. I was leaving. The Creepy Woman called out to me, but I didn’t stop, and she began to wail,
«Oh, are you leaving already? Why? What about the flowers? They are coming soon! I didn’t even think you read like that! May we invite you again?»
I nodded. The Woman let me go, but the girl called, asking where I was. A good question. Very appropriate. I didn’t know myself where I was then. The girl asked to come back for the flowers. I said it was a bad omen to return.
«What should I do with the flowers?»
«Gift them to the Woman,» I advised.
He didn’t call or write anymore. I was in a complete Void, and there was nothing and no one to lighten the Darkness.
...For five days I seemed to be dead. Someone performed automatic actions for me. I could no longer write spells, because, on the one hand, I had no strength left for anything at all, on the other hand, the one I wrote and cast them to didn’t need them.
Automatically turning towards the subway on the outskirts of the city, I heard the sound of a message from Ray, it consisted of the question mark only.
«I’m at metro A…» I answered.
«One stop down, exit to the right.»
It was not interesting to me how Ray ended up in these area, but I was glad to see him after so many years. We were having dinner in silence until Ray broke it with a question on a sore subject,
«How does your Brother do? Are you in communication with him?»
«Almost not,» I sighed.
I accepted them both for who they were. However, Brother couldn’t communicate with Ray, moreover, the pathological tendency of Ray towards Black Magic…
Ray was a very powerful magician, although no one couldn’t say that from his appearance. They were the same age, but, unlike Brother, who played business, Ray played Black Magic, professionally and constantly, just as he constantly played with his own life and death. Anyhow, it was Ray who taught me to play with Time and Space. He artificially created extreme situations, setting, at first glance, absolutely impossible tasks, but I ended up completing them. Every time I scolded him for such experiments, feeling like a guinea pig, and he laughed. It was Ray who, by uttering a simple phrase, suddenly made me understand what Love is. Love meant Life for me, and the absence of Love meant Death, because Love gave me the strength to live. I had never realized the real Love essence before meeting Ray. It turns out that Love is when you accept your loved one as one is, without any exceptions and without setting any conditions, you accept and continue to love only for the fact that one lives in this world, to love just like that, and not for something, let one be free, without limiting in any way. You are happy that you can see your loved one, to talk even silently, and you are grateful to the Higher Forces for the fact that this person exists in your life no matter as who. Besides the fact that Ray had unique abilities to connect to the Universe Astral database, he was fluent in hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming techniques. I often witnessed how he, masterfully playing words, confused people completely, splitting their Consciousness into many small pieces, and no one understood what was actually happening.
Ray brilliantly manipulated the Consciousness of others, but exclusively within the framework of Black Magic, and, as a result, paid for his game. Life constantly put him on the threshold of Death. For a long time, I tried to hold Ray energetically and began to die myself. Once he sadly stated, «Two polar magicians of equal power cannot stay together, one of them must die.»
«What are you going to do?» Ray asked, feeling everything happening to me, otherwise he would hardly have happened nearby then.
«I have to give into the world what I know from the category of practical Magic. White one.»
«Well, as for me…»
Ray spoke, as usual, in broken phrases that could be understood only by those who read minds and not listened to words. I interrupted him with a question, the answer to which would let me know whether Ray’s plan involved White or Black Magic. Ray sighed heavily. I shook my head sadly, «You barely survived then.»
Ray drove me to the subway. We sat in the car hugging in silence. We both didn’t care who had been present in the other’s life all these years.
«Do you know where I have been?» I recalled my trip to a haunted place suddenly, and Ray laughed, instantly scanning me. «All those people were so funny and strange! They asked stupid questions. One of them was a murderous maniac, and I got scared. Why do others see nothing? It’s all written all on his face!»
«You see it, Alice, and I do, but are all people like us?» he said, stroking my hair. «I don’t want anything else. Emptiness. Tell me,» Ray suddenly asked quietly and somehow compassionately, inviting me to tell about the Man Who Was Not, I had never mentioned before, at least out loud.
«I’m tired of the Void too. I need HIM to be near. Somewhere. Somehow. Him, do you understand? What do you see about me? Tell me!»
Ray shook his head negatively and again stroked me so tenderly as once upon a time, the same September, when I had been at the edge of the abyss as well. So I didn’t want to think about anything, and I fell somewhere again, closing my eyes, pressing my cheek to his cheek, fell somewhere where there were no thoughts, but the music of tenderness was playing. Time stopped. The world stopped.
«Well, I’ll go,» I said, abruptly tearing myself away from his cheek when a very beautiful, but sad song sounded on the radio.
«You had short hair then,» he sighed.
I got out of the car and walked a few meters. He beeped to me. I turned around. For some reason, like many people, he didn’t like that I never turned around when leaving. Ray waved at me. I didn’t know when I would see him the next time or if I would ever see him again. Alive.
In the evening, I received a call from the Most Important Society of Spell-casters with an urgent request to find portraits of the most famous spell-casters of the Silver Age and put them in frames, I had to paint in the appropriate silver color, in order to hang them in the end in the central office. My soul shrank as I remembered that some of the spell-casters had hung themselves. I tried not to think about Death, but less than in a day I got a call from a small Community of Spell-casters. I was asked to urgently send my spells to a collective book dedicated to Sergey Yesenin. I shuddered involuntarily. At the same time, I had to release my own book on the topic of «Spell-caster and Suicide» called «Dance with me in the window!» with dedication to Marina Tsvetaeva. Death was wandering somewhere nearby.
Re-reading Yesenin, I entered the Flow. Everything merged together — their feeling of hopelessness, my loneliness and absolute darkness. I seemed to feel the same they had once felt. For several days, while in the Flow, I wrote spells, trying in vain to return to Earth. Standing on the edge of the Abyss, I thought that I lived in a huge city with a lot of people. They surrounded me everywhere: in the subway, on the streets, in shops, cafes, offices… Like me, they were always in a hurry somewhere and often late, because sometimes one needed to stop and help someone feel not alone in a crowd of people in a big city, just a few kind words were often enough for that.
Many people argue about the Silver Age spell-casters whether they really left on their own. Read what they wrote in their last years, isn’t it obvious that they were already more There than Here? Death is always attracted by ourselves. If those nearby, instead of watching from the auditorium what was happening, had climbed onto the stage and helped those leaving to emerge from their dying state, their spells would have been different, and Death would have gone away. Life can take everything away from people and put them on the edge of an abyss, but not everyone, hovering over the abyss, shows others what is going on in one’s soul. At that moment, someone utters an unkind word, and another one is no more on the Earth. They wonder why suddenly, but in fact, that word was the last straw of the patience. However, if there is at least someone nearby to support a person with simple human communication… Please don’t be late.
I used to open my personal email about once a month because I communicated with everyone through my office box. When another one «once a month» came, I discovered a letter of a stranger sent to me three weeks before. As I read his suicide note addressed to me, my heart sank closer to my heels, and the feeling of guilt came up to my throat and eyes. He wrote it in an absolute calm manner, like someone who had already decided everything for himself — no cries, no emotions, no accusations of anyone, not even a story about why in fact the person decided to leave. The stranger said that he had read my spells having by chance run upon them on the Internet, and he felt that I had passed through fire, water and copper pipes, so I would understand and not judge him. He didn’t ask me for help, just said goodbye to our world through the letter addressed to me. Of course, I immediately wrote an answer, but I knew that I was late. I cursed myself for opening my email once a month, perhaps I could hold the stranger. And until now, even though everyone says that I am not an employee of the Rescue Service, the feeling of guilt lives in my Subconscious, periodically surfacing.
The next morning on the subway, I ran into a classmate who, after graduating from school, had taught me theory at driving course and recommended the best teacher of driving practice, an instructor. A bright man of about fifty, he used to joke kindly when I knocked down some sticks, trying to imitate driving into a virtual garage in reverse. When the practice course was over, my classmate taught me the rules of the license getting game with the flirting name «Get me!» Actually, everything you need to receive from someone in this world, is subject to approximately the same rules. Sharing the latest news, my classmate suddenly became gloomy and said that the instructor had left. By his own. I didn’t even believe it at first. However, one day a girl incredibly similar to his late wife and with the same name Elena had come to him as a student at the driving course. She became a ray of Light for the instructor. He explained to the girl what caused his reverent attitude, and asked to communicate with her sometimes in a purely friendly way. Elena laughed at him and left his life forever. Considering himself unworthy of communication, the instructor decided to leave his life as well.
I wrote a spell about the spell-casters leaving for Another Reality unable to pass the exam of life, and I couldn’t help but send it to the Man Who Was Not. His answer killed me, «Meanwhile it would be better to be glad that your body with its nine holes is intact, that you didn’t get the fate of being deaf, blind or lame, that you have a human appearance! Why grumble against Heavens? Go away!» I was standing on the ground at that moment, but if I had been at home, I would have gone out the window.