"TALES OF GHOSTS"
about Love and Death from the Land of Mists
a collection of short stories
in the “Playing Another Reality” series
"MASTER of FATES"
2. SPORTSMAN
Once, as a child, coming out of the school locker room wearing a tracksuit, a hat and a scarf knitted by my grandmother, I accidentally heard a mysterious phrase of our gym teacher, who was passing by, talking with his bosom friend, the biology teacher, “Orgasm is a small death!” On that day, the gym lesson was the last one, and while we were skiing in the forest, I wondered what the teacher had meant, pondering as well as about death and the ways it was related to orgasm.
Unlike my elder brother, who is still a great lecher, I am a holy man! I lived as a virgin until… However, I’ve been hinted more than once that it’s indecent to talk about age. Anyway, I grew up as a real athlete: every summer – in ponds, every autumn and spring – on training simulators, every winter – on the ski track!
Winter is my favorite season, don’t give me bread, just let me go skiing at dusk in a frosty coniferous forest! Yeah! It takes my breath away remembering! All the squirrels in the forest know me! Actually, it’s easy: so many years have passed, but my scarf and hat are still the same! What my grandma knitted will last forever!
I haven’t missed a single Winter Olympics! As a fan in front of the TV screen, of course. I knew all the Olympic champions by name, faces and skis! Wake me up at night, and I’ll tell you who ended up in which place in which year, how many times and which skis were changed during the competition! I’ve studied all kinds of lubricants and all types of snow. As a gift to myself for each New Year, I used to buy another pair of skis and sticks! So, a whole collection of various brands, colors, thicknesses and widths gradually gathered in my closet. Then I learned to make lubricants on my own!
That winter we gathered to celebrate another anniversary of our grandma’s death, the one who had knitted scarves and hats for all of us. At some point, my brother – out of the blue! – in front of all honest people, said that as I had been a fool, so I’d die a fool, and asked if I was interested in boys, since I was still single! An angel, compared to my brother, I flared up like a match! What an insult without any reason! Yes, I would love to meet a girl, but in winter, on a ski track at dusk in a frosty coniferous forest no one can be found! Only squirrels are jumping in front of the eyes! My brother twisted his finger at his temple and said that I was outdated, like our old black-and-white TV, since everyone had long met online on some dating sites.
When I returned home, I thought that the insult of our grandma’s TV, on which I still watch the Olympics, might be possible to survive, but the fact that I became outdated…
…A week later, after chatting over a bottle of beer with my neighbor – not to ask my older brother! – I registered under the nickname ‘Sportsman’ on five websites, choosing ‘sports’ from the list of possible goals for dating with the opposite sex.
Actually, before looking at the profiles of my ‘competitors’, I had no idea how many sportsmen had already been registered! Judging by the total number of such profiles, it turned out that I lived in the country of athletes! Meanwhile on the track, except for me, no one was observed, they had probably sharpened their skis for browsing the Internet. Well, yeah, I agree, it’s much more fun to run on a ski track together than alone. So they don’t run like me, because they are waiting for a girl to keep them company.
I posted a picture of myself in the grandma’s knitted hat, with a scarf and skis, but for some reason no one reacted. Then I photographed a ski track in the forest with… a squirrel! And that was a mass start!!! “Wow! What a sweetheart the squirrel is!” “My God, you love nature so much!” However, it wasn’t so easy to choose a girl! Yeah! I looked through the profiles of those who sent me messages or put likes, but many of them didn’t have the sweet word ‘sports’ in their list of dating goals. Why then emoticons, likes and messages? Just a waste of time!
Finally, I found a pretty girl with the same interest and invited her to sports on Saturday, late in the evening, when it would be already dark in the forest. What a romance!
Oh, I languished so much and was nervous in anticipation of the meeting! What if she wouldn’t like the track? Or the squirrels would get scared that I was not alone and wouldn’t jump out onto the track? I could always pick up skis from my collection and share lubricant, but the ski track was the only one for all in the forest. How to go through it all from start to finish so that the girl would like it?
We had agreed with Isabella that I would meet her at 5 p.m. at the exit to the city at the last metro station, just between my house and the forest. I was shifting from foot to foot, with skis and sticks, in sports uniforms and in a hat and scarf knitted by my grandma, when I noticed her wearing a long mink coat with a hood and… sneakers!
“Wow! Isabella?” involuntarily escaped from me.
“Ignatius?” she said in surprise and… burst out laughing. “Are you serious?”
I didn’t understand anything… Did I look like a non-serious person, being registered on dating sites under the nickname ‘Sportsman’ specifically for joint sports activities? Why was Isabella laughing at me? And her inappropriate outfit looked like a mockery of my shrine – the skis! Or… didn’t she like my hat?
Well, maybe that’s the way girls flirt. They say that decent girls don’t agree to any of that stuff on the first date. You know it better than me, since I haven’t had girlfriends yet, and I hadn’t been on the first date before that one with Isabella. Anyway, I figured that Isabella and I were the same height and build, and I had plenty of tracksuits, skis, and sticks at home, so it was up to her to choose.
I offered to come to my house, and YEAH! She agreed!
However, when we ended up in the flat, Isabella began to behave completely inappropriately! Pulling off my favorite hat, she twisted her face and said, “Naphthalene!” And when I showed her the collection of skis and sticks in the closet, she asked, “And where is the bathroom?!” I hastened to notice that people go to the bathroom after sports, and Isabella suddenly pounced on me like a hungry wolf!
“My God! What a horror! She is crazy!” I thought, and fighting off with a ski stick, I threw the girl out of my flat along with her mink coat, and locked the door from the inside!
***
Soon I dared to meet another ‘sportswoman’, Violetta, but I decided to invite her straight home not to equip myself in vain once again if… I had planned to watch with her the live broadcast of the Olympic ski relay, and then, at dusk under full Moon, to go skiing in the forest.
However, Violetta for some reason ran away when she saw my old black-and-white TV. Well, yeah, at first she wondered what we would do. I smiled and turned on the TV. And what is sweeter for a real athlete than the Olympic Games?!
“Well, okay…” Violetta said ironically. “Do you like antiques? Or did your TV break down, so you rented that from your granny? What about a broom?”
“A broom?! My God! She is a witch!!” I thought. “And what kind of run-in on the grandma!”
I sighed and sat down on the sofa to watch the Olympics. Violetta tried to place herself on my lap, but she blocked me the whole screen! I brushed her off, she crashed to the floor, cursed obscenely, rushed into the corridor, got dressed and ran away… What insolence!!!
Of course… how to put it… yeah, both Isabella and Violetta… they had very appetizing forms… When they touched me, I felt something… indecent… However, one couldn’t immediately start depriving me of my virginity! I indicated ‘sports’ in the questionnaire! Were all the girls pretending to be athletes, in fact, just trying to use me to achieve their own orgasms, while making fun of my favorite knitted hat and black-and-white TV?! They have to be punished somehow for such behavior! How many real athletes will they lead astray?! It’s necessary to fight these prostitutes to death! They are a threat to the health of the nation!!!
I hardly calmed down already on the ski track in the midnight forest, imagining on my inner screen the merciless massacre of Isabella and Violetta right there, in the snow with the aroma of frosty spruces, scrolling in my head every detail of my revenge for the innocent grandma and the whole world of sports, and then returned home and forced myself to give a third and last chance to girls from dating websites.
***
Her nickname was SnowWhite! Oh, YEAH!!! My God, I got already excited by her nickname only – frosty, snowy, spruce-pine like a bright spot in a gloomy winter forest… Yes, she must, she just had to be real! Finally! I found the one I had been looking for! She couldn’t help loving me back!
I stood at the entrance to the forest, waiting for the magic, and imagined SnowWhite coming to me in a tracksuit with skis, sticks, but without lubricant. She would plaintively and hopefully ask me to grease her skis, and then she would follow me along the ski track, and we would catch up with each other, periodically glancing at the Moon and smiling at the restless squirrels, and after skiing enough, I would bring SnowWhite home, send her to the bath, get beer and roach from the balcony, and then we would watch the sports channel, and she would finally fall asleep, and I…
“Hello, sportsman!”
I returned to reality and saw in front of me another…!!! Shit! Yeah, exactly! The obscene word almost escaped! She was in a short fox fur coat, with long legs in thin pantyhose, a tight skirt, barely covering her ass, and ankle boots with high heels!!! And what a makeup! – black lipstick, false eyelashes, and – MY GOD!!! – purple hair!!!
“Anyway! We’ll see who wins! Yeah!” I thought and said aloud, squeezing out a smile, “Let’s go!”
“In the forest?!” she was surprised.
“Of course!”
Not so long ago in the forest – who would have ever thought! – an entire platform filled with training simulators appeared in the open air, surrounded by spruces. I brought SnowWhite to that sports playground. It was already about ten p.m., everything was just as I liked: frost, silence, spruces, snow and sports…
“Here?! Are we going to play sports?” SnowWhite chuckled.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” I asked, unsurprised, leaving the skis under the tree, and led SnowWhite to the bike simulator. “Start!”
“What to start?”
“What? To pedal! And I’ll do some boxing with the punching bag.”
SnowWhite gave me a strange look, as if I were crazy, and pulled me to her by my grandma’s scarf!
“Have you got any money?” she asked. “How much will you pay?”
And … and – YEAH!!! – I got so furious! Beastly mad! Money?! Did you hear that?! Sport is not bribed!!! Sport is not about money! That’s life! My life! It’s my hat, knitted by my grandma, and my scarf!!! It’s my black-and-white TV! It’s my track! My spruces in the forest! My squirrels, after all!!!
I abruptly grabbed SnowWhite by the hand and dragged her to the spruce! She screamed and resisted, but in vain! – we were in the deep forest, almost at night, at minus 25 degrees Celsius! SnowWhite and me!
Her fur coat opened and exposed both a transparent blouse and the underwear! And I laughed! My whole being was filled with thirst… for blood! YEAH! The blood of SnowWhite, and the likes of her – Isabelle, Violette!
I threw her into the snow under the spruce and grabbed my ski stick, and stabbed, stabbed, stabbed her – in the chest, in the stomach, in the neck, in the eyes! – with a frenzy until she fell silent, and at the same moment I experienced an orgasm and remembered the phrase of our gym teacher that orgasm is a small death, a phrase I hadn’t been able to unravel for so many years! What a tricky guy! – he just swapped the words, because orgasm is not death, but death is an orgasm!
2021