Broken Mirror. 6. No cookies

"TALES OF GHOSTS"

about Love and Death from the Land of Mists
a collection of short stories
in the “Playing Another Reality” series

"BROKEN MIRROR"

6. NO COOKIES

“What a hard, endless day!” Igor exhaled, looking through the latest news on the Internet, as he noticed with peripheral vision that the pages of the diary on the table began to turn over.

“Okay, I agree, the working day is long over. Just tomorrow will be like today, everything is the same,” he muttered and… “Damn it! I forgot, I had also to send a letter to the Ministry!”

Ksenya sat down next to Igor, watching him slowly typing a letter on the keyboard, but soon she couldn’t stand it anymore. She started pacing silently back and forth in his large office, looking at old magazines and books, periodically glancing at the clock and out the window, in the fog, where a drearily drizzle reminded of the Sun value.

Sheets of white paper began to rise up, slipping out of the printer, and, swirling through the air, they fell to the floor.

“A trickster!” Igor whispered and wondered whether to eat or not some more cookies. He glanced at the drawer of his cabinet, opening in front of his eyes, and smiled, “Well, no way to lose weight with you!”

Having munched a couple of his favorites, with chocolate, Igor turned his gaze on the little turtle, a gift from Ksenya, it was slowly moving along the smooth surface of the table towards him. The red button on the office phone lit up, Igor picked it up, but the call failed.

“What do you want to tell me, Ksenya?”

A souvenir from Portugal, ship in the bottle, turned neck to the door.

“Is it time to leave?” Igor wondered.

‘The Portrait of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde in the original suddenly fell out of the bookcase, once Ksenya tried to teach Igor English using that book.

“Don’t play pranks!”

However, the picture with his new wife, in a frame on the table by the computer, tipped over for the umpteenth time. Igor put it back patiently, although he grew somewhat gloomy and muttered, “Sometimes you become unbearable!”

The door to his office opened wide, but there was no one on the threshold. When Igor approached the door, it abruptly slammed shut, right in front of his nose.

“Offended? Come on!”

He returned to the table and flopped down into the armchair, at the same moment there was a timid knock on the door, and it opened a little.

“Stop flirting with me!” Igor shouted and cast a condemning glance at the door.

The cleaning lady appeared on the threshold and shook her head.

“It’s time to go home, Mister Boss!” she said sadly.

“Sorry, Missis!”

He glanced at his watch, quickly gathered the papers, ran out of the building into the fog and headed for the car.

Ksenya was sitting nearby, but Igor couldn’t see her. However, the car didn’t want to start for a long time.

“Listen, really, don’t be capricious! It’s time for me to sleep,” he said, yawned, and… the car started up.

***

“Fog, fog again! One can’t see a damn thing around, especially on this long bridge. What a hell of a place!” thought Igor and yawned again.

Finally, he reached the crossroads two houses before the garage. Having stopped the car at a traffic light, Igor closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, he noticed on the right, next to him…

“Ksenya, you?!” he muttered in surprise.

She smiled and suggested getting out of the car.

They stood in the fog, on the side of the road. Igor couldn’t believe his eyes and ears.

“Is this a dream, isn’t it? Am I seeing and hearing you?” he wondered.

“Yes, it’s a dream,” Ksenya nodded, “just a very short one.”

“When I wake up, will you… disappear?”

“I will never disappear,” she replied. “And believe me, I know you didn’t want me to die.”

Igor happily nodded his head and smiled somehow childlike, some kind of a stupid smile, as it seemed to him. Ksenya’s death was so sudden and absurd, right in front of his eyes, in the hospital, when the medicines were accidentally mixed up…

“You know, I… wanted to lose weight! You used to reproach me for being overweight! But the box of cookies, it seems opening… by itself!” said Igor aloud and thought, “Lord, there’s so much I would like to talk about, and I’m about worthless cookies!”

He hugged Ksenya, and a deafening sound of a collision of cars broke the silence.

Igor lost consciousness for a moment, and when he woke up, Ksenya was still nearby, they were facing each other in the fog.

Igor frantically tried to understand what all that meant. Was he already dead or about to die? At the same time, he wanted to say that he still loved Ksenya and missed her madly, and he wanted to ask about something important, very important, for example, how was everything arranged there in Heaven? Was there a God and a Devil? However, Igor felt somehow uneasy. What if there was no God, but the Devil existed! And his consciousness again returned to… saving cookies, he wished he got just a couple of his favorites, with chocolate, right then!

Stuffing out the idiotic thought of sweet weakness, Igor tried to hug Ksenya again, but she stopped him with a gesture and smiled.

“When you get back, never deny yourself your favorites!” she said and, noticing a questioning look, added, “There are no cookies there…”

October 28, 1999