Christmas on K. bridge. 8. At Christmas on Kuznets

"TALES OF GHOSTS"

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

"CHRISTMAS on KUZNETSKY BRIDGE"

8. At CHRISTMAS on Kuznetsky Bridge

Christmas is the most magical time on Earth, because the doors between the Worlds swing wide open and all sorts of miracles happen!

We collided on Kuznetsky Bridge near a bookstore window, checking our maps.

“Hello!” I said smiling.

“Hello!” he smiled back.

And we recognized each other. It happens like that, you go down to check the next route and at a certain point bump into someone important from your future life, not just a passerby. A feeling of kinship is fixed in the souls, which wakes up later, when physical bodies collide on Earth.

“Alice,” I introduced myself.

“Vasya,” he said.

“Look, Vasya, these white flakes are magic!” I shifted my gaze to the snow and involuntarily began to waltz in the air. “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”

“Snow is not magic,” he smiled, joining my waltz. “A common natural phenomenon when it’s cold on Earth! I don’t like winter. I usually incarnate in the South. As for the lanterns, I agree, they are not bad!”

“I like all seasons! And lanterns, lanterns, lanterns… they are like enchanted souls from fairy tales!” I returned to the bookstore window. “By the way, is this an entrance to the Library of the Universe?”

“Come on! It’s just a tiny shop! Do you want to take a look?”

“Why not!”

We glided slowly past the bookshelves, looking at the covers with curiosity.

“Wow!” he said in surprise. “Books in French, English, Spanish… It’s easy to communicate in the World of Thoughts, while there are so many languages on Earth!”

“We’re going to speak the same language, aren’t we?”

“Of course!” Vasya winked at me in response and added, “A little more, a little more and we’ll start talking!”

We went out into the street, decorated with glittering Christmas trees. People with bags full of gifts were flickering in the light of lanterns and clearly enjoying the holiday atmosphere.

“God, what a beauty! And just imagine! Everything has a solid body!!! Not a kind of visualization or hologram, like we do! By the way, why is this place called the‘Bridge’? There is no bridge around!”

“The river was there, then it was driven underground. Over there, let’s go, I’ll show you!”

Vasya made me a tour in the center of Moscow, telling all sorts of interesting stories, and then took me to the roof of a house.

“It’s very nice here!” I said, hovering on the edge of the roof.

“They will open a cafe here one day. And I will visit this place! Check it out, is it with you?”

“A great idea to make a rooftop cafe!” I whispered, unfolding my map. “Oh, right! I will be here, too! Let’s check the time!”

Vasya told me his own.

“Yes, it turns out that on the roof we are together!” I joyfully exclaimed. “And what are you going to do on Earth?”

“Something with guillotine,” said Vasya seriously and laughed, adding, “a regulatory one.”

“What's?!” I asked warily, remembering my cut off head.

“I was an executioner in a previous life, in Britain. A royal one, mind you!”

“In Britain?! A royal?!” I almost jumped up and, indicating the place and time, projected a hologram of my execution on a giant advertising screen. “Weren’t you the one who chopped my head off so unprofessionally, on the third attempt only?”

Vasya watched the fragment carefully and dissolved the hologram, sighing.

“Well, it looks like they have decided to reconcile us?! Relax! This time I will write orders. New orders instead of old ones. Each of them for the whole ‘kingdom’! And what’s your purpose now?”

“They asked me to write fairy tales. As many as possible!”

“For kids? About Christmas time?”

“No, for grown-ups! About us, ghosts! Can you imagine, they say, not all people still remember the existence of our world after incarnation! Anyhow, I’d like to have time also to get to the monastery so that I can play two incarnations at once.”

“What’s your hurry for? There’s still a long time before the last battle! And what’s the point of descending to Earth to refuse earthly pleasures? As for me, I am always nostalgic for the physical body in the Astral! However, it turns out, we’ll have at least one thing in common: we are both writers!” Vasya winked. “Didn’t you happen to be told how your fairy tales would intersect with my orders?”

“I didn’t, and you?”

“Neither did I. But if they decided to bump us together in advance, it means we will do something important for each other, do you agree?” he asked and, having got my nodding in consent, unfolded his map again. “Well, Alice, let’s check further! By the way, did they teach you at the Astral Academy, why the preliminary passage of the route is useful?”

“In some places, already during the incarnation, we get a feeling of deja vu.”

“Yes, in the checking points deja vu lets us know that we are on the right track. And if there is a repeat loop, it means…?”

“We didn’t complete something we had planned!”

“Oh, you must have graduated with excellent marks only, right?”

“And what did you think of me?”

“Okay, let’s do the spatio-temporal overlay of our maps!”

Having carefully traced the entire route from the point of our acquaintance on Kuznetsky Bridge to the moment each of us was to return in Heaven, we couldn’t believe our eyes: the joint segment was repeated twice with a gap of ten years!

“Wow… a loop!” I said in surprise.

“It also happens,” Vasya shrugged and added, “don’t worry, Alice! Moscow, you know, wasn’t built in a day, either! And, judging by the places we are to visit, we can draw at least two conclusions. So, the first one is…?”

“You won’t cut off my head again!” I laughed.

“Right! And secondly, doesn’t it look like…?”

I smiled slyly, and we waltzed in the air, looking forward to our meeting at Christmas on Kuznetsky Bridge.

***

We agreed to meet at Christmas on Kuznetsky Bridge.

He was late because of the traffic, so I walked around a little and eventually stopped at the bookstore window, looking at foreign-language editions of fairy tales.

“Santa Claus asked me to give the little girl Alice a small gift!” having silently crept up to me, Vasya whispered and hugged me.

“Hello!!!” I exclaimed joyfully, turning around.

Of course, I suggested that Vasya choose something for himself as a gift, too, but he said that, except for my tenderness, he needed nothing.

“How do you like my orange mink?” I asked.

“Did they feed the mink oranges? Gorgeous! However, you are even better without it! So let’s go to our sweet place! Shall we eat before or after? Or coffee before and dinner after?”

We drank coffee in the rooftop cafe.

“How do you like it here?” Vasya asked.

“I’m fine with you everywhere! By the way, I’ve read your reports to the ministers, but… what is the ‘regulatory guillotine’? ! Were you an executioner in your previous life?”

“Well, what other previous lives, Alice!” Vasya reproached me and stroked my hand. “The guillotine means to discard the unnecessary so that the old one does not interfere with the new one.”

We entered the room, Vasya turned on the dim light, and we finally collapsed into a wide bed… ten years later. Who would have thought it! Vasya lost a lot of weight, turning almost into a skeleton, and I, on the contrary, threw meat on my bones, but an invisible attraction between us existed as if by itself and didn’t depend on anything.

Sex after a certain age is like feeling that you are at home, there is nothing unknown and shy, and no need to set records for the Guinness Book, you accept each other for who you are, just enjoying the fact that everyone is alive and well, you both are together here and now, and you can not only be tender, but also speak out.

“Listen, Vasya,” I said thoughtfully, “there have been many repeats in my life, almost always I knew why I was brought back here or there. But now, with you, why?”

“There is only here and now, Alice. It contains you and me. We feel good together. Why to think ‘why’?”

“Well… what do you need me for? You have a family. Untouchable. So it’s for something else. There are no coincidences, you know!”

“You won’t believe it, I don’t have anyone around me to talk to but you,” Vasya thought, stroking my back. “However, what do you need me for? You are free and smart, almost a goddess, and I am a gray-haired married devil!”

“By the way, I want to write a fairy tale ‘Christmas on Kuznetsky Bridge’. About us…”

“So do you need me for one story only? And what are we going to do in it?” Vasya tickled me, and I gently bit his ear.

“To live forever!” I laughed. “We are ghosts, or rather, not yet incarnated souls, but already going to Earth…”

“Listen, what else ghosts, Alice?” Vasya laughed. “There’s nothing, except for ‘here and now’! I studied much literature in all related areas! Neither God nor Devil found!”

“We are small energy balls of light, radiating information in a vast Ocean. Ocean is God. We are all in Him, and He is in us, and we are interconnected. No?”

“I believe that the human brain will evolve further, and people will live longer. Perhaps our consciousness will flow somehow through the network into virtual reality. But there is still nothing There. Live here and now, Alice, have fun. I set myself a goal to live to 80 years first, and then to 100.”

“So I will die when you are…” I counted our age difference and announced the time.

“So little?! Why?! What for? What’s the hurry?”

“It’s written so up There… The Death will fall into its sector on the Clock of Life.”

“Listen, I don’t believe in any Clock, of course, but any record can be rewritten!”

“Life is like a chess game. At that moment, I will be put in checkmate immediately. There are no other options. Right after my birthday…”

“No, Alice! There are always a lot of moves in a chess game! So, rewind a little bit and find a fork in the road where you can make the right move!”

“The death program turns on just on that birthday. As well as all programs. You can’t rewrite before it comes on, because there is nothing to rewrite, no death is there. And then it’s too late.”

“Just think, how can you play death differently? Well… make a fake death. Deceive it!”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. It just came to me from somewhere that death can be different: ordinary and symbolic.”

“It’s a strange thought. Theoretically, each sector on the Clock has several meanings. However, there is an unambiguous Death. The word ‘Death’ is flicking in front of me on the inner screen even now!”

Vasya turned me around to face him and kissed me on the third eye.

“What else can be interpreted as death?” he whispered. “Come on, think, you are given time to discover the double bottom of death and slip out of its clutches! By the way, I don’t want you to die so early! If there is no God, why to die? Leaving the world is not a problem. The problem is to stay in it!”

Suddenly, I almost jumped on the bed.

“Wow! Listen! You’re right! Why didn’t it occur to me before: to leave the world… for a monastery, that is, to have a haircut in a nun. This means to be dead for the world! Here it is, a double bottom! No?! Symbolic death!”

“Are you serious?!” Vasya sighed.

“Yes, of course!!!” I got out of bed excitedly. “Exactly!!! You are a genius!!! It’s really an option! I will go to a monastery and pray for people like you! And then we will meet at Christmas on Kuznetsky Bridge, already as ghosts! And you will be ashamed of yourself for not believing in us!”

Vasya pulled me by the hand and brought me back into his arms.

“Well, agreed, you will go to the monastery, but not now!”

***

We met at Christmas on Kuznetsky Bridge.

Christmas is the most magical time on Earth, because the doors between the Worlds swing wide open and all sorts of miracles happen!

He was standing at the bookstore window with the next map.

“Hello!” I said smiling.

“Alice?!” he smiled back. “I had a feeling you should come!”

“I have a different name now.”

“Well, sorry! I’ve got a different one too. Okay, where is your new map? Let’s check ours!”

“I don’t have it anymore…”

“It’s a pity,” he sighed. “It’s a pity we won’t meet again. Although, according to my map, it seems I will spend my entire incarnation in some kind of a prison! In complete isolation! Look here, there is a place in the wilderness. It’s a bare field now! And in the Astral Tablets, despite a lot of building options, a colony for especially dangerous people is the most real one! Can you imagine that?”

“I’ve been appointed your Guardian!” I smiled and spread my snow-white wings. “Let’s build a monastery there!”

January 15, 2022