Читать книгу Film About the Demon. Daughter of the Dawn - Natalie Yacobson - Страница 12

Russia, center of Moscow

It was pouring rain. Denis quickly clicked on the automatic button on the iron handle, opening an umbrella of a low-key shade. It is strange that it is during the rain that such freshness emanates from the city asphalt, as if you are in nature. If you close your eyes, it seems that there is a meadow all around, and the concrete walls smell of green grass.

Today is a non-standard evening. He goes to a press conference to criticize another arrogant celebrity (far from the first on his long list of debunked movie idols). Why, instead of sober thoughts, he is haunted by illusions? He never drinks during work hours, so where do the visions come from? He sees a fantastic meadow of sedge, reeds and ears of rye, and suddenly a flame falls from the heights of heaven, as if a dragon had died on the field. A huge fire burns out both grass and ears, and the entire surrounding nature. And something bursts out of the ground that has fallen asleep under the meadow, as if under a grassy cap. This polyphonic and multi-armed something has claws and wings.

Denis almost suffered a heartbeat when he noticed that smoke vapors were hovering between the rain streams. How like dragon breathing!

Stop! He is old enough not to believe in fairy tales, and the critic’s education makes him look at the world extremely realistically. There are no dragons or winged figures. The fairy with wings that he sees in the alley is just a play of shadows.

And so it turned out upon closer examination. As soon as Denis came closer, all illusions were dispelled, but he was shocked all the same. The movie star herself, whom he was in a hurry to meet, stood under the canopy of a gloomy building and smoked. Athenais was alone. Exactly the same as on the screen. There were no bodyguards or press agents with her. There was no cigarette in her fingers either. She probably managed to put it out and throw it out. But she still exhaled the smoke. This he took for the breath of a dragon.

The smoke was atypical for cigars with an orange hue and sparks. The smell is also not tobacco at all.

“It seems that smoking on the streets of Moscow is prohibited,” Denis reminded cautiously. Such a law really existed, but was almost never observed, because lazy law enforcement officers were in no hurry to incriminate anyone.

“I don’t smoke,” said Athenais.

She speaks Russian as her mother tongue! Who would have thought? Denis was ready to take off his hat in front of her out of respect, if he was wearing a hat now. But in Moscow in the summer season it is not fashionable to walk with your head covered.

Athenais wore real gold jewelery with rubies worn on his arms and forearms. And she is not afraid that she will attract the attention of the robbers?! For such jewelry they can kill.

Denis belatedly wondered where the smoke came from if she didn’t smoke. Burnt holes are visible in the canopy frame. Maybe there was a fire? But now nothing is burning. This means that calling the firemen is probably no longer worth it.

He focused on the lips of a young movie star. They were as delicate as rose petals and did not match the memories of acrid smoke at all.

“Never smoke?” Denis still expected that she would laugh impudently and breathe a new stream of smoke or even flame into his face, but Athenais behaved with royal dignity.

“Never. I don’t like tobacco. Wine is another matter. When you drink it, you feel like you are flying again with your former brothers. Their souls were left to live in wine. But this revelation is not for the press. You understood me?”

He nodded. Wow! She knows who he is. And he thought he had a privilege before the stars. After all, he saw their photo, but they did not. And now the usual incognito criticism in front of a movie star is broken. Did someone tell her about him? Some of the ill-wishers? Although, if she has already been notified of how evil his style of expression is, then why is she acting so confident?

Denis could not take his eyes off her. Athenais is like an unearthly creature that gradually enslaves you, without making any effort at all. She has something of a queen and an angel at the same time.

“Write about me!” She suddenly demanded.

“That’s what I came for.”

The movie star shook her golden-haired head.

“Write the truth about me,” she clarified, “the truth that no one dares to tell, but everyone sees.”

“And what?”

“That I am a demon!”

To say that the answer dumbfounded him is to say nothing. She really wants him not to go to the press conference at all, but to write only one insane denunciation. But Athenais had already passed him and seemed to dissolve in the rain. Her slender figure in silvery streams of moisture began to seem ghostly.

Although the umbrella was new and durable, it suddenly broke. Denis felt copious drops with solid hail on the back of his head and shoulders. And Athenais suddenly turned around and exhaled a whole stream of fiery smoke that did not go out even in the rain.

You could convince yourself as much as you wanted that this was a clever trick, but the heat from her breath reached Denis’s cheek, leaving a painful burn. As if the beauty branded him.

Many burned hands were stretched out from under the umbrella. They grabbed its lapels, ripped off its cufflinks, left traces of ash on a brand new shirt. Denis was trying to throw away the umbrella.

Something is wrong here. The world was changing, becoming like a horror movie.

“Let us in!” whispered rustling voices. “Let us recover from the greatest fire in the entire universe.”

The feeling was that he was on the other side of the screen and was participating in a horror movie himself. He threw the umbrella onto the high benches in front of the TASS building. Let yourself lie in the rain.

Nothing unusual was happening in the building itself. The journalists were carefully searched after they were passed through a metal detector. Ordinary situation. All measures are being taken to prevent the entry of terrorists. But the impression was that the terrorist had already entered. And his name is Lucifer – the same terrorist who staged the first act of rebellion in the entire universe.

Denis shook his head. He’s just seen enough creepy movies. The girls at the reception and the guards looked at him suspiciously. It was necessary to drag the umbrella with you and throw it on the table in front of the guard. What would they do if they saw the crippled hands inside? Or would they not see anything at all? What if its hands seemed to him?

As in a dream, Denis went to the second floor to the press conference hall. He usually never used the elevator. Why wait for an elevator when you only need to climb a couple of flights of stairs. But Athenais will definitely use the elevator. What if she’s already in the conference room?

A gloomy narrow corridor led forward. The walls were decorated with simple framed gray photographs. And this is the place that many celebrities and politicians have seen! For some reason, the feeling was that the true star came here only today. And from her presence here the whole building will burn.

What did he actually know about her? Denis remembered. She played Lucifer in such a way that it shocked the whole world. At the same time, she made the head of the fallen angels not a villain, but a victim. The heroic image of the devil, presented by her on the screens, deserved a prize for uniqueness. If the audience hadn’t started dying. How many young men and adolescents have already committed suicide at the exit from the cinemas. Nevertheless, Athenais continued to spin like a star. As if she needed this promotion! Someone, but she does not occupy popularity! She is the number one diva in the whole world.

Denis took his place at the edge of the side exit, as if he feared that she would see him. There were ash traces on the gray carpet by the chairs. It feels like something burned down here. Athenais’s voice, pouring into the microphone, was like a siren singing. Denis could not understand the words, because the dazzling visions hit his brain.

They were brighter than the stills from the movies. Archangel Michael brings a fiery sword to her neck and realizes that he cannot kill her. Lucifer in maiden form is too beautiful to be destroyed. These frames were not in the film. So why are they spinning in his head, as if some devil’s reel is spinning, inserted right into the brain.

He is a rational, sober person, and now his brain is inflamed from some kind of nonsense of filmmakers. Denis made urgent notes in a notebook. No, he won’t call it nonsense in the article. Otherwise, the crowd of angry fans will tear him apart! He will make an objective assessment. These are all horror films with a biblical bias. Only the Bible is upside down in them. Lucifer is deified, the brightest of whose names is Alais – the ruler of demons and pharaohs.

These horror films turned out to be sensational, because they portray Lucifer not as evil, but as a leader who was the first in the whole world to fight for his independence from the highest tyranny. This is a hero like Spartacus… Or rather a heroine, because the role is female.

Athenais! Just a name. No surname, no hint of one. It’s like the name is taken from the Bible, but it’s not there. Although who knows what they could have done in the modern edition. Something is always crossed out, something is added.

Fact – each of her films is the glorification of Lucifer. The names change, the essence remains.

The press conference was not over yet, but Denis hurried out with the knowledge that he would write and publish everything about her that she herself wanted.