Nobody's House
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When somebody’s chasing you in your dream, your legs turn into cotton wool, your body doesn’t obey you and the time is running very slowly, you keep escaping and there’s no end. In the corner of my eye I noticed that Andrei’s finger which had been lying on the trigger started pressing against it. My leap lasted for eternity, my boots didn’t want to leave the ground, and I understood that I wasn’t going to make it. But it wasn’t me who made it.
The sword shrieked leaving its lacquered sheathe, the cut off the muzzle of the rifle fell to the dirt with a plop, Andrei didn’t keep his balance... We fell down together.
Lying on Andrei’s bony back, I felt that my hand was unusually empty. The pistol. The pistol was gone.
Interesting, who was it that thought up putting down the ties so wrong?.. I was jumping over them, cursing, listening for the hundredth time to Oleg’s blabbering about how beautifully his oh-so-wonderful sword would look on his oh-so-wonderful carpet on his oh-so-wonderful wall. The sword was the only object that hadn’t disappeared along with the doppelgangers and the fog. Oleg slowed down and approached me.
“Interesting, what did Pete the rascal get his tape recorder for?” he said thoughtfully.
“They just gave him a ransom to get rid of him,” I muttered, pulling my boot out of the dirt. The lace finally got itself untied...
...Bluish grey flocks of fog were closing behind their backs, and back there, in a grey, pulsating cocoon, within its silent depth, there awaited the Nobody’s House. It was satisfied. Its state spread in all directions in invisible waves, reaching other Houses, conveying the acquired information. No, not information – images, feelings, sensations; – nevertheless, it was quite enough for communication. In an unstable situation, the first need of a man is a weapon. Rare exclusions only confirm the rule. Having acquired a deadly gift, a man relaxes and begins perceiving the situation as stable. A gift is an object. Weapon is also an object. That is all.
Weird, dead life was falling asleep in the gentle embrace of the fog, submerging into steady waiting, free from hopes and disappointments. It hurried nowhere, this abandoned house, which was Nobody’s...