Darkness

Instead of the Prefrace

Darkness fell into town M*.  Insensibly, but unexpectedly, and suddenly. One day the sun went over the horizon and hasn’t arisen anymore.
Martin was sitting on the top of the hill, waiting for the dawn. At first he was inspired by hope, but soon it was dragged into the darkness of the world.
Nothing left after houses, streets, cars, monuments, trees. Even outlines. People lost the silhouettes. Either because of their inner blackness which was similar with darkness, or, on the contrary, because they were crystal clear, therefore, invisible in obscurity of night.
Everything was absorbed by the pitch-darkness.
In those first days people by force of habit went to work, shops, schools. However, by and by, familiar images had been evanescing even from their consciousness. Darkness had already penetrated here. This kind of routine needs passed away.
Nothing existed anymore. Excepting the body, which was felt due to the heartbeat and emanated warmth. Eyes, arms, legs were without any necessity. Only the heart was beating rhythmically in silence, reminding about life being. Though soon, had been used to the monotonous knocking, a human stopped feeling his body at some moment and it discontinued its existence, being captured by the gloom.
Nothing existed anymore. Nothing was there. Even a body. But something kept on the alert, constantly chatting and forming hundreds of thousands of alternatives, possibilities and combinations. It was the mind. It still was. But then it was tired and disappeared. I think, it fell asleep.
Even so something was disturbing the world silence. Images were appearing. They were uncrystalline and semi-fantastic. Afterwards they were gone.
Every human being of town M* was left alone with himself, herself, or even, sorry, but… itself. Without tinsels, trumperies, gimcracks, fripperies, distracting things and phrases. Face to face. Tete-a-tete.



*****

Panic and blue funk started in town M*. Inhabitants weren’t ready to revelation and insight. Ordeal turned out to be back-breaking. In an instant they appealed not outside but inside and it had scared. Few people were prepared to cognize themselves, to make out their entity. There weren’t drawing away eyes, arms, movements, sounds, ears any more. There weren’t anything unnecessary. It was left the main – the soul. The soul, which used to be unheard, whose gospel truth hardly ever had been reaching the ears through thickness of vulgar laughing, low-minded chatting, disgusting behavior and deeds, black evil eyes and sequence of unreasonable movements.
When familiar tinsels had gone, everybody suddenly felt obtuseness of prescribed rhythm and grasped that was wrong. Acquaintance with themselves was killing all that seemed to be true for the sake of renaissance of existence everything which hadn’t been perceived but which was the only truth among fancy-dress ball of light and shade.
Who would like to admit a fact that all toils and trouble were vain, that all the deeds were senseless running around in circles. Who, accepting defeat, could do anything worth buying the length of a half step with life.
So, panic started in town M* and it was predetermined.
Martin was the only person who was sitting on the hill, waiting for the sun, which would either save inhabitants of town M*, or, as usual, protect them from themselves.








The first day
There was only one citizen of town M* who was applauding the darkness. It was a man without face. Had lost his familiar outward form, suddenly he came down in the world. Exterior form destroyed his inner content in people’s eyes.
Those eyes… They are looking but not seeing. Like Oedipus had made away with them at one time, town M* denied the light for the sake of awakening.
Due to the darkness, which absorbed uglified external shape, the man without face found his identity again. His appearance hasn’t caused horror and disgusting anymore. Ugliness of the shape was swallowed up by the darkness, and he stopped being social odd man out. During the first day, hundreds of arms, which henceforth were carrying out eyes' function, have been researching each centimeter of sickening scars but, instead of nasty replicas, directed against him, the man without face has heard only timid tones of apology.
Soon the man without face has made a lot of friends and fellows. His altruism and humanity gave birth to overall love and recognition. With the arrival of the darkness the man without face turned into glorious creature, ideal that should be sought by everyone. It was considered by his entourage. There was no magic at all. The man without face was the same. Town M* hasn’t changed not in the least, and its inhabitants haven’t been metamorphosed. Vision was the only thing that was changed.
****
A blind girl, perhaps, was sole dweller of town M*, whose life hasn’t varied not in the slightest degree with the onset of darkness, unless, in the opinion of the folks about her, she has turned out into a guide in darkness. From a blind person she has suddenly became the most eyed occupant of mysterious town that has lost its light.
****
For an artist light absence meant global holocaust. All of a sudden he has grasped his futility, uselessness and helplessness. The fundamental basis of his world outlook has melted into thin air. Shapes, lights and darks of a picture, all of these stopped their existence. Who is he now and why he lives?
****
A musician was lucky a bit more. He didn’t need light to travel through galaxies. There were a lot of sounds and perfection of reproduced harmonies. A musician used to play with closed eyes. Light presence often distracted him from the core of the matter. In other words, even in darkness he felt himself quite comfortable not because of self sufficiency, but due to existence of musical instrument.
****
The man without face had sickening scars, the blind girl –blindness, the artist – vision, the musician – an instrument.
With the onset of darkness truth set remained but it was happened reality substitution by means of excessive gloom presence for account of  light absence. As a result, a social outcast – the man without face – turned into national favorite, the blind girl had been leading the crowd, the artist found himself at the crossroads but the musician had been continuing his travelling through the worlds due to heavenly sounds, appearing as a consequence of skillful symbiosis of virtuoso playing technique, human’s inner motive and musical instrument.
****















The second day
The world has emptied. Town M* has lost itself in nonexistence of darkness. Have closed eyes, I’m walking through the field. Where am I going? Who am I now? Where are the light and the aim? Where is the sun?
I open my eyes but nothing changes. Darkness obduces me sullenly and forces to get craggy, curdle and turdle, turns into a dot, a full point and disappear into invisibly unbeknownst. I open my eyes widely and try to make out at least anything but everything is in vain. There is nothing here. Or, maybe, something still is. After all, I exist. So, why somebody else couldn’t be. Someone else like me. Or not like me… Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know where I’m going now. Have I known before? Hardly ever. Only now, with my eyes widely closed, I’m following my way consciously. I’m here and I am. I’m feeling breath of each my pore. I’m not a reflection of a bus passing by anymore. I’m a human being.
Someone’s voice said that I need to go ahead, that somewhere out of hail there will certainly be light. And I have been walking and walking. It was so cold, wet and damp. I definitely smelt a strange reek thereabouts. Breezing of holiness and death. I felt myself creepy but how could I escape and where. Nowhere. You can’t elope from yourself. A bright flash of lightning pierced the darkness for an instant like an arrow. It was heard a heartbreaking explosion. It was smelt blood. I stood there glued to the spot. The Earth had shaken and started crying. I crouched to it trying to console. I was kissing its scars and fresh injuries but it was shaking more and more. After some time it broke out in loud inhuman ecumenical sobbing. It was terribly. I thought that I wouldn’t survive that pain. It seemed like from deep inside the Earth mother’s shouts of despair about their killed soldiers were heard, side by side with innocent embarrassed children’s teardrops, and bitter tears of old people. And deep, inexpressible, unbearable hurt just in one single question, which was said with parched from pain and sufferings lips: “Why?”.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” said unknown voice behind my back. Freezing cold was breezed from that entity staying at the back of me. A stranger was radiating minus 195.8 degrees centigrade and was friable like good balanced humus, which has been processing by hundreds of thousands of worms. I haven’t seen but known him. “Don’t beat yourself up,” he repeated again. “ Don’t waste your energy for nothing. You will need your energies. Go ahead and don’t stop.”
I was walking through the breathing Earth. I was feeling movements under my feet. Something gave me a cue that they were corpses of soldiers, had recently been killed in action, recycling in a hurry by invertebrates and other protozoas. What can we do? Everybody has its own work. I was walking and crying silently. Each step was reflected by pain in my heart. There was no way bypassing, byflighting. Only through the dear and all-knowing land. I, a man of the Earth, couldn’t help walking. So I set out.
***
Whose truth our pathway has been paved by? Is somebody’s verity ours, too? There were two soothes, two stones on nearby tops of mountain ranges, joining by a deep canyon. And they started rolling towards each other, and ran into at the very bottom of it, and split up into thousands of the smallest fragments, and they disappeared, the both. And whose truth is the very bottom paved by now? And who won? And what was left?
***
And I am walking and hearing the crying. While some people are mocking and sneering at deceased bones, arranging orgies soaked by gloat and feeling of triumphed justice, another ones are groaning and howling with pain it their souls over an open grave, becoming exhausted from helplessness, despair and praying God for only the one – for seeing the light of torturers and their sincere repentance. A holy story is too uncrystalline and amorphous in comparison with drab existence, where saintliness is poured over blood, where evil comes from everywhereness in a flash – one has only to step within a pistol-shot. 
***
I was living. I have never hurt anybody by anything. I had been feeding pigeons and wild animals. I had been writing poems and songs. I had been playing the violin. I was of help to others. I had been empathizing with all and everyone. I was suffering for fates of African people, for destinies of all that were abandoned, rejected, offended, injured, deprived. One rainy evening I knew that I was hated and wanted to kill. Why? Because I was not just existed but wanted to have my own opinion. Because I didn’t have inside of myself any evil, hatred avarice and love of gain. Because of my humanity, agape and love of others. For my unwillingness to share the world into friends and foes, ins and outs. For my willingness to live in peace, where there is no place for violence and super profit, mad song and dance in order to please somebody’s interests. I am a patriot but not a nazi. Is being a patriot a reason for killing me? Who gave you the right to come to my land and wipe me out only because I am a man from the Earth who loves his planet madly, esteems ancestors, honors his nature and doesn’t afraid to say uncomfortable, unwanted for somebody truth. My justice doesn’t murder or harm but it interferes others to kill and destroy with impunity. Decision was taken by others: liquidate me together with my truth in order to give a free hand in an issue of legalized harm, murder, violence in the world, which definitely must lose its verify and where everybody has to turn into speaking box on thick short legs, smelling with decomposing products of vital functions.    
***
So the first sheep has been dashing ahead and leading the whole herd of joyful bighorns, skipping happily and making enthusiastic feral whoops. And there are rocky cliffs. And the first sheep is ready to fall down. And it is falling down one after another: the first, the second, the third, the tenth, the hundredth… And everybody is skipping and squealing. And all are continuing running to rocky cliffs and jumping from them, making unreasonable sacrifices.
What can I say? Congratulations! It’s a pity, but there is nothing in common with heroism. It’s just stupidity, bordering with dullness and weakness of brain-power.
I’m walking through them. Without regret, but with hurt in my heart. I’m going with stony stare like being soulless. Souls… They are choking people every day. Not such day is fearful, but another – in which there will be no one to choke. Has this day already become or it is just a final run-through of the play? What will be expected in that remarkable day, when everything happens truly? The same set and heat, intensity of emotions and, of course, full house like it was two thousand years ago. Dear ladies and gentlemen! The tickets are sold, all seats are booked. The performance begins right now!
And I’m sitting in the first row, holding prize ticket in my hands, which I haven’t asked for anybody and I should be glad but I feel some despair because of impossibility of refusing from this trophy. In desperation, I try to escape through one of the doors but every time I come across an accommodating well-wisher with sympathizer sight, who is attempting to console me. I don’t want to be comforted! Take away this lucky ticket and let me go! But all the tickets have been sold out by Mr Nobody for free and, therefore, it’s impossible to return them, because there is no one, whom it could be given back. Mr Nobody made a decision about my happiness and what is needed for this. Tonight they are performing the play on the stage and nothing could be changed. I am coming back to my seat, lights have gone out and a show has started.
Audience is delighted. They are in deep ecstasy because of dramatic effects of the plot, being acted on the stage. They are applauding and encoring. But there is nobody for encoring, because they were playing not for encoring, but for live. And they have lost or overplayed. It was brightly, emotionally, but extremely inhumanly. It was left dog-eat-dog grin, and light smell of blood. Audience was frozen. Silence and darkness were pressing more and more. It became unbearably sickeningly. All of them were witnesses of a hideous dance of death but nobody had enough courage, common sense and determination to make three steps upstairs to the stage and say the only word “enough!”. It is much easier to step aside, stay in the shade, in darkness and enthusiastically watch the process of blooding soul killing on the bright stage, which is approved by international community. Inaction is not being punished and proved but action always could be considered ambivalently. Well done!
Performance is finished. I open the door but not meet importunate pressure of a dear well-wisher with sympathetic eyes. There is nobody to comfort me anymore. There is no reason for this. It is done. Instigator has washed his hands and bowed out, allowing sheep to do all dirty work on self destruction.
***
Where am I now? Whom for? Why?
 “Go!” suddenly I heard an icy voice behind my back.
And I had gone leaving questions in an empty orchestra stalls.












The third day
I am going through the darkness. I am in town M*, which has been never known of by anybody and which is not exist at least for those who has eyes. Only a blind girl knows that town M* is. I had met her on the third day of my way. She was very cute, timid and ethereal like flute sounds. I had never seen anything more lovely than an image of a blind girl in darkness. The darkness was enveloping her but did not penetrate inwards. The girl was pushing through the gloom, leaving hardly conspicuous Milky Way glow. It was delightfully.
“You are a kind man,” said the girl.
“You are totally blind. How can you see?” answered I nervously.
“Sometimes I want to observe through these two white pearl shallows which you use to see. I have not eyes, but vision. That’s why I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“One day you will behold, too. There, out of hail, dawn is waiting for you.”
“What about you? Let’s go with me!”
“My dawn is here.”
“You sacrifice yourself for the sake of these…insects!”
“They will not have hardly waited the dawn without me. I have to stay. That decides me.”
“They will betray you as soon as the first sun rays appear. For them you will turn into a poor blind helpless worthless chick that will be certainly given a kiss-off.”
“I know but how can I betray them? Can I? I don’t need light to be a human. I don’t need darkness to find a human being within myself. I don’t need society to feel myself like a person. I have found myself a long ago. To find yourself means to discover something that you will not be able to lose again. When the sun rises, they will lose again, because they have found me, but not themselves. If I leave now, the sun will never rise for them. Can I?”
“You can’t. I see. Thank you and farewell. You are better than me.”
“No, I am not. You are better.”

The fourth day
I am alone. There is nobody here. Is it any sense for escaping? Why am I running then? Who requested this play and why? The play… Suddenly beautiful heavenly music resounded. It was like a free bird, playing universe music on the sky keys. Each sound was dropping with lively droplets in my mind, in my heart. Heart syrup, madness syrup… It is wonderful to let yourself go the stream of magic multi-faceted fragile crystals, carrying far away and upwards. Ethereal musical stream was subsiding in backwaters, rising on rock sills, breaking out in roaring of waterfalls, swamping high waves, storming in oceans and dying down again. Perpetual bliss is travelling together with musical harmony through boundless vastness of existence.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am a musician,” it was heard from the darkness.
“You have been creating a wonderful things.”
“I have just creating things that have already existed. The only thing I do is enjoying my playing.”
“So, you are doing this for pleasure, aren’t you?”
“For the sake of life and death in order to stop being ahead of time. For the purpose of not dying earlier the death by that killing yourselves forever.”
“Life is worth nothing nowadays. It is cheaped so much that I can’t help thinking about this with disgust.”
“It is because they died ahead of time. Who wants to pay for decomposing carcasses? So they found solution: powdered bodies’ noses, put in chips with programmed behavioral sequence into empty skulls, eaten away by worms, and let them go the programmed path to the finally destination, where a burial is inevitably waiting for them. And it is so pity and painful, when on their total epidemic way they strike healthy cells of a sensible organism! In that case I sit down at the piano in a hurry and start playing to be heard by those who could be saved.”
“You are wonderful. This world needs you. You…”
“I am just a musician and that’s all about it.”
“I will remember you.”
“And I will play for you, for the sake of entity infinity.”
The fifth day
“Who is there? Don’t move!” a painter was panic-stricken. I had not seen him but I felt his palpitation, which was similar with hunted elk one.
“I was just walking by and…”
“Stop this rubbish! He was just walking. Bullshit! You’ve come for me. What do you want?!”
“Sorry, I don’t know.”
“Where are you going, and why?”
“I’ve already said, I don’t know. The voice said to me to go.”
“Do you hear voices?”
“Not voices, but the voice. It’s a significant difference.”
“Perhaps …but what do I care about you! I can’t see you. It’s quite possible that you’re just a figment of my sick imagination, which is lost any possibility for creation.”
“But I exist!”
“The voice behind your back also thinks so. But are you sure in its existence? I doubt.”
“No, it’s another thing.”
“My dear, everything is nothing. You, they, voices – nothing exists. Even me.”
“You are!”
“This has yet to be proved. I can’t see nobody and nothing, among others myself. How could I claim that somebody or something exist if I’m not sure in my own existence?”
“It seems to me, you’re too formal.”
“Pardon, I am a painter! I appeal to visual images, which are full of contents. You’re trying to convince me that there is some content or sense without any forms or visual images. It’s absurd.”
“You’re absurd if you don’t stop saying nonsense. You are not just a painter, but a human. A key word is a human, but not a painter. Think about it. In any minutes of weakness or desperation remember that there is an unknown voice in the darkness, who believes in you. Adieu!”
“Thank you and good bye.”






















The sixth day
(the first meeting with Mr Nobody)
“All of this is meaninglessly.”
“What exactly? And who are you?” I asked.
“Your running in circles has no sense. You even don’t know, what direction you’re going. You see nothing. Perhaps, you have moved no millimeter. A prankster has set a running track and from time to time changes its mode, and you – like a lamb – is going, running, rushing at a breakneck speed, like mad. You’re fleeing for dear life but invariably staying on the same place.”
“You are insidious.”
“I am clever.”
“You are smart and treacherous. What do you want?”
“You! More precisely – your absence. You’re so … lively. How you could forget memorized “It doesn’t matter whether will or bondage”.
“I do not remember.”
“Every day it had been knocking into your head. From your birth, and until recently, you had been hearing me always and everywhere. Even in silence.”
“You used to control me!”
“It was your will.”
“But I didn’t know. If only I knew…”
“You had known everything from the outset. Don’t comfort yourself by false justifications. Everything was well with you like everyone else. What is this tiring senseless struggle for?”
“Meaningful and live-giving. I have understood, who you are. You are a person who sold me a free ticket. You are Mr Nobody!”
“Well, say it were true. What then? I had not sold anything. Is it possible that someone is but not exist. Moreover, this nonexistent someone acts staying, at the same time, in inaction condition because of absence of any presence?”
“But the ticket was real! I held it in my hands. And what about that stranger with sympathizer eyes, who didn’t let me leave the performance. And that smell of blood in the orchestra seats. And unbearable silence that was hovering in twilight.”
“The performance took place. In your consciousness or in reality – this is the second question. The only thing is clear: it was taken part exclusively by you, homo sapiens, more precisely – homo erectus. One of them took active part, another ones – passive, several preferred staying neutrality. That’s all of you. Mr Nobody hadn’t been there just because there can’t be anybody that isn’t.”
“Who organized selling of these damn tickets?!”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody means somebody.”
“But where is this “somebody”? Nowhere. There is no facts, which could prove presence of “someone” who organized selling of free tickets. Consequently, “nobody” was not. Nobody is nowhere. Where? Nowhere. Who? Nobody. What I say is everything is quite clear.”
“The only one thing is clear: the darkness is Mr Nobody’s doing! Mixing of images, phrases, thoughts. Replacing of ideas and principles of existence. Everything that existed suddenly disappeared whereas appeared something that wasn’t. Somebody without any preludes became Nobody, or Nobody became Somebody. What to do? Who am I now? Where am I and whether exist? Am I alone in boundless emptiness, or in crowded infested fullness? Where is my true existence: here or there? I will find the answer!”
“It’s too tedious and banal. I’m tired of your baby talk.”
“So, go away. Forever.”
“I would. With pleasure. But I can’t. I am imprisoned into a boundless immense dungeon of emptiness and darkness. How could it be escaped from infinity? I am tired. Good night.”
“Wait!”
Mr Nobody dissolved – or hid himself – into darkness along with Martin.


The seventh day
Martin woke from a stupor suddenly. Evidently, he was sleeping for some time or just didn’t exist. Has returned to a conscious state, Martin, as usual, firstly felt something that was burdening him from inside, and then, properly himself. He stretched himself and yawned. Inarticulate mumble sobered him instantly.
 “He is still exist here but hasn’t already – there”, a puzzled voice was being heard from darkness. “ Step to the left – is, step to the right – isn’t. Leftwards – rightwards. Yes – no. Here – there. A flash before – a flash after.”
“Who are you?” Martin asked in confusion.
“Don’t interfere! Don’t you see? I’m busy!”
“What with?”
“It’s not you business! Go away! Go your way.”
“So you accept my existence.”
“More than. Your existence is too much here and now, therefore, do me a favour – take yourself off as soon as possible.”
 “Don’t I interfere? You even don’t know where I am: ahead or behind, on the left or on the right, in kilometers or just in several centimeters. How could I disturb? ”
“When I say interfere, it means exactly what I say. Go away! So, where I was…”
“What if I can help you.”
“Dear young person, don’t make me laugh! Nobody could help when everything has already happened in future. Here a man is still exist but there – isn’t. Is – isn’t. You see… What is the difference between “before” and “after”? Has anything changed or not? Did the fact that he was affected the fact that he wasn’t? Was he enough to be? Or he wasn’t enough to…”
 “Stop! You’ve cut a filmstrip on separate shots and now, matching detached elements, trying to find a reasonable explanation of their sequence and simultaneity.”
“Pretty much, except for one inaccuracy: it is not a filmstrip but a life. Jus vitae àñ necis.*”
 *Right to control life and death (Latin). 
“Is it a primary task in darkness?”
“Paramount, and the only one. Such equations appear only in darkness. In pitch dark with traps everywhere which are called “black holes”. In gloom where immensely huge things weight nothing whereas a tiny capsule is hundreds of times larger than our planet. Don’t it make any difference whether 4.5 billion years mean a lot or few, something or nothing. I am mostly interested not in charges and particles but in space between them.”
“You are interested in aggregation, but not in individual.”
“I am interested not in internals but in probabilities. Laws that don’t just disclose the future of a system, but manage and control changes into probabilities time.” 
“Will anything change if you finally find, or understand, whether light is a wave, or a photon flux, figure out between difference of the granularity of the electric charge and energy? Your truth suddenly becomes unfair when the velocity of the particle approaches the speed of light. Elementary quantum and substance, existing aside from the field, don’t let you rest. Besides, the problem of gravity…
“Yes! Exactly! Gravitation!”
“But you absolutely nothing change. Everything stays unchangeable when you discover something. The condition of the equation is the same. The only thing which is changed is vision.”
“Stop!”
“I know what you need: a feeling of mystery that is going infinitely long, filling up spaces between short bright flashes – discoveries. A sense of mystery, which is filling out by incomprehension, fear, and generating a monster, in shadow of which humanity exists.” 
“Stop!”
“Don’t worry. I haven’t diminished your work. This confusion with substitution of concepts is lasting infinity. You have plenty of material to suckle an organism system afflicted by mental disorder. Good luck and goodbye!”



The eighth day
“Everything is quite trivial and banal,” was heard from darkness a female voice of declining years.
“What exactly?” asked me.
“That you are here. Your attempts, and wishes. Your all-in-all. And even that I am saying now. You, me, everybody, and everything. Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me too. That’s why I’m here. I do nothing that is also one of doing forms.”
“What aim are you doing nothing with?”
“For the purpose of being purposeless. Against this background your goal will be more pronounced.”
“Why does it suit you?”
“Because I don’t have such energy like yours. I don’t want interfere you. Oh, it’s so tritely!”
“What exactly?”
“My lofty impulses and desires, more precisely – their absence. Everything is so trivial. Even that you will leave now. Even that I will say you: “Vale!”










The ninth day
Martin felt himself quite hideously and indefinably. Something was chaining him from inside and didn’t let go on. Everything was changed. Henceforth Martin has experienced consequences and then – reasons and events. He was sad, but why?
“You are not with me, hence – against me!” resounded a voice from darkness.
“I’m just sad by myself.”
“I know you! That’s all because of you! You destroyed our system and are glad now. But, believe me, it’s not for a long time! We will destroy your pathogenic virus soon!”
“You definitely know more about myself than me. Your confidence may overpersuade everybody who doesn’t know about sick nature of your consciousness.”
 “Shut up and don’t try to persuade me. Don’t waste your words! Save them for the fools! You are viruses, that’s why there is only one way – to kill!”
“Firstly, let’s clarify who are you, who I am for you, and why you blame me in unbeknownst things.”
“You know the answers. Stop spreading your propaganda. You are killers, conquerors, betrayers, criminals, eaters!”
“Stop! I want to sort it out who we are, and what is specifically our guilt in. Perhaps, we should discuss it and find an appropriate solution. Firstly, I need to understand the reason, but not the occasion.”
“No! We will not succumb to your fairy tales! Each word that you have said, is rubbish! You want to puzzle, confuse, enslave, eat alive, and demolish us. All these words – total lies! Lies! Lies!”
“What words? Sorry, I didn’t get you. I can’t understand what you are talking about. Explain, please, what’s wrong, and what’s my fault.”
“I don’t speak with my enemies. I just kill them. Save your words for fools. They don’t touch me. Here you are!”
A shot resounded from darkness. Someone exclaimed and heavily fell down.
“What have you done?! You’ve killed an innocent person!” cried Martin with tremulous voice.”
“It’s your fault. You’ve killed, not me! It’s because of you! You!”
“How is it? Are you hearing me, sir? You’ve killed a random person! You’ve killed the life!”
“You’re trying to defame us again! You are lying arrogantly. You are trying to write off  your sins on us but you will fail because there are no evidences of our guilt. You’ve heard a shot. And what? Nothing! How can you prove? Have you got a documentary confirmation? No? You see, how easy I’ve figured it out. You’re betrayers and criminals! Murderers! Be sure, we’ll get you!”
“You’ve killed an innocent person. You’ve killed the life. Are you hear?”
- Ýòî âû óáèëè! ß íèêîãî íå óáèâàë. Ýòî âñ¸ âû! Âû!
 “Stop you blatant lie! I’ve got evidentiary material of your guilt everywhere and anywhere! Furthermore, documented and approved by international community, hence, such materials are true. All of them are here: protocols of the meetings, sessions, court decisions. It was formalized correctly, in accordance with current legislation. And you? What have you got? A shot in darkness.
“You are unambiguously gone crazy, gentlemen.”
Either of your own will, or malicious intent.












The tenth day
Martin was walking through darkness purposelessly and unwillingly. He was tired to think about the event happened just before. A flame from complicated emotional chemical reaction burnt him inside and, perhaps, completely burnt down some his part which has been called emptiness from then and which has appeared in all its glory now. Unusual feeling, embracing Martin, was frightening and alarming.
“Don’t lose your hope.”
At first Martin didn’t understand the nature of those words. Either the wind put the sounds into three cherished words so successfully, or it was just a creaked door. However, the words were heard humanly but they weren’t said with the help of  a tongue or language. It was strange.
Martin was feeling some presence but it was too amorphous and crystal. Quite not like among human beings. You’re hurt. I see.
“Don’t look for me,” began to sound a crystal voice and added after some pause: “You won’t see because you’re looking for a shape. I am here. You’re hurt. I see.”
“This emptiness inside of me generates indifference,” said Martin quietly.
 “I know. But whether indifference? Perhaps, pacification, serenity, adoption of things you can’t change. Feelings may be called in different ways and it will be its own truth in each of those names.”
“I can’t accept these.”
“Because it is against your nature.”
“Yes.”
“So, change the things that interfere your nature or just change your nature.”






The eleventh day
Martin hardly realized where and why he was walking. However, he understood: you won’t cognize light if you don’t go through darkness.
“One day the sun will die,” said a monk.
“So, are my efforts in vain?” asked Martin.
“The sun will die but the light inside of you will live forever. Darkness is given before the sun dies to find genuine internal light, which doesn’t have neither the end nor the beginning.”
“Is that all running from death?”
“Not running at all, but awareness of death absence.”
“But a human being is born, lives, dies.”
 “This is as long as you are thinking by forms. But as soon as the lights go out, forms are obliterated and disappeared. Don’t the blind girl died after you continued your way? Was the man without face born? Where is the beginning and the end in darkness? They exist yesterday, today and tomorrow like images on the artist’s painting.”
“Everything is quite uncertain and ambiguous.”
“Don’t is too hard to comprehend and perceive that we exist here and now?”
“Why the sun will die?”
“It’s not your fault. In former times – the sun, now – a black hole. This is not your concern. Live here and now. Each moment of your life is an eternity which is not burdened with the past, the future and even the present.”
“I am totally not sure.”
“It means you are not a fool.”
“Have I died?”
“You’re wandering in darkness, but one day the sun will rise inside of you.”



The twelfth day
“Oh, I’m so unhappy! I have lost everything! This is the end,” was heard whining voice.
“It is not the end at all. I guarantee,” answered Martin.
“Central bank guaranteed, too! Where is it now? How to search it out in darkness? Where are my millions? Oh, God, I’m miserable.”
“Is there nothing else you can think of in darkness, but your financial situation?”
“I have spent my whole life on money, you know. I’ve converted my life into money. Where is it now? It appears like I haven’t lived at all. Confirmation of my existence was dissolved in pitch darkness. I don’t exist.”
“I’m sure, it was something genuine in your life you can take with you…”
“Doomsday insurance?”
“What?”
“The end of the world insurance. I’ve bought it just before for a very reasonable price. Where is it? Oh, I am so unhappy! Nothing has left. No money, no insurance, no me…”
“Don’t despair. You will be alive if you start living before you die. You’ve filled a jar with wrong contents.”
“What you know about this! I am the Lord. I can everything! My millions can everything! I don’t need your verbal handouts!”
“Then abolish the darkness,” said Martin quietly.

Has a man acquired the whole world? Has he done much harm to his soul?





The thirteenth day
“Can I help you?” asked a polite voice from darkness.
“No, thanks. I just want to be alone. I’ve never thought that in the darkness it would be difficult,” answered Martin sadly.
“You’re sad. I see. Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, with pleasure. Wait! How could you make tea in pitch darkness? Where could you get hold necessary ingredients?”
“Dear, my job is to help you. Have a rest, drink some tea and after we will discuss everything.”
“I am really tired and want to relax…a minute…”
Martin fell asleep.
It’s hard to say how long Martin was unconscious. There was no more time.
“Are you still here?” resounded a cutting voice.
Martin woke up: “I am here.”
 “Then pay!”
“For what?”
“For my silence. You wanted to be alone. I fulfilled your wish, hence, you owe me!”
“For what? You haven’t done anything!”
“Exactly for this! Because I haven’t done anything.”
“It is absurd!”
“Why? Recently, before town M* was attacked by the darkness, without any extra questions, you had been paying for drinking from natural water sources, for driving the roads, having houses, lands, property, jobs, cars. Quite colorful tax system: taxes on cowardice and shadow, hats and beards, sparrows and toilets, watches and cycling, drugs and dogs, alcoholism and civil marriage, rights to sing and dance, and, finally, taxes on the world, freedom and even on life. You’re alive, therefore, you must pay a tax on life. If you want to have a beard, you must pay! This is an offense if your tent casts a shadow. But you can pay off – just pay a certain sum. If you want to wear a hat, pay! If you don’t want to kill a dozen of sparrows, pay. If you want to be a law-abiding citizen, declare illegal income from drug trafficking. It isn’t enough to buy a watch to own it – you must pay tax for the right to have it. You have brown eyes, therefore, you owe only three altyns, but if grey, you must give away as many as eight.”
“Who had you been paying to, and why? Who gave the right to someone to own all rights over all?”
“Why is that question? Don’t distract. I mean something different. In comparison with these taxes, mine is pure innocence, almost nothing. So, pay.”
“What will be if I don’t pay?”
“Then you will be considered as a criminal and be punished. You will be deprived of liberty and be forced to work off that is prescribed, and also over prescribed.”
“It will be deprived of liberty which wasn’t.”
“Snug’s the world! It was. You had got everything if you would have paid for.”
“But to pay, I had to burn my time and life. And I did it only for gaining that I had already had all rights for that!”
“Hush! Snug’s the world! Go away! I forgive your debt. Please, keep silence, for goodness’ sake, and don’t share your thoughts with others.”











The fourteenth day
“You have been saved! All troubles have gone. There is nothing for searching anymore. All answers have been found out. Let’s rejoice to bestowing happiness and salvation!”
“Where am I? Who are you?” asked Martin confusedly.
“You was found by our rescue service and now everything’s going to be OK. Just make your mind easy.”
“Who are you?”
“Our mission is saving in darkness. We have saved you because we found you.”
“But you did nothing. I wandered in your place by chance. What did you save me from? Darkness? Sorry, but how? Haven’t it stopped its existence?”
“You’ll understand. Truth doesn’t’t come at once. Just believe us and stay. We don’t need anything from you. Our mission is to save you.”
 “Don’t you need absolutely anything from me?”
“Nearly so… We need only very little – your presence here. It’s a mere trifle, isn’t it? Like it or not, you spoil, burn, waste your time. Live it for your own benefit. You should win your lucky ticket.”
“Again this lucky ticket! Now it isn’t a free ticket, but a lucky ticket, and its price is your life. Isn’t it a huge fee?”
“Of course, not. It’s a mere trifle in comparison with eternal life.”
“I’m puzzled: you’ve got fundamental postulates, you know everything about salvation, but you haven’t found deliverance from the darkness.”
“We’ve found out! There is no darkness for us, because we are under protection of our belief that there is no darkness.”
 “But the darkness doesn’t stop being because of this. Do you mean that you can see in darkness?”
“Certainly. I know about you more than you know about yourself.”
 “What kind of person am I?”
“You’re a middle-aged slim man. You’re wearing a lovely white shirt and a straw hat. You’ve got kind eyes and curly hair.”
“Is that all?”
“I suppose so. Isn’t that enough?”
 “Today I’m wearing a white shirt, tomorrow – a red one. Today my hair is curly, tomorrow – I’m absolutely bald. Everything is contingent and transient. That’s why such things disappear in darkness. You can’t see the color of my shirt, hair or eyes but you can know me. I still exist. Not my hat, but me. I have true nature inside of me, thence, I am. As soon as I had obtained awareness, my way started along the lightest path of all. I’m walking through this way here and now, in the darkness. You can’t steal my time. It is given as much as I need. Even one hundredth part of my time is more expensive than all world jewels. I’ll spend my time consciously, with love, and for myself. For myself means for those whom I love. It may be a stone which I will have been admiring till the end of time, an animal, a human, or me. Time allotted for you is over. Good bye forever.”
Martin has gone not because that action had no sense. It wasn’t value exactly for Martin whereas for others it was the only way to self-improvement, therefore, the only way out.
Everyone has the unique way but the goal is unified. Don’t go other people’s paths. They are not genuine for everybody and bring closer to the final destination exclusively theirs creators but they confuse you and lead away from your meaning. Even if you can see light in the end of the tunnel by other people’s eyes, don’t go that way, because it isn’t your way. Someone else’s true will lead to nowhere and become your lie and perdition.









The fifteenth day
I am walking. I am so scared and lonely. Where am I going and why? Will I be understood?
“They will.”
“Who is here?”
“I am your friend.”
“Oh, it’s so unexpectedly. Recently I’ve met a madman in the darkness, who has been craving to kill me without lending an ear.”
“Some of us need to love somebody by all means, whereas others – to hate.”
“Ergo, not everybody, will understand.”
“Those who are dancing are mad. So consider the deaf. For example, I am not a deaf. Moreover, I am your friend. Believe in yourself. I give credence that you will find your way. Go.”
“Thank you.”   













The sixteenth day
This quest started long ago. On the day of my birth, or rebirth. I felt a strong call. Desire to find some Nothing or Nobody by all means. Perhaps, invisible thread was too strong, or just unnoticed for cutting. Unfortunately, everything continually gained in score: town M* is in darkness and, maybe, forever. My mainstay and support – unbeknownst individuals and creatures of dual nature, helplessly floundering and wallowing in dark matter and forcing to continue my way by all sorts of methods, both a kind word and a shot. I haven’t known that evil, thrown at me, would magically turn into congenial moving mechanism pushing ahead. Don’t hurry to turn this page. Think about.


















The seventeenth day
When I was a child, I always turned upset because of impossibility to understand others’ thoughts or perceive others’ feelings. I was open. Gradually I had been closing myself and found common sense in invisibility, justify myself such notions like “white lie” or “it is better if it is not to known by them”. Now to be open means to be a boor, an idiot and, at all, “Who do you think you are?”. At that time, in my childhood, I had a friend. Her name was Palma. Perhaps, the only real friend in my life. We made friends during my first stroll. I couldn’t walk or talk then, but it wasn’t an obstacle for us to communicate telepathically. I don’t know where I learnt about telepathy. It was just normally for me then, as well as flying everywhere light forms. Happiness had been continuing several years when the shot was resounded and Palma passed away. My single real friend was killed for nothing.
Don’t comfort yourself by a thought that killing a dog you’re just killing a silly animal. In fact, you’re destroying a pure soul. I could tell you about telepathy and indescribable bliss condition, lightness of being and perfectness, which emerge among people speaking the Universe language. I am not sure whether I should. This is my story and my mystery. It’s a pity that Palmas don’t come to everybody.













The eighteenth day
Palma… And then when I again lost a friend of mine. That time it was my friend by blood. And then when the friend took me on the other side for a while. And that moment when my friend consoled me by showing the ill-fated destiny film which he chose together with his mother by himself long ago before his birthday. And then when he was giving signs to himself, earthbound, to his relatives in order to relieve their suffering. Endless night conversations with me, more precisely, with subtle matter, controlling biomass called a human. Subsequent blocking of myself-biorobot from biounneeded and biodestroying information. Much later I’ve known earth interpretation of those far events, and it was connected with gravitation, relativity theory, the concept of time and space.
Why am I writing this?
With the hope that I’m not alone in the darkness and can be heard.
















The nineteenth day
“Hey! Is anybody hearing me? Hello?”
“Calm down. Take it easy. Why are you screaming?”
“It’s so nice that you’ve heard me!”
“It’s hard not to hear you.”
“Believe me, it’s only for you. For others my scream is like an illegible whisper.”
“I see. You’re a philosopher, aren’t you?  Where are you going? Though, don’t answer, because everything is clear.”
“Really?”
“Of course! For sure, you are Martin.”
“Yes, I am.”
“A meeting with Mr Nobody have already been.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Leaving all doubts you’ve decided to go ahead.”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
“It’s interesting.”
“What exactly?”
“It’s interesting how everything that has been predetermined is coming true.”
“Haven’t you foreseen everything?”
“Certainly! Moreover, both of us – you and me – have foreknown. The problem is that you installed a conscious blocking in order to do everything more enthralling.”
“What are you?”
 “I’m you.”



The twentieth day
So, I continued my way. Alone or, maybe, not alone. I remembered events of recent past. Her, who I always loved. Always means long before her birth. And then, when we had to outlive disunity of our souls. We found ourselves in different parts of the solar system, but in darkness we could be found by each other.
Something unknown started hurting somewhere deep inside this little man called Martin. In the bowels of a completed organism with clear outlines. Why isn’t possible to reach those far away? How the Universe has opened its infinity in the bosom of limitation and compactness of space? Where is it hurting, and why?
It hurts in the darkness.


















The twenty-first day
Then, suddenly, I remembered about pigeons. They came flying to me every day and ate, ate, ate… Doves of peace. I’ve never seen more ruthless and cruel scrambles than among grey-winged pigeons for food. That fight was so genuine, without falseness and falsehood.
Sincerity touches. It is innocent. You shouldn’t be offended. When a child says that you look like a hero from the Second World War times in this hat, it makes you smile, not angry. That’s because it is said in all sincerity, from the heart, and without malice. Now, let’s put the same phrase in the mouth of an adult. What will happen? How dare you! You want to pique me! You practice your poison sarcasm in wordplay! Disgustingly!
The phrase remains the same. The only thing that has changed is vision.
The problem is in vision. You and only you vest this or that object a certain meaning. You choose by yourself whether to be happy or unhappy, cry or laugh, be sad or have fun. Everything is as bad as good and vice versa. For example, now you’re sad. What interferes you to smile? Don’t be a slave of your feelings and emotions. Opposite concepts are interpenetrating. They are unified. Plus becomes minus and minus – plus. At that, you shouldn’t change absolutely anything. This is a question of vision.
You choose by yourself whether you cry or laugh. You are free in your choice.










The twenty-second day
(Confession)
 “We’re getting tired of waiting for you, Martin. Come in. Sit down.”
“But where? I can’t see anything.”
“Don’t disappoint me. This is your chance. You don’t see, hence, you can see everything you want. This is… It means freedom.”
Martin imagined an armchair and sat down. The armchair was quite comfortable, as much as Martin wanted.
“Gentlemen, we need to start,” continued a stranger, “Alexander, welcome.”
 “Thank you, master. Those events happened during horrible manufactured famines in 1932-1933. I was a guerrilla. It was a terrible time. There was nothing left. There wasn't even the bark on the trees. Only hungry eyes, closely watching your every move through the thickets of honeysuckle, ready to pounce you at any time. I go to the first hut and see corpses, to the second, third, fifth, tenth… All are dead. Swollen with hunger and quietly moved to the light. I open the next door and see a terrible picture: a mother bent over the still warm corpse of her two-year-old daughter, greedily eating her insides. Then she raised her head and looked at me with distraught animal eyes.
I killed her. I squashed her head on the wall with a shovel. She hadn’t been a human being anymore. I don’t regret my actions.
“You was right. You shouldn’t regret. However, you came to confession and want to repent, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I confess in my stupidity. I am annoyed about my dementia which had been progressing since my school days. I’m tormented by remorse, because I had the highest score in history. Because I believed in historical tales about free mankind which managing coups d’;tats by rebellions and revolutions. I was so naive and ridiculous. After that manmade famine, which took away millions lives and which wasn’t the first or the last, I suddenly saw the light. May abstract, alien, unclear political goals be more important than the lives of our own children, relatives, our lives after all? Why every time, when there wasn’t a famine, there were revolutions, leading to regime changing. Why each time, when there was a horrible famine, nothing happened.”
Because people are livestock, and domestic animals don’t solve anything. They’re just a herd under the supervision of dogs, leading by a shepherd.
“Your sin is forgiven, because from now you’re not a loony. You stopped being like this from the moment, when you asked yourself a question and found a reasonable answer, when you correlated cause and effect, sorting out what is the reason and motive.”
“Thank you.”
“Say thank you to yourself. You are forgiven by yourself, by your conscience, which has got free from oppressing ignorance.”
“Henry, please. Your turn.”
“In February, 1942, we organized children’s shelter in a building of Makeevka kindergarten. It was called “Charity”. We used kids as donors for our wounded soldiers. Little beggars always underfed, that’s why they often went to the light after the first blood transfusion procedure. We stored kid’s corpses in a pantry. Some of them we buried in pits, others – used as food for dogs. Unused, unfit for consumption donor blood, which inevitably was covered with huge green flies, was baked in ovens and fed to children. In a word, wasteless production.”
 “That’s horrible.”
“Yes, I also didn’t like too much baked flat cakes, made from children’s human blood.”
“Are we...”
“Oh, stop this dramatic. Children didn’t understand anything. We said that they were ill, so, we need their blood for analysis. They kindly agreed and quietly fainted away, or just asleep eternal sleep. As for the fact that a girl Galina once looked in the closet with children’s corpuses, which hadn’t been recycled yet, and then ran off at the mouth about that event…in this way it was her fault. She broke the rules, the law and opened the door, which she had no rights to open, thus got information by illegal way. She is a criminal, a lawbreaker. Any sane person will tell you that. For such smart alecks and wisenheimers we have a developed system of punishment. Such crimes are prosecuted. We have to fight against such criminals. Otherwise, we will come to an end and be ruined. ”
“I was there,” said Martin suddenly.
“Where?” was surprised the master.
 “In Makeevka, at the opening of the monument in honor of the donor children. By the way, the only one in the world. I’ve re-read all the surnames of those poor kids in that accursed notebook, which had been filled up by krauts. I had even took a couple of snaps. Galina was listed as number 53, at once after her brother Vladimir. I was crying.”
“I see,” answered the master quietly.
“A clever chap had taken photos. Worthless thing in darkness. Show and prove! Can’t you? You’ll never be able to! So shut up!”
“No! Never! I don’t forgive! They are children! They were children…”
“I do not forgive either those who shot in my comrades-in-arms! Because it was shot by slightly grown children!”
“Take it easy, gentlemen,” intervened the master. “Let’s Henry finish.”
“Thank you,” continued Henry. “I confess that one day we collected too much blood, which spoiled quickly because of scorching heat during those days. The stench was unimaginable. Even green flies could not stand the smell and fell dead in a barrel with blood. Like usual, we baked it and fed the kids. After that a lot of them took to the beds because of the heaviest poisoning and, finally, ended their days. We had lost too much blood because of that bullshit cask! Well, kids did the dirty on us. They are not bloodsuckers, they are young bloodkillers. I confess that I spoiled healthy blood without any necessity.”
“It is good that you’ve repented, at least, in this, Henry.” 
“Thank you, the master.”
“Your turn, Martin.”
 “I repent of my feeling. I had been suffering for a long time as a result of my own choice and, upon that, I hadn’t done anything to change that situation.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed the master. “You’re right! You are forgiven and released from your own captivity. Now you can enjoy the light with every reason. Go and change. Do as you want. Make it right.”
The darkness was lit up by the light. It was so dazzling as the darkness. Nothing was seen. Only the master’s farewell voice, which was reaching out from faraway:
 “Before now, I was glad by ancient pieces of architecture, art and painting. Later, the joy had gone. It was not important anymore. It had cooled down. Now I am glad by nature and I have tremulous attitude towards this feeling, because I know, that, early or late, it will be gone, too. I am relishing here and now. After that it will be late and unnecessarily. Goodbye forever.”

 





















The twenty-third day
(Mr Nobody is coming back)
“Ha-ha-ha! Bravo!”
“It’s you again, Mr Nobody!”
“Yes! You have an eager desire to know who I am, don’t you? Here you are!”
“With a wave of the hand, Mr Nobody tore off the mask, behind which the face of an ordinary person was hiding. Such turn of events slightly disappointed Martin.”
“That’s not all!” exclaimed Mr Nobody.
Suddenly, with incredible speed, he began to tear off masks one after another. When all masks were torn off, the face turned up blank. Mr Nobody’s appearance without face horrified Martin deeply. He got thoughts together and asked:
“Where is your face? Who are you and whether exist? If you are a human, why don’t you have a face? If not, why do you have a body?”
Martin hardly finished talking when the body started dissolving in darkness. The darkness was so pitch as the light was dazzling. Nothing was seen. Only tires Mr Nobody’s voice, reaching out from far away:
“I am part of the light because darkness is a genuine nature of light. All unnecessary are disappeared in darkness. You are the only who stays on. It is heard only your thoughts. I am the dark side of you. You gave birth to me.”
“Where can I look you for?”
“In the dark side of your soul, in the darkness. Look for me in the darkness of your soul… And remember that I am Nobody, that’s why our conversation isn’t and can’t exist. All of these were as much as were not.”

Martin was sitting on the hill and was the first, who saw the sunrise. He smiled. The sun brought light to the dwellers of town M*.



Epilogue
In Ancient Egypt it was believed that at Heaven gates it is asked only two questions:
HAVE YOU FOUND JOY IN YOUR LIFE?
HAS YOUR LIFE BROUGHT JOY TO OTHERS?

What would you answer?