No sky anymore

1.
Not far from the town, on a forest lawn, there were three logs standing in a row. The side logs were thicker and a little lower than the middle one. The logs were connected at the top with a wooden crossbar. God only knows, for what reason and who installed that woodwork in the middle of the forest. But the complete weirdness of this construction consisted in the presence of two black rubber hoses fastened to the side logs. They had no obvious purpose, since they weren’t connected to any water facilities.
One day an unknown power made the lower ends of the hoses move. They approached each other and began to merge while moving up along the middle log. After the merged side of the hoses reached the crossbar, it skirted the log and then leant forward. Then the end of the hoses began wiggling like a snake’s head. This was the last point of the hoses’ activity.
Once there was a blood rain. After it there appeared a motorcycle petrol tank above the hose “snake head”. The tank was attached to the upper side of the middle log and its colour was blindingly scarlet. The tank and the hoses didn’t interact at all. It’s difficult to say whether there was petrol or any other liquid in the tank but, one way or another, its apparition wasn’t burdened with any purpose as well. Thus, this construction was standing in the forest, and probably, nobody knew about it.

2.

It was a summer afternoon. Not hot; partly cloudy. I went for a walk. I was walking without hastening, when a passer-by called me up. That was a middle-aged man having a kind of plain appearance. He called out to me in a loud, sprightly but a bit croaky voice:
– ¬Hey, buddy! Hear me? Can you help? See this stuff over here? I needa take it to one place.
Next to him there was a big cast-iron vat, shut with a screw top. The vat was put onto a cart with little wheels and a grip. He pointed to this vat. I wondered what was in it.
–  Ah, nothing special, – he waved his hand and smiled: – Just some acid. With my daughter in it.
 I can’t say what made me express no emotions and blindly obey that man. I simply took the grip and went dragging the cart with the vat, following the man.
We were going across the town, just as if nothing had happened. The passers-by didn’t notice us and had no reaction to our strange procession. But the top of the vat was screwed not tightly enough, and, when the cart moved against some bumps on the asphalt, the acid poured down from the vat and burnt the rubbish on the pavement.
Some time later we came up to a slightly sloping hillock which was a border of the town. We started climbing it, but when I drew the cart across the obtrusive tree roots, the top of the vat unscrewed completely and rolled down the hillock. In the vat I could see only the acid, there weren’t any remains of the daughter whom the man had told me about.

3.

At last, we left the town behind and went towards the forest. When we reached it, we merely made a few steps into the thicket and then found ourselves on that very lawn where there stood the construction of the logs, the hoses and the petrol tank.
– Well, here we’ve come! Thank you, buddy! – The man addressed me still cheerfully and shook my hand.
I gently smiled without responding anything, and went back. But I didn’t walk far. I stopped and hid behind the trees, just wondering why I had been dragging that vat with acid into the forest; what devil put those logs there, hoses with their wiggling “head” and the aimlessly hanging petrol tank; and the final question harassed me: what was that man going to do then?
He put the vat with acid next to the middle of the construction, right below the hose “head”. Then, without thinking and a bit of fear, he got into the ill-boding vessel and dipped into the acid. Smoke poured from him at once. With absolute calmness and without a single shriek of pain, the man began dissolving in the acid. The hoses and the petrol tank didn’t take part in this madness, and their role in the action still remained unrevealed.
Finally, the man vanished from my view, for he had dissolved completely.
But, oh, my god! The sky! There’s no sky anymore! The blue of the heavens disappeared! Only dull clouds kept on their drifting. And behind them the naked Space was seen – with myriads of brilliant stars, sinking in pink and red nebulae. Endless, charming, eternal, splendid, icy, sizzling, ruthless, forgiving, absolute, mysterious, and at the same time deprived of any destination – Space. No sky anymore.
I got dizzy of delight. I was looking around perplexedly, but I didn’t notice any other changes. The summer breeze was still blowing, the trees were rustling, the birds were tweeting, the flies were humming – everything remained the same. But there is still no sky anymore.
Then I had another look at the place where the dreadful ritual had passed, but I couldn’t see anything: either the strange construction, or the vat with acid and the dissolved felon within…
…Or the sky.
No sky anymore.