Dresses from Phoenix

"It was the first and last Black Sabbath concert I ever attended. July 5th, 2025. Villa Park, Birmingham.
Forty thousand spectators froze in tense anticipation under the gray sky of the historic stadium. On stage stood a massive structure resembling a black throne, surrounded by monitors and speakers. The air was thick with the premonition of the finale: today, the Prince of Darkness was to perform his last song. I stood in the crowd, feeling history being made before my eyes. The concert was broadcast worldwide, but being here, breathing this air, was something special.
When Ozzy Osbourne slowly walked onto the stage, supported on both sides, the crowd roared. Parkinson's disease had taken its toll—the great frontman could no longer stand—but his voice, as he lowered himself onto the throne and took the microphone, resonated with the same power as it did half a century ago.
The show was hosted by Hollywood actor Jason Momoa (known for his role as Conan the Barbarian), one of the most devoted Black Sabbath fans in Hollywood, which made him one of us. He energetically announced the guests and at one point even jumped off the stage into the mosh pit.
Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and—for the first time in twenty years—Bill Ward took the stage. The original Black Sabbath lineup had reunited. I listened to the sounds of 'War Pigs,' 'Iron Man,' 'N.I.B.,' and finally, 'Paranoid.' It was the last song Ozzy ever performed on stage. Seventeen days later, the Prince of Darkness would be gone.
The Press Conference That Changed Everything
VIP lounge, shortly after the concert.
Journalists surround a tired but satisfied Ozzy. Cameras click, voice recorders glow with red lights.
"Tell us about a mystical incident from your career," asks a BBC reporter.
Ozzy chuckles:
"It was in '78, the last tour with the original lineup before my... first departure. We were promoting 'Never Say Die!'. The tour: May in Sheffield, December in Albuquerque. It was a tough year: we were tired of each other, and the album turned out, let's say, not the most successful. But the arenas were still packed to the rafters."
He takes a sip of water.
"At first, Van Halen opened for us. Just young kids, a bar band from Los Angeles, or so we thought. After the tour with Kiss, we wanted something simpler..."
Tony Iommi coughs, adjusting his glasses:
"Yeah, I remember Kiss. Damn, what a time that was!"
Ozzy nods with a distant look:
"Seventy-five, the 'Sabotage' tour. They told us: there's this young band, Kiss. 'Just another American band,' we thought."
"Back then, we just walked out," interjects Geezer Butler. "Plugged in the guitars and played. No special effects."
"And then THEY appeared," continues Ozzy. "Four guys in war paint, platforms the size of skyscrapers. Gene Simmons in his demon costume comes up to me backstage in Boston. I'm not short, but he was a tower."
"What did he do?" the journalist asks.
Bill Ward laughs:
"Show them, Geezer!"
Geezer, waving his hand:
"He just leaned down, stuck out that long tongue of his, and barked: 'Aa-a-a-ah!'"
Ozzy:
"And then they went on stage—fire, smoke, blood... We stood there with our mouths open. Before them, rock concerts were simple: come out, play. Kiss turned the performance into theater. Going out without effects after that was pointless.
"Since then, we swore never to take them on tour again," chuckles Geezer. "Too good."
The room laughs.
"But Gene came up, shook my hand: 'Hi, I'm Gene Simmons.' No arrogance. Respect forever," summarizes Ozzy.
"And was that a lesson?"
"Of course. Female bands, by the way, were doing shows even earlier. The Quatro sisters—The Pleasure Seekers. They were schoolgirls, stage costumes, the vocalist's long hair doing the windmill, professional lighting, and the drummer Arlene beat out fifteen-minute solos!"
"After Kiss, we were looking for 'something simpler'—and found Van Halen," smiles Tony.
"And you know who they became," adds Ozzy.
"But before the show on December 5th in Phoenix, we were warned: a new heavy metal band called 'Cesarines' would be playing the day before us. Four girls, less than a year since founding—and already wildly popular. We couldn't miss it. We arrived a day early and went to listen."
"It was a show, too. Four girls in wedding dresses and elegant crowns provided a crazy contrast to the music they played. Stage lighting, scenery. They played incredibly: our 'War Pigs,' then 'Stairway to Heaven' with their own lyrics—philosophical, cohesive," says Geezer.
"After the gig, at the bar, they were telling us that the vocalist was a princess from ancient Baghdad, and the drummer was a time machine!" laughs Ozzy. "We drank hard, both us and them."
"The girls climbed onto the table, back to back facing the four cardinal directions, clapping, stomping, singing 'We Will Rock You' while rotating in sync—they stripped completely naked, leaving only crowns and sandals, and suddenly vanished! Melted into thin air. Only the dresses remained. We thought it was the DTs. But all four of us saw the same thing.
"The next day they show up again, but older, our age, around thirty," continues Tony. "Leila, Lisa, and Polina with their husbands. They say: 'We haven't played in a long time. Come to our final concert—London, end of December.' We went—and they were teenagers there again."
Ozzy throws up his hands:
"No one believed it then, no one will believe it now. But I returned the dresses to them, at that very concert in London," Ozzy finished, spreading his arms. Then he saw me and unexpectedly waved his hand like an old acquaintance.
"And you know what really got to us about those Cesarines?" Ozzy squinted. "Not just how they disappeared. But the fact that they reminded us who actually invented heavy metal. We men think it was us. Like hell it was."
He tapped his finger on the table.
"Even before us, there were the Quatro sisters. The Pleasure Seekers, then Cradle. Patti Quatro on guitar—that was just a wall of sound. And Nancy? She had hair down to her ass, straight, black. And she spun it like a 'windmill' on stage! Now every long-haired metalhead does it, but back then we watched and thought: 'She's going to break her neck!' And their drummer, Tamper... Double bass drums! With Keith Moon, it was chaos, but she pounded like a diesel engine. Even, powerful."
Ozzy chuckled.
"We looked at those girls from Detroit and realized: the time for garage rehearsals was over. We had to make a show. We had to be a machine. The Cesarines in '78 were the same. Except they also dissolved into thin air, the devils. I'm sure they were at this concert too."
I listened and thought it was just another rock star tall tale. How wrong I was.
The Meeting That Split Life Into "Before" and "After"
In the corridor backstage, where the stadium noise was already fading, a tall elderly woman with long gray hair wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt and a leather skirt approached me.
"Are you the journalist from Moscow?" she asked in unaccented Russian.
I nodded silently, stunned.
"I am Gina, or Polina, whichever you prefer, the drummer of the Cesarines—that very time machine," she continued as if nothing were amiss. "Right now I am studying the twenty-first century: Novosibirsk Academgorodok, the Physics Department of Novosibirsk State University, husband Konstantin, son Maxim, daughter-in-law Zara—they will soon give me a grandson. Every day I disappear for a couple of seconds: returning to my office at the Institute of Time in the twenty-third century. It's just the job."
"And the other members?" I barely squeezed out.
"I sometimes bring flowers to their graves. Youth is irrevocably gone. And life has a tendency to end. We can return to nineteen seventy-eight, but only as observers; one cannot bring back one's youth. Self-awareness moves linearly; you can't cheat thermodynamics."
"And yet you go back?"
"To remember what I was like."
She handed me a flash drive.
"A recording of our last concert. You can publish it."
My brain refused to believe what was happening, but journalistic curiosity took over.
"Who created you or 'remade' you into a time machine? Why can you move through time and space?"
"I don't know. I'm constantly trying to find out—so far, nothing."
"Do you want to go to our concert in London for a couple of hours?"
I answered in the affirmative.
"Watch silently; if you want to ask something—consult with me. Agreed?"
I answered affirmatively again.
And in the next second, the world around me began to swim.
December 28, 1978, The Marquee Club in London. We just... appeared there. On stage—four young girls wearing only crowns and sandals, and the hall is roaring with delight.
They began singing a song about the incredibly beautiful Queen Vashti, whose husband ordered her to appear before his guests at his birthday party wearing her crown to boast of her beauty.
When this song ended, Ozzy stood up and handed them the dresses. He had picked them up from the table in the bar after their striptease and disappearance, kept them, and brought them to the concert to return them.
The girls beautifully and elegantly donned them right on stage, once again looking like brides.
The audience understood that, apparently, this was intended, and the hall roared with applause.
Then Leila sang "Stairway to Heaven," but with different, slightly altered lyrics of her own. Afterward, there was a song about a young poetess, in which the story of Anna Akhmatova could be guessed, followed by a song about a mother carefully feeding breakfast to a grown-up child. Several songs in Russian followed.
Young Polina beat out a crazy solo on the drums. Elderly Polina stood next to me and whispered:
"We thought we would play forever. But growing up is inevitable. This is our last concert. Leila is getting married."
"When we, having melted into thin air, naked and dead drunk, returned from Phoenix to the baths of ancient Baghdad, Leila took the hand of our uninvited guest—a local Robin Hood thief hiding from the guards in our baths—and dragged him into her bed. In the morning, she asked him to be her husband. She will bear two sons and is already pregnant now, although she doesn't suspect it yet.
Do you understand now? It is future technology, not magic. It cannot bring back youth."
The night was just beginning. There was excitement after the concert; young Polina was shaking glitter from her hair, and her gray-haired version suggested:
"Let's zip over to see Alice!"
The question "Who is Alice?" rang out almost in chorus. Young Polina, laughing, pointed to a petite girl with short curly hair:
"Alice, or Lisa the Second, is our keyboardist."
A Night at the Pub
The pub Lisa the Second drove us to, located not far from the palace, was a classic London establishment with dark wood, polished brass, and the lingering smell of ale and fried food. We, a surreal procession of 1970s rock stars and time travelers, took over a corner of the room. Elderly Polina and I settled at a heavy oak table. She, looking perfectly at home, ordered a pint of stout and a steak and kidney pie. I followed suit with a local ale and a plate of fish and chips. On the small stage in the corner, elderly Lisa the Second sat at a magnificent concert Steinway and, as if for herself, began playing Ludwig van Beethoven's 'F;r Elise.' The melody flowed through the pub's cheerful noise, creating a pocket of calm around us.

When she finished, the pub regulars, who had quieted down to listen, erupted in applause. Gray-haired Polina, seeing a lonely drum kit on stage, winked at her bandmate.
“Well, Lisa, shall we shake up the old days?” she said, her eyes glinting with youthful mischief. “Time to stretch our bones.”

What happened next was pure magic. The two elderly women, who looked like they should be knitting by a fireplace, unleashed a musical storm. They started with a frantic, mind-blowing improvisation on Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee," turning it into a progressive rock epic. Polina's hands were a blur over the drums, her rhythm precise and powerful, while Lisa’s fingers danced over the piano keys with impossible speed. It was a half-hour show of pure virtuosity that left everyone, including the members of Black Sabbath, utterly jaw-dropped.

As they played, young Polina slid onto the bench next to me, holding a Coke. She watched her older self for a moment, then turned to me and, as if no time had passed, picked up the exact thought her older version had left hanging at the Marquee Club.
"...yes, Leila is getting married," she said calmly. "It was inevitable, though we really thought we would fly through the ages forever, just the four of us."

I was stunned, my fork frozen halfway to my mouth. "How... how do you know what we were talking about?"

Young Polina laughed, a bright, clear sound. "I know everything she knows. We're one and the same, just at different points in time. Our consciousness is linked. We even communicate with an older version, she's well over a hundred now. True, she doesn't travel as much anymore. Prefers her garden in the twenty-second century."

My mind reeled. Before I could process this new layer of impossibility, the duet on stage finished to thunderous applause. Even Ozzy and Iommi, who had been watching from a nearby table with incredulous expressions, were on their feet.
That’s when the real jam session began. On stage were the "Cesarines," now joined by the electrified musicians of Black Sabbath. They launched into "Living Next Door to Alice," and Ozzy, grabbing a microphone, simply howled protractedly into it: "Э-э-э-лис!"
I stood there, drinking my warm beer, taking photos with a camera whose film would never be developed, and realizing with absolute certainty that no editorial office in the world would ever buy this report from me.
Wedding in Ancient Baghdad
In the midst of the merriment, gray-haired Polina announced:
"Leila is getting married! She is waiting for us! Who's coming with me to the wedding?"
An hour later, I, along with this entire incredible company, including Black Sabbath, was loading into the black Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman limousine—Lisa's wedding gift for Leila and Aladdin. The air swam again, and we materialized in the palace garden, which turned out to be in twelfth-century Baghdad.
The wedding was unforgettable. The palace draped in silks, walls covered in ancient sayings. Guests sat on silk cushions embroidered with "Cesarines" at low sandalwood tables. Forty of the princess's ladies-in-waiting commanded hundreds of waiters carrying fruit and wine.
At the feast, they served roasted camel, pilaf, sherbet, and plenty of drinks. The very same equipment set from the concerts in Phoenix and London stood in the garden, and the two musical groups took turns playing and singing with pleasure, entertaining not so much the guests as each other.
It wasn't without a small scandal when the well-tipsy girls habitually stripped naked on stage.
I learned the love story of Leila and Aladdin in great detail. The noble robber, fleeing from the guards, burst into the baths where the princess was singing about her loneliness and dreams at that moment. Forty naked ladies-in-waiting drew their swords and raised them over the bold boy, but Leila stopped them.
"In the morning I will hear his explanations and decide his fate."
She commanded that during her absence, the uninvited guest be soaked and scrubbed according to all the rules of Eastern baths. Forty naked girls of heavenly beauty trampled his back with their heels, rubbed him with hot soap suds, and massaged his joints. Resistance turned into blissful oblivion. After prolonged bath procedures, he was anointed with oils and fed exquisite delicacies: roast lamb with saffron, the sweetest dates, pomegranates, and figs. He was given cold sherbet and tart wine from Shiraz to drink. Then he was put to sleep on a huge bed with feather mattresses and silk sheets, covered by a canopy with thin gauze curtains through which the night breeze flowed.
At this time, the Cesarines traveled to Phoenix for the rock concert. Upon returning, barely standing on her feet, tired and dead drunk, the princess climbed into that same bed where the uninvited guest was sleeping. Finding each other by touch in the darkness of the night, they gave themselves to each other with a passion that surprised even a rock star experienced in refined debauchery. It was the best sex of her life—wild, sincere, devoid of any courtly sophistication.

And when the morning sun filled the room, they came together again, and it was even more beautiful than the passionate haze of the night. Afterward, as she lay in his arms, she finally asked:
“Why did you break into my baths?"
He answered:
"Anyone could see you by paying not with what no one has—silver and gold—but with what everyone has: their worthless life."
"You could have at least thought about your mother, you fool," the princess said affectionately and unexpectedly added.
"Be my husband."
The Chief Judge conducted the wedding ceremony. Aladdin, who, as it unexpectedly turned out, was a descendant of a Novgorod prince exiled to a foreign land, and Princess Leila, the vizier's daughter, exchanged vows. And we, the guests from the future—musicians in t-shirts and leather jackets, the queen in a formal dress, and I, a Moscow journalist—looked like a hallucination in ancient Baghdad. The gifted limousine became the main curiosity of Baghdad. Returning to 2025, we visited the graves of the princess and her husband in modern Baghdad and then stopped by their unexpectedly modest Moscow apartment, where they were still living in 2025.
Epilogue
After the wedding, Leila left the stage. She and Aladdin moved to Moscow; Leila, falling in love with cars, graduated from MAMI (University of Mechanical Engineering), Aladdin graduated from the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty of MSU; she became an engineer and bore two sons. The boys grew up in a typical Soviet environment, but once or twice a year they would "zip over" to see their grandfather the vizier in the twelfth century, just as their peers went to the village to see their grandmother. The vizier, in turn, established trade with the Soviet Union, and later with Russia.
When the children grew up, Leila returned to ancient Baghdad to learn how to govern the state from her father. All her lives—diligent student, rock star, loving wife, talented engineer, caring mother—merged into one.
And me? I returned to my reality with a flash drive in my pocket and a story no one will ever believe. But I was there. I saw it all. And sometimes, re-listening to old recordings of the Cesarines and Black Sabbath, I smile. Because I know reality is far, far madder than we can imagine.
Having written a short sci-fi story, I asked Polina, who had recently become a writer, to publish it on her Proza.ru and LitRes accounts.
In the end, I realized that I had become part of their history. When Polina transported me to '78, she didn't just show me the past—she wove me into the fabric of time. Now I am there forever: a Moscow journalist at a London wedding in medieval Baghdad. A paradox? No. That's simply how time works when touched by the hands of those who know how. Sometimes at night, I wake up with the feeling that I am there again. I hear young Leila's voice, the stomp of Polina's drums, the roar of the crowd at the Marquee Club. It is not a dream. It is an echo. Music creates an echo in space. Time travel creates an echo in eternity. And I will remain part of this echo forever—a witness to the impossible."