Guardian Angel. 3. 3. Labyrinth of the Subconsciou

"A GUARDIAN ANGEL"
a mistical novel
by Alexandra Kryuchkova

PART III. 7 SECONDS

3.3. The Labyrinth of the Subconscious

19:32:03
the 53rd km of Moscow Ring Road


I opened my eyes. A meter from the nose of the car, there was a concrete wall that separated the opposite roadways, into which I was about to bump at an angle of 90 degrees.

«It’s all over!» I instantly summed up mentally.

«Not yet!» someone’s voice sounded inside me, and immediately, that someone inside me, with my earthly hands, turned the steering wheel to the right at its maximum.

BOOM!!!


***
Library of the Universe


The Man carefully took the weak phantom of Alice in his hands, slightly rocking her like a child and quietly whispering one of his Silver Age spells. But her hands were lifelessly lowered, and more and more blood stains appeared on the ghostly dress.

The Nun sat down on the windowsill at the Window into the World with a ghostly cigarette in her fingers. The Green-eyed woman read a chapter from the «Book of Knowledge» already written by Alice in reality and said the banal, «M-yes! Sometimes, it’s useful for a well-forgotten one to surface.» She placed the book on the table covered with the snow-white tablecloth and went up to the Nun, «Did you manage to turn the steering wheel?»

«Yes, finally, the pillows and curtains have worked. The third blow to the head on the left. And to her ribs. Severe chest contusion. The bones are intact, but it’ll hurt to breathe.»

«… but it’ll hurt to breathe…» I heard a voice and opened my eyes. The shimmering zigzags, I had already got used to, dissipated. I began to distinguish familiar bookshelves.

The Man gently put me on the antique parquet floor and supported me by the hand. The Green-eyes asked, «Alice, don’t you understand yet what’s happening?»

I shook my head negatively, trying to piece together what kept falling apart.

«Do you remember what you have to do?»

I pondered. It seemed that I had already been there, in the Library of the Universe, and not so long before. I thought they had advised me to find something. Perhaps a book?

All three of them, reading my thoughts, nodded in agreement, and the Green-eyed sighed, «Well, also the book.»

The Man who looked like Ray said softly, looking me straight in the eye with his hypnotic gaze, «Alice, what’s the most painful for you to remember?»

The Green-eyed silently held out my «Book of Knowledge». I didn’t understand what they were getting at. Then the woman abruptly took my hand, and I followed her along the endless racks until we slipped through another door and…


***
the Labyrinth of the Subconscious


In the hopelessly black space, I saw absolutely nothing but myself and my companion.

«Where are we?» I asked with horror.

«In the labyrinth of your Subconscious.»

«But I don’t see any corridor here!»

«You don’t want to see.»

«Why?»

«We are in the most remote place, in the basement, where your deepest pain is hidden. In the Black Box of Memory. You need to open it.»

«What for?»

«In order to not die on Earth today.»

«What will happen today? Are we talking in my sleep now?»

«It doesn’t matter. Let it be in your sleep.»

«But I don’t have the key to the Black Box!»

«You have, Alice. Moreover, only you have it. Fear of pain prevents you from using this key. But you’ll either open your Black Box or be stuck here for a long time. You’ll turn into a prisoner of Eternity and be doomed to wander in the Subconscious for decades, or even centuries, chaotically falling into fragments of the Past, sorting them through at random in order to finally find the reason for imprisonment and eliminate it. Only after that you’ll be allowed to continue your Path.»

I had a terrible headache. Fear pulled me to run away, but I believed the Green-eyed woman for some reason, or rather, I knew she was telling the truth.

The space began to change. I saw a long corridor and stepped into it with difficulty, because I felt my own resistance. I forced myself to take one more step, and one more, and more, and finally, I saw many doors on both sides of the corridor. I turned around. The Green-eyed was still at the entrance to the labyrinth.

«Go ahead, you don’t have much time! Feel the right door and enter inside!»

I was walking down the black corridor that seemed endless. I was scared to look at the doors on the sides, because as soon as I started peering into them, they came to life. A rose suddenly appeared on one of the doors, and it was breathing, its petals were pulsating. On another door, there was my photo, and it came to life, too: I was playing the guitar. The sounds of the song I had once sung made me remember that evening in that house! And the pain overwhelmed me so much that I wasn’t able to see those doors anymore! I ran into the distance along the black corridor to get to the saving exit as quickly as possible. It must be somewhere! But the corridor ended… with a DOOR!

I turned around to run back, to exit the labyrinth through the door I had got there, but right in front of me, a huge stone wall grew out of nowhere. The corridor was cut off, a trap! I tried to get through the wall, but I didn’t succeed! All I could do to get out of there was to go through the door in front of me, and I went through it…


***
once in the Past,
a flat on Polyanka


A white room. My Teacher was sitting in the chair opposite. I saw myself coming to him to erase the memory of the Man who caused pain, The Man Who Was Not, or simply MWWN.

«Cross yourself, exhale and say „Thank God!“ If it had been otherwise, you would have died. The word „death“ comes up to my mind,» said the Teacher.

«But why? Is it possible to die of happiness?» Me in the Past asked.

«When information comes to you from There, can you always explain why?»

«No.»

The Teacher sent Me in the Past to the cinema to rewind the movie tape back to the point from which to erase the memory. So, in the Teacher’s room, I looked at Me in the Past, watching a non-color movie fragment related to the story about me and the MWWN, watching quickly, almost without peering, because I didn’t want to relive it all again.

We had met in a restaurant then. The MWWN looked into my eyes intently and asked, «Are you crazy?»

I realized, he had looked at my stars in the Heavenly passport and had seen there the Moon in Gemini in the 12th Sphere in opposition to Neptune in the 6th Sphere, one of the signs of schizophrenia and other mental disorders. «However, the Moon, being the ruler of my destiny, in a binary Sign always gives the right to choose! So I play the Moon in a different way — writing about Another Reality, therefore, there’s nothing wrong with my mind.

«Did you take drugs?»

«Why do you think so badly of me? You don’t know me at all. Despite the drug addiction formula, I don’t drink and have never taken drugs, because not everything that the stars incline one to from birth is bound to happen in one’s life! Everyone, knowing one’s predisposition, has the right to adjust the scenario.»

«Did you try to exit the Earth?»

I grinned, he quoted stars of my Natal Chart, indeed!

«Well, life put me in situations no one would like to live in, neither me, nor you, nor anyone else. But I am sitting in front of you now, in front of the Man who is registered in my Heavenly passport! The Man to whom I’ll write my best poems, and who…»

No, that was enough. I could no longer watch the movie, it hurt me, and Me in the Past categorically pronounced to the Teacher, «Done.»

«Get up from the last row. Go to the operating room. Get the tape. Find that black and white fragment. Take scissors. Cut it out… Glue the full-colored film: what was before that fragment and what was after. Now douse the cut piece with gasoline and set it on fire. Let the ashes into the wind and open your eyes… How do you feel now?»

Me in the Past quite unexpectedly quoted the lines of my verse «The Monastery», «But I know, on the very edge of April, under the White Moon, you’ll suddenly come for me in my deaf chamber…»

The Teacher winked enigmatically at Me in the Past, «I see this picture as clearly as you,» and we said goodbye.

I walked out the door and found myself…


***
Venice


…at the cemetery! Surrounded by tombstones! I came up to one of them and read, «Joseph Brodsky».

«How did I end up in Venice? What am I doing here? Perhaps it’s just the dream, which the Man in Black buries me here in. Nobody would be at my funeral. How will I die? Or am I already dead? Maybe I’m a ghost, returned here to unravel the cause of my death.»

Some voices were heard in the distance. They were calling me. I caught up with them and… Suddenly, I remembered joyfully that I was there with a group of writers and poets, at the seminars of E. B. Rein and V. Erofeev! Dmitry Nemelstein, a poet and historian, came up to me, «Alexandra, don’t be sad! You’ll succeed!»

«I’m not sleeping! Yes! Exactly! He addressed me by my earthly name! We were there for a tour of the places of Brodsky!» My memory returned, I gradually remembered how we had left Milan by bus, got to the pier of San Marco and arrived by boat to the cemetery island of San Michele.

Suddenly, someone took my hand. I turned around and… my nightmare returned! I saw in front of me the Man in black robes with a white collar, an inhabitant of the Library of the Universe! He hypnotized me with his gaze, saying, «Alice, you must not think about death right now. You need to really want to live, otherwise you’ll never get out of here. Let’s go. I have to show you something. It doesn’t hurt. Close your eyes…»


***
sometime in the Future,
Alice’s kitchen


The sounds of music from Mansurova’s seminar immersed me into Another Reality. I knew that my next Solar year, or my next birthday, would come soon, and I was going to leave for Vysotsk to change the stars above my head…

Mountains appeared against the background of the blue-black Universe. I walked into the distance to the ringing bells, passed along the corridor formed by the monks, and saw another Staircase. I climbed it and there, at the top, I was met and kissed three times by the Empress Alexandra (called Alice before her orthodox baptism). Descending the Staircase, I saw a man walking towards me, and myself in a white dress, and the ghostly outlines of a church unknown to me…

«Alice!»

I turned around and found the Green-eyed woman in front of me.

«If you want this to happen, you need to want it very badly right now!»

«I really do!» I whispered back to her, at the same time realizing that my strength was leaving me again. My head hurt and I found it hard to breathe. I looked at my dress. It was no longer white, but orange, with blood stains on it. I turned and saw myself there, in the Universal Church, with unknown phantom man… once in the Future… But I saw again the familiar flickering zigzags and, behind them, a barely visible dial, one of its hands loudly shifted to the right…

To clinking of a fragile glass,
that day brought on a silver platter
my cherished dreams, — they all came true
with the precision of a pattern!

My restless soul is smiling like
an angel, carefree, while writing
another heavenly light verse,
has no hurry for the final.

It’s funny in the earthly space
to look at monuments so orphan,
I’ll soon be there meeting with
Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Brodsky.