Guardian Angel. 3. 4. The House of Life

"A GUARDIAN ANGEL"
a mistical novel
by Alexandra Kryuchkova

PART III. 7 SECONDS

3.4. The House of Life

19:32:04
the 53rd km of Moscow Ring Road


I could see nothing anymore because of the belatedly triggered airbags and curtains, but I felt suddenly the car turning at an angle of 60 degrees, and it was about to roll over to the right. The left wheels screeched running along the concrete bump stop line.

BOOM!!!


***
Library of the Universe


The Green-eyed and the Man with a de-energized phantom of Alice in his hands looked out the Window into the World. The Green-eyed said, «The 4th second is the most terrible. „4“ carries death in itself.»

The Nun returned from the world, «A blow to her head, on the left, the door panel smashed kicked her left kidney, but the car didn’t roll over! Her door is the only one that can be opened later.»

The ghosts watched in the Window the car smashed from all sides, thrown to the right after a rear left impact, the trunk opened up.

«Her door,» the Green-eyed sighed, «she hasn’t found that door yet!» and, hovering over Alice’s face, she said, «Wake up, wake up! You still have to light my 11th bonfire in Elabuga!»

I opened my eyes. The face hovering over me gradually became clearer. The Man put me on the floor holding me by the hand. The pain receded. I looked around and saw bookshelves, a table covered with a white tablecloth… I turned to the Window.

«Don’t look outside,» the Man said, turning my ghostly body inside the library. He looked a lot like Ray, but I realized that he was not Ray. Thoughts were confused in my mind.

The Nun looked at me with sadness and said, «You know, Alice, when your grandmother told you in your childhood that you would be able to sleep off in the Other World, you did the right thing not to believe her!»

I looked at the Nun with surprise, and she slowly dissolved into the Window. The Green-eyed asked me almost hopelessly, «Alice, do you remember what you have to do?»

I looked helplessly at the floor. I didn’t.

«You are in the Library of the Universe, because on Earth you are talking with Death.»

«Am I dying on Earth?» I asked.

«Yes,» she nodded. «Do you remember, the astrologer in India said that you must jump to another Space of Options, otherwise, you would die?»

I remembered that fragment quickly enough.

«Fine! At least something! You have already taken one cardinal step, so the outcome of today is not predetermined as 100% death, and your Future is not yet closed. But what you once sowed, you’ll reap now. What must be left in the Past, throw off like a snake sheds its old skin! Finish the unfinished and still hanging like a burden around your neck! If you have any debts, pay them back. But if you don’t eliminate the reason…»

I painfully tried to understand what I had to do there right then, but I couldn’t find an answer. The Green-eyed took my hand. We left the Library through another door and…


***
the House of Life


…and we found ourselves in front of a ghostly building against the background of the blue-black Universe. It had a lot of floors and windows, but almost no lights.

«What’s it?» I asked in surprise.

«Your House of Life.»

«Mine?»

«Each floor is your earthly age, each window on each floor is a certain event at the corresponding age. While life on Earth is not over, the House is constantly changing, being built up, floor by floor. Your Past is firmly fixed, because the events have already happened. On the floors of your past years, you’ll find everything that happened in reality. Pay attention, at the present moment, there are much more floors in the House than you are years old now. But the light in the windows of your Future is so weak that it can hardly be distinguished from the darkness, and the events that may happen if you return to Earth today are dormant there.»

«Does each event exist in its own room?»

«In the Past, yes. The Future is multivariate, so several of them can be in one room at once. When you enter the Future, you see one of the potential scenarios. If it doesn’t suit you, you can find another one and recharge it energetically, with the power of your thought. When an event is realized on Earth, it’s permanently registered in its room, and other options disappear, moving to the Space of Unrealized ones. However, there are exceptions to all rules. Sometimes, even in the Future, there is only one option that cannot be replaced, but this doesn’t apply to the room you are now in.»

We entered the ghostly House and found ourselves at the open doors of the elevator, inside which there were no buttons indicating floor numbers, but buttons with numbers from zero to nine and a small screen to display the dialed combination of one’s years.

«I must leave you for a while to find fragments of the Future needed to be recharge,» the Green-eyed said. «Look for a cold autumn, in the falling leaves of which your reason is hidden.»

The elevator doors closed smoothly. I pressed the buttons and went up. Finding myself in a long corridor of the chosen age floor with many doors, I tried to feel which one to enter, when I suddenly remembered the dream about my funeral in Venice. «Perhaps, I’m in Venice on Earth right now,» I thought and suddenly one of the doors in the distance, right down the corridor, started flickering with a mysterious silvery light. I came up to it and slipped inside…


***
sometime in the Past,
on Leninsky Prospekt


The Man in White standing at the window said, «I need you. You’ll have whatever you want.»

He had appeared in my life right after… But it hurt to remember! Maybe later…

He looked like the Man in Black who would bury me in Venice.

«I know, creativity is important to you,» he continued. «Tell me how I can help and I’ll do it for you.»

I cringed because of the awaken pain. The main thing was not to remember right then what I had tried to nail shut into the Black Box of Memory. So I ran away. Some Force lifted me up one floor above.


***
sometime in the Past,
a flat on the outskirts of Moscow


I found myself visiting a composer. Sliding my gaze along the walls of his room, I discovered pictures of a gloomy city where everything was black: houses, small blind windows with no lights, water, boats, people, except for the ghostly Mist and the Moon. I recognized my favorite city, the City-on-the-Water. But in those pictures, it looked completely cardboard, like the scenery on the stage, — artificial, frightening, sinister…

Me in the Past told the composer about my funeral in Venice dream, and he smiled, «Forget this dream. You never know what it can be dreamt in a sleep. Better write a book about it. And I’ll paint Venice for you. Would you like that?»

…Suddenly, a strange thought came to my mind. I instantly disappeared from that room. The power of my thought transferred me back to the Library.


***
Library of the Universe


I found myself at the bookcase with a shelf with my books. I looked around, but none of the inhabitants of the Library was observed there. I tried to see the titles of the ghostly books, not yet written by me in reality, and one of them, «A Dreams Trap», began to flicker, attracting my attention. I took my «Dream» out of the shelf, opened the last chapter and tried to read the text. Some fragments looked completely hazy, while others, on the contrary, appeared clearly, but that was only my Venetian dream that I would see once more in the Future, and in which the Man in Black would inform someone that I had died in sleep. However, I didn’t have time to finish reading or to comprehend what I had already read. The Man who looked like Ray touched my chin with his palm and lifted my head. He hypnotized me with his gaze, saying, «Alice, you are looking in the wrong place, believe me, the reason for your death wasn’t and won’t be connected with the Man in Black in any way! If you can’t find the reason now, you’ll be buried in 3 days and not at all in Venice… Look at me carefully… It had to do with me!»


***
sometime in the Past,
Open Literary Club,
a party dedicated to Alexander Blok


Lyudmila Koroleva put me on the poster. I would open the literary party in memory of Alexander Blok. We had a mystical connection. He had been the first of the poets to enter my life with that old volume of poems, which for several years after the death of my mother had been my desk book. At the final exams at school, I had got a topic about Blok. At the written exam to enter the Academy, I had written an essay about Blok. At the oral exam in literature, I had been asked about Blok. I knew so many of his poems by heart that I could recite them without a pause for about an hour. The entrance exam in Russian and Literature had been the last one. The previous ones I had passed with excellent marks, and, having pulled out the topic about Blok, I had already realized that I would have been accepted to the Academy. And some time before the party, my colleague, a poet, had given me a book «Alexander and Love».

The hall the event took place was flooded with the Sun light. On the table, there was tea and sweets. One of the guests smiled in a strange way, asked me to step aside for a minute and, with undisguised joy at the anticipation of my reaction, asked, «Do you know that your MWWN…» She added two words and made a meaningful pause, but I answered automatically, «I’m happy for him.» The woman, obviously upset that my earthly body hadn’t collapsed instantly, began to shower me with details, savoring them, clearly putting a special meaning into the words, periodically inserting as a refrain, «And you loved him so much! You wrote him such poems! He considered you absolutely worthless! While she… And he made for her…» At the end of her memorial service, she put into my lifelessly lowered hand something that looked like a brick in a luxurious gift box, «This is for you! My present! A soap! Handmade!»

«You forgot to add the rope,» I thought.

Lyudmila Koroleva announced the party open and called me onto the stage. I was standing in the sun-drenched hall at the microphone without realizing who was speaking instead of me there, because I was outside myself.

On the eve of that party, at my cottage, all the windows had been closed as well as the doors. I didn’t understand the way a tit had appeared in the room on the upper floor. But I had known everything without that tit. And not in May, when our mutual friend had come to visit me, «Do you know our latest news?» and I had looked at him so that he had immediately fallen silent. And not even in April, when the Book of Changes had whispered, «The old man marries a young girl.» I had known that the first time I had come to visit him and he had looked at me in admiration introducing me to the audience as Marina-Anna and promising to make me the Queen and not only… The next morning, I had arrived into the office we worked together with Svetlana, and she had tried in vain to understand what had happened that night, «Did you quarrel?» No, nothing bad had happened yet, but it would, and I wouldn’t be able to change anything.

I was driving home in the left line along the Moscow Ring Road from the party in memory of Alexander Blok. 120, 130, 140… Fragments popped up in my mind one by one, including his message at midnight some days before, the height of cynicism, «Darling, I bought you a magic stone as a gift!» I remembered my own prophetic poems, and the words of that woman with soap. There was no need to live in the world for the «absolutely worthless» one. I wanted only that someone would drive bumping into me, instantly, so that I wouldn’t feel pain anymore… Never again…

Key to the right! Pedal up to the floor!
Why 40? — No, faster! — My carriage, take off!
110 — buy a medal for tea!
You’re worthy of it, and your neck will be warmed!

Enough — to the Sky! — 120 — quatrains!
Louder, music! — A net full of traps! —
130 — Don’t be scared of flames! —
Only house explodes! So, pillows, relax!

Who am I? — 140 — Confessions?! — No, worse!
An outcast for — tender love! — and plus 10 —
Throwing harshly three dots in the end,
You shot at the Boundlessness, not at my heart!

Books — 200 — each, are just paper, some sheets!
Well — 210 — a tsunami! — That’s it…
A careless pawn on the road… — Goodbye,
habits! — plus more and plus more — with an eye

on Eternity…