Tales of Ghosts. Playing Another Reality. Edgar Allan Poe award

“Do you know what is there?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” the Man replied indifferently.“They say, there is the City of the Sun beyond the fog. However, not everyone can reach it.”

“Are you from the City of the Sun?”

“I don’t think so,” the Man grinned. “More likely, from the Land of Dreams’ Dungeon.”

The queue moved forward a little.

“So, are you an atheist?” I supposed.

“Not anymore,” he sighed.

Suddenly, a girl of about five years old emerged from the fog. She ran between us and immediately disappeared.

“Are the kids in the queue, too?”I wondered.

“I guess so,” the Man replied and shrugged.

The Girl emerged from the fog again, but from the other side. For a moment she stopped next to us and then turned to me.

“There’s a cat waiting for me there! And who is waiting for you?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged.

“Weird!” the Girl said thoughtfully. “There must be someone waiting for you! If there was no one waiting, you wouldn’t be here!”

I smiled, and the Girl disappeared in the fog at once.

Soon we reached the bonfire on the side of the road.

“Well, we can relax until morning,” the Man said.

A shadow of a woman separated from the fire and approached us.

“Join us!” she suggested.

The Man and I sat down by the bonfire. How many of us were there? Anyway, I couldn’t count, Mr. Fog clearly didn’t want us to see each other …

“What are they throwing into the bonfire? There is no wood at all!” I asked the Man in a whisper.

“Stories!” he smiled.

“And you both will definitely tell us yours, too,” the Woman smiled, handing cups of tea from a thermos to me and my neighbor.

“What for… tea and thermos?!” I asked the Man, without ceasing to be surprised at what was happening, when the Woman left for the fog.

“It’s more familiar,” the Man answered calmly, and at the same moment a sad female voice sounded out of the fog.

“He told me, ‘See you tomorrow!’…” I heard it and regretted I had nothing with me to write down the stories thrown into the bonfire by ghosts that night …

But… if I ever come back…

1. See you tomorrow!

Natasha adored the theater since childhood and went to premieres almost every weekend. A tall, slender, blue-eyed blonde, with an uncommon power to attract men, she had just graduated from the best Theatre Institute and decided to devote herself to the stage. Late autumn, Natasha played her first major role. Tired but happy, she was walking to the dressing room, when suddenly someone caught up with her and took her by the hand.

“Congratulations! You were great!” Sergey, the theatre director, said enthusiastically.

“Thank you,” Natasha replied calmly. “I don’t like compliments. See you tomorrow!”

…Sergey returned home and, as soon as he crossed the threshold, he heard the usual words.

“Try walking in my shoes! I’m so tired of your nightly returns!”

“We had a premiere tonight. And you knew about it. I offered you to come, but you refused! And Natasha was amazing! A really talented actress. Not what I thought of her.”

“That bitch must have already confessed her love to you, and you hung up your ears, idiot!”

“Don’t talk like that,” he asked wearily.

“The theatre became everything to you! You sneezed on me and on our son! You live your own life in which there is no place for us! And you appear and disappear like a ghost!”

“You’re wrong,” Sergey tried to argue.

“No, I’m right! Theatre is an entertainment for idlers, a waste of time! Lazybones! You adore doing nothing, and the theatre is your shelter!”

Sergey silently turned around and walked off into the night.

…It was snowing outside. He wandered along the road, wherever his eyes looked, immersed in heavy thoughts. He loved his family. And his wife, he had loved. Sergey for the first time realized the gravity of the past tense verb! Yes, he had loved, once upon a time, because everything was long gone. Flat-dacha-flat. To plant potatoes. To buy groceries. To take them there. To pick up from here. To fix the faucet. To give money for a fur coat… When he tried to talk with his wife about something unearthly, she was completely uninterested. So, he withdrew into himself, and the only outlet for his soul became that small experimental theater he had recently established. The theatre was the only thing that kept him on Earth. He plunged into his brainchild and lived in the theatre for real. Sergey caught himself thinking that everything had been turned upside down: he was himself in the theatre, while he became an actor in real life…

Turning automatically to the right into a small lane, Sergey reached the playground and sat down on a swing. Suddenly, as if sensing something, he turned around. Behind him, a girl was sitting on exactly the same swing.

“Natasha! What are you doing here?”

“Don’t you know I live there?” pointing out the house across the street, she asked in surprise.

Sergey remembered that he had paid attention during the interview to the address, indicated in her CV, although said nothing about their shared neighborhood.

“Sorry, I forgot,” he apologized embarrassed, “but why aren’t you at home?”

“I slammed the door, and then realized that I had left the keys in the flat. The neighbors are asleep, and it’s still a long way till morning. I’m sitting here wondering what to do…”

“Do you live alone?”

Natasha nodded. He wanted to ask something else to keep the conversation going, but…

“When you don’t know what to talk about, it’s better to keep silent,” she suddenly said. “Listen, how quiet it is! What stars! We’re always running and looking down at our feet. And they’re always up there, so beautiful. They are looking at us… There’s the brightest one! When I die, will I reach that star?”