The Blog

"Had a glorious revel?"

"Bet your butt! Everything in strict complying to their rituals. Where the Holy Book of Codified Rules states plain and clear: A player from the winning team to be decapitated."

"What for? It's not cricket!"

"Wanna discuss it with their priests?. You, as usual, faded in the woodwork, and the UF-1 was discarded by their high priestess Esma. 'Too greenshitty,' sez she, 'this here stiff.' And now you’ve got three tries to figure out: who of UltraFuckers got circumcised about his neck?"

"Why?!"

"In keeping with their special technology, they add rubber coating to the skull of a player from a particularly impressive team to make a lucky sports equipment. A black ball with a surprise filling. A kinda rabbit’s foot, you know."

"How come you’re here then?"

"As any other GI, buddy. On the AWOL, of course… Whoops! The MP popped up. I’d better split! And be easy with that Ctl-Alt-Delete short cut!."

Inokenty looked back, but could make out no military police patrol. Or any at all, for that matter…

However, UF-2 gave up winking at him and kept dumbly mum on his stand, so Inokenty, to avoid getting caught pants down—in a friendly talk to marble, some choice company indeed!—proceeded to the box and got seated in the same chair as before.

Soon Maya also came to say that this here Minnie they met in the buffet, though a complete fool, still has an aunt and tomorrow…

That moment the overture for the second part began to play…

They played too loudly again, and over again Inokenty closed his eyes painfully and, wincing in the inner dark, played with the information received from UF-2. Which undertaking served him a kinda distraction from the distress of being kicked and beaten up by a host of mares the night before.

The fingers of the left hand mechanically (and still in the darkness) typed the short-cut mentioned by Parthos, in the taut plush along the barrier top: Ctl-Alt-Delete…

His ear drums hardly survived the volley of relentless applause and thunderous cries of discordant "Hurrah!" A sting of piercing smartness deluged his closed eyes. He had to open them.

Both the box and the entire hall of the theater was veiled up, if not swaddled, with a bluish thick fog. Everyone around was smoking.

Spectators smoked in the boxes as well as those in the stalls.

Maya was smoking to the right from Inok… no! it's not Maya! Where's she?

A girl in a red scarf on her hair was smoking, instead of Maya, to the right from Inokenty.

Everybody smoked and clapped. Loudly. Inhumanly. Cruelly clapped they and smoked. Smoked all, both the conduc…

Hell no! The conductor was not there, neither were the musicians…

The timber platform spanning the orchestra pit was mounted with a long table. From behind it, the theater was faced by the line of people in tunics and army jackets except for one or two at the table ends in civilian neckties. Those also kept smoking.

A man with a thick mustache, smack bang in the middle of the jamboree table, ostensibly crushed his cigarette against the glass wall of the decanter put in front of him.

From out of his pocket, he produced another one, lit it up and waved the burning match nearby his ear so as to extinguish its flame.

Shouts of "Hurrah!" intensified.

Is that their conductor?

Above the stage, behind the backs of those sitting in the presidium, a wide band of red cloth stretched across the full width of the stage.

Bold white letters hollered in merciless yells:

"GREETINGS TO THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE THIRD CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST YOUTH INTERNATIONAL!"

A short man in a gray overcoat and cap crossed the stage behind the table, doffed it, the overcoat, and folded it into a cushion to sit down on the proscenium.

A notebook whipped up into his hands, where he started to jerkily enter some notes.

The unabating applause began to stumble, slow down, subside. Yet, the smoke grew thicker.

Inokenty remembered his chat-room friend Leopold, an advertising agent from Dublin, who once explained to him in a chat conversation that the sight of a writing person unavoidably attracts attention, even if the scribbler was not a chick.

This bald-headed actor there, below his box, did know how to sell himself, he surely had the tricks of the trade at his fingertips.

The scratch number performed, he rose and took the floor behind the rostrum to change the miss-en-scene so that only his bust above the necktie knot, remained in sight.

‘Com'gghids!’ exclaimed the minion of Melpomene with thickly guttural burr, and that very moment, despite the glued-on goatee and mustache, Inokenty recognized the bald crown of UF-2. The artful SOB went on another of his AWOL's!.

The cloth in the shoulder of the blue frock coat got clamped within the bunch of callused fingers of a labor-hardened hand stuck out of the sleeve in a leather jacket while the gnarly dome of the same man, the hand owner, topped with a visored cap, also of leather, with a hefty red star in the band, jutted above the buttoned up collar:

"Is this him?"’

"Ies!"’ replied a voice full of Georgian accent, from behind Inokenty. "I figward him from out the prezudum, eh! Dis herre White Guard bustarrd. In all dis whole tiatyr, only dis herre agent of the Entente no smokes!"

"Don’t worry, Lavrent Palych,” said the dickens in the leather jacket, “we’ll check this here hydra of imperialism."

‘…lea'gghn, lea'gghn, lea'gghn, and lea'gghn once again!’ urged on the burring tooter from beneath the box barrier.

The shocking blue fabric in the shoulder of the frock coat started to give in to the pull, ratcheted into the bulge of contracting fist.

"I’m fucked!" shakily formed the parting thought of Inokenty. His fingers clawed in desperate ramification of the the wide-spread Ctl-Alt-Delete shortcut into the barrier top…

There sounded a half-hearted clapping, uncertain, stifled, fading…

"No, I liked the first part better’, Maya said. ‘And you? Oyaa! What have you been caught on? Look! The shoulder seam’s burst asunder!"

* * *

Bottle #35: ~ Standing The Heat In Social Networks Kitchen ~

A year and 2 months past the dexterous breaking of the padlock (or rather, it still stayed locked, hanging idly alongside the broken hasp from the same ring in a door jamb of the lazy mouse’s house), the electricity flowed to Yezznaggomer Village thru the aluminum wires stretched atop the iron poles installed by the employees of the state company ArtsakhEnergo.

Lots of half-forgotten pastimes came within reach. I brought my PC from Stepanakert, and the weekly wet cleaning of the house started to be done to the sounds of the Golden Collection of Rock and Roll, and buying lavash bread from Lachin City was obliterated altogether.

Instead, I began buying 25-kg sacks of flour from there and mastered baking bread in an electric oven.