Natalie Yacobson - Film About the Demon. Daughter of the Dawn

“You want to return to the realm of fairies to take a sip of their magic like a drug,” the children were still humming an ominous countdown. Don’t they sleep at all? Or are they ghosts of children?

Annette walked past the alleyway from which the song was coming. She was no longer drawn to the land of magic, because Cialas was waiting there. It is worth looking at the beautiful angels and fairies, and the claws of the monster will claw in the eyes. The payment for the sessions is blood from your own eyes and phase shifts. Enough for her! The vague image of Atenais beckoned, but the pain in the eyes and in the brain was stronger. She seemed to be burned all over from the inside. Annette staggered home. She noticed that a vaguely familiar girl in an elegant olive-colored dress was walking under the entrance of the skyscraper. It seems she saw this girl in the cinema. Then she was cheerful, flirting with some young man, now she staggered like a drunk, leaning on the base of buildings, leaving bloody handprints on the concrete. Who hurt her? Is she herself or her partner who is no longer around? Annette was not interested in this. But the wounds, like the prints of a dozen razors, were alarming. The girl’s palms seemed to be passed through a meat grinder. Are these the consequences of touching Cialas?

Well! She began to believe that the image from the film could leave the screen! This is absurd! She just fell asleep in the cinema. Stagnation in her career upset her, and her consciousness began to draw her a fantastic world of demons, distracting from the wretched reality.

She and Leah had an apartment on the top floor of a skyscraper. Someone who has not seen how it gets cluttered after Leah’s return from expeditions would call it a penthouse. The only fancy things there were potted palm trees and a small pool with jacuzzi. The antique imitations that Leah adored were not considered luxury by Annette. And the upholstered furniture and carpets had a dilapidated look. Someone pulled the blinds from the windows and scattered a deck of tarot cards on the floor. Perhaps the wind. When she left, she forgot to close the windows.

She was too tired now to clean up the mess. Need to look for pajamas and slippers. As luck would have it, there was neither one nor the other. Maybe she is looking in the wrong place? She no longer remembered where and what she had put. The time spent in the cinema unsettled her. Annette looked at the usual cabinets and shelves, at the fish in a large, wall-mounted aquarium, and saw the heartbreaking scenes of the torture of fallen angels. The frames were spinning in her head. They sucked in consciousness like a funnel.

What to distract yourself with? Can bungle yourself a dinner, forgetting about diet and indispensable fasting before bedtime. There were few items in the fridge: lasagna, a package of frozen patties, a can of caviar and spinach. Well, some more yogurt. You cannot make a feast out of this, as in Nero’s palace. Annette, as luck would have it, was drawn back into the movie. I wanted to get everything that Acte had: feasts, orgies, treasures, power.

“And the screams of fallen angels in their ears, who are being tortured for rebellion,” added the obliging voice of conscience. “You can rule the world and hear them forever!”

Annette turned around, expecting to see someone in red again. The door of the half-empty refrigerator slammed shut itself.

There was no one in the kitchen. The phone was silent. Leah will definitely not call from the excavation site and report on her progress. It seems like there is no one to talk to. Several of Annette’s boyfriends disappeared by themselves, realizing that their pretty girlfriend was not interested in anything but a career. There was no one else to bring home for the night. But there was definitely someone in the living room. Annette felt more of someone’s presence than she saw. In one of the chairs was what looked like a heap of gleaming metal.

Annette didn’t even take a kitchen knife for self-defense. I probably realized that it would be useless.

The silent guest sat in an armchair between the floor lamp and large floor vases. Immediately many short and long limbs entwined the armrests and the carpet. A multitude of pairs of multi-colored eyes sparkled at Annette. If their gaze had not hypnotized, then a feeling of acute panic would have arisen. And so the fear dulled.

It was as if Annette had gone back inside the movie, rather than come home. Or on the contrary, a piece of the film showed up to her.

Cialas sat in her apartment on the top floor of a skyscraper, her eerie clawed paws thrown over one another. It sat in a chair so royally that it began to resemble a throne. Long claws knocked the frames and amphorae off the table. Flowers mixed on the carpet with shards.

The feeling was that it was not able to keep its limbs in a motionless state. Its claws scraped at everything like golden insects. A moment, and they reached for Annette’s face, accidentally touched a tightly curled lock, and it slipped cut off on her sleeve. Anette shook him off in disgust. Wow, the claws of Cialas are really sharper than well-sharpened knives. And it itself is so luxurious that the apartment from his presence began to seem like a royal pyramid.

For some reason, next to him it was difficult to breathe, and there was a feeling of heat, as if from an open oven, where something was burnt.

“The time has come!” the voice of Cialas rang like metal.

“For the film?” she noticed that the TV turned on itself, showing the already familiar footage of the uprising and fall of the angels.

“For embodiment!”

“What?” Annette did not understand, and the claws of Cialas were already playing with her earrings. What if they ripped them out of their ears now, tearing the earlobes? Resisting them is the same as putting your hands in a meat grinder. Annette prepared to endure the pain, but the creature suddenly insinuatingly suggested:

“Do you want to visit the place of Atenais?”

“That is, to become a star?”

“Something like that.”

“It would be cool.”

“But it will be very expensive.”

“Are you offering me a deal?”

There was a long silence. What if all this happens in a dream? There are no monsters that come to your home, even crawling off the TV screen to offer a stunning career. Annette was not afraid of the monster, but that his proposal would be a trick. To promote a starlet into a celebrity, you need not a scarecrow from the movie, but an influential patron from the real world.

“If you were looking for profitable acquaintances, then you found them,” Cialas claws stroked her cheek, slightly scratching, but the touch was pleasant, as if the hot rays of the tropical sun were touching the skin.

The deal also promised to be pleasant. You just need to ask him more about the price, but the multi-pair look of Cialas has already penetrated her brain, informing that she will not be required to join a sect, or trade in drugs, or espionage, as from ordinary worthless stars. Just a little blood.

“But it will not hurt at all,” Cialas embraced her with all his limbs, and on the screen of the dying TV the footage of the fall and uprising of the grandiose winged armies of Alais was still spinning.

“I want to be her,” Annette just thought aloud, when golden claws painfully cut into her chest, drawing some symbols on her flesh.

“And you will!” promised Sialas. “But not forever.”

What does it mean? Not forever! But what’s the difference? She will not live forever. Annette didn’t understand why the multi-colored pairs of eyes narrowed so slyly, but she nodded anyway.

Sam woke up in the dark of the tent. The feeling that someone had called his name was very clear. The hiss still hung in the void: