Прохор Озорнин - On the Wings of Hope - Prose

“Teacher, Chris!” I cried out loudly, trying to overcome the noise of the strengthening wind.

He turned back. A weak smile appeared on his dried up lips.

“Peter, my sonny, is that you? They caught you too, yes? Forgive me, sonny… please forgive me… I should foresee that that will once happen.”

“Teacher, but why?! Why everything has come to this at last? Did they… have they been lying to us all that time?!”

It was still visible that Chris smiled once more with his not obeying lips.

“And here and now, my sonny, you have awakened at last,” he muttered, and during that same instant, a roar of the gushed wind silenced all other sounds.

I saw, how four men dragged my mentor somewhere in the direction of a building's corner – I tried to rush for aid, only to have been instantly seized by same three men, dressed in white cassocks.

“Stop twitching, oh brother,” smiled one of them.

When several seconds after his holiness appeared before my eyes once again – I was surprised no longer.

“And as for you, my son… we must perform the procedure of… cleaning, so that your brain can become sacred and holy once more and not a single demon even had the chance to crept into it!” and he smiled. “Seize him! In the name of the Patriarch!”

My entire world ruined in a single flash of time. Everything I trusted, all that I hoped for – everything became nothing. All was in vain. And when my… brothers… seized me – I resisted no more. That was no longer necessary.

“May the Divine will guide me forevermore,” a thought came an instant before a weighty wooden club of one of the white brothers landed on my head…

26.05.2005

Salary… such a sweet word! Honest payment for your work, your self-pressure, your idleness, your indifferent-sad swaying day by day through a stuffy office, your hypocrisy, your self-interest, your eye and brain-washing, your rearrangement of papers from one folder into another and hours of life, thrown into a garbage can; your suppressed, decaying, thrown out on boondocks of Universe individuality… such a bitter word! Here it is, lying before your very eyes…

Sweetly crackling recently got out from a printing house colored pieces of paper with different numbers, drawn upon them… how lovely and, apparently, innocently do they rustle, demanding your attention! There are lots of them in a short-term and so little in a long one at the same time… Here and now you accurately recalculate them all, trying not to evade even a single instance of this illusory delight, already estimating in own thoughts on what you are going to spend all these riches in the nearest future. Such is the deification and meaning of the job of a man, an embodiment of hopes and expectations of millions, now in your hands as well - crackling so impatiently-sweet, stupefying your sense of smell… You have been burning all these days in a chamber of times along with a unique possibility of self-learning, granted to you, knowingly, fastidiously and irrevocably for a reason - and have finally received a well-deserved, earned, acquired with a blood bribe! Each and every piece of it. Now you can buy much…

In this world of yours almost everything can be bought for these colorful pieces of paper, right? Things, feelings, words, honor, and conscience of men… even, probably, souls of some - from those that are purchased cheaply and by the gross. But you are most certainly not some awful demon from the underworld, yes? You will be satisfied just with things and feelings… to begin with. So let the offer forms the demand even further.

Surprising, unusual, delightful world! And why were you born in it only now – and where have you been wandering during all your last times? Oh, it matters no more from now on! Here it is, your own salary, lying absolutely-totally nearby… Oh, such a nice day it's today – one of your most awaited and expected. A true Event! And so you have already started dreaming of how you will spend fairly or not totally so earned sum… Oh, such a pleasure it is – to spend… Buying, buying, buying… consuming, consuming, consuming. Probably if you had plenty of those paper pieces, you would certainly buy the whole Universe itself… such is a pity that it's not for sale! You already know what you will buy first, you have already made a plan… the most grandiose Plan of the purchase and sale of your life. How strange is that it looks so similar to the ones of your planet's relatives… fucked stereotyped plagiarists – that's who they are! Oh, let this tiresome working day end as soon as possible for one of the reckonings with your salary to come into action.

How wise are your planet's colleagues – they have already invented a universal price-list of everything. A payment for each and every sin. Yes, that's right – for any sin ever made by them. And you are certainly not going to be original in this business, yeah? It's a pity that seasonal discounts are not yet in action, however, the prices have practically been made stable. Amazing world! And how did you even image to survive in it without that very salary of yours? The one wishing to be on sale or to sell finds the owner or the buyer – and he finds his own… Each buys each one – except for a small group of fools, having no desire to live according to uniform private earth law. A vicious circle – but whether it was you who have created it first? You were simply born in this already built-up world of your ancestors… and what's the point to really alter it? To buy, to buy, to buy… to sell, to sell, to sell! Since the time someone has invented money, it became so simple… so naturally – as natural as you grab your long-awaited wages. And what would you cost without it… cost as a man? But what's the reason to measure your value by a different criterion when you have money on hands and in mind, and time of your life has been converted in it in advance for a lot of upcoming years… for there are plenty of things this world has to sell you! In exchange for this next salary of yours…

Have no fear, take it. You have deserved it, after all, earned, right? This money is now yours by right – sort of a universal man's measurement tool. And its amount has been growing with each passing year – a true equivalent of your market cost… and only now, having got this new salary, your feel yourself truly happy. Your heart sings in joy for you know how much do you cost – a whole heap of colored crackling pieces of paper…

14.08.2011

Dirt. Slush. Dampness. Decay's smell. Water, dripping from a ceiling.

It used to be here so for a time being. No one was ever going to fix this cellar, and it was unimportant for inhabitants of this house – totally and irreversibly. They, too, were unimportant for those tenants, not to anyone, not to anybody.

Only a few ones aided them and responded to their requests… immensely simple requests, so easy for these rich tenants. To give some money – as little as they can, as much as impossible. To bring a small piece of bread – for they were starving to death.

Practically nobody ever helped. So few ones.

Why? Why? Why?

What an immense amount of boldness was required for them in order to address someone! To plead for help in the condition, in which they were, for now, to stand against a gaze, full of hatred and contempt.

What for did men despise them? For, when their father died and mother passed away from this world as well, having choked in some furious illness, for, when this has happened, government expropriated their apartment from them – so totally young, and since then they have been doomed to wander through courtyards and cellars, by hook or by crook finding even a single piece of bread? Stealing so seldom, so much often – just to beg. To plead for help, for aid with something – what can be given, can be spared. They were left with the last possibility of survival – a sincere human request, addressing the hearts of men… But almost no one ever dared to help.