Прохор Озорнин - On the Wings of Hope - Prose

“Yes. As I have thought, you are from a bank!” Tommy was totally upset.

“And the last clarification – are you familiar with the processing rules of our system?”

“What kind of system?” Tommy didn’t get it.

“Ah, it turns out that you are dealing with us for the first time. That’s great, we love and respect new clients,” young man in a snow-white suite was the politeness.

“So, as for the rules… they are, actually, simple. In accordance with your recent – or, more precisely, ten-minute and forty-five-seconds ago appeal, we are ready to fulfill your desire with some safety restrictions. We will turn on our system for you – we call it a system of tests. Within this system, you will continue to live and work as usual – with the only difference that your requested desire will be gradually implemented with safety restrictions. In particular, you won’t be able to cause any harm to any living being in this world, especially ones with a soul – any similar action will cause a reciprocal pain in much greater amount. Secondly, a short time later you may start receiving appeals, which are being sent to our CEO, whose deputy you have desired to become. And thirdly and lastly, please remember: to receive absolute power one has to be absolutely perfect and to be perfect means to voluntarily accept all restrictions, imposed by perfection. Also remember that either you or your relatives will be able to ask for a break, having sent another request to our department. Upon termination of system’s functioning, we can ask you to leave us a comment or to tell your friends about it. Please tell, is that clear to you?”

“Not really, but who the heck cares. Where is that system of yours? Can I at least take a look?”

“Oh, very soon our courier service will deliver it straight into your life, don’t you worry. From one to several days are required to completely integrate it, please take note. And yes, I have almost forgotten – its usage will be completely free of charge – for you were already, so to speak, financially reasoned, even though for your debts you have not yet been imprisoned,” joked the guest.

“Very funny!” Tommy squinted his face. “Where do I sign?”

“No signatures are necessary. The fact of your request to our organization was already enough. Await the integration of our system – and goodbye!” and, having that said, the young man in a white suit with a red bow tie waved his hand and went, nearly jumping in the processing, somewhere further on his affairs.

“Darling, who came in there?” a sleepy voice of Tommy’s wife came out of a bedroom as soon as he has managed to slam the entrance door behind this strange visitor of his dwelling place. “Were they from a bank?”

“No, sweetheart, not from the bank!” Tommy shouted in response. “Some kind of strange dealer. Offered some systems. That’s some kind of a madhouse instead of a life!” Tommy said in a fit of temper and plunged himself back into his – or not quite his – gloomy thoughts.

From this information swamp, he was pulled out almost by being dragged by his dear wife, who embraced his neck and put her head on his shoulder.

“Would you like some coffee?”

“All right, thanks. You are my priceless treasure. Don’t throw me away as a loser.”

“Perhaps I will throw you once,” Valencia laughed. “But not earlier than you will turn tail from me yourself.”

“That will hardly ever happen,” he replied and embraced her in return.

“Shall we go together to a grocery shop today?”

“All right, let me just have a breakfast first.”

***

We did tell you that Tommy was catastrophically unlucky – and did you think that we were trying to deceive you? Just like that, once Tommy started coming from his bedroom downstairs to a first floor in order to go together with his beloved for a shopping spree, so beloved by every true American, their domestic cat Jess barred him a road in a literal sense of that word. “Meow?!” she said interrogatively-instructive, having pointed a testing look of her green eyes directly on Tommy, hinting him that from the time of her last feeding an inexcusably great amount of time – certainly, by cats’ standards – have passed already.

“Shoo!” Tommy shouted to her, “I will feed you later. Get out of my sight!”

“Meow!” that hungry cat started yelling even more demandingly and scratched legs of his owner and by coincidence bringer of food.

“Away, silly fluffy!” Tommy shouted with irritation and kicked the cat, who was sitting on a ladder pass. “I will punish you for your bad behavior once I come back!”

“Meeeeeooooowwww!” Jess suddenly grew furious and rushed on her owner’s back, having seized him with her immoderately sharp by human standards claws.

Tommy cried, trying to throw off from his back a newly born predator, twirled in one place, faltered over one of the top stairs and rolled down, head over heels, damning all cat’s kin in general and that of Jess in particular.

“Ouch! My leg! My fucked curved since the childhood leg!” he moaned, having grabbed his right leg and swirling on a first floor right after he has finished his way downwards.

“What has happened to you, daddy?” Mila ran out from her room to incoming noise. “Your leg hurts, is it? Do you want me to blow on it as you did for me, and all your pain will go?”

“It won’t… go,” overcoming flashed pain in own joints and as much as possible calmly replied Tommy. “It’s… sprain, probably. Better call for… your mother.”

“I will do that ASAP, daddy, but let me first feed Jess, you see how she stares at us? And you lie here, have a rest, daddy, you can never rest at work, I heard it from the mother,” Mila said unperturbably with her angelic voice.

***

So, having lain for the first half of the day with bandaged leg in a bed and sadly beholding through a window, how the wife of his neighbor is ineptly trying to park their brand new expensive Porsche car in a garage, having managed to several times throw a slipper into a cat, who has decided to visit her sick owner, Tommy prepared morally for viewing of an evening telecast of “Voice of America”.

Here we need to note that this particular voice, which has many residents of other countries and cities, has always been calming down Tommy. How pleasant it was for his tormented consciousness to listen to it after a hard labor of everyday life and understand that somewhere there, far beyond the World Ocean in other countries, which Tommy never succeeded to visit and which he would barely able to find on a globe without some extra hints from “Google Maps”, new national revolutions are being made for the sake of democracy, and their country, America, blessed by the God himself – in whom Tommy didn’t believe – goes on with her holy mission of protection of various social minorities and strictly, just like a kind police officer, monitors the rights of humans for the sake of peace on the planet Earth. Rights of what people were meant by news announcers, speaking about the recent invasion of Iraq by the USA, approved at the UN level, Tommy never tried to inquire.

This TV telecast was about to begin in several hours, but from a sole boredom Tommy turned on his speaking box before the usual time.

“Idiots, idiots, idiots – they give us the problems all day… fuck you, oh Muslims and idiots, that’s what we are gonna to say!” some newly appeared group of niggers danced, sang and threatened to finish off all Muslim immigrants on a hastily build stage of Detroit under the gaze of many television cameras.

“You are idiots yourself!” muttered Tommy and switched to another TV channel.

“My little fool, my little fool, I sleep with you, I like your rule,” a voice of yet another porno-star, who has gained access to the big scene by well-known and trivial means, sang from a turned-on TV screen.