‘You’re still weak,’ he whispered, hiding her hair lock came out behind her ear.
‘What was that?’ Victoria asked in a sepulchral voice.
‘What’re you talking about?’
‘About the man.’
Kharon glanced in surprise at the girl, lying in his arms. A suspicious creeped into his mind what a man was there and why the demon didn’t see him. Holding Victoria in his arms Kharon sat down on the big bed, which size was more than standard one. The demon was examining her face in disarray, taking out by atoms threads impregnated with self-reproach, putting on the new feeling. The only thing he didn’t understand was how it was possible to have so extensive range of feelings?
‘With a loop on her neck. He was standing near the table then rapidly headed towards me. I was scared. He had so… empty and lifeless face. Didn’t you see him?’
Kharon nodded his head.
‘Why can I see them? What’s wrong with me? I’m insane, aren’t I? Oh, my dear.’
The girl put her cold palms on the warm, bristled cheeks of the silent man. She tried to feel every inch of his fabulous face, convincing herself of her more or less sane mind. Feeling his warmth running through her hands frozen with fear, she perceived it shoot at her capillaries, waking them up from sudden winter sleep, immersing them into a wonderful autumn evening. Vic touched his lips with hers. She closed her eyes. Here his warmth was…the fire which she had been looking for to get warm, understand that she was alive. No madness was left. Life was in full swing.
Kharon didn’t move but voluptuously answered the girl’s kiss. No, he didn’t turn into a sanctimonious person, he just fought and subdued his crazy feelings, he mocked his burning passion and desire to grab the ginger puny girl and despite of anything to demonstrate his many-thousand-year experience, do something unusual and unbelievable in the middle of human abyss of ordinary and banality.
But Kharon didn’t touch the girl with his fingertips. He was capable of waiting.
Victoria was getting deeper into the kiss, thinking that she was about to get her mind back but in fact she didn’t notice her losing her mind. The demon’s sensual lips played tricks with her mind. Her disobedient hands lasciviously and awkwardly tried to unbutton his shirt to touch his “divine” body. She wanted so much to feel a life streaming through his muscles into the black soul.
‘No, no, no… If you don’t stop me then I must do it…’ she whispered, embracing hard the petrified man.
‘Do you know how much strengths I need not to fall upon you and get known what to rape means by my own? I know only too well that you’re not gonna let me go further than your childish kisses. Tell me, by the way, why?
‘Ah…’
‘Wait, I’ll do it myself. Romanticism, right?’ he gave her a poisonous frowned look, buttoning his shirt. ‘We’re studying what romanticism means. I remember, dear, I really do.’
Kharon got up from the bed and added lighter, adjusting his hair and collar. Victoria closed her eyes and fell on the bed.
‘I’m so stupid…’ she said quiet.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘No, Kharon. There’s something wrong with me. If I’m not insane then I’m stupid.’
‘Your tea got cold, dear. Let me do a new one for you and you’ll say me your thoughts and sufferings as regards what exactly deprived you from saying “yes” to me. You did really want to say it. I heard you begging your stubbornness and it repeated about romanticism. You’ll say me in detail what I should be ready for while I’m advance studying the XXI century romanticism.’
Victoria hardly didn’t laugh when she was on the bed. She couldn’t still get over and understand that with no difficulty the demon penetrated her mind and absorbed all her thoughts and after it he threw them like lances into the girl hinting at “Look what your naughty mind was thinking of while your body was so irreproachable”.
‘You’re insufferable. Stop getting into my mind.’
‘Alas, dear, it’s impossible. I can hear your thoughts as clear as your voice.’
‘How can you distinguish them?’
‘Like linguists… by the con-text.’ Kharon smiled. ‘Moreover, if I took everything that you think, like a sign to act, we’d have already had something that could be described in more than a book. And some of your thoughts, I’m certainly sure, you’d never ask to release. Unfortunately…’
Vic sat on the edge of the bed, trying to understand how she felt. She seemed to have come to herself, but the memories of that man didn’t live her alone. Through the laughing and enjoyment, she was sending away the bad vision. Her all efforts were futile.
As soon as they came back to the kitchen, Victoria understood the man go nowhere.
‘Kharon’ Vic whispered, grabbed his hand.
He stared at the girl: she was pale, her eyes scared, her hands were shaking. Kharon unwittingly thought that the girl was about to faint with fear. To be on the safe side he embraced her.
Victoria was staring at a point not moving and breathing. Her fingers squeezed the man’s hand seeking for defence and support. Her fingers were so cold and tenacious. Her heart was beating in a crazy way, her chest heaved pushing out the air. The girl was looking at him whom Kharon didn’t see.
‘Is he here?’ the demon asked the girl in a low voice.
She nodded silently, being unable to tear herself away from the spirit.
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Looking. Pointing at his neck…’ Vic held back tears.
‘What does it mean?’ Kharon glanced at the girl carefully.
‘What the hell do I know!’ she sobbed. ‘It hurts so much inside me. My heart hurts. It’s empty and broken. I’ve been betrayed by someone. It’s exquisite pain, suffocative and pressing. I’m at the end of my teether. I can’t bear to live…’ Victoria closed her eyes. ‘A girl. She is very beautiful. Big light-blue eyes… like a doll’s ones. She’s happy and loves her life. Love. My heart’s full of love for this girl. My heart beats only because her heart does. I can breathe only because she does. How gentle and tender she is…’
‘Vic…’ the demon whispered, understanding nothing.
The girl hanged in his hands like a deflated balloon. Her eyes were closed, her lips were dry and a silent mask of desperation and sufferable pain on her face.
‘Victoria,’ Kharon called louder. ‘Stay with me… Hey…’
‘That morning, I’m coming into the flat. She’s with him. She is with him. In my bed. Pain. It hurts. Emptiness. Sufferings… She left me for him. A loop on my neck…I don’t feel pain anymore. There’s no desperation. There’s still emptiness… and peregrinations.’
Victoria opened her eyes. Tears were running down her cheeks like hails, her eyes were washy and lifeless.
‘Hey, dear…What’s wrong?’ Kharon touched her forehead.
‘I don’t know, Kharon…’ the girl looked up at him, weary.
He took her up at his arms and sat down on the wide windowsill, being worried that she would faint.
‘I’m sick. I have no strength to move, breathe. I’ve got such a feeling as if I went through an awful lot.’
‘I’ve lived with you all your emotions you got through. With you I’ve got through and felt it… But I don’t understand what it was. I feel almost the same every time when I see past of a person. But I don’t know what it was with you.’
‘I