Monday, January 21, 2013

Russian Novel proceeds



It was the first hour of the evening of the first day of a brand new year and
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D.R. Wagner, Ed Balldinger and 10 others like this.


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Alex Pope the bells began to toll as
January 1 at 7:04pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein Vlaskov pulled up the high collar on his overcoat and headed out into the
January 1 at 7:10pm · Like · 1




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Alex Pope pink snowstorm in order to investigate
January 1 at 8:21pm · Like · 1




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Laura Hohlwein the untimely death of his great uncle, Pavel, who
January 1 at 8:46pm · Like




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Emily Sato at the age of 6 had once been hailed as the next great child prodigy, but
January 1 at 8:53pm · Like · 1




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Laura Hohlwein , though he could play the Кorobushka with his teething spoon, he never got much beyond that and audiences had soured to him before his seventh birthday. Vlaskov thought of this as he whistled without gift in the pink snow. The wind silenced his tune in a snow drift as he turned right on
January 1 at 9:28pm · Like




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Emily Sato to the main avenue of town, where it was for the most part quiet and sleeping off the previous night's festivities. A few people with reason to be out in the snow passed him, in the same determined manner he expected he projected, on their way to their various destinations. He
January 1 at 9:56pm · Edited · Like




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Laura Hohlwein arrived at 17 Mosfilmovskaya Street, ran his gloved hand over the doorframe and knocked Uncle Pavel's key onto the icy doorstep below. He quickly ascended four flights, not pausing on floor two, where Pavel had apparently kicked out the final chorus of the Korobushka with his boot against the wall as the last of his moving blood dripped from floor two to floor one. Vlaskov
January 1 at 10:06pm · Like




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Emily Sato nimbly hopped over the coagulating mess, cursing briefly under his breath, as he ascended the broad, wooden staircase,
January 1 at 10:10pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein сукин сын, сукин сын, he kept muttering. сукин сын, сукин сын. As he opened the door to Pavel's apartment he realized his mumbling had lead him to his first suspect! The сука was, of course,
January 1 at 10:27pm · Like




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Emily Sato his father, Nikolas, who had shrugged indifferently when the authorities had knocked at their door and
January 1 at 10:32pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein told them of Pavel's brutal assault with what they think was an oboe. Nikolas was indeed a сукин сын, not to mention a lousy oboist. Only Vlaskov even knew he 'played' the oboe. And Nickoli Nickolovich had been missing since that night. It wasn't unusual for him to leave for days without anyone knowing his whereabouts, but still ...
January 1 at 11:33pm · Edited · Like




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Laura Hohlwein Vlaskov turned the key and flung Pavel's door open wide. ...
January 1 at 11:00pm · Like




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Emily Sato revealing a youngish woman, dressed in pale linen and somewhat disheveled, hunched over the ornately carved desk that dominated the room. She
January 1 at 11:19pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein simply looked up at him, as if he had come in quietly and they had lived together for years, and returned to study what was before her - sheet music that Pavel Pavlovovich had
January 1 at 11:28pm · Like




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Emily Sato most likely been working on when he'd been surprised. Vlaskov quietly came up behind her and peered over her shoulder, which was bare. Glancing down, he startled briefly before regaining his composure. Surreptitiously he looked again, noticing at once what appeared to be
January 1 at 11:42pm · Edited · Like




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Deb Belt words, in pale and uneven script, at the bottom of the sheet music. Vlaskov tried not to let his mind run ahead and imagine that the faint words could be a clue to
January 2 at 9:51am · Like




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Laura Hohlwein Uncle Pavel's miserable demise but his mind ran ahead and he knew the faint words were a clue to Uncle Pavel's miserable demise. He was also distracted by that bare shoulder. But that was beside the point. The pale uneven script was in French and it said,
January 2 at 6:56pm · Like




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Dennis Yudt "C'est la seule phrase que je peux écrire en français." Puzzled, Vlaskov wandered
January 2 at 7:32pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein around the living room in circles., muttering, "Почему? Почему? Pourqoui en français? Pourquoi une expression en Français?" "And...," he said in English, turning sharply toward the girl, "Who the hell are you?"
January 2 at 8:53pm · Like · 1




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Brian Gorman and You are A Wonderful Person
January 2 at 9:02pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein "Thank you, but I'm not," she said in English, with a slight French accent, Marseilles maybe. "I came to Moscow to steal this from him. I did! And here it is, right below my digits." She looked Vlaskov right in the eye as the linen slipped just a bit more off her shoulder - maddening! "Do you know what this is?" she said, waking him from a new trance and tapping vigouously on the musical score. "Do you know?!?"
January 2 at 9:23pm · Edited · Like · 1




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Dennis Yudt His eyes rolled back down past the lids as he gave a slight shudder while he was coming to. "Ah, that. I used to know...before this happened". He took off his fez, an ill-gotten keepsake from his mercenary days in the Ottoman Empire, and pointed to a large patch of scar tissue and proudflesh. "A Prussian officer accused me of stealing his monocle. This is what his sabre did. Worse, it took away my ability to read music or play my beloved bassoon. Before I die, I
January 2 at 9:34pm · Like · 1




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Laura Hohlwein dearly hope to play the bassoon again." "If I can teach your father to play the oboe, I can teach you to play the bassoon," she said. "What?!? You ... ?" "Yes!" she said, nodding, excessively, he thought. ... "Exactly! Your father, Nickolas and I were
January 3 at 6:28pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein ...were ...
January 5 at 6:16pm · Like




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Patrick Grizzell in a loyalist marching band for a time. We both played bassoon. While practicing a particularly difficult manuever while performing a piece for brass and woodwind, Boris Buravic, who played the tuba, lost his hat and while quickly reaching down to retrieve it smacked your father quite hard in the head with the bell of his ample horn and he, at that very moment, forgot how to play the bassoon. Ever since that event he has struggled with 
January 5 at 6:36pm via mobile · Edited · Like




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Laura Hohlwein ... well, pretty much everything. But potatoe cakes. He is still the best at potatoe cakes, don't you think?" she said, pulling up her linen blouse much to Vlaskov's dismay.
January 5 at 6:37pm · Like




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Rebecca Spencer discussing our shared loves... the oboe, needlepoint and throwing rocks at moving objects whilst sipping on an old wine and eating even older cheese, when...
January 5 at 6:38pm via mobile · Like




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Laura Hohlwein "You know what? ... I don't care," said Vlaskov. "Why is Pavvy writing in French? He hates the French! He doesn't even like cheese! EsPECAIALLY not OLDER cheese! ... This is getting unbearable! What is that score! What is it for?!"
January 5 at 6:39pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein "It's brilliant. Brilliant." She looked outside at the snow, no longer pink, but the palest blue, drifting straight down, and slowly. The both watched it snow for a very long time, knowing the answer would come.
January 5 at 6:54pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein "It's 'The Internationale' - scored ... for teething spoons! It's.. It's. " She stammered and stopped. How could he have not seen it before? She was holding onto her stomach and blood began to seep through her fingers. Vlaskov
January 5 at 6:56pm · Like




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Patrick Grizzell looked at the empty butcher's wrapper on the counter and at her stomach and the wrapper again and at her stomach again and began to laugh uproariously while trying to discern some betrayal of duplicity in her eyes. There was none. His laughter slowed but his eyes kept darting back and forth as though there would at any moment
January 5 at 7:08pm via mobile · Like




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Rebecca Spencer grabbed the cork from the bottle of aged wine on the chairside table and shoved it tightly into the fresh bullet wound. He gently eased her to the ground and slightly over, confirming the shot had not gone clean through. She reached up to him...
January 5 at 7:11pm via mobile · Like




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Laura Hohlwein "Can you believe it?" she said, "A butcher knife! AND a bullet! I deserve it! Ha ha. Hahahahahahaha," she laughed, disturbingly. "Hahahahahahaha" Who cared what color the snow was? Would she stop? Ever? " "Hahahaha.... I've always tried to be two things: Haha! Russian/French, Ha! An oboist/a bassonist, a Loyalist....a ....
January 5 at 7:39pm · Edited · Like




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Laura Hohlwein Ha.
January 5 at 7:39pm · Like




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Rebecca Spencer ..a connoisseur of fine wine and cheese...but..." her voice trailing off as her final breaths left her limp body. Suddenly...
January 5 at 8:01pm via mobile · Like




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Rebecca Spencer the door burst open and Vlaskov spun around to find himself staring down...
January 5 at 8:14pm via mobile · Like




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Patrick Grizzell at a calling card on the stained floor. He bent and picked it up. It read: Madame Hand - Palmistry, Psychic Readings, Seances. He remembered a pavillion outside the snowy retreat near St. Petersburg and the drawer full of daggers belonging to a transient circus performer who, one night 
January 5 at 9:40pm via mobile · Like · 1




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Laura Hohlwein tapped out the first rhythm of the Кorobushka in thrown daggers next to the profile of a wild-eyed Petrograd child, looking at Grand Uncle Pavvy the whole time as if he'd, Pavel Pavlovovich, had done something WRONG by being a toddler prodigy. His whole life he'd been teased in this way. And now Madame Hand. Would it never end?
January 5 at 10:02pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein Vlaskov felt like crying, hearing the girl draw her last, "Ha ha h.!" behind him, feeling the presence of Uncle Pavvy dying on floor two, not days before. And his ruined father, good only for potato cakes, gone ... where? He could ask Madame Hand. That's it. She would know. ...And then he heard it, the poor, plaintive cry of
January 5 at 10:02pm · Like




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Rebecca Spencer the impossibly small, scrawny, half-starved kitten huddled in the corner of the room. Having attempted to clean itself of the partially congealed blood of his uncle, the kitten's once-white fur had turned the same shade of pink as the snow outside. Approaching cautiously...
January 6 at 12:20am via mobile · Like · 1




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Mary Zeppa Vlaksov murmured "Grushenka, Grushenka". The name he'd instinctively given the kitten calmed her at once. She recognized something kindred about him and..
January 6 at 8:22am · Like




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Alex Troyan Rubbed up against his rigid leg, and started to purr. He quickly checked the cabinets for some cat food and found nothing but some old condensed milk. He opened the can with
January 6 at 11:49am via mobile · Like




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Laura Hohlwein knife sharpener. One blunt thrust into the can did it, but as he pulled it out he noticed just a bit of potato cake on the handle. ... "Nicolevich!" he whispered loudly.
January 6 at 3:41pm via mobile · Like




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Laura Hohlwein "Yes, what?" said his father, stepping out from behind the front door, bloody butcher knife in hand. He looked utterly broken and depressed. "I loved her, you know." He choked back a sob. "But...
January 6 at 3:44pm via mobile · Like · 1




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Alex Troyan "That's it!" He exclaimed.
January 6 at 3:45pm via mobile · Like




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Laura Hohlwein "You killed Pavel!" "No. ..I killed her, " he said, gesturing lamely with the butcher knife at now quiet girl, slumped over the "Internationale for Teething Spoons." "She killed Pavel. With MY oboe! She said I was no good. She said I couldn't even play Frère Jacques after six months and that she'd had enough. ... I wasn't that bad. Was I?"
January 6 at 5:33pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein Time passed. The snow fell, colorless in the dark.
January 6 at 5:33pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein Vlaskov broke the silence without answering the question. "But why take it out on Pavel? ... And who SHOT the girl?"
January 6 at 5:35pm · Like




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Patrick Grizzell With that, the slinky kitten trudged out of the house, leaving little red footprints on the snow. It was as innocent as anything that had left through that door. It would never come back. Just like everything that ever left before a coroner arrived. It was like the time that 
January 6 at 5:44pm via mobile · Like




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Laura Hohlwein the transient circus performer killed two people at once with a wild and terrible throw when someone in the audience sneezed and the elephant and the dancing zebra just left the tent, as innocent as anything that had ever left the tent before. It was like that. And speaking of the transient circus performer, it was probably his dagger that had just whizzed through the air, just missing Vlaskov's nose and puncturing another hole in the can of condensed milk. Vlaskov and Nicolas turned.
January 6 at 6:00pm · Like · 1




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Laura Hohlwein "I shot the girl, you fools," he confessed, "because, well... my aim with a dagger has gone to hell ever since that incident with the baker and his wife and elephant and the dancing zebra. ... She was going to take that score back to France and it is rightfully mine. I...I...I am Russia's greatest prodigy. I AM! I ...
January 6 at 6:00pm · Like · 1




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Alex Troyan I am the oboe master! Why you thought I would...
January 6 at 7:01pm via mobile · Like




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Mary Zeppa ..allow her to get away with such an outrage I cannot begin to imagine. Have you forgotten..
January 6 at 7:34pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein this!" he said, pulling from his pocket like a sabre from its sheath (he even added an 'ahHA! of his own): a monocle, THE monocle! The monocle from the Prussian officer from so long ago. Vlaskov felt dizzy and instinctively touched under his fez, the scar, the proudflesh. He could hear bassoons or oboes or hungry kittens screaming in the night or the officals arriving, their boots thundering up the stairs. He pulled out a chair and just sat at the ornately carved desk that dominated the room. He was suddenly very tired. And yet there would be no rest, no meditative moment, no thought or mention of snow because just then
January 6 at 11:48pm · Like




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Alex Troyan The alarm on his watch went off. He was late! He quickly left to go to...
January 7 at 12:01am via mobile · Like




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Mary Zeppa ..the rendezvous he hoped would save him, to meet the one person who might help him untangle this web of oboes and kittens and egos. Ah reader, you guessed it, Vlaskov was off to meet...
January 8 at 4:33pm · Like




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Laura Hohlwein Madame Hand. Even though she cost 3,037.27 rubles an hour and her tiny carriage smelled like wax and cats and ... Madame Hand, she did get around, by way of cards and crystals and humming and weird hand gestures, at pointing in the direction of what might seem like some at least plausible variant of absolute truth. But, just as Vlaskov was about to fling himself across the threshold, the sound in his head of officials thundering up the stairs ceased abruptly and he practically bounced backwards off three stomachs of the three officials now stopped and aligned in one flank, blocking the door.
January 8 at 5:06pm · Edited · Like




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Brett Daly "This your cat?" the biggest of the stomachs queried..."We traced its bloodied paw prints to this flat, and I see it's not the cat's blood that coated its fur, but some other's..." The largest stomach was caught mid-breath when its owner's eyes espied the bleeding female corpse toward his right. He approached the girl, while the other two stomachs blocked all entry to or from the flat, to investigate. Suddenly, with a great THUD as stomach and supporting legs collapsed to the floor, the first stomach wailed in sorrow...and a gentle hand gently touched the young girl's hair...then stroked it as a mother might fondly stroke her child's first locks in the crib...he mumbled something incoherent to all else in the room, and gently kissed the young girl's lips, then brushed his hand across her eyelids to close them forever to the world, and pulled-up her blouse toward her shoulders lest she catch cold. He looked up as if to say something, then suddenly collapsed. The great stomach heaved its breath no more...
January 12 at 9:29pm via mobile · Like




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Laura Hohlwein The cat instinctively came up to the corpulent official, renewing the potency of her prints by padding through another puddle of the lost girl's blood. She climbed atop his still stomach and curled up, facing the girl - as all were now facing the girl. "Grushenka," said Official Two, and the cat turned around as if addressed. " The girl. I feel sure of it... Trepov has been looking for his sister, Grushenka, for his entire life. She ran away to France when she was twelve. I feel sure ..." "TWELVE!" - the number shouted itself in Vlaskov's head. And again - "TWELVE!" He knew then, like a thunderbolt had hit him, why he instinctively named the cat, 'Grushenka.' Oh no, " he thought. "Please, no...My little kitten. My little love."
January 13 at 2:56pm · Edited · Like




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Brett Daly His mind drifted backward through the years to a carefree time in Montmartre. Two scarecrows running through the alleys of Bohemia. In bliss amongst suffering...
           
            One evening in a cafe as the sun set, Trepov and Grushenka staring into the West, a music student in a flat above the cafe practicing the oboe. How they found the ten franks they needed for wine Topov couldn't fathom now, but he recalled the settling of his mind into the bath of Pinot noir while he gazed fondly at Grushenka. He was just about to tell his first love his first confession of his feelings, when he noticed just past her, at a farther table, sat another young woman looking his way. She was pretty, Oui!, and clearly had money from someplace as she didn't have the disheveled look and soot-spotted skin of those he had known all his young life. She cast him his first ever seductive look. His breath grew tight, and his pants felt tighter...
           
            Topov made some quick excuse to use the restroom downstairs. The other girl, the seductress who was to become his femme fatale, noted his bearing, and arose to make the same journey...
           
            Into the basement...
           
            Topov returned later to find Grushenka no longer at the table, and his belle du soir had vanished as well...
           
            He spent the ensuing years searching for his dear Grushenka throughout Paris, living amongst miscreants and n'er-do-wells, yet having no desire to be one of them. He became knowledgable of their ways, and often was called upon by the Prefecture of the Police to assist them in their investigations. That relationship gave him access to all manner of men and means in that great city, but it never brought him any closer to his dearest Grushenka.
           
            In his mind he resolved himself that he had lost all rights and privileges to traffic with people, to have friends, to bask in the warmth of their celebrations. He had lost his first love to the demons of the Parisian underworld. It was his fault. He was no better than a common murderer.
           
            His only respite was spending his evenings at that same table at that same cafe, soaking his brain in liquor, and listening to the music students' practicing in the flats above. Cellists, violinists, and others had come and gone over the years, and his ear had become attuned to the practicing that he could sense where a student stood in his or her own musical development. He was most fond of an oboist who played sonorously every evening, at twilight, who always finished when the night sky had lost all trace of sunlight. It was upon such an evening, when he could discern a faint sound of sheet music being folded away and the window closing, that his mind spoke to him in a moment of clarity: "To Russia"...
January 13 at 2:22pm via mobile · Like




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Paula Detwiller Writers: THANK YOU! This is better than HBO!
January 13 at 8:14pm · Like




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Brett Daly Vlaskov sat in the ornately-carved chair supified...confused..."Ach! The confusion! As if the bleeding girl, the scattered sheet music, the nuances of mastering the oboe, the ever-changing color of the snow weren't confusing enough, but now his mind was awash with "Trepov! Topov! Paris! Incest...?
January 13 at 9:20pm · Like




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Brett Daly Vlaskov recalled with horror those long Russian winters of his youth. His cherished oboe stowed away by his grandmother, not to be savored until he had finished reading those wretched Tolstoy novels with their armies of characters, and the ever-shifting use of names from formal to patronymic to informal address that drove him to vodka. If only Stalin could have purged a few hundred pages of those horrid tomes instead of his well-placed one day, ill-placed the next, Uncle Vanya of whom he was so fond...
January 13 at 9:33pm · Like




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Brett Daly But the smell of cheap tobacco from the two standing officers' cigarettes brought clarity to Vlaskov's brain. He knew now who the fallen officer was, Trepov (who shared the same formal address as the second officer) he knew as Topov or "Toppy" as he called his Casanova of the Caucus before he ran away with a young girl to Paris in the days of his youth...
           
            ...and where was Toppy now...? Lying still in a pool of a young woman's blood...
January 13 at 9:40pm · Like




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Brett Daly But Toppy's mind, just a moment before his untimely demise, was in that cafe. "To Russia" he had resolved, and retained in his memory. But now his conciousness transmigrated into the afterlife...we now witneess his sprit departing from its original course on that Paris evening, arising toward the sound of that oboe...ascending stairs into the light. Toppy approaches a door, which upon opening of itself reveals his beloved Grushenka holding an oboe. His spirit motioned as if to pass the threshold but Grushenka raised her hand, and gently pushed against his torso as if to say, without being audible, "It is not your time".
           
            Suddenly, a great burst of light surrounded Topov, and as the door closed of its own accord his spirit slid backwards down the stairs...away from the light...back to that same seat in the cafe. His spirit now sitting into that seat in his memory, we return to the actual course of time...he heaved a great sigh and said to himself "Yes, to Russia I must go."
January 13 at 9:53pm · Like




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Brett Daly Reader, I beg your leave for me to step back only a few moments in time, back to the scene in which we left our heroes. Centuries in the afterlife seem as seconds on Earth, and I must convey the events which transpired during Topov's sojourn into the hereafter...
January 13 at 9:55pm · Like




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Brett Daly The second officer approached his fallen comrade, followed immediately by his collegue, and the room now smelled not only of cheap tobacco, but of cheap vodka. The two officers had imbibed themselves in so much vodka for so many years that they had become unaware that the alcohol had permeated not only every fiber of their clothing, but every cell of their bodies.
           
            The second officer drew out his nightstick, and gently proded the ribs of his fallen comrade. The gentle pressure was sufficient to unleash a great flatulence from the fallen Topov. The methane ignighted into a fireball when it met contact with the cigarette embers, and the flames seared through the alcohol which comprised so much of the officers' body mass so quickly and so thoroughly that neither was able to feel any pain from dying of spontaneous combustion.
           
            The fireball extinguished itself as quickly as it had formed, leaving only some scattered ashes.
January 13 at 10:06pm · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 95
            
Brett Daly The monocle fell from Vlaskov's eye as he, and everyone else in the room, were petrified by what they had just witnessed. All paid no attention to the sound of the monocle rolling across the floor, save for the cat, who paid the event with casual indifference, fixated upon the rolling object with great interest. The cat's muscles were just starting to steel themselves ready to pounce when it was interrupted by a great sigh from the stomoach upon which it was perched.
January 13 at 10:13pm · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 95
            
Brett Daly ...and amongst the web of neural connections in Vlaskov's brain, at that moment a small thought flashed in-and-out of existence: "Well, at least that's two fewer people's names I need to worry about keeping straight..."
January 13 at 10:15pm · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 95
            
Laura Hohlwein Vodka. Vlaskov needed vodka. Nikolay Nickolovich, one hand on the butcher knife, one stuck, apparently, against his forehead in perpetual astonishment, needed vodka. That was clear. The circus performer, lost in some kind of trance and mumbling, slumped down now to the floor, needed vodka. Even the cat would eschew condensed milk for a little nip. It was a moment of true despair in which Vlaskov recalled Uncle Pavel's great personal triumph over the tyranny of drink. Not a drop in the place. No point in even looking. Pavel had been clear as a bell in his final months, humming, happily, day and night. There was nothing to do in that moment but look at the snow, swirling, ecstatic, electric green in the glow of the streetlight. Toppy sucked in a loud, ugly gasp. Vlaskov really wasn't happy. He leaned against the table, with the purest digust he had ever felt, observing him wheeze and huff and return to the company of the exhausted, unwelcoming living.
January 14 at 12:51am · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 95
            
Brett Daly Topov lifted his head as if he had just been beaten in a fight. He gazed confusedly around the room, and met Vlaskov's eyes.
           
            "You..."
January 15 at 8:06am via mobile · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 95
            
Laura Hohlwein "And how will you address me then? You pig. You swine. You thief. Ever since French class, in our primary school days, you knew, you KNEW, Grushi and I were ONE!". With this, Vlaskov pounded on the table, crumpling the corner of Pavel's masterpiece. "And here you lay fat and pickled and one kick in the head from dead. Even the cat takes you for a litter box."
            He was interrupted from his tirade by the sound of awkward, fitful sobbing coming from
January 17 at 7:53pm via mobile · Edited · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 95
            
Patrick Grizzell a young woman in the back of the traveling Habedasher's wagon. Her father slouched over the reins that guided two remarkable black horses with manes that reached the ground. Oddly, he wore no hat, and sleet was beginning to blow down the wind tunnel formed by the two close rows of houses that lined the cobblestone streets. Everyone knew Petrov and his damned wagon with its steamers and blocks and its gawdy decoupage of Bowlers and Fezes, Miters and .Dunce caps, clopping sloppily along at the misaligned mercy of its one small wheel. But was that really Natalya whimpering from the hold? Had he found her after all this time? Did she hold the key? And where had he gotten those gorgeous horses? He couldn't afford them! And where was his hat? And just as Father Gregor had intimated over dinner, there would be
January 17 at 10:59pm via mobile · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), quality = 95
            
Mary Zeppa ..the raven-haired, statuesque woman in the doorway. "Vlassy, Vlassy," she cried. At the sound of her voice, Vlaskov spun around. His jaw dropped; his eyes widened. He had never been more confused..
January 17 at 11:04pm · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 95
            
Brett Daly The woman rushed toward Vlaskov, throwing herself on her knees and burying herself in his heart..."Twelve years I've searched for you..."
           
            Suddenly Petrov appeared at the doorway as if he had thrown himself there, gasping for breath and hunched as if he had run for miles, orange snow blowing through the doorway. "Natalya...my love...Father Gregor was right...I would find you again someday..."
           
            Topov surveyed the latest intruder, then swung his head back toward the lovely raven-haired woman now caressing Vlaskov's cheeks. Natalya...where had he heard that name before...then he registered the thick raven hair, the edges of the woman's profile, HER EYES! Yes, THOSE EYES...he'd never forget them. Natalya, sensing Topov was staring at her, cast him a quick glance, and as if they'd both been struck by lightning they both knew: she was the woman at that Parisian cafe so many years ago. The woman who, for only a moment of carnal passion, had forever separated Topov from his dearest Grushenka...
Friday at 11:29pm via mobile · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 95
            
Brett Daly The circus performer, who had lain stupefied and petrified all this time, now found strength to speak..."Petrov...HORSE THIEF!!!!...SWINE!!!" He reached for another knife from his belt and flung it with all his strength. The knife flew through the window, and a horse neighed as if electrocuted. Next came the fading sound of hooves galloping down the cobblestone street, dragging pieces of a wooden cart.
Saturday at 12:14am via mobile · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 95
            
Brett Daly "Papa! Papa!" A young girl, a little disheveled and starting to bruise from having been thrown off a cart, but wearing a very stylish bowler hat, hugged Petrov from behind as if clinging for protection. "Papa! Someone threw a knife at Sasha and now she's gone...". Her voice broke and she clutched her throat, then her fingers clutched her necklace. Her eyes and the circus performer's locked into each other's...
Saturday at 12:32am via mobile · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 95
            
Laura Hohlwein "Um... The horses ... your horses... are fine. Well, they ... were ..... and Papa... Papa just ... borrowed them and I REALLY love them - especially Sasha," and here she lost control, taking the bowler hat off her head and crying in terrible heaves of...See MoreSaturday at 1:46pm · Edited · Like




            CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 95
            
Brett Daly Madame Hand sat in the deepest meditative trance she had ever been, and that's saying something for someone who has spent her entire life in deep meditative trances.
           
            She continued to lay the cards upon the table, now covering the original cards with a successor, forever defining the course of the history for that still very small pile, as well as that for the other emerging piles, as she continued in this manner by the faint light from a single candle placed at the center of the table. The flame flickered wildly, casting hallucinogenic shadows dancing upon the walls of her carriage. The candle was soon reaching its end, when it will soon of its own accord self-extinguish, casting all into darkness, and ending the card placement in which she had been so engrossed.
           
            She drew another card from the deck, and she regarded it for what seemed an enternity. Shortly the card was stained by a teardrop, now running down and then off the card, the dripping onto a small pile of placed cards below. She looked-up with a countenance of utter despair, her face a shifting collage of shadows from the now rapid oscillations of the candle flame. "Damn! Damn! Damn!" she cried, and with a sweep of her hand dashed all of the cards onto the floor.
           
            For twelve long years she had performed this nightly ritual to no satisfaction. Now, on this very night she had taken the ceremony to its farthest point, but still, to her dismay she could not conclude.
           
            She resolved that night never to play solitaire again, not after twelve straight years of losses.
           
            She snuffed the candle, and drew a warm shawl around her shoulders. Looking outside she noted the snow had just stopped, and she decided to walk the streets to reflect and take her mind off of solitaire.
           
            She happened upon a sight of all manner of hats scattered about in the middle of a street and, seeing nobody about, placed a stylish broad-brimmed hat adorned with peacock feathers upon her head.
           
                        She was soon to make good her escape when she espyed a door left ajar at one of the buildings. An odd sight on an evening when it had been snowing intermittently all day. She was about to pay it no mind and return to her carriage when she felt a sudden impulse to investigate. She felt guided by an internal energy which guided her footsteps. And as she trod ever closer to her destination as if controlled by some outside force, an oboe solo she had never heard before, but which seemed so familiar in a déjà-vu way, was playing in her head.
13 hours ago via mobile · Like

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