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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.
Laura Hohlwein Vlaskov
pulled up the high collar on his overcoat and headed out into the
January 1 at
7:10pm · Like · 1
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
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
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
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
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
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
Emily Sato his father,
Nikolas, who had shrugged indifferently when the authorities had knocked at
their door and
January 1 at
10:32pm · Like
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
Laura Hohlwein Vlaskov
turned the key and flung Pavel's door open wide. ...
January 1 at
11:00pm · Like
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
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
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
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
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
Dennis Yudt
"C'est la seule phrase que je peux écrire en français." Puzzled,
Vlaskov wandered
January 2 at
7:32pm · Like
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Rebecca Spencer the
door burst open and Vlaskov spun around to find himself staring down...
January 5 at
8:14pm via mobile
· Like
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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 More
Saturday at
1:46pm · Edited · Like
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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