Chapter 2
The Skomoroshya Settlement

Methodius and the hog turned around at once. They heard neither the click of the entrance door nor steps, but they were no longer alone on the landing by the elevators. Next to the mailboxes, above which the mysterious “NUFA – SVENYA!” was scratched on the wall, a tall, very plump girl of about twenty with ash silver hair was standing. In her hands was a triple-decker sandwich so immense that all double burgers in comparison would seem like pitiful undersized objects with a complex. However, the girl was obviously not a bit disturbed by its size. She was conducting with the sandwich like a maestro with his baton, without forgetting to bite off good-sized pieces occasionally. It is worthwhile to add that the girl was in a thick leather jacket and a short skirt. Completing the outfit were tall boots – one red, another black – and bubble bracelets in the form of lizards with eyes of shiny stones.

“Hey you, slammed by a scanner! It seems I ordered you to let go of the boy! If you don’t, I’ll stuff you inside the cable of a busy phone! I’ll have you wandering from one beep to the next! I, Julitta, am telling you this!” the girl repeated, brandishing the sandwich threateningly.

The hog began to snuffle, digesting the complex threat. A whole wrestling match of motivations was launched in his small cranium; however, in the ring the desire to get even with Methodius flattened the possibility of putting in her place the insolent girl with the strange name. “Don’t be in the way! This young criminal punctured two of my outstanding tires!” he growled, shaking Methodius like a pear.

“A whole two tires? Oh, Gloom! My condolences in connection with the loss of the mechanical relative!” Julitta was horrified.

“What???” the hog did not take it in.

“Build yourself a supernatural monument! The road surface will not grow over it!” the girl continued. She was clearly mocking the hog, Methodius, and herself at the same time. Here was some round of shooting.

“The prince’s” scanty eyebrows, angrily wandering towards each other, formed on the forehead a fold like a bulldog. “Go away, fatso!” he bellowed, taking a threatening step towards her. It was not worthwhile to do this, because immediately the girl took a step towards him.

“Who’s a fatso, me? Why are we, heavy people, eternally obligated to listen to this filth? They attempt to vulgarize our kingly proportions by the meanest means! And the main thing, whom do I hear this from? Apollo Belvedere? The handsome man Prometheus? The jock Heracles? Not in the least! From the pitiful crossbreed of a pig with a computer keyboard! A walking cemetery of cutlets! The drain tank for beer bottles, who greases the folds on his diathetic belly with cream!” Julitta was insulted.

The hog started to grunt angrily. The girl, by some mysterious means, had gotten to his sorest point. Dragging Methodius behind him, he threw himself at Julitta. Showing how frightened she was, the girl began to tremble and, after collapsing onto her knees, began to wring her hands. “How horrifying his glance is! What terrible thoughts are concealed under this low pimply forehead! Mammy-nanny, where’s my stiletto? I want to stab myself! At the same time grab a bucket of poison, if the knife, like last time, breaks against my stone heart,” theatrically howled Julitta. She wanted to drop the sandwich for an increase in effect, but she looked at it and thought better of it. “In short, I’m tormented by melancholy and I’ll die in terrible spasms! Consider this an expression of my reproach!” she explained in an ordinary voice.

“What, are you batty, yes? A hysteric?” the hog fearfully asked. His fingers, never closing over Julitta’s hand, gathered empty space. The unpredictable behaviour of the strange person overloaded his grey matter. Must admit, Methodius was not a bit less astonished, although in this match the girl was clearly playing on his team. On a most heart-wrenching note, she suddenly got up on her feet and, having spat with disgust, cleaned her knees.

“How barbaric! You play for them, you try, and you’d think that at least someone would clap! At least one pig! This also concerns you, Buslaev! I’m also a tragic adolescent! Mephistopheles from kindergarten!”

“Buslaev? Where does she know my name from?” Methodius was surprised, hurriedly attempting to recollect whether he had met the girl in school or in the courtyard. Of course not, hardly. Indeed the interpretation that he could simply not pay her any attention faded immediately. Such loud and substantial individuals do not hide behind a cactus, although now and then they take refuge somewhere in a dark corner of an auditorium, concealing a fashion magazine with their knees.

The elevator that arrived with strain threw open its doors. The hog began to push Methodius forcibly into it. The boy attempted to break loose and earned a good punch in the ribs by a fist from behind. “Who are you beating up, support for a bald spot? Are you generally well-informed on what I’ll do with you now?” Julitta asked grimly, and the elevator doors slammed shut much faster than usual. The hog looked around. “He mutilated your car?” Julitta continued. “And, Xerox not finished? Excellent! So I’ll add something still!” Not postponing her threat, she blew on her palm. The sound of broken automobile glass distinctly reached them from the courtyard. Complaining to fate, the alarm began to cry. “Poof! Oh-oh-oh, what vandalism!” Julitta was horrified and blew on her palm again. This time – judging by the sound – it had reached the windshield.

For some reason Methodius did not experience the least surprise. He only thought that if Julitta, instead of blowing on her palm, had made the movement of catching thrown keys and at the same time moved her shoulders in undulation like in Indian dances, the car would flatten in the manner of a hippopotamus-suicide jumping onto it from the Crimean Bridge. “Magic of motion” – it seems it is called. After thinking this, Methodius wondered slightly about his own knowledge.

By then the hog was simply in shock. He glanced with distrustful horror at Julitta, and then, towing the resisting Methodius after himself, he rushed to the street. The glass splinters had barely stopped jumping on the asphalt. The alarm no longer howled, but was only sobbing quietly. The face of the hog changed three or four colours. He was frightened, lost, and enraged. Everything was in disorder in the Oblonsky home. “It’s you… it’s all you, trash! I knew it!” he began to roar.

The ashen-haired girl, who lazily came out after them, made a face, and touched her ear with a long nail, “Calm down, darling! Don’t tempt me unnecessarily with a return of your tenderness! Better to say, cut the cackle!”

“WHAT?! You… you!! I’ll finish you off!!!”

Julitta shrugged her shoulders, “Turn down the sound track, citizen! Of course, it’s necessary to speak up, but not so loud! Well, me, not me – what’s the difference? Is it worthwhile to go into details? From a philosophical point of view it’s all irrelevant!”

The bull was shown a new red rag. The hog flung Methodius away and took a step towards Julitta. His bulging eyes became malicious and wild, as if an entire battalion of scum microbes was lapping in them. “I… Yes you…”

“Calm down, daddy! Heart attack on alert! Oho, it seems they are going to kill me on the spot! Perhaps you’ll kiss me before death, eh, uncle Desdemon? How about a fiery caress? To both burn and sear? Eh, old fax? Or did the battery die?” Julitta lazily asked.

“And do you understand whom you’re dealing with? Whom you’re teasing? I’ll rip out your heart!” the hog croaked hoarsely.

“Ah, if only there were something to be ripped out…” Julitta said quietly. It seemed to Methodius that incomprehensible melancholy flickered in her eyes. But this did not continued for long at all, only up to the moment when the hog, turning, croaked the most overused and worn phrase ever heard, “You have no idea what I’ll do with you!”

“Sounds very promising, pappy! But I already thought that you love to beat up only the young!” The female purred huskily and suddenly, although Methodius was ready to swear that she had not taken a step, she turned out to be right next to them. Her chubby hands with some kind of icy force lay on the unhappy fiancé’s shoulders. “It’s been a very long time since someone among the living has declared love to me! How do you relate to female vampires? I hope they’re to your taste?” Julitta asked with strange significance. Chubby lips moved apart. The hog, like a blind man, sensed wild horror filling his body.

Methodius did not notice what was there beyond the lips, but the auto-maniac started to wheeze and somehow immediately went morally limp. He became like the pig, to which a pensive butcher with a camomile behind the ear arrived at the pen. Smiling bewitchingly, Julitta pulled him to herself, persistently and mockingly demanding a kiss, to which the victim of a fax answered only with a pitiful whimper.

“Look, Met! It seems not everything is well in the Danish kingdom,” she giggled, turning to Methodius. “Every time when I attempt to kiss him, he begins to shake. Stop thundering with your bones, I said! This prosaic detail oppresses me! What, are you deaf, can’t hear?” The auto-maniac despondently bleated that he could hear. The courage left in him was no more than the juice in an empty juice box.

“Then memorize something else in case we meet again some time. Rule number one: don’t be rude to me. Rule number two: my requests have to be received like orders, and orders like natural calamity. Rule number three: my friends are a part of me, and they don’t offend me… Rule number four… Never mind, you won’t be able to violate the fourth rule, because you won’t live till that moment! Go away!” Julitta, with disgust, unclenched her hands. The hog attacked the porch and, without losing time, ran on all fours to the car. Ten seconds had not even passed when the motor roared, and the mutilated automobile dragged itself from the courtyard with the speed of a traumatized tortoise.

Methodius turned to Julitta. The feeling that he had flipped did not forsake him. Reality faded like an old newspaper, and in its place, complete phantasmagoria decisively forced its way with its elbows. Surrealism in the spirit of Salvador Dali.

“Poor devil! I understand him! To see how a witch’s eyeteeth slide forward is not a sight for the nervous. And this regardless that I never frolicked with pure vampirism – I simply met one vampire and learned the technique. It’s not very complex – basic question in the modification of the bite.”

“And did it take long?”

“No, not particularly. I learned to advance the teeth in a month or two! At first it was dreary to train, and then it’s alright,” the ashen-haired one informed him. “Well! Let’s get acquainted!” Julitta stretched out her hand, and Methodius touched her fingers indecisively. He for some reason expected that the hand of a witch would be cold, but it was warm and, perhaps, encouraging.

“Methodius!” he said.

Julitta nodded. “Yes, I know, I know… Good at least that you didn’t say ‘Methodius. Methodius Buslaev!’ One of my acquaintances in glasses, who is now having a ‘great love’ with a certain Russian photo-model, would present himself precisely in this sequence.”

“You know me?” Methodius wondered.

Julitta burst out laughing. Methodius already noticed that she moved from one mood to another with surprising rapidity. If she was not in all of them simultaneously. “Oh, we’re already on informal ‘you’! What can be better than being informal? Treat me with familiarity as much as you want! Okay?”

“Okay,” Methodius said. He again felt uncomfortable. It was not everyday that lady-vampires fell to your lot and asked you to treat them with familiarity.

“I know you, Methodius, and very well. We have been observing you every day of your life. However, only now, when you’re more than twelve, can you learn the truth about yourself. Up to this moment, your consciousness simply could not sustain it. You could die of horror, scarcely finding out who you are and why you came into this world,” Julitta continued with an air of importance.

“A so-so announcement to me!” Methodius thought sourly. Until now, he was certain that he had come into this world without any special purpose. The type: “Hello! May I drop in?”

“And you? You didn’t die of horror? Are you indeed a tiny bit older than me?” he asked without irony.

Julitta’s face suddenly became serious and sad. As if the pain, which Methodius’ question involuntarily caused her, forced her for a moment to remove her mask. “I’m a special case. I had no way out. They cursed me immediately after birth. Besides, the one who did the cursing, his curse had special power… But we’ll not talk about this,” she said and turned away, showing that the conversation was finished and this theme would not be developed further.

“Did you come specially in order to protect me from this character?” Methodius refined his question.

Julitta glanced at the place where the car had been standing very recently and burst out laughing. “Are you serious? To protect you, the very Methodius Buslaev, from this slug? Something I’ll not understand: is this is a funny ha-ha?”

“But he was indeed stronger. And generally he was somewhat malicious,” said Methodius.

Julitta snorted. “Malicious? Him? And what about you, very good perhaps? Who started to puncture the tires first? And as for who is stronger… Delirium! Memorize from this minute and until your brain tissues harden: physical force is nothing in comparison with mental power! You yourself would also have managed if you would exert yourself slightly. You haven’t yet managed your gift by yourself, but this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Simply this evening was favourable for my appearance. Look, how many coincidences! A lunatic who wants to knock your brains out. The reflection of the moon in the puddle, which you chase with your eyes like chasing a ball. And finally your dream, about which you recently recalled.”