"TALES OF GHOSTS"
about Love and Death from the Land of Mists
a collection of short stories
in the “Playing Another Reality” series
"MASTER of FATES"
9. DEADLY TIRED
Gleb opened the door silently, and I stepped into the pitch darkness.
“What’s happened?” I asked in a whisper. “No light? Why? And where is Lada? Did you lie that she was waiting for me? Has she left you?”
Gleb, the husband of my sister Lada, deeply immersed in his own thoughts, seemed not to hear anything at all. He held a cigarette in one hand and an almost empty bottle of whiskey in the other.
“I’m talking to you!” I nearly shouted.
“Come in, just… Shh!!! You won’t believe it, the baby’s finally asleep! If you wake him up, he will cry. I’m tired of his screams! God, every night… Every night he kept me awake! And Lada, she’s dead tired too! They need to sleep… Shh!”
I approached the bedroom and stopped on the threshold at the ajar door, making out in the darkness Lada and the baby asleep on the bed.
“La-ad-a…” I called my sister in a whisper and wanted to enter the room, as I felt Gleb’s heavy hand on my shoulder.
“I said shh! Let her sleep. Let’s go to the kitchen. She had no strength left at all. Poor Lada! Let her rest… Talk to me. I need your advice. You turn to be always right… Always and in everything…”
We entered the kitchen. Gleb plopped down on the stool.
“Why don’t you turn on the lights here?” I wondered.
“I’m dead tired.”
“You are dead drunk!” I sighed. “And all I can advise you is to stop drinking as soon as possible!”
“By the way, what time is it now?” Gleb asked.
“About one o’clock, why?”
“Oh, it seems to be the time she was feeding the baby…”
“Okay, I’ll wake her up,” I suggested.
“No, no… wait!”
Gleb went to the windowsill and turned on the music so loudly that I shuddered. Besides, it was Lada’s favorite song! Gleb seemed to sober up for a moment, and then he suddenly threw the already empty bottle of whiskey at the wall in a frenzy.
“Are you crazy?!” I screamed and rushed to the windowsill to turn the music down. “You’ll raise the dead out of the coffins!”
I already turned around to carefully step between the fragments of the broken bottle and slip from the kitchen into the bedroom to my sister, when I heard back,
“I wish… I wish you were right even now…”
1997