Confession of a Ghost. 14. 27. The Denial of Peter

“CONFESSION of a GHOST”
a novel by Alexandra Kryuchkova
in the “PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY” series


27 BEFORE/14 AFTER. HOUSE No. 6

*****ALPHA CENTAURI*****

***
Somewhere in the Universe


I opened the door of House No. 6 and saw a Star.

“Hello, Rukh! I’m Toliman, Bungula, or Alpha Centauri.”

“Toliman is a beautiful star, lucky and the closest to Earth,” the Guardian smiled. “The third brightest after Sirius and Canopus, like the Sun, from the Centaurus Constellation, of the wise and kind Chiron the healer, who taught Asclepius to heal and gave his life for Prometheus, making him immortal.”

“I’m at the point of breaking the Circle, above the door to Heaven at the end of the Burnt Road, which merges with the door of your House No. 6. An interesting and promising coincidence of coordinates! I patronize people whose soul aspires to Heaven. I give them strength for development and put lazy people and idlers in prison.”

“Toliman,” added the Guardian, “is considered the star of Venus and Jupiter, of fame, success and power, but of unhappiness in private life. Hovering above the door between the Houses, it spreads its influence on both Spheres at once – Love-Creativity and Service-Illness. Thus, the increased creative activity and high efficiency are guaranteed.”

“Relations end badly, interrupting suddenly, for reasons beyond your control, especially with women. I give the possibility to know our Reality through innate paranormal abilities. Good luck!” Toliman waved at me and disappeared, and I felt a familiar energy behind me.

“No! Just not you! Have you come to poison me to Death?” I exclaimed, stepping back.

“Honey, aren’t you happy to see me?!” Pluto laughed, and I said nothing, trying not to look him in the eye. “Dear Rukh, I’m the Master of your House No. 6. I do whatever I want in the Sphere that is responsible for your earthly work, service to the world, as well as for illness or health. If one doesn’t work, that is, doesn’t serve the world, one gets sick. To be sick means to feel pain. Illness is the consequence of wrong behavior. All people have a choice – either to serve the world, or get sick. If one day a hard planet wanders into House No. 6, it means either difficulties with work, or some serious illness.”

“Are there a lot of diseases on Earth?” I asked.

“Oh, a lot,” Pluto chuckled, “but predispositions are written in the passport.”

“So, the Lord of the Kingdom of the Dead is in charge of my health!”

“Not happy again, darling?” Pluto laughed.

“Shall I be glad that you are poisoning me with your scorpion venom?”

“I tend not so much to poison as to crush and multiply. Neptune is in charge of poisoning. I multiply exponentially at breakneck speed. I give fertility in creativity or in offspring in Sphere No. 5, and rapid reproduction of abnormal cells, that people call oncology, in Sphere No. 6. The door to House No. 6 in the last degree of Scorpio usually means problems with the reproduction system.”

“These are two mutually exclusive factors!” I exclaimed. “Fertility and…?”

“One thing is always played. You are prolific in creativity. Well, insomnia from overexertion, illness from loneliness and boredom. The psyche in your case has a stronger influence on the physical body than in others.”

“What do people call oncology?” I asked.

“Most often a ticket to Heaven on a slow train,” the Guardian replied sadly.

“Uranus promised me a ticket on express, didn’t he?”

“Right,” Pluto agreed. “Miracles do happen. Besides, I’m a mage. Saturn, as the ruler of your Death located in your Self, is a guarantee of colossal strength and survival in extreme situations. You’ll die many times in life, but not from me in the end. I’ll only transform you, transferring to new levels of Consciousness through creativity, work and illness. Usually, work slows down spiritual development and distracts from thoughts about the true Motherland, Heaven. In your case, with Toliman and Neptune in House No. 6, you won’t be in danger of breaking away from us.”

“Serve the world through creativity,” the Guardian advised. “Create as a spiritual work on yourself. As for the earthly job… Pluto is in charge of large finances of other people, especially in closed organizations, in financial areas, in the field of magic and professions related to touching Death. Your Pluto is evil, they can promise and not pay you. It’s better to make a career and achieve recognition according to Venus – in creative professions, in everything related to beauty, design and harmony.”

“You’ll have a clear connection between Love and Work,” Pluto added. “You love your job and fall in love with those you work with. Emotional satisfaction of the process and the result of work, of the surrounding characters is important to you. You’ll see, they’ll turn out to be Plutos. You are drawn to me, magically and inexplicably, aren’t you? You shouldn’t work without your heart or warm feelings for those with whom or for whom you work, or you’ll immediately get sick. Favorite work in case of illness will contribute to recovery, and disliked one will drive you into a deep depression and cause illness.”

“It’s a choice without a choice!” I exclaimed.

“You can show my scorpion qualities as self-criticism and poisonousness towards other employees, caustic irony and sarcasm, as well as suspiciousness. You hate boring routine, can’t stand shoddy work. I guarantee you high professionalism, a fanatical attitude to the performance of duties, dedication and a thirst for transformation towards improving the workflow.”

I got lost in thoughts looking into the distance. There, just outside the threshold of House No. 6, it was getting light, the smoke of the Burnt Road didn’t penetrate there, but a gentle predawn Mist was creeping.

“What is there in the Mist?” I asked.

“Let’s go to the Library at first,” the Guardian smiled.


***
Library of the Universe


“Angel, if there’s nothing joyful in Sphere No. 6, where is it, the joy of incarnation? Well, it must be at least somewhere, or not? There are only 12 Houses, or Spheres of Life, right?”

“My soul, you are exaggerating greatly!” the Guardian encouraged me. “Well, you’ll be in a state of clinical death in childhood, live with ghosts instead of parents, get your straw inheritance burned. Deprived of the Sun by non-reciprocal love, you’ll suffer with children. Your bosses will squeeze your energy out at work and break their promises, you’ll be a donkey, who hasn’t got his carrot. Well, you’ll fail with money, earn oncology because of nervous unbalance. What’s so terrible about that? Just imagine, how much you can create!”

“Did you live like that on Earth too?” I asked.

The Guardian hugged me with his wing and said,

“I wasn’t required to become a writer.”

The book opened at the page with the story “A Letter”.

“You know, there are some words, once uttered by someone even without malicious intent, that are forever imprinted in the heart and slowly devour the soul, until, sooner or later, there is nothing left of it at all… I’ll be always somewhere nearby to help you from There if necessary, and I’ll come to say goodbye to everyone who was close to me, and even to those with whom I used to drink coffee and recite my poems in the office kitchen in the morning. If there, outside, where I’m going to, life still goes on…”


*****The DENIAL of PETER*****

***
Moscow


I stepped out of the lift. The Ghost of my neighbor’s husband, an indicator of the correct movement in Space, was sitting on the stairwell by the window.

“Hi, Alice,” he greeted sadly. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Not yet,” I smiled. “Do you stay here all the time or sometimes go to her?”

“Sometimes,” he said, still sadly.

“Doesn’t she notice you? One day she will feel, really!” I tried to console the Ghost.

The flat was the same: icons, icons, icons and the secret room with things piled up in a heap. I looked around and, besides the bookcase, noticed many boxes of books. I scanned the contents and found classics in Russian and English.

Ray entered through the window.

“Wow! You are not lost! What a miracle! Do you recognize the books?”

“I have a strange feeling that they are mine, but it’s nonsense.”

“No, it’s not, it’s excellent, Alice. They are yours.”

“Are you kidding? Here is Dickens, Conan Doyle, Blok, Severyanin!”

“Have I ever made fun of you?” Ray chuckled. “Your books. Come on remember! And pay attention, in the next box, there are Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Brodsky, Mayakovsky. The writers in both boxes are close to you in spirit, that’s why you didn’t get rid of them during your lifetime. But the energy of books in different boxes is different.”

“The books by Dickens are in English. They are all about ghosts.”

“So what? Conan Doyle is about Sherlock Holmes. Blok’s poems by year are in 7 volumes. There are a lot of Severyanin, all the covers are in his favorite purple colors. What do they have in common?”

“Oh, Ray. Well, you always give me some riddles! Okay. I’m going to say complete nonsense, don’t scold me for that!”

“Let give birth to your idea!”

“These books, they are… like my… children! And the covers, so different, but they reflect my perception, there’s something of me in them,” I said and drew attention to one and the same logo on the back of the books.

“Bravo! Congratulations!” Ray exclaimed. “And there’s no your surname in the imprint, mommy! Who the hell are you? Don’t you remember? Well, how much you should have loved your work, that even after what they had done to you, you bought these books and kept them until your last breath!”

“What have they done to me? I worked over what I was fond of. It was interesting for me to publish books, adding something of my own to them – covers, annotations… I published about 3,000 books of classics in a year and a half. I looked for pictures for covers, sat with our designer, told where and how to shift details, came up with series, and even made corrections reading old reprints of poets. I took the printed lay-outs with me, and both at night and on weekends … I had a plan of 300 books from scratch per month, with a few girls after college who didn’t understand how to work, or didn’t want to, although I met exceptions.”

“Yes, your workaholism amazed me always. Tell me, don’t you feel pity for the waste of your energy, love and time in nowhere? Well, you could publish your own books as a hobby! How many own books did you write and publish working for them? The cobbler’s children have no shoes! Have you been promoted somehow? Were you allowed to shine? Or introduced to someone? Submitted to competitions? They had every opportunity, unlike those who had really helped you before, without demanding anything in return. You plunged headlong into work and stopped being creative. Home-work-home. How many years down the drain? And, most importantly, for the sake of whom? People usually do business when they need money from the business. If even your great-grandchildren are already wealthy enough, you need a pleasant company to spend time with. Hard workers are not interesting for such people, because in some situations the decisions are far away from pleasant, especially if they concern a pleasant company!”

“You are talking, and in my eyes, there are only books, and those are foggy. No office, no people… Oh! I see diplomas! I give them as my personal symbolic gift to employees for the New Year!”

“How am I supposed to get you out?” Ray exhaled grimly. “How many years have I been telling you to take a step aside, just a step?”


***
Ouranoupoli


The owner of the shop of the natural stones jewelry called me out on the street that led to the border with Athos.

“Hello, Alice! It’s time to gather stones! We haven’t created any masterpieces during your visit, why?”

I loved rare stones and even looked for them at auctions, carefully selected and combined with others in the jewelry that I made on Athos. I always lacked time in Moscow, although even on Athos it flew by like a fast train.

“We’ve already grown a Garden of Stones, now I need to take care of it!” I joked.

Dimitra was drinking water on the bench opposite the Tower. It was too hot, the Sun had already set, and the thermometer showed +33C.

“Alice, hi, sit down! Water or coffee with water? What’s new?”

“I’ve corrected my old story about the office ghost, well… water! I had a bad dream. I have dreams 2–4 times a year, usually they warn me of something bad.”

“Come on! What did you dream about? Tell me, and the dream won’t come true!”

“It will. However, nothing new. And not for the first time. When I get home, I’ll have to look for a job.”

“Why? Did you do something wrong?”

“I’ve done several projects from scratch as well as possible and within tight deadlines. Each time they promised me that the project would remain mine, but as soon as I launched it… It took me one month to prepare a nationwide project for presentation to the President on his birthday. They promised to give him my own book as a gift. They didn’t. Together with the impudent glamorous madam behind my back, they appointed as the General Manager a young, snotty girl who had no idea about business. They offered me to write elementary texts for her.”

“Toxic people!” Dimitra exclaimed.

“Whoever betrayed you once will betray you again.”

“What a blessing that we live in a village and work for ourselves. We are not rich, but we are not poor either. In your crazy Moscow, with such a frantic pace of life… Alice, you are so bright, and they hear you in Heaven! Who of the Saints is responsible for jobs?”

“St. Martyr Tryphon. They depict him on a horse with a falcon in Russia, since he helped the servant of Ivan the Terrible find the missing Royal falcon, and in your country he is with a cross and grapes, less often – with a sickle and grapes. He lived at the beginning of the 3rd century in a Christian family and was a shepherd of geese. According to the Bulgarians, he was a winegrower. He chased insect pests from the fields to get crops and to avoid starvation. Since childhood, he had two gifts – of healing and exorcism. At the age of 16, Tryphon expelled a devil from the daughter of the Roman Emperor and ordered to appear to the Emperor to convince him of the existence of Evil spirits and adopt Christianity. The subsequent Emperor tortured Tryphon in every way, and then, because of his non-denial of Christ, cut off his head, but the spirit of Tryphon was taken to Heaven still before the execution. His relics were kept in Byzantium, and then spread throughout the world.”

“Tryphon is from the Greek ‘trifi’, a delight. So, he helps to find work and loss, casts out devils and heals, doesn’t he?”

“St. Spyridon also helps to find the loss. You can pray to both of them for stable work with good money. Tryphon’s feast day is the same of St. Valentine, on February 14. They say he helps people in love and in search of a soul mate.”

“Pray to Tryphon! Let him find you a job, thanks to which you’ll find love, and don’t forget Spyridon for material stability!”


***
Tower of Ouranoupoli


“You wrote a whole novel about St. Peter, Joice. I often wonder why he denied Christ. He had been warned! At the Last Supper, Christ told Peter that he would deny Him three times before the rooster crowed, but Peter assured Christ that he was ready to follow Him even to Death. And the denial happened. So is there something you can’t change?”

“The choices are gradually narrowed down to a single one. There are cardinal points where we cannot change the events. Christ knew that after praying for the Chalice in the Garden of Gethsemane he would be arrested by the guards brought in by Judas. After the arrest, they came to the courtyard of the high priest. The Evangelists have differences in their description of who exactly approached Peter and recognized him as an Apostle, but each time Peter publicly denied his acquaintance with Christ. After the 3rd denial, the rooster crowed, and Peter realized that the prophecy had come true, although, according to Mark, the rooster crowed for the 2nd time only.”

“Do you think Peter denied Christ for the fear of arrest? It seems to me that Peter couldn’t have uttered other words, or acted otherwise. Judas’s betrayal and Peter’s denial were already predetermined from Heavens and couldn’t but happen. The rooster’s cry woke up the bewitched Peter, brought him out of the hypnotic trance of Destiny, and he realized what had happened. The rooster is not an accidental bird. It sings at dawn, awakens us from sleep, besides, after the rooster crows, all Evil goes away.”

“An interesting idea, Alice! By the way, from that day on, every morning after the rooster crowing, Peter knelt down and repented, and Christ forgave him after the Resurrection. The Gospel of John ends with the episode when Christ appeared to the disciples and asked Peter three times to confirm his love.”

“But why, of all the Apostles, the holder of the keys to Paradise and Hell is Peter, who betrayed Christ? Maybe it means that you won’t receive the key to Paradise if you betrayed someone, didn’t repent and were not forgiven by the one you betrayed?”

“And you’ll never get to Heaven unless you forgive the one who betrayed you,” Joice added logically.

I went out to the balcony of the Tower, looked out at the Holy Mountain and thought, “Will I be able to go to Heaven? Will I find my parents and where, since they weren’t baptized?” My gaze shifted to the square, and I noticed the mysterious Monk! He was different from both humans and ghosts, and looked at me silently. Who was he? Why did he appear and disappear? I should have gone downstairs and talked, but I was scared. I closed my eyes and…


***
Courtroom in the Universe


The Moonlight Sonata was still there. There were a lot of people at the Scales, they came up one by one talking about me with a smile. Frames from the Past were flashing on the screen. I remembered a little bit – colleagues and subordinates, some of them even called me “their office mother”. In the Mist, the doors to the lift opened. I stepped inside and saw … a devil! He suggested going on vacation together. “You call yourself his friend, don’t you?” Whose friend? I didn’t remember. Everything was hidden in the Mist. The Moonlight Sonata was getting louder. The lift doors opened, and the Woman appeared in front of me. Her face was flickering, and she seemed to have two faces in one. Who was she? I heard her voice, “Don’t leave him! Help him!” Perhaps that was Love. The Mist was enveloping everything around, but I could hear the laughter of devils in the Courtroom, the clatter of their hooves and ominous squeals, “Ours!”