1. Instamama

2. Hype

3. Natural

4. The Human Circus

5. Jealousy

6. Save our souls

7. Subway never sleeps

8. The Puppeteer

9. The Healer

10. The ward number "sevennn"

11. Family

Instamama

- Mom, I don't want to, I won't. I hate you; I don't want to do it.

- You are brute. You are beast. I said we're shooting another take. You did everything wrong. Everything. The sheep (followers in social media) won't believe that you like to eat it and play with it. You are bitch, you will eat it with pleasure. Come on, I'm filming, smile, scum, otherwise I'll tear your fucking mouth.

- Mom, Mom. I don't want to eat it, please don't touch me. I want to sleep. Let me go, please.

Seven-year-old Sonechka curled up on a new rug, sent recently by the company "Grushka-toy" for advertising. Her legs ached from the dermantine shoes her mother made her walk in. These shoes were too small for her, the company made a mistake with the size, since low-quality Chinese shoes were a few centimeters less from the declared standard. The feet were pierced with wild pain, as the soft baby bones were still forming and growing, and the bright pink shackles in rhinestones and sequins did not allow the fingers to straighten. Others have not been sent for advertising yet, and Kristina "Happymom", her nickname on Instagram, was principled. Everything that can be obtained for free, she will receive for free, "fo free", as they said at the training on personal growth and development.

Naturally, the training was in Russian, during her nine classes, Kristina never learned English, but some words, such as "money", "open mind", "Come on" and "cash", she diligently wrote down in a handwriting in her, Kristina's notebook.

To shoot her daughter on camera twenty-four hours a day, Kristina was taught by a coach for the same personal growth, Vita Freedom, and in the past, escort Vitalina Zapenko.

- Bunny, you can earn money right at home. Think about what you have that many women don't have? That's right, baby. You have a boy.

- A girl. I have a daughter and a husband, - Kristina corrected her timidly.

- Fuck your husband. All husbands are losers and beggars, if they don't earn a million and don't drive a Porsche, and a boy or a girl, what difference does it make if you can earn millions on it.

The hall of the small recreation center, where the training took place, buzzed approvingly. Wives and mothers in Chinese low quality jackets sweated and wanted a different life, without sausages from cheap store and promotional cottage cheese, which had the same relation to dairy products as success coach Vita Freedom - to education.

Sonechka's life from the age of five turned into endless smiles at the camera, praise of toys, reviews of things and goods.

Kristina filmed her every step, not allowing her to do something without the consent of her mother - director. The rating of reality shows on Instagram and on Youtube began to grow. The perfect mother of the perfect princess and dad is hanging out somewhere for show.

Sonechka's legs were very sore. She could not stand on them, because the curvature of the feet led to deformation.

- Brute, get up, I said get up!

Christina slapped her child on the back. She could not hit her face, the camera will quickly show bruises.

- Mommy, I don't want to eat this. My stomach hurts, - the girl turned pale and leaned against the wall of the toy house.

- Bastard, get up from the wires, you're breaking the scenery, get up, creature, I've been setting up the light in this part of the room all morning.

- Mom, my eyes hurt, I don't want to be photographed. Tummy. My tummy hurts.

Sonya was holding her stomach with a small hand. There was a sharp stench of excrement in the air. A huge red puddle spread out under the girl's ass.

- Bitch. What a bitch you are, - Kristina hit her daughter in the chest and she fell on the house like a rag doll.

- Mommy, my tummy!

Sonya tore the remains of the advertised product right into her lap.

Next day.

- Hello, this is Kristina. What did you send me? I ask, do you, your motherfuckers, want to poison my child? I don't care about the storage conditions, I'll sue you. I took everything on camera. There is a conclusion of doctors. No, worse. I'll write on Instagram, what a shitty you are! And your products are shit. How much? Shove your five hundred dollars up your ass. How much? Okay, I'll think about it.

A few days later.

- Hello everyone, guys! I am Sonechka, happydaughter and my mom, Kristina, happymom recommend you the best and most nutritious product in the world! Order now, the link is in the head of our profile!

Hype.

Sasha Rygotina went to Instagram and opened her profile. A million. The long-awaited million. Who are all these people? Fans? Haters? Watching? Two million pairs of eyes look at her every day. They watch her like a lab rat, what she eats, how she sleeps, where she walks, who she's friends with. When the rating of statistics starts to fall and views are reduced, she gives them food content, in fact, she is watching them, their reaction, they are rats behind glass, and from time to time she throws them a piece of meat in the form of a hype.

She liked this fashionable English word, she didn't even bother and translated it in a Google translator: hype. It's about her. A simple girl from the village, without manners, education and culture. She came to the district town, got a job as a waitress at the Golden Chest pub. After sleeping with a fat and bald client, Sasha bought herself the very first iPhone, the first sign of a successful girl. And by downloading the Instagram app, she discovered a new, beautiful, glamorous, rich world of chicks who ate lobsters on yachts, drank Veuve Clicquot champagne against the backdrop of European attractions and ordered coffee at Starbucks near Trump Tower.

- I want that too! Sasha whispered resolutely and registered under the nickname #sasharygotina#.

She put up a photo from the park. Against the background of yellow autumn leaves, which carefully warmed the slightly chilled ground with a blanket, stood an ordinary girl in blue jeans and a red faux fur coat. A dermontine shoulder bag with the logo of a famous brand screamed about poverty and bad taste. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail. Sasha received only one comment from her mom: "Daughter, you are beautiful!"

The girl resolutely clicked on the link to delete the account.

Nowadays.

"Alex Bystritskaya, you are super!"

"Subscribed to you, you are my ideal!"

"Awesome figure, baby!"

"Sleep with me, you dirty whore!"

"I hate you!"

"Love you!"

"You fucking scum, die!"

Sasha Rygotina did not like to read comments, but a hundred thousand laudatory reviews were colored with negativity. The most important thing is that even bad comments and hate (hate - v 1 to hate), gave her statistics, views, rating and advertising order. She deleted her first account five years ago and immediately created a new one, where she signed with a different name and put up a photo in panties and a bra.

The first steps were difficult; the videos were not funny and not beautiful. But people liked them. Here she shows how she shaves her legs, and here she shows how she scares an old lady and she (an old lady) falls to the ground from surprise. Next video where she puts on a transparent T-shirt and douses herself with milk, letting the cat lick her nipples.

For several years, Alex Bystritskaya amused her hamster subscribers (hamster – another name of fans and followers) as much as she could. They liked to absorb her irrepressible fantasy, wait for the next hype and trolling, comment, touch the famous hype instagram influencer.

She posted photos and videos where she gets a tattoo on her pubis, gets beauty injections without anesthesia, and last year she restored her virginity live and arranged an auction for her sale. Virginity was bought by a blogger from neighboring countries and they arranged the purchase and sale process almost online, hiding only the genitals, fearing to go into ban because of the guardians of morality and the policy of safe content.

For several years, Sasha moved from the district center to the regional center, and today she is moving to Moscow. She dreamed of a big city, the center of the world, that she would be rich and famous walking around Red Square and signing autographs. The amount of hamster (followers), as she called them, was growing, there was more and more advertising, but it was still not enough. She wanted to count not tens, but hundreds of thousands, not to rent a studio on the Arbat, but to buy it. She wanted not a Honda, but a BMW, although ideally she wanted a Bentley. Like those others, her idols with lobsters and Clicquot.

The content has become tougher, brighter, and more fun. Views were growing, but not as fast as she would wish, and she want a lot of money right now.

Last week, she asked subscribers which part of her body to pierce, the first place went to the nipple, the second to the clitoris, the earlobe was in last place. Vodka no longer helped, Sasha had been on cocaine for a long time and tightly, which gave her the strength to work and gush with ideas.

The nipple still hurt and seemed to be inflamed, and the breast, like her whole body, made for advertising of new plastic surgery center, bothered and ached even more. The plastic surgeon turned out to be a novice trainee and something went wrong during the operation. The stitches were leaking and bleeding, so Alex took pictures of her in a tight bra, hamsters loved it.

Yesterday she collected several million views by drinking a cocktail of her own urine and having a lemon snack.

Today she has her period according to the plan. Pads and tampons she has already shown, because followers need something sharp. For example, lick the finger or smear blood on the face.

And tomorrow she will come up with something with a cat, for example, like last time. She will secretly hurt a little animal and with tears in her eyes she will fly by taxi to the vet clinic that ordered her advertising. Of couse, she will do it on camera live broadcasting. Here it turned out badly with the dog, under cocaine she did not calculate the blow and fatally injured the dog, which she so heroically saved on camera from a fake dog hater.

In the vet clinic, death was pronounced; Sasha was so bitterly grieved in stories that money began to come to the card from compassionate people. The blogger arranged a lavish funeral for the unfortunate corpse, ordered cremation and buried it in a specially designated place in the pet cemetery. She wore black for another week and started good morning in her underpants and in tears.

The hype with the dog began to be forgotten and the elite kennel gave her a new victim for advertising, a four-month-old puppy that no one wanted to buy because of a small defect on the paw. The dog spent the whole day howling in the pantry until the neighbors did not complain about Sasha to the landlady. Rygotina took the dog back to the kennel, threatening to make them anti-advertising forever with their little amount of followers on Instagram. Where are they? And where is she with her million? And the million is growing. That's the main thing. The most important thing in the life of Sasha Rygotina, ugh, Alex Bystritskaya.

She looked in the mirror, her face was gray, bloated from free fillers, filters and makeup helped her out in Instragram, she had to go back to the cosmetologist, rejuvenate, there last week she was invited to one. Sasha wiped the white dust under her nose and clicked on the coveted Insta icon. The monthly video has gained more than three million views, more than the video with a cocktail of urine.

"Alex Bystritskaya, you are a terrible person, for the sake of popularity you are ready for anything, probably to eat your own shit or kill your own mother, and you are a freak!"

She did not like the number of likes of this comment. Many. Even too much. She didn't like thinking hamsters. Such people started to rebel, complain about the page, call for a boycott and unsubscribe, for Sasha it was like death.

She wrote an answer under the comment, muttering it under her breath.

"Freaks are you. You visit my page, you watch me 24 hours a day, you expect stories and videos from me, and you vote and choose what you are interested in. You demand more and more, because it's always not enough for you. I am the most scandalous blogger thanks to you, because all of you are my viewers".

The comment immediately rose to the top. She was showered with praises and emoticons, hearts, declarations of love and vows of loyalty, comparisons with other bloggers in favor of Alex and much more. But Sasha didn't read it anymore. She was thinking about that comment, he stuck a thorn in her head and she didn't want to pull it out.

Alex Bystritskaya opened the phone book and pressed the call button:

- Hello, Mom. Hello. I'll come to you for a week or two. Yeah. I'm tired of Moscow; I want to change the situation.

Natural.

Dinara Gafurova was sitting near the doors of the intensive care unit, white as the wall against which she leaned her back.

- Live, live, live! Please, Allah Almighty, Lord, Universe, and Mother of God, just live!

A year ago.

- My sunbeams, my people of Nature and Goodness, my Universe, are you ready to realize your essence? Are you ready to become a part of Mother Nature?

- Yes, we are ready, - Dinara shouted and stroked her huge belly, - we are ready and happy.

- Are you ready to give up the poisons that poison us, from hospitals and clinics where we are killed, from living in concrete boxes and riding in iron cans?

- Yes, - Dinara shouted and looked at the priestess of Light and Goodness, Valeria Johnson, (her real surname was Sviridenko), with fascination.

- I will teach you to talk to your precious yoni (vagina) and generate energy, I will teach you to live in a flow with the universe, I will teach you to be healthy and live up to one hundred and fifty years. Our body has no analogues either in the animal or in the plant world. It regenerates itself and develops protection against all diseases, I will tell you about the treatment with the power of thought and what nature gives us.

Lera Sviridenko, a native of the glorious city of Odessa near the Black Sea, was conditionally convicted of fraud. Having narrowly escaped prison, she met an American of Russian origin and moved to the sunny state of California. Having founded the sect of the Holy Sun, she urged parishioners to donate money monthly to generate solar energy, love and health. Having received several complaints and police records for illegal activities, Valeria has been closely engaged in social networks and promoting her brand "Sunny World" on Instagram. She gave birth to a baby live in her bathroom, which caused a stir and a huge number of followers of the "Life without Doctors" movement.

She wrote two books "Open the sun in your yoni" and the second "Yoni of my soul", created a course on yoni mastery and a master class "Storage and preparation of placenta at home".

Having received a furious response on the social network, entrepreneur Valeria Johnson finished her cigarette and finished a bottle of French red wine.

- These idiots fall for such nonsense; listen to what they write to me, Rob. But most importantly, they buy tickets to my trainings for a hundred dollars, they have a monthly salary.

- Dear, we live in a luxurious mansion, we go to Las Vegas for the weekend, we have full medical insurance, because we have four higher educations for two. If you were poor and stupid, you would also want to get a key to the apartment where the money is for a hundred dollars.

- Not money, dear, but love and health!

Valeria laughed loudly and began booking tickets to several countries of the post-Soviet space.

- You are clever and beautiful, you are nature, you are God, only you can become happy and healthy with the power of thought. Your chakras are open; the life inside you will soon ripen and be born without doctors and other destroyers of nature. Remember, meat is evil. And you don't need fish, dairy products and eggs. Our goal is to eat raw fruits and vegetables, that's what nature wants, it gives us strength and sun, light and reason. Everything created by nature is good; everything created by man will lead to the end of humanity. Work out your desires, feelings, realize the power of your thoughts, unity with nature, and open your yoni towards the sun. Eat fruits and vegetables, drink clean, and spring water and the body will thank you!

- And my next course, which I developed for future and present mothers, is called "Don't let the doctors take your child into their hands", it costs even cheaper now, only fifty dollars, you can buy the course by clicking on my link on Instagram.

Dinara Gafurova diligently performed all the tasks of the guru from the USA. She bought a maternity course, learned books about yoni and every day tried to look not only into herself, but also where Valeria Johnson's inexhaustible imagination and thirst for money taught. Dinara gave birth to a boy in the bathroom, in a removable tiny one-bedroom in a hood on the outskirts of Moscow. Every day she chewed cucumber with all her might and tried not to look at sausages made of soy, buckwheat and rice. Dinara's husband Said Gafurov did not share his wife's hobbies, moreover, every day he complained to his relatives about the quirks and hobbies of his half. Relatives shook their heads, ate fatty lamb pilaf and washed it down with green tea. After giving birth in the bathroom, Said threatened Dinara with a divorce, but felt sorry for the little and long-awaited son. Working as a cook in a restaurant, Said saw the family sleeping only late at night when he returned from his shift. He had to support not only them, but also send some of the money to relatives back home.

Dinara was engaged in self-development and unity with nature. The son was born tiny and very weak, did not take a breast for a long time, turned blue and choked with screaming. Said begged Dinara to call a doctor, but the girl stood her ground - doctors are the biggest evil in the world. Returning from work around midnight, Said listened to the sleeping lump, his son, his baby was not breathing.

Dinara Gafurova was sitting near the doors of the intensive care unit, white as the wall against which she leaned her back.

- Live, live, live! Please, Allah Almighty, Lord, Universe, and Mother of God, just live!

The door of the intensive care unit opened. Dinara jumped up.

- Are you a mother? – The doctor, a woman in her sixties, took off her gloves, a cap, and then she took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes for a long time.

- Doctor, how is my son? Dinara was sobbing hysterically and trying to calm her trembling hands.

- Your son is already well. Stable. He has a postpartum injury. It was necessary to go to the hospital immediately, he had severe anemia, and most likely there was oxygen starvation during childbirth. The child is not registered anywhere. Where did you give birth to him? In Uzbekistan, that he is not listed in the lists of newborns?

- No. In the bathroom. In my flat.

The Doctor looked into Dinara's eyes for a very long time. Probably a whole minute. The girl could not stand it and lowered her head. The doctor sighed and walked down the long corridor towards the receiver.

- Doctor, wait, thank you. Thanks.

- Today your son was saved. Pumped out. And yesterday, the baby died, three years old, also the same conscious raw food eater fed the child to complete exhaustion with pine needles and leaves from trees, the body could not cope with an elementary cold, the temperature did not knock down for several days, they brought almost a corpse here, and took it away after the fact. And we are the doctors to blame; and this so called mother screamed here that her child was killed.

- I won't do it anymore, - Dinara squeezed tears in herself, but they traitorously rolled out of her eyes, painfully burning the skin of her frozen cheeks, - I promise you. Forgive me.

- Is there an education? A job? Specialty?

Dinara shook her head negatively.

- Come to us as a cleaner, you will enter a technical school; I will transfer you as a nurse after graduating the nurse school. We have a round-the-clock nursery here for infants, anyway, he needs to recover for six months under the supervision of doctors, and here you will have work and connection with your son.

The girl nodded vigorously, wiping away the tears that blurred her eyes.

- Thank you, - she bent down to kiss her hand, but the doctor pulled her back.

- That's enough. Pull yourself together. Come with me, I'll give you books to read from cover to cover. Go to work tomorrow morning. We have a nurse on a binge, you will help me in cabinet.

Dinara ran beside the doctor like a faithful dog. She wrote a message to Said on the go that everything was fine, and after thinking for a second, deleted the Instagram app from her phone forever.

The Human Circus.

Robert with tears in his eyes from pain and humiliation, rubbed his wrists, which had changed from blood-red to a deep purple hue. The places where the skin came into contact with the metal of the handcuffs rotted and abscessed. Pus protruded from larger wounds under pressure, Robert was very afraid that his hand would rot and washed the wounds in a bowl with stagnant, smelly water, which was put in his drinking cage. The bowl was old and broken, the previous occupant of the cage beat this bowl on the concrete floor when he went crazy and attacked the Caretaker. The food bowl was filled with something expired and smelly to the point of vomiting. But never mind, Robert will eat it later, when his stomach is cramped with hunger and a painful spasm. It was always easier for him to eat, or rather to swallow this something, when he crawled up to the grate, where a small door opened and a hairy paw with claws handed him a bowl filled with so-called food, something that does not let him die of starvation. The same paw was pouring water from a bottle into his drinking bowl. He always enjoyed the water more.

Robert hated the evening more than the day. He lived from sunset to sunset, trying not to remember the details of the night, terrible, noisy, fiery. Every evening the locks rattled, the noise approached and became unbearable, the bright light of the lights beat into his eyes. His cage was opened by two Tigers, and baring razor-sharp teeth led along the trees, which intertwined into an impenetrable wall, behind it a waterfall was rustling. Now he was obedient and intimidated, the first attempts to escape almost took his life. He was severely bitten on the leg to discourage him from running forever. The foot was so damaged that stepping on it was already an execution. Robert limped with pain and horror, imagining how he would jump over the burning ring, run around the pit and fight with the prisoner from the next cage.

Lionesses have already gathered around the pit, they have always been more bloodthirsty than the rest, it was they who insisted that the prisoners of the pit fight to defeat, to death. Behind them there were always Lions, Bears, even the damn Hyenas laughed at the sight of human blood, Pythons hung from trees and passed all the events from the pit to the last rows, there were mastodons: Elephants, Hippos and Rhinos. They clapped approvingly when the Pythons informed them that all the teeth had already been knocked out of the pit. Elephants and Rhinos looked at each other approvingly and admired their tusks, which no one else would ever pull out, cut off, shoot or sell. Far away, in the very darkness, herds of Deer and Bison grazed, they approached drinking troughs made of human skulls and drank water from them, which fell in drops flying from a huge waterfall, as if into bowls.

People were loved here. Especially the new and strong ones. Every day, returning from hunting, the Tigers, who were called Hunters, dragged a new person on ropes, and if they were lucky, his whole family. Women were not favored here, firstly, women were poorly trained, secondly, they fought weakly in the pit, and thirdly, they whined for their children. Women were put into production and stripped of their delicate and well-groomed skin, which could be used for home, decor or attire. Human children were not killed if the latter did not die themselves from grief and longing for their parents or from wounds in the process of hunting. Children were allowed into special enclosures where little tiger cubs, lion cubs, fox cubs and other kids played with them all day, took pictures with them, in general, did whatever they wanted with their live toys. Children under one year old stopped being allowed into the aviaries after the baby elephants trampled several of them during the game. The hunters shook their heads and shook their paws, human cubs are so difficult to get for games, they also grow fast, prepare to fight in a pit in a few years, jump over fire and kill each other. They had a conversation with the baby elephants, but they did not forbid them to come to the aviary to play.

Robert knew that the Guardian Wolves would protect him as long as possible, they gathered everyone just for him, the former animal trainer and his brother Ruslan. They feed him pills, drugs, and the devil knows what vitamins to continue life in his weak and broken body. These creatures do this for one single purpose, so that life in it smoulders, fading slowly and terribly. Robert remembered Marina, his wife and trainer of dolphins and killer whales. Her last days were spent in a muddy puddle, where she swam among her feces and the remnants of food that these animals threw at her from above. She was suffocating from lack of oxygen and dying from lack of clean water. She beat her head, arms and legs against the clay walls, distraught with grief, pain and fear. When the animals realized that Marina would no longer be able to show evening shows in a pit with water, they left her to die in this pit, having previously flushed the water. Robert never saw his wife alive again. Out of grief, he climbed on the bars of the cage, jumped on the floor in the hope of breaking on the stone floor, but the Guards entered the cage and injected something into the prisoner, immobilizing him for several hours.

The eyelids were heavy and hot, Robert could not open his eyes, he just sniffed and listened to the movement behind the bars. Something familiar. He crawled to the door through which he received food, opened his eye with his hand. Ruslan, his brother and a bear trainer, hobbled absolutely blue from bruises, traces of a whip, cut the skin on his back in two, like yin and yang, once Ruslan had this tattoo on his back, unity with the world and nature, male and female, heaven and earth. Now, in place of the tattoo, there were old scars from blows and fresh ones from daily training. The heavy collar around his neck did not allow Ruslan to look back at Robert, the bear who was leading Ruslan to training pulled the chain and forced him to go faster. The Bear Trainer was the cruelest and the strongest. He pierced his students' nose and inserted an iron ring, because of unsanitary conditions, the man's nose rotted, fell off in pieces, along with the skin, but the bear was adamant. He called all his captives students and regularly tried to teach them some new and absurd tricks, such as riding a bicycle or riding a moped through a pit with fire torches. Once there was an incident in the Circus. One of the prisoners got out of the pit on a moped and crushed a bear cub in the front rows, tried to escape. The fugitive slipped among the elephants, who did not immediately realize that this was not part of the nightly show. But he met with the horns and hooves of buffaloes, which knocked the desperate man off the vehicle. The bear personally tore the prisoner into two parts and hung him over the pit to intimidate the other students.

Ruslan was a favorite student of the Bear. All the animals were waiting for his show in the pit, some even forgot about crackers made of human bones and chips made of human skin. The bear took a whip in his paws and gave the command. Ruslan ran in a circle, then accelerated, the bear lit a fire and Ruslan jumped through numerous fire barriers under the stomp, roar and howl of the audience. The last time Ruslan's head caught fire, the rest of the hair on his skull flared up like a torch, and the Bear, fearing for his best artist, doused him with stinking water, where the Crocodile artist had recently died.

Robert looked at his brother through the bars, knocked on the steel bars, but Ruslan did not hear him. After the burn, his ears were burned, the Bear took out ointment to stop sepsis, but Ruslan lost his hearing. Now the Coach beat him with an electric stick, then showed him the number that Ruslan would have to perform. Robert wanted to scream, but in the Circus people didn't make a single sound. Every single student and artist had their tongue torn out to deprive them of the opportunity to communicate with each other. In the early years, people agreed on escapes, attacks, and someone managed to run to the border and hide from Hunters. After such escapes and riots, the King of Animals issued a decree to deprive people of their language.

Robert hardly remembered his parents and his family anymore. Yesterday he killed another man in the pit. The Tigers who trained him nodded approvingly and even threw a piece of something hot and fresh into his cage. Robert didn't even want to think about what he was chewing so furiously, tearing with his teeth, swallowing, practically without chewing. Only the taste of blood in his mouth hammered at his subconscious that it was clearly not a beast. They didn't eat each other. And they didn't let people eat them. They began to understand, sympathize and respect each other. The only creatures they killed were humans.

Jealousy.

In the psychologist's office:

- Esenia, do you understand that your painful jealousy can lead to divorce? To the end of the relationship? Do you understand that?

- Anna Valentinovna, I'm trying.

- Esenia, Dmitry called me yesterday. You smashed his phone. Again. It seemed to you that his mistress was writing to him.

- Yes. I have already asked for forgiveness this morning, we have reconciled, on the condition that I will start going to you twice a week again.

- Good. Very good. Esenia, you have to work on yourself. Trust your husband, who loves you very much and worries about you. You have to stop tracking down his female colleagues, his social networks, the information on his phone. Give him freedom in communication, do not seize Dmitry's personal space, otherwise you yourself will destroy everything you have. Jealousy in your case has turned from flirting with peppercorn into a disease that can lead, unfortunately, to divorce. And yet, you understand that if you accuse your husband of treason a thousand times, he will change for the thousand first time, so that it will not be so offensive to listen to screams and scandals.

After leaving the office of the hated psychologist, Esenia lit a cigarette with pleasure. Although the words of this damn woman made sense. Yes, she often behaves inappropriately. Yes, Dima threatened that if she attacked his colleagues again or swore at his boss in a work chat, he would leave. Forever.

A cold wind ruffled her raincoat what had recently been stylish. Senya shivered, where are you, warm September? Where are you, ghostly Indian summer? The dark sky was not conducive to long walks, but she decided to walk to the next metro station, resisting the temptation to immediately dive into the subway.

Having reached the middle of the route, Esenia realized that she had overreacted. Piercing gusts of icy north wind blew, or rather blew the life out of the fragile body. Cursing the walks, the fresh air, Esenia gritted her teeth and almost ran to the saving subway building. What made her look at the parking lot near the road, she will not remember, but Dima, hugging a girl near the car, will never be forgotten.

Never.

The planet stopped for a second. And almost collapsed. Esenia also resisted. At such moments, she imagined that she would lose consciousness or the ground would open up under her feet. But he hugged, whispered something in her ear, smiled and tried to warm the other one from the wind. Esenia was standing on the sidewalk one car away and living her waking nightmare, but she didn't need to be warmed. She was hot. A trickle of sweat ran down her back, sweat broke out on her forehead, her palms were wet, although her fingers did not bend at all, her hands became alien and plastic.

Senya tried to swallow and was even surprised that she couldn't swallow saliva. Firstly, there was no saliva, her mouth was absolutely dry, like a desert with a prickly cactus tongue. Swallowing movements caused scratching and coughing, dry, loud and angry, as if she was about to suffocate. And just for a moment it seemed to her that she forgot how to breathe through her nose and almost suffocated. She grabbed the parking lot fence and breathed noisily, but instead of relief, she vomited right under the wheels of someone else's car.

The fence was in the shape of a pipe around the perimeter, Yesenia bent down, and entering her own vomit, found herself in the parking lot. She was separated from the couple in love only by a Toyota Camry and a Land Rover. Dima did not see her immediately, only when she was already very close. He was unpleasantly surprised and, somewhere deep down, a little scared.

- It's your own fault. Understand? I'm tired of your scenes. And shame. And I found a person with whom I feel good. I found someone who trusts me!

Esenia approached the couple. Without saying a word, she pulled out a pair of nail scissors from her purse, hit her opponent in the stomach with all her might and pulled out the sharp scissors with slightly curved tips back. The girl's eyes bulged out of surprise, grabbed the wound on her turtleneck with both hands and began to settle.

- Oh, Lena's fitness trainer? Very pleasant. How are Dima's successes?

- You're crazy! You are motherfucker! What have you done? Lena? How are you? Wait, I'll call an ambulance. Hold on, baby. My God! My God!

Dima was already dialing the emergency number. Meanwhile, a black Gelentwagen drove into the parking lot in search of a free space. When the car was a few steps away from the love triangle, Esenia pushed her husband right under the wheels of the jeep, whose driver was looking the other way, to the far row, where there was only one parking space. Dima staggered from surprise. The phone fell out of his hands and flew away. There was a screech of brakes, the deafening sound of a signal, the crunch of something very soft and pliable. And now the world has definitely stopped. And the light in Dima's eyes went out forever.

Esenia woke up an hour before the alarm sound in a cold sweat. Her hands were shaking, as if after a good drink with her best friend. Her heart was pounding too hard and too fast. Swallowing, she looked at him with fear. Her Dima. Dear and beloved. Her life, her meaning and support. She loves him so much that sometimes it becomes even scary. And he loves her. He hints at a wedding, she waits patiently. And in a couple of years they will think about children. Necessarily. Absolutely.

- Oh, my God, what a dream, real nightmare! I have to get up and look out the window. And a bad dream will quickly go away, especially at dawn. That's what Grandma said.

Senya got up and found one slipper with her foot, the second stubbornly did not want to be. Spitting on the search, she went barefoot to drink water in the kitchen, and also to laugh at herself and the nightmare. Returning to the bedroom, she saw that Dima had received a text message. Strange, six in the morning. You never know. Some kind of spam. Esenia stretched herself sweetly, lay down by the side of her beloved and fell fast asleep.

P.S.

SMS: Dimusya, everything is canceled today at lunch. I miss you, my cat. Kiss. Your M.

Save Our Souls

Maria Petrovna Kuklacheva felt a slight indisposition in the entrance. Damn allergy. Carefully slamming the front door behind her, she pressed the elevator button wiped by thousands of fingers on the first floor and summoned a rumbling iron monster that thundered down, overthrown from somewhere above into the very underworld. The doors slowly and with a screech opened the insatiable interior, the sharp smell of cheap women's perfume in the style of "the last chance of a berry woman", strong cigarettes and something completely unbearable hit the nose, but judging by the way Maria Petrovna had tears in her eyes, of organic origin.

- That's a bitch Valentina, she was driving her garbage again and smoking in the elevator! May she never find a husband, a prostitute!

The kind neighbor Kuklacheva swore with gusto and entered the poorly lit cabin with satisfaction. Pressing the button for the ninth floor with a crooked finger, she watched as the elevator doors jerkily closed in order to quickly execute the command of the incoming signal.

The elevator began to pick up speed, swaying unusually from side to side. Goosebumps the size of a rat ran down Maria Petrovna's back, which had recently been poisoned by a contractor hired by the management company of the house. Kuklacheva tried to press the emergency stop button, but for some reason it sank into the dashboard and was no longer pressed. The unfortunate woman began to press all the buttons, including the dispatcher's call button, but the button was soulless, silent and soundless. Maria Petrovna weakly shouted help, but the cabin rumbled so that her voice was drowned in the screeching and the sound of the approaching end of the world. The light in the cabin went out, twitching violently, the cabin froze for a moment somewhere between heaven and earth in weightlessness, but the force of gravity won and carried its victim down, somewhere in the Realm of Hades, rumbling and rejoicing in freedom from cables, safety ropes and speed limiters.

Maria Petrovna Kuklacheva died long and painfully, choking on her own blood due to ruptures of internal organs, numerous bruises and fractures. Her skull was crushed by the ceiling of the elevator on only one side, so one eye remained intact. Henna-dyed hair was matted with blood and brains. The feet were unnaturally twisted, as if they belonged to a completely different body. Inexpensive leatherette shoes, bought at a sale in a shopping center, flew off their feet and lay separately. She was already unconsciously rolling her one eye for the last time, peering into the darkness of the elevator shaft, where her old, battered body lay helplessly. Maria Petrovna ended her life in the basement of the entrance, which she so carefully protected from bad neighbors, visiting tenants and women with a bad reputation. Somewhere above in the world of daylight and sun, the siren of the police, ambulance and even firemen was noisy, but pensioner Kuklacheva no longer heard anything.

Charlie wagged his tail and glared at me with his infinitely intelligent and all-understanding brown eyes. He flattened his ears and stuck out his tongue, as if stretching his cunning and impudent muzzle in a smile. I patted him on the withers and stroked his large black head with a white spot. The fur was so thick and long that my neighbor and I started calling him Bear instead of the usual Charlie. He barked a greeting and gave me the stump of his front paw out of habit. The wound healed well, but unfortunately, the paw could not be completely saved.

- So let's see, boy, how you feel today. Pus on the head no longer oozes from the bite, the bite itself has tightened. So antibiotics work, they work, as our anesthesiologist says. Charlie the Bear couldn't get up yet, the postoperative period, recovery, treatment is a long process, but nothing, we'll manage, right, boy?

I was walking from my shift, tired and exhausted to the limit. I hate November, the most disgusting month of the year, damp, dull, dank, icy, dirty and black. Whatever boots you don't wear, you'll freeze and get wet anyway. There was a madhouse at work, the patient complained about the poor attitude of the staff, I turned out to be extreme, you see, I did not respond quickly enough in the message whether she could drink alcohol after the operation. She had liposuction of the whole body, pumped out a garbage bag of fat, tightened into a corset, bandaged with elastic bandages, modeled a waist or its likeness, and she let me write messages at night in the style of "you are slaves, I am your king." I lit a cigarette and tilted my head back to look at the November night sky.

I can't see a damn thing! No stars, no clouds. One solid blackness, as if we were thrown somewhere on the outskirts of the universe, away from cheerful and warm stars, such as, for example, by the name of the Sun. I wanted to listen to Victor Tsoy and drink wine, sit by the window and mindlessly smoke a cigarette through the open window. But first the shower! Hot! Like a cauldron in hell, in which the devils of sinful souls boil. I shivered from a gust of wind, Zara's jacket, invented for the European winter, was shocked from cold too. I also wanted to go to the toilet, a chill ran through my skin. Trying to think about the boiling cauldron of hell, I cheerfully walked along the fresh and poorly made asphalt on the sidewalk.

I walked up to the entrance and crossed my legs with the strength of a fitness trainer. Taking the keys out of my backpack, I suddenly swore out loud. On a rainy November night, my three-story emotional cry for help sounded like music from a Tarantino movie, to the time and place. The key to the entrance flew off the general key fob and laughed at me somewhere in the depths of a bottomless trunk.

I heard the cat's meowing immediately, insistent and somehow desperately loud. Moonwalking, I followed the sound that came from the basement window of our building. I turned on the flashlight on my phone and shone it through the window, nothing. Sighing and gathering courage, I went down the stairs. I have attached two cats from this basement, and I will attach a third one.

I walked into a painfully familiar, smelly, damp and low room, turning on the flashlight on my phone at full power. I didn't want to do it in a small way anymore, I wanted to do it in a big way. After saying the duty kitty-kitty, I fumbled with my flashlight on the floor and the pipes lined with glass wool. A shadow flickered under one of the pipes. I took a step towards the pipe and screamed. There was something covered in blood under the pipe, and the shadow that flashed in the light of the lantern turned out to be a rat. I shone the light on the animal and tears rolled down in a hail.

Our Charlie! Charlie, darling!

The favorite of the whole entrance of our building! Defender, the best and kindest dog! He was sleeping on the ground floor in a special couch, and we took patronage over him with the whole entrance. I sat down and shone the light on the corpse of the unfortunate dog, the head and stomach were bitten by rats, the front paw turned into some kind of mess, as if the dog was trying to bite it off. I was confused and just ran my flashlight over a huge black-and-white woolen lump, which recently cheerfully greeted each tenant, desperately wagging its tail and licking the hands. Something touched my leg and I almost died of fear, only the desire to go to the toilet and the wide open door to the street from the ill-fated basement helped.

Cat. Lord. Save and preserve these sacred animals.

- It was you who meowed, kitty, you wanted to save our Charlie. You see it's late. Tomorrow morning, before my shift, I'll take a package and bury it.

While I was calming myself with a monologue out loud and backing away with the cat at my feet to the door, I swear I heard a sigh. Darting like an arrow to the dog, I examined him, almost the corpse was still breathing.

Calling a taxi, I carefully picked up a dog between a mongrel and a collie and I was surprised to note that my neighbors and I had fattened Charlie to glory, as if for slaughter. A strange expression. For slaughter. Nasty.

- Hey, did you bring Charlie?

A young doctor of pleasant appearance, took off his glasses and invited me into the office. I tried to banish thoughts of the handsome doctor from myself and completely switched to Charlie.

Poisoning. Multiple fractures. A broken kidney. The paw had to be amputated. There were tears in my eyes again. The doctor carefully handed me a box of paper handkerchiefs. At least a week in the hospital, if he survives these days. And of course, postoperative care and long recovery.

I blew my nose loudly and thanked our savior.

- Doctor, it's all deratization, right? Rat poison? Our house committee constantly calls for prevention.

The doctor looked carefully at the finished tests and shook his head.

- No, rat poison hits the spot. And the dog is already old, smart, she can smell it. It's different here, most likely something was spiked into the food intentionally. And the injuries were inflicted punctually, the ultrasound shows that someone deliberately killed the animal with a heavy object, possibly with an iron stick.

I shook my head in disbelief. Intentionally? The pet of the whole entrance, who hasn't offended a cat in so many years? It's like rat poison, only in a weak dose, the rats are running around alive. He fell down the stairs into the basement. Well, then how did he roll under the pipe?

In the morning I met Katya, who was taking her nasty child to the garden.

- Hello, neighbor. Have you seen Charlie? Mine is yelling, waiting for Charlie to take him around the yard to the kindergarten.

I wanted to open my mouth and tell the good news, but I shook my head and stubbed out my cigarette on the trash can. Katya wouldn't let up.

- A few days ago we had deratization, together with the rats, several dead dogs and cats were taken out of the basement. Can you imagine? Apparently the poor were poisoned. If only Charlik could be found.

By the way, I recently helped our neighbor from the ninth floor, Maria Petrovna, she ordered sticks for Scandinavian walking, asked me to meet the courier. She says she is waiting in line at the pharmacy for special prescription medications, she says, it is necessary to monitor health, do sports and live clean, otherwise she says, the cardiologist said, at her age allergies and heart disease can become deadly. Listen, there's been some problems with our elevator lately. I was just coming down, I got stuck on the third, I thought we'd be late for the garden. Sports are sports, but I don't want to walk. Your brother works in the state Elevator Company, let him send a good repair team to put a new elevator, I'll write to the entrance chat about raising money for a new elevator. Safety is the priority of our entrance!

Subway never sleeps

- Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Gorky Park?

Varvara gently touched the shoulder of a man in a well-tailored gray suit. He looked up from the phone screen and turned around. He looks about thirty years old, tall, fit, even slender brunette with piercing green eyes. High cheekbones, sensual lips and a Roman chiseled profile.

Varvara hesitated. She was always a little shy in front of handsome men.

- Girl, did you tell me something?

The man politely, but very dryly looked at Varvara, showing with all his appearance that he was ready to spend literally five seconds of his precious time on her.

- Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Gorky Park?

She was completely embarrassed and blushed to the roots of her already fiery hair. The freckles on her pretty face were lost against the background of a nervous blush.

- You got off at another metro station, this is Sokolniki, and you need to get to the Park of Culture – this is Gorky Park.

- Oh, do I have to buy a ticket again?

- Of course, buy a ticket, go through the turnstile, get on your train on the right side, the one in the direction of the Park of Culture and get off at your station.

The young man explained clearly, but there was impatience and bewilderment in his voice, there are signs everywhere, each station is announced separately, what is difficult here?

Varvara thanked him and stepped aside. She turned her head in confusion, trying to delve into the mysterious scheme of the underground kingdom of Moscow, which looked like the Eighth Wonder of the World on the diagram. She hesitantly reached into a leatherette handbag of a disgusting dirty pink color with a huge tasteless rose on the side. Pulling out her purse, she fished out coins, and it seems she wiped away an unbidden tear.

- Girl, you should be more careful near the cash registers with your wallet. There are a lot of tricksters here, they will cut out the contents of your bag with a blade and remember your name.

Vladimir cursed himself for his pity and concern, putting his phone in his jacket pocket, he came closer.

- Varvara, my name is Varya! Oh, thanks for the warning. I'm in the subway for the first time in my life. You'll excuse me for messing with your head. I have already reached the Comunarka station, and they tell me that this is the final one. I changed trains and made a small mistake. The guys must have been joking with me. I asked them how I could get to Gorky Park, and they looked at each other and said, they say, so now they call him Sokolniki in a new way and they took out the phones, they started asking me, and they themselves take pictures and smile. They asked me where I came from and what my name was. And as I got out of the car, I see them smiling and waving at me, and talking into their phones again. I think I'll ask a handsome man, that is, so that I can get to the Park for sure. And apparently, the guys wanted to laugh.

- You, Varvara, should download the application to your phone, it's very convenient, and the tag will show you the geolocation of where you are going now.

Some invisible force attracted him to a simple, pretty girl, childishly naive and so open to this, sometimes evil and cruel world.

Varya laughed loudly again and took out her small and, judging by the outdated model, cheap phone.

- I wanted to download it, but it doesn't download, I look, and there is no memory in the phone at all. And it's a pity to delete photos, everything is valuable there, my family. I look at them for the second day, I already want to go back to them.

- And what did our capital not please you with? All girls and boys, on the contrary, strive to catch on here, to stay, to find, as they say, themselves and their destiny, and you, on the contrary, are in a hurry to return to your homeland. Is your fiance waiting?

Vladimir unexpectedly asked about the groom, hoping in his heart that Varvara would answer in the negative. It's a strange feeling. It's so nice and easy to talk to her, you don't have to invent and make someone out of yourself who you are not. To stand and chat like this to the screeching brakes of hurrying cars, announcements on the loudspeaker, the trampling and noise of thousands of feet that rush past. And they stand in the middle of this whole giant anthill, as if in an invisible cocoon, and chat with each other.

- No, not at all! What a groom! I'm only nineteen, my father and mother need help, this year I entered our city in absentia, so I have no time.

Varvara blushed again, becoming surprisingly pretty. Through a simple knee-length dress, a wonderful, even athletic figure could be seen. Her natural red hair, at least it seemed to Vladimir, scattered like fire over her fragile shoulders. Slightly touched with mascara, long eyelashes were framed by bright greenish-gray huge eyes that looked at this big world with surprise and kindness.

- Varvara, let me personally take you to the necessary station and take you across the bridge to Gorky Park so that no one will deceive you anymore and so that you don't get lost anymore.

It wasn't like him anymore. Well, what a deal. He stuck to an unfamiliar girl, and now he is also being imposed on as a guide by the last philanderer, as his grandmother, an intelligent mother, a poetess and a descendant of a noble family, liked to say.

Varvara was so delighted that she instinctively shook hands with her unexpected and noble escort. Now it was his turn to be embarrassed and blush, like a boy on a first date.

They chatted about everything and nothing while the train of the metro line red as love was taking them to the Park station. They almost passed their stop, jumped out and began to laugh madly, collecting the glances of dissatisfied and hurrying subway passengers.

- What a beauty!

Varvara froze on the bridge over the Moskva River, looking with admiration at one of the largest and most beautiful vacation spots for thousands of people. Even the air here was somehow special, intoxicating.

- And why do you want to go to Gorky Park? Just for a walk or a meeting?

- I wanted to take a boat ride! They say you can see the whole of Moscow on it! I promised my little brother to go on a boat for him, he dreamed about it for a long time, as he went to first grade. She told that they buried him last month, got hit by a car. The drunken son of the mayor of their city was knocked down to death at a pedestrian crossing. Money was poked at parents so that our family would be silent. Their father kicked them out, he said that the killer of my son will sit in the prison.

After that their old foreign car was burned, they say if you don't take the application, the house will burn down. So her father and her mother sent Varvara to Moscow. They said that Alyosha dreamed all his life of riding on a boat on the Moscow River, to see the monument of Peter the Great and the Kremlin.

- So, - Varvara said sadly, - I'll take a look, I'll come to my brother's grave and tell him everything.

Varvara looked admiringly at the huge white yachts and small excursion boats passing under the bridge. They buzzed to each other like old gentlemen acquaintances, lifting invisible hats in greeting.

Music started playing loudly on one of the tour boats and shouts of Gorko(«Bitterly!» - traditional word during the wedding when a bride and a groom kiss each other) were heard!

Bitterly!

After a few seconds of silence, the vacationers on the boat hooted, whistled and congratulated with applause. The voice of the presenter was even heard, who announced the first dance of the young people to the romantic song of all weddings "I love you to tears". Varvara smiled, she really liked this song.

Her hair was fluttering in the wind, she was here and now so beautiful and free that Vladimir wanted to hug and hold her to him, he was standing a little behind her and her hair touched his face, the scent of her body drove him crazy, thin wrists lay on the handrails, and he wanted to hug her neck. He wanted to protect her from all the scoundrels, not let her go and cherish her as the most precious treasure.

- Varya, let's go for a ride together, I'll buy tickets now.

- Oh, Volodya, it's inconvenient, thank you! I'm going to take it off my mom's card and give it to you!

- Stop it! Don't bother, I'll buy tickets through the app now.

- Thank you! I am in a fairy tale!

He smiled and opened the app.

On the ship, they were silent and looked ahead, holding hands. Words were superfluous.

Two lonely souls who found each other in such a huge metropolis merged together.

Vladimir took her face in his hands, looked into her eyes for a long time, bent down to her lips and said:

- Well, you've overdone it with your brother, pretty girl! Although it makes me cry.

Varvara's eyes began to look like a cat ones. She looked at Vladimir for a second, and then burst out laughing loudly.

- Where did I slip up?

- Twice.

- Well?

- Firstly, the newcomer does not use such expensive and niche fragrances. Even then I began to suspect that the simpleton is not as simple as it seems. And the second, just now. Before boarding, I opened my e-mail to find the ticket code for the controllers, and you said that you could also enter the ticket code without dialing a number by simply opening it on your phone. It was epic. How, I think, does a provincial woman from the subway know about scanners and codes, with her phone from the Ice Age?

- Yes! I screwed up. But it's your own fault. You rubbed against me on the bridge, and I lost my head, although I don't fall in love at work.

- What if you fell in love? Or if I fell in love?

He looked her straight in the eye and held her close. Varvara pulled him by the neck and kissed him gently on the lips.

Some time later.

- Good evening, dear viewers! Today we have a magical, I would even say, magical couple of Vladimir and Varvara Karetsky, the most famous energy magicians in social networks. They have already fulfilled the wishes of hundreds of people! People sign up for the marathon of desires for them for several months, since places in the streams of desires are strictly limited.

- Varvara, Vladimir, you have been a leader in the number of subscribers for a year, your family is on the tenth place in the Forbes list in our country, many call you scammers and liars, someone - wish-fulfillers and healers of souls, tell me what do you think about this?

- Good evening, Andrey! Good evening, dear viewers and followers! Yes, our marathons of desires are unique, we reveal the potential of a person, give him a fulcrum and open his energy! We make people believe in themselves, because our life is unique! Every day we have to live like the last!

- Varvara and Vladimir, I have a question for you: why do you encourage your lonely subscribers to get acquainted in the subway? Why exactly there? And not in the cinema or in the library, for example?

- Yes! We are often asked this question. Everything is simple. The metro is a unique place, where you can read, listen to music, look at people, and of course, get acquainted. Even if you don't like the interlocutor, you can get out of the car and forget him forever. Here you can give way to a beautiful girl, smile at her, skip ahead on the escalator. Hundreds of thousands of beautiful and lonely people ride the subway every day, who simply do not notice each other. Therefore, going down to the subway, remember, maybe that's where you will meet the Love and Meaning of your whole life!

The Puppeteer

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:2.

The Main Puppeteer looked at the back of his palm with a glass eye, opening the tok-tok application on his hand. Dolls are not particularly active today, his dolls. For their activity, they received a reward: food and a new portion of air in their transparent pink cocoons, which were called tokhouses.

Dolls have stopped reproducing since the climate and ecosystem on the planet of Laughter completely changed due to global warming and two biological wars. But there were a lot of them, still a lot.

The first biological war took much less than expected. His own puppeteers reported successes from all continents. They quickly and cheerfully got in touch, reporting on the actions of their biological troops. But the result of the Main Puppeteer was not satisfied with the word at all. The dolls turned out to be persistent, strong and brave. They managed not only to survive, but also to acquire mysterious immunity.

The second biological war was more productive. It became the most terrifying horseman of the Apocalypse. There were exactly seven times fewer dolls on the planet of Laughter, but this was enough for the Puppeteer to view likes and activity in his brainchild, in his tok-tok. He rolled his glass eye, rejoicing that now only those who love his virtual baby, who are passionate about him, who are devoted to tok-tok are with him. Now he really loved his dolls, because each of the dolls was an active user.

He created it, cradled it, nurtured it, he achieved the ideal brainchild, completely numbing the mind and feelings, taking away the will, requiring only one thing to look and like. He gave the dolls tok-tok so that they would forever forget about happiness, about love, about family, about wisdom, about nobility, about faith and about life. About the most boring and delusional things that made dolls unhappy and lonely. Without tok-tok, the dolls were boring and gray, they thoughtfully liked to sit with books on benches in parks, they spent time in libraries, getting an unnecessary higher education, they wept over dead relatives because they experienced the stupidest feelings of love and pity, they laughed to tears with the same stupid dolls and called it the funny word "friendship", for all sorts of trifles they called disgusting parents and no less disgusting children, in general, they did everything, just did not register in his beloved and expensive tok-tok.

He gave them a pill from all problems at once: from lack of money, from unhappy love, from loneliness, from the mind. He doesn't have to force them anymore. They themselves. Now they do everything themselves. Dolls stopped reading, communicating and loving. Now they spent whole days laughing and dancing on fifteen-second videos, actively commenting on each other, making reposts, coming up with whole staged scenes, in other words, only now they were all really happy. They were their own actors and directors, friends and enemies, their own family. Their wealth, their greatest wealth, was their profile, which contained all their virtual, bright, musical, filtered, in a word, real life.

Now the dolls were sitting in their cocoons, afraid to come out and inhale the poisoned air. They were intimidated and broken. Depending on the number of views of the recommended videos, they were fed a portion of air and a plastic container into the cocoon through special pipes, but no more than for the next twenty-four hours. In a plastic container there was a plastic bottle of filtered liquid with an interesting name "water product" and three plastic bags "special food with vitamins and minerals, produced on the planet of Laughter".

If the doll did not fill in the video for more than two days, the air pipe was automatically disconnected from the cocoon, blocking the hole with a special hatch. The doll could file a complaint with the support service, but it took too much time to process the complaint, much more than there was enough air in the cocoon for the doll to exist. The support service worked tirelessly, but still it was not possible to avoid precedents. Sometimes the dolls' videos were blocked automatically due to communication failures. The latest disruptions due to powerful earthquakes were the longest in history, the dolls were without communication for almost four hours. Many people did not receive air into the cocoon, although the videos were filled in on time and were supposed to provide the doll with breathing for the next day for tok-tok activity.

Just today, a small riot began in the application, the dolls were outraged by the imperfection of the system and problems with communication, which the tok-tok team had to provide until the end of the world. Activity dropped due to mortality and many of the dolls have already recorded fifteen-second videos with mournful faces in memory of those who lost air due to earthquakes. They complained about the cataclysm and made a bonfire of the natural phenomenon, launching a flash mob #fuckyouearthquake#

A small red dot hysterically, like a vagus nerve, flashed across the holographic screen in the entire wall. The Main Puppeteer looked at the statistics and the number of views. He sent a message to the general chat of his puppeteers, which consisted of a smiley face with an eye and a question mark.

One of the puppeteers sent a smiley with an earthquake and spread hands, saying they couldn't do anything.

The Main Puppeteer raised an eyebrow and turned on the search for the profile of this puppeteer on his hand. Activating the "Delete" label with his eye, the Puppeteer watched with pleasure how a stupid answer could cost the life of not only the doll, but also the puppeteer. The name, number, photo of the puppeteer was cut out of all online systems, turning a dull brown color, which meant that the puppeteer was blocked from air access instantly, and his data flowed into the archive of the planet of Laughter.

The Main puppeteer repeated his message to the general chat once again. More than a thousand puppeteer icons were silently flashing from the general screen. They had not seen an online execution for several months, so their tension was felt through the hologram of the screen. The Main Puppeteer loved precision and brevity. Not that he liked to execute, he just maintained discipline in a friendly and well-coordinated team. He rules the planet of Laughter, after all, and not some planet of Sorrow.

After waiting a couple of seconds, he was about to take additional measures, which were updated in the microchips of each puppeteer, but the screen softly lit up with the pink color of a new message.

The message consisted of several emoticons, namely, a lit candle, praying hands, a tok-tok icon, zombies rising from graves and an infinity icon. Following the message, a file with a primitive program made in a few minutes was sent to the chat, but the Main Puppeteer already understood the genius of what he had planned. Of course, virtual cemeteries! Now the profile of the deceased doll will not turn brown and merge into the archive. Now the profile of the deceased doll will continue to function indefinitely! The system will automatically post his video, put likes on those to whom the doll was subscribed during his lifetime, make reposts and repeat all the actions over and over again, so to speak, endlessly in a closed circle.

The Main Puppeteer sent the smart puppeteer a badge with a thumbs up. This was the highest praise from the authorities. The puppeteer's profile lit up purple, he automatically received air for forty-eight hours. In the general chat, they rushed to congratulate, sending holiday emoticons and clapping hands.

But the Main Puppeteer has already left the chat. He carefully made updates to his brainchild. Now the number of dolls will never decrease. Tomorrow, all devices on the entire planet of Laughter will be automatically updated.

How to name the new update. The Main Puppeteer thought only for a second and the name "Joy of Eternal Life" appeared in the chat of the puppeteers.

All coincidences are random.

The story is based solely on the author's fantasies.

28.01.2022

The Healer

«Death is worth living.

And love is worth waiting for»

Victor Tsoy

- What, my dear, have you already gathered for the next world? It's too early for you, it's too early, we'll fight again.

- Gathered, Healer, gathered . By your prayers.

In front of him sat an unhappy man, sick, terminally ill. The Healer felt his special smell, indescribable. They all smell the same, of inevitability, despair, fear and, of course, death. She, the death, is already sitting on all of their necks, a little higher to the back of the head, does not pay any attention to the healer, lazily rubs her hands, gets comfortable on the head of dying person and watches.

Death watches the Healer like an overfed cat, which is no longer interested in manipulating the bowl and food. She opens one eye slightly when the Healer runs his hands over his head, trying to remove the damage and turns over on the other side. The Healer takes various herbs and powders, prepares medicines, requires the client to take them by the hour, at a certain time and in a strictly specified dosage. Death only turns away when the healer takes the money. Big money. The last money.

Here and now. Male, forty-five years old, liver cancer, the last stage. Death had been sleeping on the back of his head for a month, gently stroking the unfortunate man on the head, from time to time providing him with such necessary oblivion. The Healer calmed him and his nervous wife, who from the threshold began to fight in hysterics. He was cooking something blue, in a huge, poorly washed bottle, putting roots there, whispering spells and spells, from which even death's eyebrows slightly raised. The dark blue liquid in the bottle became thick and viscous, the menacingly dirty color of the stormy sky inspired fear and awe among customers before the skill of the Healer. He stood next to the client and began to read the "Our Father" softly, from time to time stirring the thickened liquid over the unfortunate man's head.

The drugs were paid in addition to the paid session. And the wife, carefully clutching her purse in her hand, looked through tears at the room where, according to eyewitnesses, the most incredible things were happening. The red carpet was covered with dust and small images of Orthodox saints pinned to the fleecy surface with office needles with colorful heads. The windows were tightly drawn with dark curtains. A small table lamp illuminated only part of the room, where piles of books, various vials of liquid, bags of herbs and a huge plastic tray filled with sand lay on a desk with thick glass. Thin wax candles of different lengths stuck out in the sand, which slowly smoked, twitching lights.

In an old-fashioned cabinet with glass doors there were many of the same bottles as on the table. The walls, like a radioactive hedgehog that lost its needles in the battle for ecology, were studded with nails, on which hung crosses, elements of magic, witchcraft, beads with animal figures and even bird feathers.

The healer knew that there was nothing he could do to help. There are those who can and he helps. He has already cured hundreds, thousands of clients, those who were not hopeless. He was once a doctor, a real doctor. He shuddered at the memories of his past life. And the operations that he recommended, and the children who were given incorrect diagnoses, and he immediately determined that they were treated incorrectly, and the medicines that he used in his practice under the guise of herbs and homeopathy, helped everyone who came without death on the back of the head. For money. Certainly. It can't be helped. Death stirred and even snored brazenly.

He has such a reputation, he even has reviews in Google, he has the payment of all taxes from the activities of a private entrepreneur, nobody can dig in, there is a queue of those who want for six months in advance. Desperate, hopeless, disappointed, but not giving up, ready to pay and believe, believe and pay.

The Healer calmly gave the bottle to the man, promising to schedule the next session in exactly a month. He knew he wouldn't live to see the next session. The client's wife looked at the Healer with eyes full of hope, she put a new candle at the direction of the Healer right in the middle of the tray with sand, prudently choosing the thickest and longest candle symbolizing life and health.

After closing the door behind the clients, the Healer padded into the kitchen and took the phone out of the closet. Turning on the kettle, he checked the balance and incoming messages. His hands were shaking with excitement and tension. There is. There is. There is. He opened the virtual envelope.

"Dear Valery Ivanovich, we are glad to inform you that our clinic N has received a transfer in the amount of three hundred and fifty thousand euros. Your son's surgery is scheduled for the tenth of this month. The annex contains the contract, as well as all the necessary documents to resolve formal issues. We are waiting for you and your son at the specified date and time in our clinic N. If you have any questions, please contact your personal coordinator (all contacts are attached), who will be in touch with you until full rehabilitation. With the wishes of the fastest recovery, the team of clinic N".

The chief surgeon of Clinic N looked at the mountain of printed documents on his desk with an unseeing gaze. For some reason, he remembered the children's "I look in the book – I see nothing". He has already reread, revised, rechecked a thousand times.

The same answer. Always the same answer.

His son is dying. Dying, damn it. He, a doctor and a world luminary, he, who has been saving other people's lives for many years in a row, cannot save one single life, the most precious life. The life of an only child. The chief surgeon rubbed his eyes tiredly, squinting from the bright light that filled the huge snow-white office. He called the secretary and, for some reason ashamed of his own voice, asked quietly.

- Did you find out about the Healer?

- Yes, I made an appointment for you and your son on the twelfth.

- In two weeks? And before in any way?

- Unfortunately, no. I monitor his calendar constantly, barely managed to book the twelfth. From the eighth to the eleventh, the admission dates disappeared altogether.

The ward number "sevennn"

«The whole world - theater, and the people in it - the actors»

V. Shakespeare

- Good morning, colleagues! I ask you to provide weekly reports tomorrow not to my mail, but to Ekaterina Alexandrovna's mail. Tomorrow I'm going on a business trip for one day. I will sign the documents for my secretary's signature by the evening.

So, who did we have yesterday?

- A woman, forty years old, violent. We acted strictly according to protocol, we had to tie her up, she bit our Anechka on the cheek, we injected a sedative. We didn't put her in the general ward so that she wouldn't scare the others away.

- Colleagues, I repeat once again, we do not have a madhouse or a mental hospital! We have a psychological health clinic with the possibility of a full recovery! No bindings! We try to avoid shoveling methods of brute force. Their relatives pay us a lot of money for mental health treatment, by the way! What else about this violent?

The nurse nodded to the head doctor and continued.

- Everything is as usual, blogger, there are twenty million subscribers, seventy percent are bots, but there are still plenty of live subscribers. She conducted training and trainings to the point of insanity, created marathons of desires, taught women to be independent, beautiful, slim and smart.

A week ago, her page was blocked indefinitely. She accused a competitor with the same subject, they say, incited her subscribers and they began to complain massively about the profile of our patient. She found out the address of a competitor, came to her house and attacked. They were first taken to the police. There are serious bodily injuries and a threat to the life of employees. But her relatives bought off and quickly came to us, they say, she is in poor health, we need to treat her head. After she attacked our Anya, we quickly pinned her down.

- I understand, okay, then keep her on with medication for a couple of days, watch if the adequacy does not return, - here the chief sighed heavily, - we will use heavy artillery of medicaments.

Valentina Valerievna did not like to use heavy artillery. She tried not to turn her money into vegetables, and most importantly, initially normal (at least before that, having no drives to psychiatric dispensaries) patients. A few years ago, a school psychologist Valentina Valerievna accidentally stumbled upon her personal gold mine.

Having summoned a fifth-grade student to an appointment with her mother, whom the teachers complained about, she quickly made sure that, fortunately, everything was fine with the girl. Unfortunately, the mother turned out to be inadequate, who forced her daughter to record videos on social networks outside of school, hoping for success and fame of famous bloggers. The girl was laughed at by her classmates, who wrote nasty things from closed accounts, and her mother continued to make a star out of her, forcing her to make faces at the camera.

Valentina Valerievna worked with the student's mother for three months, gently probing the complexes that gnawed the latter and prevented her daughter from living. Of course, there was a whole bouquet of them, which had to be smelled, watered and nurtured by an innocent child. After the work with the psychologist, the girl's mother tripled to work as an accountant in a cosmetology company, met an interesting man and hired a tutor for her daughter in mathematics and English, with whom the fifth-grader quickly caught up with the school curriculum, which she launched because of social networks.

Valentina Valerievna worked tirelessly.

At first, the victims of blogging had to look for themselves on the pages of million-dollar stars, but a year later they were looking for her, Valentina Valerievna, a specialist in helping victims of social networks. She borrowed money for a clinic from a drug–addicted blogger, whom she helped rehabilitate his child after the tsunami of hate, which poured out on the unfortunate in connection with the black PR of the father. According to the recommendations of the people's commissar blogger himself (native advertising is the most selling advertising), people signed up for the clinic actively and independently. Valentina gave back the money even earlier than necessary, and took the same drug-addicted blogger into a share for the development of a network of clinics in other cities, and possibly in the future, in other countries.

The detour, as usual, took longer, which was already in short supply. The room with straight bloggers, as the nurses dubbed them, was filled to the brim. Here was the most famous preacher of natural childbirth and natural abortions, who was threatened with the most natural term in the prison. Not only did she sell packaged chalk on social networks, posing as medicines for diphtheria, cancer and tuberculosis, she organized a real natural movement "Women against Medicine", which was joined by an amazing number of subscribers. After a series of deaths of women in labor, which happened live on the social network, the prosecutor's office became interested in her page, to whose offices applications from all over the country flew like pigeons. The unemployed alphonse husband, sensing that he smelled fried, took a ticket from a warm country and flew to the benefactress on the first flight. By the way, this same benefactress was not against the plump bundles of chemical and unnatural cash that she withdrew daily from an ATM and got into the most expensive car, shamelessly polluting the environment and her, motherfucker, nature.

The chamber with younger bloggers, the so-called talk-talkers, was sad. Valentina Valerievna did not like this ward and tried to leave it as soon as possible. Young drug addicts, they were sick from withdrawal due to the lack of chemistry and social networks. Without education, without understanding, without a soul. They aged catastrophically fast, and younger and bolder ones stepped on their heels. Once they got a moment of glory, they could no longer stop, for example, to live, study, work. On camera, they jumped from high-rise buildings and cliffs, dived into the depths, put their hands in the mouths of wild animals, drank and ate inedible things, in a word, caught hype. Broken souls. The outcasts. Not interesting. Here lay those who survived the tricks, but did not get the right number of likes and views.

The ward with the victims of plastic surgery was called the nurses' room of laughter. Not accepting themselves. Not resigned to themselves. Those who failed to stop in time and tell the temptation to turn into another person - no.

One of the patients of this ward was previously a straight blogger and a subscriber of the aforementioned founder of Women Against Medicine. She desperately gave birth at home, smeared herself with sunflower oil and asked the universe for everything in the world, from money to a normal man. The man appeared. Thanks to the universe or the established reputation of asking for non-heavy behavior, history is silent about this. But together with the man there was an irresistible desire to make lips and breasts the size as close as possible to the size of the universe. The man, seeing the catastrophically irreversible result, advised to increase the brain and sank into oblivion. But the blogger-no-longer-straight didn't stop there. She removed the ribs, drained all the fat from the once natural body, cut off the eyelids, as a result of which one eye stopped closing completely, enlarged the buttocks, altered the nose, cheeks and forehead line, pulled wrinkles, although she was not yet thirty, shrunk her ears, reduced her feminine inside and out surgically to the size of a little girl, and read the conclusion of her surgeon that she would not tolerate the next anesthesia. The tests showed that irreversible changes had taken place in her body. Her mother and father brought her to Valentina directly from the underground clinic, removing her from the operating table during the live broadcast, which she was leading, completely forgetting that two her babies were waiting for the grieving mother at home.

Valentina disdained the ward with psychic bloggers, fortune-tellers and witches, she took them reluctantly and for a lot of money from their relatives, who still harbored the hope of finding their former sisters, daughters, mothers and even grandmothers. First of all, these people were liars, crooks, lying at every breath, and real scammers. The patients of this ward had no magical power, as well as conscience. But therapy with the criminal code and communication with invited representatives of the law gave truly miraculous, one might say magical results.

There was also a ward with victims of a reality show. It seemed to one of the victims that her life was being broadcast twenty-four hours a day, she was sitting beautifully in a hospital bed, changing clothes, wrapped in a sheet and refused to go to the toilet, ashamed to become public. In addition to medications, she was prescribed an enema every day. A month ago, her husband could not stand the broadcast of his personal life, which became public against his will, starting from the color of his underpants and ending with the filming of him sleeping on the couch. After the divorce, the fascination with social networks became a progressive insanity. Parents began to sound the alarm when they noticed that she was broadcasting live and talking to the audience even without a phone, convincing them that she was being continuously filmed by a hidden camera. And every word she utters automatically gets on the Internet.

The rest contained less colorful characters: influencers, opinion leaders, experts and other bloggers without education, who had something gone wrong. For example, a cute guy with a beard went crazy when one of the haters dumped the terrible truth on the Internet that a millionaire blogger was renting a corner in one of the poorest areas of the city, and all the attributes of luxury were rented. And this plump girl on sedatives and in prostration, someone of her haters photographed in full size. Without filters, it turned out that the natural size is exactly forty kilograms more natural.

And this is a blogger and his personal hater walking along the corridor, who, as it turned out in the clinic, cannot live without each other.

Valentina Valerievna made her everyday routines and returned to her office. After signing all the papers, she called an assistant.

- Alina, what do we have on subscribers? Is the cheating going on?

- It's almost ten million, Valentina Valerievna! I gave the task to our smm team to promote a second account in case of blocking.

- It's good that it was our bot attack that blocked the account of this exuberant, additional hype.

- And plus ten thousand of her subscribers.

- Are the courses for sale?

- Yes, Valentina Valeryevna! The new online retreat "Life without Networks" is the hit of the season.

- Great. And the last. Make sure that my new publication hangs in the recommendations for at least a week.

Family

Leonid looked at the Big City through the panoramic window of his office. Multicolored lights, like fireflies in a field, scattered below with the arrival of darkness. Somewhere below, life was in full swing: men hurrying home to their beloved wives and children were descending into the subway, women were hurrying to pick up children from schools and clubs in order to have time to cook dinner for the whole family, students were leaving universities, rejoicing at the end of the last couple, and only Leonid was out of this noisy raging stream called life.

Sophia, his third wife, whom he disliked, as well as the first two, was waiting for him at home. She was silent and stupid, like an aquarium fish, but Leonid even liked that Sophie, as she asked to be called, did not meddle with him with conversations. Thin and sonorous, she spent days on the phone and posted her photos in a swimsuit on social networks, signing with thoughtful quotes from scientists she had never heard of, diligently copying them from the resource "quotes of great people".

Sonya Svinyuk was nineteen years old when Leonid married her. She entered a university in absentia, the name of which she could not pronounce, and if it were not for the money of her father, a fugitive oligarch from a neighboring country, Leonid would have thought that this was another escort girl passing from Dubai, whom he rented in a nightclub. But it so mystically coincided that right now Leonid needed to develop a business, and apart from getting to know young ladies from decent families, as he called them, he could not do anything else.

The second wife, Karine, a sultry and hot as a southern night, a Caucasian princess, smashed Leonid's business and life into splinters after seeing on a surveillance camera how the sun of her life has sex with two women at once with no heavy behavior on a blanket that her great-great-grandmother hand-woven a hundred years ago. After breaking all the crystal and ceramics from Versace, Karine called two of her five siblings to help move things from the house of her husband, a former and already ill.

After the visit of his second wife's brothers, Leonid spent six months treating his healthy twenty-six-year-old body in the hospital and unquestioningly signed with his healthy hand the documents for divorce and the division of property in favor of the injured party (his second ex-wife Karine).

It was then that he remembered Galina, his first wife from a good family. In a small provincial town, she was a star, and her dad, coincidentally, was the mayor and master of the city. When Galina appeared in front of her father and an awkward guy in short, shot trousers and with worn soles on his shoes, the wise father smoothed his mustache and shook his head. Six months later, Leonid rode the best foreign car, a German, pearl-colored one, lived with Galina in his own country house and managed a small factory for the production of household chemicals, which, like the house, was registered to his first wife.

Leonid became the new owner of the city. No one remembered him driving sober anymore. Even the magnanimous father-in-law forgave the accidentally knocked down dog and old lady on New Year's Eve. The only thing that Galina's dad did not forgive the loser son-in-law is the absence of grandchildren and a bad memory.

Amnesia struck Leonid right after the factory and drunkenness in the baths with whores, which Lenya ordered for his friends on the Internet. He no longer made excuses to Galina and her dad and brazenly claimed that he had achieved everything himself. People in a small, five hundred thousand, town began to laugh at Ivanovich, saying how so, the godfather of the city, a bandit, the most honest man who grew up and grew old here and has such son-in-law. Ivanovich called Leonid and warned him in a fatherly way: they say, «If you behave like this, I'll tear your mouth».

Lenya was quiet for a few weeks, but after the delivery of the most excellent cocaine, he again began to talk about how he had achieved everything himself, and his wife Galina, so, shit on a stick, picked up out of pity.

Having miraculously managed to escape from the wrath of his former father-in-law, Leonid flew to the Big City, his heels were already sparkling. Galina's dad wanted to skin him alive, but a compassionate Galya begged her father not to execute him - to pardon him, they say, let him live in a Big city, and not stick his nose in here.

It was after this that Leonid told his second wife, Karine, that he had lost his fortune because of his first idiot wife and her father, a crazy pensioner. Karine, beautiful and sensual, transferred money from her accounts to him for business development, believed and melted when he called her the Moon of his heart.

- Leonid Ignatievich, your wife is here, - secretary Allochka cheekily wagged her hips, straightening her skirt, which Lenya lifted up a couple of times a week from idleness.

Sonya floated in the office space on stilt legs, elongating them with heels. Sitting down on a chair, she made a mysterious face that

made Leonid sick. He was sickened by her long arms, which hung in lashes along her bony and unsportsmanlike body, from the three bleached hairs that she straightened in the salon every morning for a hundred dollars, from stupidity and utter darkness in an empty head that swung aimlessly on top of an almost two-meter body.

- I'm busy, why did you come without warning, - Leonid regretted the sharpness of the tone, which he barely concealed.

- My beloved. Hello. I have a gift for you, look, a test. I'm pregnant. My daddy is thrilled. We're already celebrating. Are you happy? I can imagine how happy your parents will be.

- Of course, they will be happy, - Leonid thought, - they hate me with all their heart, I imagine how they will hate their grandson.

- Honey, I'm so happy. How I adore you. You're my real mom, - said Lenya easy.

- Yes. I will give birth at home. To the bathroom. It's so fashionable now. And you will cut the umbilical cord.

Leonid smiled and went to the toilet in his office. He flushed the water so that the sound of vomiting could not be heard. After rinsing his mouth, he turned on his phone and googled his favorite site, "whores of the Big City, call the office".

The end