That's when it hit me. My hands started trembling so much that I had to quickly put the newspaper back on the table. October of '91. And not just any October, but the fifteenth specifically. A significant date. On that very day, I, along with a couple dozen other clueless eighteen-year-olds, stood in formation, shifting from foot to foot, already mentally picturing a blue beret on my shaved head.
For some reason, I had no doubt that what was happening was real. I suddenly knew for certain that this wasn't a dream. And it wasn't a coma-induced vision. Everything around me was one hundred percent reality. Just thirty-two years in the past. Right at the start of those infamous nineties that I had missed.
How ironic…
I walked thoughtfully over to the window and drew back the curtain. It was a gloomy October morning. Wet asphalt and gray skies. No rain—it had probably all come down during the night. Astaroth's five-story building stood at a sharp angle to the avenue, and on the wall of the building across the street was a banner with black-and-green letters: "MMM." Above it, on the edge of the roof, were large, dirty-red letters: "Novokinevsk — City of High Culture."
A "Vegetables and Fruits" store. A concrete bus stop. A sign for a "Cooperative Store."
The nineties, huh… I hungrily took in the dreary surroundings of a ruined era that hadn't yet been wrapped in the shiny packaging of capitalism.
Perhaps someone else in my place would have desperately rubbed their eyes and cried out in disbelief that all this couldn't be real! Because… because what? Because someone once said there must be a tunnel in the afterlife, with light at the end and an old man with kind eyes sitting in a chair? And halos, harps, and floating among the clouds?
Who am I to say how things should be?
Maybe at that moment when the draft officer asked me, "What branch do you want to serve in?" and I confidently blurted out, "Airborne Troops!", I actually unknowingly pressed a "Save Game" button. And when that damned grenade went off, the save kicked in, and here I am. Not in a dream, not in a coma. My eyes see. My nostrils still catch the scent of the omelet with potatoes and liverwurst. My stomach growls with hunger. The pain in my head seems to have subsided, but every now and then it reminds me that yesterday's port wine, or whatever that swill was in those bottles, was definitely not worth drinking. And my back itches—I probably should have taken a shower a while ago. How much more real could this get? Well, aside from the fact that now I'm a lanky, long-haired rocker with an unfamiliar face. And I guess I should be able to play the guitar.
"Vova, are you okay?" Tatyana Anatolyevna's worried question broke through my thoughts.
"Just thinking," I replied, peeling myself away from the window. To hell with the guitar, really. Problems need to be solved as they come.
About an hour later, our long-haired group found itself on the street. Astaroth had tried to leave earlier, but Tatyana Anatolyevna's motherly instincts, mixed with gratitude, suddenly kicked in, and she practically forced us to down a cup of tea with cookies while discussing current events. Astaroth's mom was concerned about a wide range of things—from a green tomato salad recipe shared by the chief accountant Zinaida Stepanovna to the recent murder of singer Igor Talkov, which happened just over a week ago. What made it especially touching was that she was worried about the death of the star because her son also thought he was a musician. And apparently, it could be a dangerous line of work. And she asked, "Maybe you'll come to your senses, Sasha, and re-enroll in the institute? I'll talk to Grigory Ivanovich…"
Astaroth mumbled something indistinctly, and we all hastily started getting ready to smooth over the awkwardness of breakfast.
The cookies and tea had dulled the hunger a bit. While we were getting dressed, I deduced through process of elimination that my clothes consisted of nearly new army boots and a jacket pieced together from bits of black leather. In the right pocket was a keychain with a red glass trinket wrapped in copper wire. In the left pocket, there was some loose change jingling along with a couple of crumpled bills. Not bad—this rocker who responds to the nickname "Belial" managed to avoid drinking away every last penny yesterday!
"Hey, Sasha—I mean, uh, Astaroth, I mean—" Belphegor babbled hastily, waving his hands. "How about today we play 'Hit, Satan, Hit!' instead of 'The Heavy March of Hell,' huh?"
"We talked about this yesterday," Astaroth grumbled displeased.
"Come on, please!" Belphegor whined. "It's a really good song…"
"We agreed that I write the music and lyrics," our frontman said with a scowl. "And you still…"
"Well, if you want, we can say you wrote it," the redhead looked at Astaroth with eyes like the cat from Shrek. "Just let's play it, okay? And I'll ask my mom to bring home another box of stage makeup from work."
"Listen… about the makeup," Behemoth said with a frown. "Maybe we can skip it? It makes my whole face break out in a rash."
"No way!" Belphegor nudged the chubby guy in the shoulder. "Without makeup, it's totally lame! We're supposed to be portraying demons!"
"Actually, about the makeup…" Astaroth said thoughtfully. "We're expressing ourselves through music. The audience can get the ideas we want to convey without any makeup. Wearing it just makes us look like clowns… It's ridiculous."
"So it's okay for KISS to perform in makeup, but it's not okay for us?" Belphegor snapped back.
"'Korrozia Metalla' doesn't wear makeup at concerts, and they're doing fine…" muttered Abaddon, whom I still kept calling Behemoth in my head.
They continued throwing out names of bands I didn't recognize and arguing. But I tuned out. First of all, I had no idea what they were talking about, and second, I was trying to get my bearings. From the letters on the building, I already figured out that I hadn't changed cities—I was still in Novokinevsk. And as soon as we stepped outside, the neighborhood became clear too. Further up the street, looming over the buildings, was the dull rectangular block of the Novokinevsk Hotel, and across from it was a pompous red Stalin-era building with conceptual cubic clocks on the roof. That meant the train station square was nearby. But we were heading in the opposite direction, toward an industrial zone wedged between two streets. The Novokinevsk Mechanical Aggregates Plant. By the year 2000, the place was nothing but ruins, and by 2023, a luxury residential complex had long been built where the factory once stood. But right now, it looked like there was still some life there. The dusty letters "NMPA" were still on the roof of the main building. And the windows were intact.
My fellow demon rock band members, still arguing, crossed the road and walked along the crumbling asphalt sidewalk beside a concrete fence. Occasionally, cars drove by. Few cars. And mostly Soviet-made models. And the license plates… Heh, I remember when my parents transferred me to a math-focused school in fifth grade, I initially felt like a complete blockhead. At the start of every lesson, there was a quick mental math exercise. It was simple—you just had to add two-digit numbers. My new classmates did it effortlessly, while I struggled. My old school hadn't prepared us for that. So, to practice, I used car license plates, which had exactly four digits. I had to take the bus to school—not too far, just about five stops. I'd stand on the back platform and add the numbers from the plates of the cars I saw. Within a week, I'd improved my quick math skills. And I picked up a habit. I even got a little upset when the plates switched to a three-digit format. Out of habit, I tried to do some math with the new plates, but it wasn't as fun. And now that old school habit came back to life. Cars passed by, and while I half-listened to my buddies still arguing about makeup with their hair shaking and hands flailing, my brain was crunching numbers. Forty-three plus eighteen equals sixty-one. Twenty plus eighty-four equals one hundred and four.
"Belial, why are you so quiet?" Belphegor shook me by the sleeve. "Do you think we don't need makeup either?"
"With makeup, we'll stand out more in photos," I replied after a brief pause. "Without it, we're just a bunch of long-haired teens, blending into the crowd."
"See! I told you!" Belphegor squealed joyfully, almost like a girl. Astaroth and Behemoth indignantly started talking over each other, and the argument flared up again.
Meanwhile, we approached the heavy, rusty gates, and Astaroth started pressing the call button at the security booth insistently.
The abandoned factory didn't actually look abandoned yet. But it wasn't exactly operational either. There were no smoking pipes or people inside. I vaguely remembered this factory. For a while, back in fifth or sixth grade, we used to come here to fulfill our labor duties. We worked honestly in the shop, assembling some things. And once there was some construction, and our class participated in it as well. There was a pile of bricks and a bunch of pallets, and we had to stack those bricks onto the pallets.
"Is he asleep in there or what?" Astaroth was fidgeting with impatience—or maybe from the cold. The breeze was pretty chilly. I didn't ask any questions about "why we're going to the factory." It would have sounded dumb. A punk nicknamed Belial should have known everything already. No need to ask. I would be taken to the place anyway. So, I adopted a thoughtful and detached demeanor and stuffed my hands into my pockets. The jingling of coins immediately caught my eye on a squat, dirty-gray kiosk across the street. My stomach growled immediately, and I even took a step towards the road. It was obvious even to the naked eye that the kiosk sold some cans, chocolates, and other vaguely edible stuff. But at that moment, the door swung open.
"What do you need?" asked the unfriendly, short guard. He looked like a frail old man, but my sharp eyes quickly noticed a striped shirt peeking out from under his robe, and he didn't move like an old man at all. I wouldn't be surprised if he had an airborne "dandelion" tattoo on his shoulder.
"Uncle Kolya, what's up? It's us, we have a rehearsal…" Belphegor puffed up. "Vovka, where are you going?"
I threw one more hungry glance at the kiosk and approached the booth. The guard raised his thick eyebrows and spat.
"Ugh, you've all grown your hair like sissies…" He stepped back into the booth, and we followed him in a line.
On the factory grounds, Astaroth headed resolutely toward the gray brick administrative building. It was empty. No busy loaders, no sounds from the shop. Some life was evident only in the far part of the factory, but we didn't reach it. Astaroth confidently stomped to the side entrance and then down the stairs. He marched down a corridor, the ceiling of which was covered in pipes and cables.
"Belial, where are you?" he stopped at one of the locked doors.
"Huh?" I responded as if half-asleep.
"What do you mean 'huh'?" our frontman said indignantly. "You have the keys—open it!"
Oh, so that's how it is… I pulled the keyring from my pocket and bent down to the keyhole. Hmm, judging by the slot, one of these two keys should fit; there were two keys on the ring with two different notches.
"I already told you a long time ago to make me a copy," Astaroth complained over my shoulder while I fumbled with the lock. The first key didn't work.
"You'll manage," I muttered in response and put the second key into the lock. Ah, seems like that's the one. Though I had to forcefully shove the door with my hip to get it to turn.
I opened the door and stepped aside to let our frontman in. Let him turn on the lights and do all that stuff. I pretended to be occupied with the lock.
The light switch clicked.
Behind the door was a rather spacious square room, with the lower half of the walls painted a muddy green. On the far wall were a couple of shabby desks with two guitars—one bass and one regular. And a drum kit, well…
It seemed the room's owners were against us artistically transforming the walls, so there were no pentagrams or inverted crosses painted on them. Instead, there were several posters of hairy rockers. For creative touch, a large sheet of paper, which seemed to have once been wallpaper, was taped to the far wall with blue masking tape. On it, there were various satanic symbols.
Actually, not a bad "den." And the equipment—speakers, amps, synthesizer, guitars, drums. It turns out that the "mommy's satanists" had somehow managed to get money for all this. And I had the keys to this luxury. And while "I" was still real, I didn't want to give a copy to my frontman. Damn, it would be so much easier if I could somehow access the memories in this hairy skull! I'd need to get home later, but how would I know where I live? You can't exactly ask someone to escort you to your door…
"Astaroth, about the makeup…" Belphegor started again. "We performed in makeup last time, so people remember us with it. If we go out without it, it'll turn out…"
"We need to rehearse," Astaroth cut him off, unwrapping the microphone cord.
"How about we use masks?" I suggested. I had, whether I liked it or not, become somewhat invested in this problem during the drive, as my colleagues discussed it quite passionately. I could understand Behemoth, who was allergic to theatrical makeup and, for obvious reasons, didn't want to smear it on his face. And I also understood Belphegor's position—makeup is cool. Musicians in makeup attract more attention. On the other hand, makeup has to be applied before every concert. That's time and effort. It's not just about smearing your face with soot; it's an art form.
"Masks?" Astaroth asked.
"Yeah, masks," I said. "Like Zorro. Or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
"Who?" Behemoth laughed. "Ninja Turtles? Who are they?"
"Forget it," I waved off. Well, it was a mistake, clearly. These particular teenagers evidently hadn't heard of the brave team of reptiles named after great artists and their rat trainer. "Like gangsters. Like raccoons. Or we could even pull black stockings over our heads. It looks unusual and is quick to do."
"Hmm…" Astaroth scratched his shaggy head. "And what…"
"But still bring the makeup," I nudged Belphegor's shoulder. "It'll be useful for photoshoots. We need to get a photo for the album cover."
"I can ask Mom for some black tights," Behemoth brightened up.
"No one performs in masks!" Astaroth said grimly, continuing to fiddle with the wires.
"So we'll be unique!" Belphegor exclaimed happily. "And we'll definitely be remembered!"
"Astaroth, what's the deal?" Behemoth frowned. "The mask idea is actually good…"
"We need to stand out through creativity, not through this…" our frontman lifted his chin proudly. "We have a mission—to create music and convey it to people. And all you discuss are some gimmicks."
"If appearance doesn't matter, then why do you dye your hair?" I smirked. "And grow it out. You could just wear a suit, get a haircut like all normal people, and stand out only with the music."
Astaroth shot me a scorching look. It was clear he was sticking to his stance out of sheer stubbornness. He was offended that he hadn't come up with the mask idea himself, so he couldn't just agree. I wonder why he is considered the leader? His authority must be based on something. Not on his mom's night shifts. Among all of us, he seemed the most contentious and useless.
"Come on, Astaroth," I stepped up to him and patted him on the shoulder in a friendly manner. These three were clearly posturing and arguing. They're teenagers. Their heads are full of "play-hormones," and there's a draft of freedom blowing through all the cracks in the former Iron Curtain. They want to assert themselves and all that. But as for me? I've already asserted myself where I wanted. "The band is our shared endeavor. It would be great if everyone contributes their part of creativity. You write the songs, and Belphegor takes care of the appearance…"
Astaroth looked at me… strangely.
"Fine," he grumbled, no longer with much intensity. "We'll think about the masks. But for now, let's rehearse."
Behemoth grabbed the bass from the table, Belphegor went to the synthesizer. And all three looked at me. And then at the lonely guitar.