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For those spending time at home, looking for a cozy adventure or bedtime story for kids, we offer this imaginative rhyming picture book, read by the author, Daniel Errico. Follow the Marmabill on her quest through the rainforest, where she meets fantastical creatures like wugs, tankadiggies, and flying fluthers. As her journey takes her from treetops to glowing underground caves, the Marmabill finds out for herself the true meaning of home.
Remember, our stories for kids are here for you to read at any time. And remember, Dream Big!
Gemma is a middle grade novel that follows a curious explorer and her ring-tailed lemur, Milo, as they hunt for the “most greatest treasure in the world”. Solving riddles, battling a bell-wearing jaguar, and traveling the Eight Seas, Gemma’s adventures take her from a young girl to a brave captain, whose only limits are the stars.
While drawing in class at Stagwood School, 12-year old Cal sees a frog staring at him through the window. Stranger than that, is the fact that this frog happens to be wearing glasses.
Cal and his best friend, Soy, learn that the frog (who prefers the name Deli) has sought them out for a reason. When a school administrator named Ream reveals himself to be a dragon, the boys discover that fairytales are real, and that there is magic afoot in Stagwood.
With Ream on their tail, the trio must unearth a powerful tool protected by riddles and rile (the magic that fuels nightmares) to save the fate of all fairytales past. But, before Cal can defeat Ream, he has to deal with Soy's knack for arguing with magical creatures, discover the truth about Deli's identity, and earn his place as the hero of the story. The Guardians of Lore is a middle grade novel that centers around two life-long friends, infusing humor and fantasy-based riddles into a modern fairytale.
This quirky tale is about our most infamous character of all. If you don’t have a soufflé-baking, trumpet-blaring, sleigh-riding friend, then maybe it’s time that you met Ms. McKay. Told as a monorhyme poem. “Say what you will or say what you may, you’ll remember the day that you met Ms. McKay…”
Mr.
McKay is a most mischievous fellow. His hair and eyes have been known to change color with the seasons. If you ever feel a warm breeze on a very cold winter day, be sure to keep your coat on, because it may be Mr. McKay playing his trick! A light-hearted, rhyming bedtime story about keeping your coat on when it’s awfully cold outside.
Ages 3-8, Narrated, Read Along
Explore the ocean floor and discover the location of Orangebeard's Treasure in this series of adventure stories for kids! Each location that you visit under the sea reveals a unique story from the gnarble. Piece together the clues with reading comprehension and reasoning skills to solve the mystery!
The Journey of the Noble Gnarble is a number one best-selling ebook that has been adapted into a hardcover book and play.
Through rhyming verse and engaging illustrations, the Noble Gnarble teaches kids about perseverance and determination in the face of obstacles. Dream Big!
Ages 3-5, Narrated, Read Along
One of our most popular children’s stories, this is the tale of a group of robots winding down for the night. The Robot Bedtime Book is a playful bedtime story that encourages interaction, imagination, and a fun bedtime routine.
FREECHILDRENSTORIES.COM PROVIDES BEST-SELLING CHILDREN’S STORIES FOR KIDS OF ALL AGES FOR FREE. READ MORE ABOUT US HERE!Follow Us for New ONLINE Stories For Kids
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Fairy Tales, Bedtime Stories and Kids Poems!
A guided meditation for children about being warm and cosy, while the world is cold outside.
A tranquil bedtime story to initiate sweet dreams...
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Thabo and Tumi can't wait to see what Mama's made for lunch today!
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An old-fashioned poem about a visit to the moon.
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Little Ida discovers the flowers have a ball at night when she's asleep.
Pepper tests her genius potion on her long-suffering friend Carrot.
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A Princess is turned into a monkey called Babiole by a wicked fairy's spell.
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The breeze helps some flowering weeds spread their seeds.
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Naughty Carrot the Cat steals some of Pepper's colourful potions.
He's in for a big surprise!
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A magical Christmas adventure about two sisters who discover a mystery in their toy room, and are led into a fantastic adventure!
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90,000 short stories Read online freeShort stories
Fedor Ivanov
© Fedor Ivanov, 2017
ISBN 978-5-4483-9391-4
Created in the intellectual publishing system Ridero
mirror
She stood at the entrance to the Unipri department store, frequented by poor Parisians and guests of the French capital. She looked no more than eighteen. The stranger held a bright package in her hands.
It immediately seemed to Juan that he had seen her somewhere. But where and when did they meet? In a dream, at a university, in a past life?
Or maybe this girl just stepped off Velazquez's portrait, escaping from the black background to meet the light sculpting her?
Juan instantly forgot about his friend who was waiting for him at the Sorbonne to prepare for the exam together.
Forgetting everything, he stepped forward. The girl raised her head. Their eyes met. Faces lit up with smiles:
"What's your name?"
Jane. And you?"
"My name is Juan."
"Are you Spanish?"
"Yes!"
“What are you doing here? Are you studying? Are you working?
“Studying an engineer at the Sorbonne.”
“And I just recently came to Paris to look for a job. I want to be a fashion model. How difficult it is to get a good job in the center of the world. Listen, don't you need top models at the Sorbonne?"
“Be patient, Jane! I will soon be rich, open a fashion house and name it after you. You agree?"
“Yes, Juan, I agree, I'll wait! All my life I'm ready to wait!
Jane smiles and shakes her head slightly, as if Juan's suggestion is too good to come true. Her eyes are a little sad when she listens attentively, as if thinking about the words addressed to her, but her gaze again and again illuminates with fire and the light of a smile, tenderness and attention to the interlocutor.
"Jane. You are charming!" Juan thinks.
These words are hidden in the depths of his heart, but they are expressed by hands, eyes, head tilt. Juan does not believe that Jane can leave just like that, get lost in the crowd.
“Jane, are you busy right now? Let's walk along the banks of the Seine!"
Jane nods and smiles shyly.
"Can I take your arm?" she suddenly asks. And he immediately explains:
“For so long I dreamed of walking around Paris next to such a handsome guy like you, Juan!”
They walk along the Seine, and around them Paris in all its joyful uniqueness. A country of small cafes, a multilingual dialect of museums. A city where loneliness is not sad. Because with Paris there can be no loneliness. But Juan and Jane don't need Paris either. Paris today is the third extra. Juan leaves Jane only for a minute, asking for forgiveness. He leaves and returns with a bouquet of beautiful white roses.
They parted for several hours and met again in the evening at the mosque.
Then we walked around the city for a long time. In the Luxembourg Garden among the birches, Juan kissed her for the first time. And then there was dinner in a restaurant, where the violin sang sweetly, and a heavyset gypsy in a red shirt sang in a hoarse, touching voice.
Around midnight, they entered the hotel where Juan was staying. Jane did not remove her hand and both, without exchanging a word, walked past the understanding receptionist and went up the red carpet to the second floor. The door creaked a little, and the world of the two, dissolved in the vast Paris, became a world only for them alone, a world of solitude, a closed space of a small room with a bed, an armchair, chairs and a huge half-wall mirror that had stood here since God knows what century.
The night passed like a storm. Affectionate words, warm hugs, an open window, and a city that never sleeps, even at night, restless. Thirst. Empty bottles of mineral water from their small refrigerator, and an unexpected dawn, and a suddenly fading dream.
Juan woke up and immediately realized that he was alone.
"Jane," he called softly. There was no answer. Sunlight peeped into the room through the loosely drawn curtains. From the street came the noise of cars.
Suddenly his eyes fell on the mirror. Something was written on it in red lipstick.
Juan jumped off the bed, walked barefoot to the mirror and read aloud in syllables:
“Revenge on men. I have AIDS. Goodbye!"
Juan reread the words over and over again. They did not make sense, did not fit in the head. They were not real, they passed by consciousness without touching it.
"Why?" He went into the bathroom, put his head under the stream of cold water, and stood for a long time feeling nothing, without thoughts, without movement, without fear or bitterness.
“I have to find her. I need to understand why she did this! What was done to her before she got so... so... bitter!" he thought the next day, about to go for a blood test.
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Read online "All Stories (collection)", Viktor Pelevin - LitRes
Sorcerer Ignat and people
On May 4, 1912, Archpriest Arsenikum came to visit the sorcerer Ignat. While Ignat was busy with the samovar and getting out the gingerbread, the guest was blowing his nose at the hanger, took off his galoshes for a long time, made the sign of the cross and sighed. Then he sat down on the edge of the stool, pulled out a folder of red cardboard from under his cassock, opened it and said to Ignat in a cheeky way:
- Look what I wrote!
“Interesting,” Ignat said, taking the first sheet, “read aloud?
- What are you! the archpriest hissed in fright. - Inwardly!
Ignat began to read:
Revelation of St. Theoktist
– “People! - said St. Feoktist, shaking his knotted staff. “Christ appeared to me, truly so. He told me to go to you and apologize. Nothing happened.
"
– Ha-ha-ha! - Ignat laughed, and he himself thought: "It's not without reason." But he didn't show it.
- Is there more? he asked instead.
- Aha!
The archpriest gave Ignat a new sheet and he read:
How Mikhail Ivanovich went mad and died
“Wherever I go,” thought Mikhail Ivanovich, sitting down on the sofa in surprise, “everywhere there is always at least one crazy person. But now, finally, I am alone…”
“Besides,” continued Mikhail Ivanovich, turning to the window in surprise, “wherever I found myself, at least one dead person was always present. But here I am alone, thank God…”
“The time has come,” Mikhail Ivanovich said to himself, opening the shutter with surprise, “to think about the main thing…”
“No, for sure, it’s not without reason,” Ignat decided, but he didn’t show it again and instead said:
– Interesting. Only the main idea is not very clear.
“Very simply,” replied the archpriest, winking impudently, “the fact is that death is preceded by a brief insanity. After all, the idea of death is unbearable.
“No,” thought Ignat, “he is definitely twisting something.”
“And here’s another one,” the archpriest said cheerfully, and Ignat read:
The story of the cockroach Zhu
The cockroach Zhu is relentlessly moving towards death. Here lies the poison. You have to stop and turn around.
“Succeeded. Death is ahead, ”says the cockroach Zhu.
Boiling water is pouring. You need to dodge and run under the table.
“Succeeded. Death is ahead, ”says the cockroach Zhu.
Here a heel appears in the sky and, growing, rushes to the earth. You can no longer dodge.
"Death," says the cockroach Zhu.
Ignat raised his head. Some men in sheepskins came in, hiding large rusty axes behind their backs.
– The door was unlocked… Understood. That's what I thought - it takes you a long time to undress, - said Ignat.
The archpriest straightened his beard with dignity.
- What do you want, huh? Ignat asked the peasants sternly.
“Here,” the peasants answered, embarrassed and shifting from foot to foot, “we are thinking of killing you. The whole world has decided. The world always kills sorcerers.
"Peace, world…" Ignat thought sadly, dissolving into the air, "the world itself was killed long ago by its own sorcerers."
“Pah, you,” the archpriest spat and crossed himself. - It didn't work out again...
- So you can't kill, - said one of the peasants, blowing his nose into his sleeve. - Need an icon.
Sleep
At the very beginning of the third semester, at one of the lectures on email philosophy, Nikita Sonechkin made an amazing discovery.
The thing was that for some time now something incomprehensible had been happening to him: as soon as the little eared assistant professor, who looked like a priest overwhelmed by blasphemous thoughts, entered the audience, Nikita began to deathly fall asleep.
And when the assistant professor began to speak and point his finger at the chandelier, Nikita could no longer help himself - he fell asleep. It seemed to him that the lecturer was talking not about philosophy, but about something from his childhood: about some attics, sandboxes and burning garbage dumps; then the pen in Nikita's fingers climbed diagonally to the very top of the sheet, leaving behind an illegible phrase; finally, he nods and falls into blackness, from where, after a second or two, he emerges, so that soon everything will be repeated in the same sequence. His notes looked strange and were unsuitable for classes: short paragraphs of text were intersected by long oblique sentences, which dealt either with cosmonaut defectors, or with a working visit of the Mongol Khan, and the handwriting became small and jumpy.
At first, Nikita was very upset because of his inability to sit through the lecture normally, and then he thought: is this really only happening to him? He began to look closely at the rest of the students, and here a discovery awaited him.
It turned out that almost everyone around was sleeping, but they were doing it much smarter than he, resting his forehead on his open palm, so that his face turned out to be hidden. At the same time, the right hand was hidden behind the elbow of the left, and it was impossible to make out whether the person sitting was writing or not. Nikita tried this position and found that the quality of his sleep immediately changed. If earlier he jerkily moved from complete disconnection to frightened wakefulness, now these two states have merged - he fell asleep, but not completely, not to blackness, and what happened to him resembled a morning nap, when any thought easily turns into a moving one. a color picture, following which you can simultaneously wait for the call of the alarm clock translated an hour ahead.
It turned out that in this new state it was even more convenient to record lectures - you just had to let your hand move by itself, making sure that the muttering of the lecturer rolled from the ear straight to the fingers, in no case getting into the brain - otherwise Nikita would either wake up , or, conversely, fell asleep even deeper, until the complete loss of understanding of what was happening.
Gradually, balancing between these two states, he became so accustomed to sleeping that he learned to pay attention to several objects at the same time to that tiny part of his consciousness that was responsible for communications with the outside world. He could, for example, see a dream where the action took place in a women's bath (a rather frequent and strange vision that struck with a number of absurdities: handwritten posters with verses calling for saving bread hung on the log walls, and thick-set, fair-haired women with rusty gangs in their hands wore short ballet skirts made of feathers), and at the same time could not only follow the flow of egg yolk on the lecturer's tie, but also listen to the joke about three Georgians in space, which was constantly told by a neighbor.
Waking up after philosophy, in the first days Nikita could not get enough of his new opportunities, but his complacency vanished when he realized that for the time being he could only listen and write in his sleep, and after all, the one who at that time was telling him a joke was also asleep! This was clear from the special oily gleam of the eyes, from the general position of the torso, and from a whole series of small but undeniable details.
And so, having fallen asleep at one of the lectures, Nikita tried to tell a joke in response - he specially chose the simplest and shortest, about the international violin competition in Paris. He almost succeeded, only at the very end he lost his way and started talking about Dnepropetrovsk fuel oil instead of Dzerzhinsky's Mauser. But the interlocutor did not notice anything and laughed in a bass voice, when after the last word Nikita said, three seconds of silence elapsed and it became clear that the joke was over.
Most of all Nikita was surprised by the depth and viscosity that his voice acquired when talking in a dream. But it was dangerous to pay too much attention to it - an awakening was beginning.
Talking in a dream was difficult, but possible, and to what extent human skill could reach in this, the lecturer showed. Nikita would never have guessed that he was also sleeping if he had not noticed that the lecturer, who had a habit of leaning tightly against a high pulpit, from time to time turns over on the other side, turning his back to the audience and facing the blackboard (to justify the impolite position of his torso , he waved his hand listlessly in the direction of the numbered white premises).
Sometimes the lecturer would turn on his back; then his speech slowed down, and his statements became liberal to the point of joyful fright - but he read the main part of the course on his right side.
Soon Nikita realized that it was convenient to sleep not only at lectures, but also at seminars, and gradually some simple actions began to come out of him - so, without waking up, he could get up, greeting the teacher, could go to the blackboard and erase what he had written or even look for chalk in neighboring classrooms. When he was called, he first woke up, frightened and began to wander in words and concepts, at the same time admiring the inimitable ability of the sleeping teacher to wince, cough and tap his hand on the table, not only keeping his eyes open, but also giving them a semblance of expression.
For the first time in a dream, Nikita managed to answer unexpectedly and without any preparation - he just noticed out of the corner of his mind that he was retelling some “basic concepts” and at the same time was on the top platform of a high bell tower, where a small brass band was playing under the control of love, which turned out to be a little yellow-haired old woman with monkey-like grips.
Nikita received an A and since then he even kept notes of primary sources without waking up and coming to a waking state only to leave the reading room. But little by little his skill grew, and by the end of the second year he was already falling asleep, entering the metro in the morning, and waking up, leaving the same station in the evening.
But something began to frighten him. He noticed that more and more often he falls asleep unexpectedly, without realizing it. Only when he woke up did he understand that, for example, Comrade Lunacharsky’s visit to their institute on a troika of blacks with bells was not part of the ideological program dedicated to the tercentenary of the first Russian balalaika (the whole country was preparing for this date in those days), but an ordinary dream. There was a lot of confusion, and in order to be able to find out at any moment whether he was sleeping or not, Nikita began to carry in his pocket a small pin with a green pea on the end; when he had doubts, he pricked himself in the thigh, and everything turned out.
True, a new fear appeared that he might just be dreaming that he was pricking himself with a pin, but Nikita drove this thought away as unbearable.
His relations with his colleagues at the institute improved markedly - Komsomol organizer Serezha Firsov, who could drink eleven mugs of beer in a row in a dream, admitted that before everyone considered Nikita a psycho, or, in any case, a strange person, but now it finally turned out that he is quite his own. Serezha wanted to add something else, but his tongue stuttered, and he suddenly began to talk about the comparative chances of Spartak and Salavat Yulaev this year, from which Nikita, who at that moment was dreaming of the Battle of Kursk, realized that his friend was seeing something Roman-Pugachev and extremely confusing.
Gradually, Nikita ceased to be surprised that sleeping subway passengers managed to quarrel, step on each other's feet and hold heavy bags full of rolls of toilet paper and canned seaweed - he learned all this himself.
Something else was striking. Many of the passengers, having made their way to an empty seat on the seat, immediately dropped their heads on their chests and fell asleep - not like they had slept a minute before, but deeper, completely disconnecting themselves from everything around. But, having heard the name of their station through a dream, they never woke up completely, but with amazing accuracy they fell into the very state from which they had previously dived into temporary non-existence. The first time Nikita noticed this was when the man sitting in front of him in a blue dressing gown, snoring for the whole car, suddenly jerked his head, put a book open on his knees with a travel pass, closed his eyes and plunged into a motionless, inorganic stupor; after a while the carriage shook violently, and the peasant, jerking his head once more, began to snore again. The same thing, Nikita guessed, happened to the others, even if they didn't snore.
At home, he began to look closely at his parents and soon noticed that he could not find them in a waking state - they were sleeping all the time.
Only once, while his father, sitting in an armchair, threw back his head and saw a nightmare: he screamed, waved his arms, jumped up and woke up - Nikita understood this from the expression on his face - but immediately cursed, fell asleep again and sat closer to the TV, where it was just blue some kind of historical joint falling asleep shimmered in color.
Another time the mother dropped an iron on her leg, badly hurt herself and burned herself, and sobbed so plaintively in her sleep before the arrival of the ambulance team that Nikita, unable to endure it, fell asleep himself and woke up only in the evening, when the mother was already peacefully nodding over One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The book was brought by a neighbor, the old anthroposophist Maksimka, who had looked into the smell of bandages and blood. Maximka, occasionally visited by one of the numerous criminal grandchildren, quietly slept out his life in the company of several smart cats and a dark icon, with whom he quarreled in a whisper every morning.
After the incident with the iron, a new stage began in Nikita's relationship with his parents. It turned out that all scandals and misunderstandings can be prevented if you fall asleep at the very beginning of the conversation. One day he and his father discussed the situation in the country for a long time; during the conversation, Nikita fidgeted in his chair and shuddered, because the grinning Senkevich, having tied him to the mast of a papyrus boat, was saying something in the ear of the thin and evil Thor Heyerdahl; the boat was lost somewhere in the Atlantic, and Heyerdahl and Sienkiewicz, without hiding, walked around in black Masonic caps.
“You’re getting smarter,” my father said, looking at the ceiling with one eye and at the bedside table for sea kale with the other, “it’s just not clear who told you this nonsense about hats. They have aprons, so long. The father showed with his hands.
In general, it turned out that no matter what kind of human activity Nikita tried to adapt himself to, difficulties existed only until the moment when he fell asleep, and then, without any participation on his part, he did everything necessary, and so well that, upon waking up , surprised.
This applied not only to the institute, but also to free hours, which were rather painful for this because of their senseless length. In a dream, Nikita swallowed many of the books that had not been decipherable before, and even learned to read newspapers, which finally reassured his parents, who had often whispered bitterly about him before.
– You have some kind of rebirth to life! - told him his mother, who loved solemn turns. Usually this phrase was said in the kitchen, during the preparation of borscht. Beetroots fell into the pan, and Nikita began to dream of something from Melville. The smell of fried seaweed and the lowing of horns came in through the open window; the music subsided, and the radio voice said:
- Today at nineteen o'clock we bring to your attention a concert of masters of art, which is, as it were, the final chord in the solemn symphony dedicated to the tercentenary of the first Russian balalaika!
In the evening the family gathered at the blue window to the universe.
Nikitin's parents had a favorite family show: "The camera looks at the world." Her father came out to her in his striped gray pajamas and curled up in his chair; mother would come up from the kitchen with a plate in her hand, and for hours they would turn their half-closed eyes in fascination at the landscapes floating across the screen.
“If you want to taste fresh bananas and wash them down with coconut milk,” the TV said, “if you want to enjoy the sound of the surf, the warm golden sand and the gentle rays of the sun, then ...
Here the TV made an intriguing pause.
- ... then this means that you want to visit banana-lemon Singapore.
Nikita was snoring next to his parents. Sometimes the name of the program, refracted by the turbid prism of sleep, reached him, and the content of the dream was set by the screen. So, during the program "Our Garden" Nikita several times dreamed of the founder of a popular sexual perversion; the French marquis was wearing a cranberry archer's caftan with gold lace, and he invited me to some women's hostel.
And sometimes everything was mixed up into complete confusion, and Archimandrite Julian, an indispensable participant in any self-respecting "round table", looked out of a long "ZIL" with a flashing light and said:0003
- See you on the air!
At the same time, he frightenedly poked his finger up into the celestial void, where the red dot of Antares from the program about Ivan Bunin stood alone. One of the parents switched the program, Nikita slightly opened his eyes and saw on the screen a major in a blue beret, standing in a hot mountain gorge. "Death? Major smiled. - It is scary only at first, in the first days. In fact, the service here became a good school for us – we taught the spirits, the spirits taught us…”
The switch clicked, and Nikita went to his room to sleep under the covers on the bed. In the morning, when he heard footsteps in the corridor or the ringing of an alarm clock, he cautiously opened his eyes, got used to the daylight for a while, got up and went to the bathroom, where various thoughts usually came into his head and the night sleep gave way to the first of the day.
“What a lonely person after all,” he thought, turning his toothbrush in his mouth. “After all, I don’t even know what my parents dream about, or passers-by on the streets, or grandfather Maxim. At least ask someone why we are all sleeping.
And then he was frightened, realizing how impossible this topic was for discussion. After all, even the most shameless of the books that Nikita read did not mention a word about it; in the same way, no one talked about it aloud in front of him. Nikita guessed what was the matter - it was not just one of the omissions, but a kind of hinge on which people's lives turned, and if someone even shouted that it was necessary to tell the whole truth, he did it not because he really hated omissions, but because the main omission of existence compelled him to do so. Once, standing in a slow queue for seaweed, which filled half of the supermarket, Nikita even had a special dream on this topic.
He was in some kind of vaulted corridor, the ceiling of which was decorated with stucco grape bunches and snub-nosed female profiles, and a red carpet ran across the floor.
Nikita went along the corridor, turned several times and suddenly found himself in an appendix ending in a painted over window; one of the doors of a short corridor cul-de-sac opened, a chubby man in a dark suit looked out and, making happy eyes, beckoned Nikita with his hand. Nikita entered.
In the center of the room about ten or fifteen people were sitting at a large round table, all in suits, with ties, and all quite similar to each other - bald, elderly, with the shadow of some inexpressible thought on their faces. Nikita was ignored.
- Not a shadow of a doubt! the speaker said. - We must tell the whole truth. People are tired.
- Why not? Of course! - several cheerful voices responded, and they all spoke at once; confusion began, a noise, until the one who spoke at the very beginning slammed with all his might on the table a folder with the inscription "VRPO Dalryba" (the inscription, as Nikita realized, was actually not on the folder at all, but on a can of seaweed from another dream).
The blow hit the whole plane, and the sound came out quiet, but very long and weighty, like the ringing of a bell with a silencer. Everything is quiet.
“Understood,” the clapper said again, “we must first find out what will come of all this. Let's try to make a commission, say, consisting of three people.
- Why? asked the girl in the white coat.
Nikita realized that she was here because of him and handed her the money for his five cans. The girl made a sound like the crackling buzz of a cash register through her mouth, but she didn't even look at Nikita.
“And then,” the man answered her, even though Nikita had already passed the cash register and was now walking towards the doors of the supermarket, “because those who enter this commission will first try to tell the whole, the whole truth to each other.
Very quickly agreed on the members of the commission - the speaker himself and two men in blue three-pieces and horn-rimmed glasses, similar as brothers: even dandruff, both had more on their left shoulders.
(Of course, Nikita knew perfectly well that both the dandruff on his shoulders and the vulgar pronunciation of certain words were not real and were simply manifestations of the aesthetics adopted in such dreams.) The rest went out into the corridor, where the sun was shining, the wind was blowing and cars were honking, and while Nikita descended into the underground passage, the door to the room was locked, and so that no one would peep, the keyhole was smeared with caviar from a sandwich.
They began to wait. Nikita passed the monument to the anti-tank gun, the Tobacco store and had already reached a huge obscene inscription on the wall of the paneled Wedding Palace - this meant that it was still five minutes walk to the house - when from the room where quiet, unintelligible voices had been heard all this time, he suddenly heard some gurgling and crackling, followed by complete silence. The whole truth must have been told, and someone knocked on the door.
Comrades! How are you?
There was no answer.
In a small flea market at the door, they began to look at each other, and some tanned, European-looking man exchanged glances with Nikita by mistake, but immediately averted his eyes and muttered something irritably.
- Breaking! - finally decided in the corridor.
The door flew out on the fifth or sixth blow, just as Nikita was entering his entrance, after which he, along with those who were breaking the door, found himself in a completely empty room, on the floor of which a large puddle had spread. Nikita at first thought that it was a puddle, which he saw in the elevator, but, comparing their contours, he was convinced that this was not so. Although long tongues of urine were still crawling up to the walls, there was no one under the table or behind the curtains, and on the chairs three empty suits, charred from the inside, hunched and hung down. Cracked horn-rimmed spectacles gleamed near the leg of an overturned chair.
“Here she is, really,” someone whispered behind him.
The dream, already rather boring, never ended, and Nikita reached into his pocket for a pin. Unfortunately, she wasn't there. Entering his apartment, he threw a bag of cans on the floor, opened the closet and began to fumble through the pockets of all the trousers hanging there. In the meantime, everyone went out of the room into the corridor and began to whisper anxiously; again the tanned type nearly whispered something to Nikita, but stopped just in time. They decided that they urgently needed to call somewhere, and the tanned one, to whom this was entrusted, had already moved to the phone, when suddenly everyone exploded with jubilant cries - in front, in the corridor, the disappeared three appeared. They were in blue sports shorts and sneakers, ruddy and cheerful, as if from a bath.
- That's it! shouted, waving his hand, the one who spoke at the very beginning of the dream. – This is, of course, a joke, but we wanted to show some impatient comrades...
Out of spite, Nikita pricked himself with a pin several times harder than required, and what happened next remained unknown.
Picking up the bag, he carried it to the kitchen and went to the window. It was a summer evening outside, people were walking and talking merrily about something, cars were honking, and everything was as if any of the passers-by were really walking under Nikita's windows right now, and were not in some dimension known only to him. Looking at the tiny figures of people, Nikita thought with anguish that he still did not know either the content of their dreams, or the relationship in which dreams and reality were for them, and that he had absolutely no one to complain about a recurring nightmare or talk about dreams that he like. He suddenly felt so tempted to go out into the street and talk about all this with someone—it doesn't matter who at all—that he realized that no matter how wild the idea was, that's exactly what he would do today.
In about forty minutes he was already walking from one of the outlying metro stations along an empty street rising to the horizon, like a half of a linden alley cut in two - where the second row of trees should have grown, there was a wide asphalt road.
He came here because there were quiet places, almost not visited by police patrols. This was important - Nikita knew that one could escape from a sleeping policeman only in a dream, and adrenaline in the blood was a bad sleeping pill. Nikita walked up, tingling his leg and admiring the huge lindens, like frozen fountains of green ink; he stared at them so much that he nearly missed his first customer.
He was an old man with several multi-coloured badges on a shabby brown jacket, probably out for a regular evening exercise. He darted out of the bushes, glanced sideways at Nikita, and went upstairs. Nikita caught up with him and walked beside him. The old man raised his hand from time to time and forcefully ran his outstretched thumb through the air.
- What are you? Nikita asked after a pause.
“Bedbugs,” the old man replied.
- What kind of bugs? Nikita didn't understand.
- Ordinary, - said the old man and sighed: - From the upper apartment. All the walls here are full of holes.
“We need a disinfectant,” said Nikita.
Nothing. I'll give a finger for the night more than all your chemistry. Do you know how Utyosov sings? “We are enemies…”
Then he fell silent, and Nikita never found out about the bedbugs and Utesov. They walked for several meters in silence.
“Kryap,” the old man suddenly said. - Khryap.
- Are these bedbugs bursting? Nikita guessed.
“No,” the old man said and smiled. - The bugs are dying quietly. And this is caviar.
- What kind of caviar?
“Think about it,” the old man perked up, and his eyes shone with cunning Suvorov insanity, “do you see the kiosk?
There really was a locked Soyuzpechat kiosk on the corner.
“I see,” said Nikita.
- You see. Good. Now imagine that there is such an oblique booth here. And they sell caviar there. You have never seen such caviar and you will never see it - every grain is the size of a grape, understand? And then the saleswoman, such a lazy woman, weighs a pound for you, takes it with a scoop from a barrel - and onto the scales.
So while she puts your half a kilo on the ground - grunt! - the same amount of damage. Understood?
The old man's eyes went out. He looked around, spat, and walked across the street, sometimes bypassing something invisible, perhaps heaps of caviar lying on the pavement of his sleep.
“No,” Nikita decided, “you have to ask directly. God knows who's talking about what. And if they call the police, I'll run away…”
It was already quite dark outside. The lanterns were lit, half of them worked, and most of those burning emitted a faint violet glow, which not so much illuminated as colored the asphalt and trees, giving the street the character of a strict afterlife landscape. Nikita sat down on a bench under the lime trees and froze.
A few minutes later, something creaking and squeaking, consisting of dark and light spots, appeared at the edge of the visible hemisphere of dusk. It approached, moving with short stops, during which it rocked back and forth, emitting a comforting and false whisper.
Looking closer, Nikita made out a woman of about thirty in a dark jacket and a light carriage rolling in front of her. It was quite clear that the woman was asleep: from time to time she straightened an invisible pillow near her head, pretending, in the usual female habit of hypocrisy even in solitude, that she was putting her piebald hair in order.
Nikita got up from the bench. The woman started, but did not wake up.
“Excuse me,” Nikita began, angry at his own embarrassment, “may I ask you one personal question?”
The woman lifted her plucked-out eyebrows over her forehead and stretched her wide lips to her ears, which, as Nikita realized, meant polite bewilderment.
- Question? she asked in a low voice. - Come on.
- Tell me, what are you dreaming about now?
Nikita made an idiotic gesture with his hand, circling everything around, and was completely embarrassed, feeling that some completely inappropriate playfulness sounded in his voice.
The woman laughed a cooing pigeon laugh.
“Fool,” she said affectionately, “I don't like those.
– What are they? Nikita asked.
- With sheepdogs, silly. With big sheepdogs.
"He's mocking," thought Nikita.
"Just don't get me wrong," he said. – I myself understand that I am crossing the border, so to speak…
The woman cried out softly and, averting her eyes from him, walked faster.
“You see,” Nikita went on excitedly, “I know that normal people don’t talk about this. Maybe I'm crazy. But have you yourself ever wanted to discuss this with someone?
- What to discuss? the woman asked, as if trying to buy time in a conversation with a madman. She was almost running, peering vigilantly into the darkness; the carriage bounced on the roughness of the asphalt, and inside something heavily and silently beat against the oilcloth sides.
“That’s exactly what we’re going to discuss,” Nikita answered, starting to jog. - Here, for example, today.
I turn on the TV, and there ... I don’t know what is scarier - the hall or the presidium. I watched for an hour and did not see anything new, only, maybe, a couple of unfamiliar poses. One is sleeping in the tractor, the other is at the orbital station, the third is talking about sports in a dream, and those who jump from the springboard are also all sleeping. And it turns out that I have no one to talk to ...
The woman frantically adjusted her pillow and began to run. Nikita, trying to hold his breath choked by conversation, ran beside him - the green star of the traffic light was rapidly growing ahead.
- Here, for example, you and I ... Listen, let me prick you with a pin! How did I not guess ... Do you want?
The woman flew out to the intersection, stopped, and so abruptly that something weighty shifted in the carriage, almost breaking through the front wall, and Nikita, before slowing down, flew a few more meters.
- Help! the woman yelled.
As if on purpose, about five meters away on a side street, two men were standing with bandages on their sleeves, in identical white jackets that made them look like angels.
At first they recoiled, but when they saw that Nikita was standing under a traffic light and not showing any hostility, they grew bolder and slowly approached. One entered into a conversation with a woman who wailed fervently, waving her arms and repeating the words “stick” and “maniac” all the time, and the second went up to Nikita.
- Are you walking? he asked amiably.
“Something like that,” Nikita answered.
The warrior was a head shorter than he was and wore dark glasses. (Nikita had long noticed that it was difficult for many to sleep in the light with their eyes open.) The warrior turned to his partner, who nodded sympathetically to the woman and wrote down something on a piece of paper. Finally the woman spoke, looked triumphantly at Nikita, straightened her pillow, turned her carriage around and pushed it up the street. The partner came up. He was a man in his forties with a thick mustache, wearing a cap pulled down over his ears so that his hair would not be disheveled during the night, and with a bag on his shoulder.
