Oleg Roy lady cat.

Choice of colors

Once - she considers herself a monster and believes that she inspires horror in those around her, like her father who ran away from the family. Two - he is the son of a missing scientist, a mysterious boy with a cane. Three - run as fast as you can, because the evil that came from your dreams is already behind you!..

Oleg Roy, Ekaterina Nevolina

1

Cat lady

Alice,

or One Night...

Smell. The smell filled my nostrils, causing slight nausea, causing my muscles to clench with tension. From a premonition of trouble. It was the smell of fear. They say fear has no smell. Nonsense! It has its own aroma - very characteristic. Musty and at the same time sharp, sickening, disgusting. He invaded consciousness, clouding it, killing all living things around him.

The girl tried not to breathe, but the damned smell still climbed into her nostrils, corroded her lungs like black mold, and her chest quietly ached with pain...

The crooked moon, like a bitten candy, grinned as it looked down from the dark, almost starless sky. The sound of lonely footsteps seemed especially loud in the sudden silence. Every step is like a pistol shot to the temple, distinct and terrible - dot, dot, dot...

The girl stopped, swallowed bitter, viscous saliva and closed her eyes. How I wanted to disappear into the shadows of the night, to become invisible and inaudible. The pulse was pounding loudly in my temples. My heart was beating like a bomb ready to explode. The countdown is on: five, four, three, two...

And then she heard a strange sound. Quiet, even insinuating, but that made it even more terrifying - as if someone was SECRETLY approaching, wanting to take her by surprise. The heart froze, and then beat even faster, although it would seem that this was simply impossible.

The same footsteps, insinuating, slightly shuffling, sounded from the side, as if an unknown person was trying to draw a circle around her from which she could no longer get out.

The girl couldn't wait any longer. Fear... no, not fear - icy, hopeless horror poured into her consciousness, erasing all thoughts, all instincts, except one: SAVE YOURSELF! Immediately run anywhere but from here!

And she ran, hearing the stomping of her no longer lurking pursuer behind her.

She rushed through the endless wasteland, every now and then stumbling and falling, realizing that there was no way to stop. Not for a second!

Forward! Just go ahead, and maybe then you will be able to escape.

The night breathed down her back, lashed her eyes with lashes of distant lights, and anxiously whispered in her ear: “Trouble is near!” The girl felt it herself. All her senses warned of danger, causing the hairs on her skin to stand on end.

If only this wasteland would end! Just to reach people! Any kind, anywhere!

She felt like her heart was going to break. But even death would be the best way out. A new spasm squeezed the girl’s throat. She, like a fish thrown ashore, was breathing noisily with her open mouth, but there was a catastrophic lack of oxygen. Perhaps it's all about that smell. And in a feeling of hopelessness.

Some kind of can fell under her feet, the girl tripped and fell, feeling how the fragments were cutting through her hand. Blood. Here comes the first blood - like a victim of this predatory night. What else is needed?..

A new wave of the foul smell almost turned her stomach, but, holding on with some incredible, titanic effort, the girl jumped up and ran again.

She didn’t think about anything - she only had the strength to run. Last strength.

She ran through the wasteland, blood dripping from her hand, and tears rolled from her eyes, unnoticed by her, leaving clearly marked paths on her dirty cheeks.

A flashlight flashed ahead. Is this really the end of the wasteland? Did she really make it?

At some point, the girl began to gain hope that she would still be able to get out, but then a huge shadow blocked her way.

The girl screamed, feeling like a hunted game, and slowly raised her head, finally looking into the face of her pursuer.

He had no face. Only a huge grinning muzzle, either a dog or a wolf, growing from the muscular human shoulders. The mouth is open, large yellowish fangs are visible in it, from which saliva falls to the ground. The eyes are infernal red.

"This is the end!" - the girl understood, and the cruel mocking moon winked: “Well, didn’t you leave?”

The girl wanted to scream, but the scream got stuck in her throat, her body became limp, like cotton wool, and the monster leaned towards her, dousing her with a stinking odor, and suddenly, completely like a cat, hissed.

Alice opened her eyes, gradually realizing that she was in her own room. At the foot of the bed, a cat hissed, arching its back and raising its fur.

- Marquise, what are you doing? - Alice called her pet. -What are you afraid of?

Once - she considers herself a monster and believes that she inspires horror in those around her, like her father who ran away from the family. Two - he is the son of a missing scientist, a mysterious boy with a cane. Three - run as fast as you can, because the evil that came from your dreams is already behind you!..

Oleg Roy, Ekaterina Nevolina

Alice,

or One Night...

Smell. The smell filled my nostrils, causing slight nausea, causing my muscles to clench with tension. From a premonition of trouble. It was the smell of fear. They say fear has no smell. Nonsense! It has its own aroma - very characteristic. Musty and at the same time sharp, sickening, disgusting. He invaded consciousness, clouding it, killing all living things around him.

The girl tried not to breathe, but the damned smell still climbed into her nostrils, corroded her lungs like black mold, and her chest quietly ached with pain...

The crooked moon, like a bitten candy, grinned as it looked down from the dark, almost starless sky. The sound of lonely footsteps seemed especially loud in the sudden silence. Every step is like a pistol shot to the temple, distinct and terrible - dot, dot, dot...

The girl stopped, swallowed bitter, viscous saliva and closed her eyes. How I wanted to disappear into the shadows of the night, to become invisible and inaudible. The pulse was pounding loudly in my temples. My heart was beating like a bomb ready to explode. The countdown is on: five, four, three, two...

And then she heard a strange sound. Quiet, even insinuating, but that made it even more terrifying - as if someone was SECRETLY approaching, wanting to take her by surprise. The heart froze, and then beat even faster, although it would seem that this was simply impossible.

The same footsteps, insinuating, slightly shuffling, sounded from the side, as if an unknown person was trying to draw a circle around her from which she could no longer get out.

The girl couldn't wait any longer. Fear... no, not fear - icy, hopeless horror poured into her consciousness, erasing all thoughts, all instincts, except one: SAVE YOURSELF! Immediately run anywhere but from here!

And she ran, hearing the stomping of her no longer lurking pursuer behind her.

She rushed through the endless wasteland, every now and then stumbling and falling, realizing that there was no way to stop. Not for a second!

Forward! Just go ahead, and maybe then you will be able to escape.

The night breathed down her back, lashed her eyes with lashes of distant lights, and anxiously whispered in her ear: “Trouble is near!” The girl felt it herself. All her senses warned of danger, causing the hairs on her skin to stand on end.

If only this wasteland would end! Just to reach people! Any kind, anywhere!

She felt like her heart was going to break. But even death would be the best way out. A new spasm squeezed the girl’s throat. She, like a fish thrown ashore, was breathing noisily with her open mouth, but there was a catastrophic lack of oxygen. Perhaps it's all about that smell. And in a feeling of hopelessness.

Some kind of can fell under her feet, the girl tripped and fell, feeling how the fragments were cutting through her hand. Blood. Here comes the first blood - like a victim of this predatory night. What else is needed?..

A new wave of the foul smell almost turned her stomach, but, holding on with some incredible, titanic effort, the girl jumped up and ran again.

She didn’t think about anything - she only had the strength to run. Last strength.

She ran through the wasteland, blood dripping from her hand, and tears rolled from her eyes, unnoticed by her, leaving clearly marked paths on her dirty cheeks.

A flashlight flashed ahead. Is this really the end of the wasteland? Did she really make it?

At some point, the girl began to gain hope that she would still be able to get out, but then a huge shadow blocked her way.

The girl screamed, feeling like a hunted game, and slowly raised her head, finally looking into the face of her pursuer.

He had no face. Only a huge grinning muzzle, either a dog or a wolf, growing from the muscular human shoulders. The mouth is open, large yellowish fangs are visible in it, from which saliva falls to the ground. The eyes are infernal red.

"This is the end!" - the girl understood, and the cruel mocking moon winked: “Well, didn’t you leave?”

The girl wanted to scream, but the scream got stuck in her throat, her body became limp, like cotton wool, and the monster leaned towards her, dousing her with a stinking odor, and suddenly, completely like a cat, hissed.

Alice opened her eyes, gradually realizing that she was in her own room. At the foot of the bed, a cat hissed, arching its back and raising its fur.

- Marquise, what are you doing? - Alice called her pet. -What are you afraid of?

“Don’t be afraid, Marquise, everything is fine, it’s just a dream,” Alice picked up the cat in her arms and, throwing back the blanket, went to the window with her pet.

The houses opposite were dark, and only a dim light was burning in one window, which meant that they had not slept there either. This light calmed Alice a little, like the look of a friend. “This is an ordinary world,” he seemed to say, “there are no monsters here.” The street was empty, and no matter how much the girl peered into the darkness, nothing alarming was felt in it. An ordinary city, an ordinary night.

“You see, Marquise, everything is calm,” the girl began to stroke the cat, and she, having forgotten about fear, began to purr, as if a motor had turned on inside, “you and I don’t really like dogs, it’s true.” Or rather, they don’t favor us too much, but that’s okay. We just won’t wander around wastelands where we could be attacked, no, of course, not by the monster from my dream, but by a pack of stray dogs. We are in the house, it’s cozy here, and no one can get to us...

Alice spoke and calmed down herself. The dream, until recently so real and frightening, began to seem like something like a fairy tale. A simple reflection of elementary fears - what could be simpler.

The once round moon, now more like a lightly sucked lollipop, silently looked out from the sky. She saw everything - the long-haired girl in a long striped T-shirt, and her red-and-white cat, and something else that neither the girl nor the cat saw, but she did not at all consider it necessary to tell anyone about it.

The marquise gratefully licked her mistress's hand with her hot, rough tongue and yawned sweetly.

“Let’s go to bed,” Alice kissed the cat somewhere in the ear and was about to return to the warm bed, when suddenly she noticed something strange.

There was a long, crooked scratch on his hand. Just in the place where the skin was pierced by a bottle shard. Strange. When Alice went to bed, this scratch was not there. The girl definitely remembered this, because the day before she had stood in the shower for a long time, lathering her hands and shoulders with a new sweet-smelling apricot gel, which she just wanted to taste.

or One Night...

Smell. The smell filled my nostrils, causing slight nausea, causing my muscles to clench with tension. From a premonition of trouble. It was the smell of fear. They say fear has no smell. Nonsense! It has its own aroma - very characteristic. Musty and at the same time sharp, sickening, disgusting. He invaded consciousness, clouding it, killing all living things around him.

The girl tried not to breathe, but the damned smell still climbed into her nostrils, corroded her lungs like black mold, and her chest quietly ached with pain...

The crooked moon, like a bitten candy, grinned as it looked down from the dark, almost starless sky. The sound of lonely footsteps seemed especially loud in the sudden silence. Every step is like a pistol shot to the temple, distinct and terrible - dot, dot, dot...

The girl stopped, swallowed bitter, viscous saliva and closed her eyes. How I wanted to disappear into the shadows of the night, to become invisible and inaudible. The pulse was pounding loudly in my temples. My heart was beating like a bomb ready to explode. The countdown is on: five, four, three, two...

And then she heard a strange sound. Quiet, even insinuating, but that made it even more terrifying - as if someone was SECRETLY approaching, wanting to take her by surprise. The heart froze, and then beat even faster, although it would seem that this was simply impossible.

The same footsteps, insinuating, slightly shuffling, sounded from the side, as if an unknown person was trying to draw a circle around her from which she could no longer get out.

The girl couldn't wait any longer. Fear... no, not fear - icy, hopeless horror poured into her consciousness, erasing all thoughts, all instincts, except one: SAVE YOURSELF! Immediately run anywhere but from here!

And she ran, hearing the stomping of her no longer lurking pursuer behind her.

She rushed through the endless wasteland, every now and then stumbling and falling, realizing that there was no way to stop. Not for a second!

Forward! Just go ahead, and maybe then you will be able to escape.

The night breathed down her back, lashed her eyes with lashes of distant lights, and anxiously whispered in her ear: “Trouble is near!” The girl felt it herself. All her senses warned of danger, causing the hairs on her skin to stand on end.

If only this wasteland would end! Just to reach people! Any kind, anywhere!

She felt like her heart was going to break. But even death would be the best way out. A new spasm squeezed the girl’s throat. She, like a fish thrown ashore, was breathing noisily with her open mouth, but there was a catastrophic lack of oxygen. Perhaps it's all about that smell. And in a feeling of hopelessness.

Some kind of can fell under her feet, the girl tripped and fell, feeling how the fragments were cutting through her hand. Blood. Here comes the first blood - like a victim of this predatory night. What else is needed?..

A new wave of the foul smell almost turned her stomach, but, holding on with some incredible, titanic effort, the girl jumped up and ran again.

She didn’t think about anything - she only had the strength to run. Last strength.

She ran through the wasteland, blood dripping from her hand, and tears rolled from her eyes, unnoticed by her, leaving clearly marked paths on her dirty cheeks.

A flashlight flashed ahead. Is this really the end of the wasteland? Did she really make it?

At some point, the girl began to gain hope that she would still be able to get out, but then a huge shadow blocked her way.

The girl screamed, feeling like a hunted game, and slowly raised her head, finally looking into the face of her pursuer.

He had no face. Only a huge grinning muzzle, either a dog or a wolf, growing from the muscular human shoulders. The mouth is open, large yellowish fangs are visible in it, from which saliva falls to the ground. The eyes are infernal red.

"This is the end!" - the girl understood, and the cruel mocking moon winked: “Well, didn’t you leave?”

The girl wanted to scream, but the scream got stuck in her throat, her body became limp, like cotton wool, and the monster leaned towards her, dousing her with a stinking odor, and suddenly, completely like a cat, hissed.

Alice opened her eyes, gradually realizing that she was in her own room. At the foot of the bed, a cat hissed, arching its back and raising its fur.

- Marquise, what are you doing? - Alice called her pet. -What are you afraid of?

“Don’t be afraid, Marquise, everything is fine, it’s just a dream,” Alice picked up the cat in her arms and, throwing back the blanket, went to the window with her pet.

The houses opposite were dark, and only a dim light was burning in one window, which meant that they had not slept there either. This light calmed Alice a little, like the look of a friend. “This is an ordinary world,” he seemed to say, “there are no monsters here.” The street was empty, and no matter how much the girl peered into the darkness, nothing alarming was felt in it. An ordinary city, an ordinary night.

“You see, Marquise, everything is calm,” the girl began to stroke the cat, and she, having forgotten about fear, began to purr, as if a motor had turned on inside, “you and I don’t really like dogs, it’s true.” Or rather, they don’t favor us too much, but that’s okay. We just won’t wander around wastelands where we could be attacked, no, of course, not by the monster from my dream, but by a pack of stray dogs. We are in the house, it’s cozy here, and no one can get to us...

Alice spoke and calmed down herself. The dream, until recently so real and frightening, began to seem like something like a fairy tale. A simple reflection of elementary fears - what could be simpler.

The once round moon, now more like a lightly sucked lollipop, silently looked out from the sky. She saw everything - the long-haired girl in a long striped T-shirt, and her red-and-white cat, and something else that neither the girl nor the cat saw, but she did not at all consider it necessary to tell anyone about it.

The marquise gratefully licked her mistress's hand with her hot, rough tongue and yawned sweetly.

“Let’s go to bed,” Alice kissed the cat somewhere in the ear and was about to return to the warm bed, when suddenly she noticed something strange.

There was a long, crooked scratch on his hand. Just in the place where the skin was pierced by a bottle shard. Strange. When Alice went to bed, this scratch was not there. The girl definitely remembered this, because the day before she had stood in the shower for a long time, lathering her hands and shoulders with a new sweet-smelling apricot gel, which she just wanted to taste.

The girl lowered the cat onto the bed and rubbed her finger over the scratch. It did not disappear, however, there was no particular pain.

“She probably scratched herself in her sleep…” Alice muttered, accepting the most harmless and most obvious version. “It’s not for nothing that my mother calls my nails claws... Or is it Marquise’s fault.” Was it you, scoundrel, who scratched me?

The cat meowed indignantly, obviously denying any involvement in the crime.

“Okay, okay,” Alice said conciliatoryly, “I’m sure it’s really me.” Let's go to sleep.

She climbed into bed and closed her eyes as hard as she could - there were only a few hours left before dawn, and a difficult day lay ahead...

The rest of the night passed quietly.

The girl was woken up, as always, by a melody flowing from her cell phone - a signal to get up.

The marquise was already licking her paw, looking meaningfully at her mistress: wouldn’t it be time for some milk?.. Alice got out of bed and looked at her hand. There was no scratch. Well, of course it seemed. Reality remains unshakable, and, fortunately, there is no place for dense nightmares. The girl stretched and wandered into the bathroom. Here she washed her face with cold water, inserted lenses into her eyes with her usual movements and froze, meeting her gaze with her own reflection. A teenage girl with a triangular face, pale after sleep, with a small nose and slightly slanted eyes, looked at her. Blonde hair with a slight reddish tint was disheveled... She seemed defenseless and scared.

or One Night...

Smell. The smell filled my nostrils, causing slight nausea, causing my muscles to clench with tension. From a premonition of trouble. It was the smell of fear. They say fear has no smell. Nonsense! It has its own aroma - very characteristic. Musty and at the same time sharp, sickening, disgusting. He invaded consciousness, clouding it, killing all living things around him.

The girl tried not to breathe, but the damned smell still climbed into her nostrils, corroded her lungs like black mold, and her chest quietly ached with pain...

The crooked moon, like a bitten candy, grinned as it looked down from the dark, almost starless sky. The sound of lonely footsteps seemed especially loud in the sudden silence. Every step is like a pistol shot to the temple, distinct and terrible - dot, dot, dot...

The girl stopped, swallowed bitter, viscous saliva and closed her eyes. How I wanted to disappear into the shadows of the night, to become invisible and inaudible. The pulse was pounding loudly in my temples. My heart was beating like a bomb ready to explode. The countdown is on: five, four, three, two...

And then she heard a strange sound. Quiet, even insinuating, but that made it even more terrifying - as if someone was SECRETLY approaching, wanting to take her by surprise. The heart froze, and then beat even faster, although it would seem that this was simply impossible.

The same footsteps, insinuating, slightly shuffling, sounded from the side, as if an unknown person was trying to draw a circle around her from which she could no longer get out.

The girl couldn't wait any longer. Fear... no, not fear - icy, hopeless horror poured into her consciousness, erasing all thoughts, all instincts, except one: SAVE YOURSELF! Immediately run anywhere but from here!

And she ran, hearing the stomping of her no longer lurking pursuer behind her.

She rushed through the endless wasteland, every now and then stumbling and falling, realizing that there was no way to stop. Not for a second!

Forward! Just go ahead, and maybe then you will be able to escape.

The night breathed down her back, lashed her eyes with lashes of distant lights, and anxiously whispered in her ear: “Trouble is near!” The girl felt it herself. All her senses warned of danger, causing the hairs on her skin to stand on end.

If only this wasteland would end! Just to reach people! Any kind, anywhere!

She felt like her heart was going to break. But even death would be the best way out. A new spasm squeezed the girl’s throat. She, like a fish thrown ashore, was breathing noisily with her open mouth, but there was a catastrophic lack of oxygen. Perhaps it's all about that smell. And in a feeling of hopelessness.

Some kind of can fell under her feet, the girl tripped and fell, feeling how the fragments were cutting through her hand. Blood. Here comes the first blood - like a victim of this predatory night.

What else is needed?..

A new wave of the foul smell almost turned her stomach, but, holding on with some incredible, titanic effort, the girl jumped up and ran again.

She didn’t think about anything - she only had the strength to run. Last strength.

She ran through the wasteland, blood dripping from her hand, and tears rolled from her eyes, unnoticed by her, leaving clearly marked paths on her dirty cheeks.

A flashlight flashed ahead. Is this really the end of the wasteland? Did she really make it?

At some point, the girl began to gain hope that she would still be able to get out, but then a huge shadow blocked her way.

The girl screamed, feeling like a hunted game, and slowly raised her head, finally looking into the face of her pursuer.

He had no face. Only a huge grinning muzzle, either a dog or a wolf, growing from the muscular human shoulders. The mouth is open, large yellowish fangs are visible in it, from which saliva falls to the ground. The eyes are infernal red.

"This is the end!" - the girl understood, and the cruel mocking moon winked: “Well, didn’t you leave?”

The girl wanted to scream, but the scream got stuck in her throat, her body became limp, like cotton wool, and the monster leaned towards her, dousing her with a stinking odor, and suddenly, completely like a cat, hissed.

Alice opened her eyes, gradually realizing that she was in her own room. At the foot of the bed, a cat hissed, arching its back and raising its fur.

- Marquise, what are you doing? - Alice called her pet. -What are you afraid of?

“Don’t be afraid, Marquise, everything is fine, it’s just a dream,” Alice picked up the cat in her arms and, throwing back the blanket, went to the window with her pet.

The houses opposite were dark, and only a dim light was burning in one window, which meant that they had not slept there either. This light calmed Alice a little, like the look of a friend. “This is an ordinary world,” he seemed to say, “there are no monsters here.” The street was empty, and no matter how much the girl peered into the darkness, nothing alarming was felt in it. An ordinary city, an ordinary night.

“You see, Marquise, everything is calm,” the girl began to stroke the cat, and she, having forgotten about fear, began to purr, as if a motor had turned on inside, “you and I don’t really like dogs, it’s true.” Or rather, they don’t favor us too much, but that’s okay. We just won’t wander around wastelands where we could be attacked, no, of course, not by the monster from my dream, but by a pack of stray dogs. We are in the house, it’s cozy here, and no one can get to us...

Alice spoke and calmed down herself. The dream, until recently so real and frightening, began to seem like something like a fairy tale. A simple reflection of elementary fears - what could be simpler.

The once round moon, now more like a lightly sucked lollipop, silently looked out from the sky. She saw everything - the long-haired girl in a long striped T-shirt, and her red-and-white cat, and something else that neither the girl nor the cat saw, but she did not at all consider it necessary to tell anyone about it.

The marquise gratefully licked her mistress's hand with her hot, rough tongue and yawned sweetly.

“Let’s go to bed,” Alice kissed the cat somewhere in the ear and was about to return to the warm bed, when suddenly she noticed something strange.

There was a long, crooked scratch on his hand. Just in the place where the skin was pierced by a bottle shard. Strange. When Alice went to bed, this scratch was not there. The girl definitely remembered this, because the day before she had stood in the shower for a long time, lathering her hands and shoulders with a new sweet-smelling apricot gel, which she just wanted to taste.

The girl lowered the cat onto the bed and rubbed her finger over the scratch. It did not disappear, however, there was no particular pain.

“She probably scratched herself in her sleep…” Alice muttered, accepting the most harmless and most obvious version. “It’s not for nothing that my mother calls my nails claws... Or is it Marquise’s fault.” Was it you, scoundrel, who scratched me?

The cat meowed indignantly, obviously denying any involvement in the crime.

“Okay, okay,” Alice said conciliatoryly, “I’m sure it’s really me.” Let's go to sleep.

She climbed into bed and closed her eyes as hard as she could - there were only a few hours left before dawn, and a difficult day lay ahead...

The rest of the night passed quietly.

The girl was woken up, as always, by a melody flowing from her cell phone - a signal to get up.

The marquise was already licking her paw, looking meaningfully at her mistress: wouldn’t it be time for some milk?.. Alice got out of bed and looked at her hand. There was no scratch. Well, of course it seemed. Reality remains unshakable, and, fortunately, there is no place for dense nightmares. The girl stretched and wandered into the bathroom. Here she washed her face with cold water, inserted lenses into her eyes with her usual movements and froze, meeting her gaze with her own reflection. A teenage girl with a triangular face, pale after sleep, with a small nose and slightly slanted eyes, looked at her. Blonde hair with a slight reddish tint was disheveled... She seemed defenseless and scared.

Alice quickly looked away and looked out into the corridor.

“Go, the omelette is ready,” mom called.

And Alice, padding her bare feet, walked into the kitchen, where the first thing she did was pour milk for the cat curling at her feet, then she sat down at the table and looked sadly at the plate in front of her, where, indeed, there was a lush and rosy piece of omelette.

“Mom,” she said, resting her head on her hand, “tell me, why am I so... scary?”

- Where did you get the idea? – the mother, who was pouring coffee from the coffee machine into a cup, looked back at her daughter in surprise. “I think you’re very pretty.” Or...” she paused, “or are you talking about the eyes again?..

Alice nodded.

– Don’t even worry! – Mom put a cup of excellent cappuccino in front of her and patted her daughter’s hair. – You know, this happens in our family.

“Yeah, a special genetic mutation,” the girl muttered and, taking a fork, began to pick at the omelette. - Sometimes, once every hundred years, a freak like me is born in our family...

- Fool! – the mother lightly slapped her daughter on the top of the head. - You make up all sorts of things! You are a beauty to me, and your great-grandmother was a beauty, despite the fact that she, like you, had problems with her eyes. Mom told me that my great-grandmother had a bad time. She was considered a witch and was once almost burned. Remember, your great-grandfather saved her. He fell in love with her, in spite of everything - not the strange eyes, not the rumors that superstitious and envious fellow villagers spread about her...

“Maybe there are no people like my great-grandfather and there won’t be anymore,” Alice raised her head and finally looked at her mother. – I’m probably the only person in the world who was prescribed lenses for aesthetic reasons! No wonder no one loves me! - She threw the fork so that it rolled across the table and fell with a clang onto the tiled floor, paved with squares.

Nobody meant first of all “father,” but neither Alice nor her mother tried not to remember him. He had another family for a long time, so, one might say, we moved on.

“There will be a guest,” the mother voiced the well-known sign, picked up the fork, rinsed it under the tap and served it to her daughter, “and I hope it’s not your class teacher who will complain that you’ve completely neglected your studies.” Come on, eat, otherwise you'll be late for school! As for love, it’s too early to say - you have your whole life ahead of you, you will definitely meet someone you love and who will love you with all his heart.

“Of course, he’ll love it,” the girl muttered, but still pricked a piece of omelette onto her fork. Her gaze was fixed on the plate and reflected such a thoughtful dreaminess that it became clear to the stasis: she had already met someone.

-Have you eaten yet? – Mom looked out of the bathroom, where she was putting herself in order, and shook her head reproachfully.

I had to stuff the already cooled omelette into myself, without even tasting it, and run to get dressed. At their school they wore blue, Alice hated this color, which made her even paler and more inconspicuous, but you can’t wear your favorite striped white and red jumper to class?! That is, of course, you will put it on, only then you will run into the notation of the class, who wants to see “their guys” the same, as if from an incubator. If she had her way, she would fill the entire class with clones. The training paragraphs are identical in appearance and answer synchronously letter by letter. In general, if you don’t want a scandal and increased attention to yourself, please dress standardly.

The only liberties that Alice allowed herself was her hair. A year ago, the girl began to twist her hair into funny horns or ears, perkyly located on both sides of her head. The hairstyle required a certain dexterity and practice, but it looked original and very stylish. Now that the hand was already filled, it took about fifteen minutes to create it, and at first I had to hang around in front of the mirror for at least an hour.

- I ran! Be smart, Alya! – Mom kissed her on the cheek, and soon the sound of a slamming door was heard from the corridor.

- I'm leaving too. Be smart, Marquise,” the girl, in turn, turned to the cat.

It was September, the school year had barely begun, but the days were cold, so I had to take my jacket off the hanger - pale pink, more like pearlescent. In fact, Alice suited brighter colors, but the jacket perfectly helped her to get lost in the crowd and not stand out, which is what she needed.

The cat, meowing pitifully, stood between the owner and the door. “You’re leaving me alone again!” – read in the reproachful look of yellow-green shining eyes.

“I don’t want to,” the girl sighed and, gently pushing her pet away, went out into the common corridor.

The elevator arrived quickly, but as soon as the doors opened, a large black dog flew out onto the landing and started barking hoarsely and desperately.

Alice backed towards the door, pressing her back against it. My stomach dropped somewhere and my temples began to pound disgustingly. How inopportunely I remembered today’s dream!

- Come on, sit down! – a tall, bald man shouted at the dog. “I don’t know what came over him.” Marty is actually friendly.

The girl swallowed nervously. Marty's friendliness was peculiar, to say the least.

While the man, clearly straining, dragged the struggling and barking dog back into the elevator, the girl stood there, afraid to even move.

- Ugh, Marty! Ugh! – finally, the owner managed to drag his pet into the already closing booth. - Well, girl, will you come with us?

She shook her head vigorously, flatly refusing the generous offer.

- Well, well, Marty is somehow nervous today...

The elevator doors finally closed, and Alice was able to catch her breath. She already thought that this torture would never end.

To be honest, she hasn’t liked dogs since childhood. Well, the relationship with them didn’t work out, it didn’t work out at all! One day the dog attacked her and bit her. Perhaps the matter would have ended more tragically if adults had not come to the rescue. But she already got the full brunt of it: stitches and the notorious forty rabies injections. In general, the memories are far from the most pleasant. Therefore, when meeting the dog, Alice literally froze. My legs weakened on their own, and I even felt nauseated from fear. Animals very clearly sense the fear of others, so each of the dogs they met, even the smallest one, a little larger than a hamster, considered it their duty to at least bark at the two-legged coward.

In case of an encounter with dogs, Alice even had a special repellent device, but now, not expecting an attack in her own home, she was confused and forgot to take it out of her pocket.

The dark red old school building seemed especially gloomy and even gothic today because of the lead clouds that had gathered in the sky. Stopping at the metal fence, Alice suddenly thought that perhaps she found herself in one of the horror novels that she had become so addicted to lately.

A group of junior high school kids walked past her, chatting and laughing. The bell was about to ring, but for some reason the girl hesitated. She took a maple leaf clinging to a fence peg - yellow, with brown veins - and thought that not long ago it was spring and this very leaf was just swelling in its bud, full of thirst for life, wanting to break free, believing in the sunshine, the vastness of the world and infinity life... and now...

- Aliska, it’s so good that I met you! – a cheerful voice was heard from behind.

Alice looked back. Her classmate Svetka Perovskaya beamed with a constant smile, from which dimples appeared on her pink, plump cheeks, adding to the girl’s charm.

“Hello, Sveta,” Alice responded without much enthusiasm, still squeezing the long petiole of a maple leaf in her fingers.

Alisa and Sveta were never friends, especially since Perovskaya was friends, as they say, with the entire school and was often the most reliable peddler of gossip of any kind.

- Why don’t you go to class? – Svetka asked, but then, without waiting for an answer, she began to say frequently: “Have you done algebra?” Will you let me write it off? I had so much to do yesterday – it’s terrible! First we met with Natasha and Tanka, and then Leshka came over to us, can you imagine!..

Alice sighed. Well, of course, the popular Perovskaya simply has no time to do algebra, while she herself simply has tons of free time for lessons.

- Good morning, girls. Well, why did you stand in the aisle?..

From this soft, seemingly enveloping baritone with a barely noticeable Baltic accent, Alice’s legs weakened, and some kind of painfully sweet wave spread in her chest. The girl timidly raised her head and came across the scorching gaze of gray-blue eyes, inhaled the smell of smoky-tart men's eau de toilette and, of course, was unable to move or utter a word.

Perovskaya pulled her by the sleeve of her jacket, pulling her out of the way, and easily, as if with an equal in age and position, greeted the young geographer.

– Good morning to you too, Vladimir Olgerdovich!

It’s easy for Svetka. She wasn't in love.

And the geographer, smiling absentmindedly, had already passed by, heading towards the school entrance. Alice just stared after him, amazed at his casual elegance. The tall, fit, fair-haired Baltic looked like a real European. Flawless to the very tips of always well-groomed nails. Even the greasy autumn mud seemed to leave no marks on his polished fashionable boots or stain his immaculate dark gray short coat.

- I heard, Olgerdovich, they say that he is putting wedges on our chemical plant! – Svetka shared her gossip. - God bless him! Will you give me a notebook?

Alice, as if in a dream, opened her bag and, almost without looking, took out the notebook she needed. Did she care about a notebook now?!

- Danke! I appreciate it! - Perovskaya blurted out and, immediately forgetting about Alice, hurried to the school entrance.

Left alone, the girl grabbed the metal grate until her fingers turned white. The news she was told in passing burned her like a brand burned on her forehead.

Students running past glanced sideways at the girl. Someone laughed.

– Our Alice has gone through the looking glass again! – another classmate told her faithful friends.

The girl shuddered and was about to step through the gate when a car passing by suddenly splashed Alice with mud from a large puddle. Here you go, and this to top off the morning’s misfortunes. It’s not for nothing that they say: if the day is not going well from the very beginning, don’t expect anything good from it.

She let go of the maple leaf, angry at her own sentimentality. Wow, I regretted the leaf! What a fool, honestly!

The leaf fell under her feet, and Alice, having deliberately stepped on it, nevertheless entered the gate.

Because of a passing reckless driver, I had to go to the toilet and somehow wash away the dirty stains from my tights and skirt, because the second lesson of the eleventh "a" was geography, and there was no way to show up in class like that. Vladimir Olgerdovich is a model of elegance and cannot stand sloppiness.

The mirror hanging above the washstand, as always, both frightened the girl and attracted her with its depth. And now Alice looked into it (everything is fine, the eyes look completely ordinary) and, unable to resist, stuck out her tongue at her reflection. The reflection, a second later, repeated her grimace.

- Hey there, in the depths! – Alice jokingly called to her reflection. - Come on out!

The joke turned out to be unfunny. The mirror seemed to tremble slightly and began to ripple slightly, and a chill ran down the girl’s spine.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and opening them again, she was convinced that everything was fine: the mirror was like a mirror, and the reflection was quite ordinary, only a little frightened.

The door opened, letting in a noisy group of girls, and Alice hastily turned on the water to clean the dirt from her tights and skirt.

Having cleaned herself and waited until her flushed cheeks paled a little, Alice entered her class, where the lesson was already in progress. Accompanied by the disapproving gaze of the writer, she took her place on the first desk, next to Olenka Krasnova, with whom she was friends not so much because of the similarity of views and interests, but according to the principle: “Well, you have to be friends with at least someone.”

And the lesson dragged on. Everything seemed to be going as usual, but Alice soon noticed increased interest in her person from her classmates. From the next desk, across the aisle, Kolka Sulifanov openly stared at her, and Mila Lisitsyna kept looking askance and giggling, almost pointing her finger at her neighbor.

“I probably didn’t wipe the dirt off my face,” thought Alice, but she could not detect the flaw, no matter how much she peered into the mirror, but she earned an angry rebuke from the teacher, who decided that her student was overcome by a fit of coquetry.

After the lesson, Perovskaya ran up to her, thrust the borrowed notebook into her hands, thanked her, giggled for some reason, and hurried to hide in the crowd of children already leaving the class.

– Is there something wrong with me? Please look, maybe they stuck something on my back? - Alisa asked Olya, remembering how in elementary school they often pinned pieces of paper on each other’s backs with inscriptions like “Kick me” or “I’m a fool from the alley” and others of the same kind.

- There is nothing! – Olya shrugged her shoulders dismissively. – Don’t pay attention to any degenerates.

I had to be satisfied with this answer, but still, before going to the geography class, Alice looked into the toilet to look around in the mirror again. But again I didn’t find anything criminal. True, for a moment it seemed to the girl that a vague shadow flashed somewhere in the depths of the mirror glass, but, of course, this was a play of the imagination. Like the night scratch.

1
Alice,
or One Night...

or One Night...
The girl tried not to breathe, but the damned smell still climbed into her nostrils, corroded her lungs like black mold, and her chest quietly ached with pain...
The crooked moon, like a bitten candy, grinned as it looked down from the dark, almost starless sky. The sound of lonely footsteps seemed especially loud in the sudden silence. Every step is like a pistol shot to the temple, distinct and terrible - dot, dot, dot...
The girl stopped, swallowed bitter, viscous saliva and closed her eyes. How I wanted to disappear into the shadows of the night, to become invisible and inaudible. The pulse was pounding loudly in my temples. My heart was beating like a bomb ready to explode. The countdown is on: five, four, three, two...
And then she heard a strange sound. Quiet, even insinuating, but that made it even more terrifying - as if someone was SECRETLY approaching, wanting to take her by surprise. The heart froze, and then beat even faster, although it would seem that this was simply impossible.
The same footsteps, insinuating, slightly shuffling, sounded from the side, as if an unknown person was trying to draw a circle around her from which she could no longer get out.
The girl couldn't wait any longer. Fear... no, not fear - icy, hopeless horror poured into her consciousness, erasing all thoughts, all instincts, except one: SAVE YOURSELF! Immediately run anywhere but from here!
And she ran, hearing the stomping of her no longer lurking pursuer behind her.
She rushed through the endless wasteland, every now and then stumbling and falling, realizing that there was no way to stop. Not for a second!
One foot got stuck in the mud and a shoe fell off. But there was no time to pick her up. The damned smell drove the girl away, like a shepherd drives his stupid, obedient flock.
Forward! Just go ahead, and maybe then you will be able to escape.
The night breathed down her back, lashed her eyes with lashes of distant lights, and anxiously whispered in her ear: “Trouble is near!” The girl felt it herself. All her senses warned of danger, causing the hairs on her skin to stand on end.
If only this wasteland would end! Just to reach people! Any kind, anywhere!
She felt like her heart was going to break. But even death would be the best way out. A new spasm squeezed the girl’s throat. She, like a fish thrown ashore, was breathing noisily with her open mouth, but there was a catastrophic lack of oxygen. Perhaps it's all about that smell. And in a feeling of hopelessness.
Some kind of can fell under her feet, the girl stumbled and fell, feeling how the fragments were cutting through her hand. Blood. Here comes the first blood - like a victim of this predatory night. What else is needed?..
A new wave of foul odor almost turned her stomach, but, holding on with some incredible, titanic effort, the girl jumped up and ran again.
She didn’t think about anything - she only had the strength to run. Last strength.
She ran through the wasteland, blood dripping from her hand, and tears rolled from her eyes, unnoticed by her, leaving clearly marked paths on her dirty cheeks.
A flashlight flashed ahead. Is this really the end of the wasteland? Did she really make it?
At some point, the girl began to gain hope that she would still be able to get out, but then a huge shadow blocked her way.
The girl screamed, feeling like a hunted game, and slowly raised her head, finally looking into the face of her pursuer.
He had no face. Only a huge grinning muzzle, either a dog or a wolf, growing from the muscular human shoulders. The mouth is open, large yellowish fangs are visible in it, from which saliva falls to the ground. The eyes are infernal red.
"This is the end!" - the girl understood, and the cruel mocking moon winked: “Well, didn’t you leave?”
The girl wanted to scream, but the scream got stuck in her throat, her body became limp, like cotton wool, and the monster leaned towards her, dousing her with a stinking odor, and suddenly, completely like a cat, hissed.

Alice opened her eyes, gradually realizing that she was in her own room. At the foot of the bed, a cat hissed, arching its back and raising its fur.
- Marquise, what are you doing? - Alice called her pet. -What are you afraid of?
Hearing the familiar voice, the cat calmed down a little, but her ears were raised warily. Carefully approaching the owner, the animal sniffed her hand incredulously, then sneezed and meowed quietly, as if questioningly.
“Don’t be afraid, Marquise, everything is fine, it’s just a dream,” Alice picked up the cat in her arms and, throwing back the blanket, went to the window with her pet.
The houses opposite were dark, and only a dim light was burning in one window, which meant that they had not slept there either. This light calmed Alice a little, like the look of a friend. “This is an ordinary world,” he seemed to say, “there are no monsters here.” The street was empty, and no matter how much the girl peered into the darkness, nothing alarming was felt in it. An ordinary city, an ordinary night.
“You see, Marquise, everything is calm,” the girl began to stroke the cat, and she, having forgotten about fear, began to purr, as if a motor had turned on inside, “you and I don’t really like dogs, it’s true.” Or rather, they don’t favor us too much, but that’s okay. We just won’t wander around wastelands where we could be attacked, no, of course, not by the monster from my dream, but by a pack of stray dogs. We are in the house, it’s cozy here, and no one can get to us...
Alice spoke and calmed down herself. The dream, until recently so real and frightening, began to seem like something like a fairy tale. A simple reflection of elementary fears - what could be simpler.
The once round moon, now more like a lightly sucked lollipop, silently looked out from the sky. She saw everything - the long-haired girl in a long striped T-shirt, and her red-and-white cat, and something else that neither the girl nor the cat saw, but she did not at all consider it necessary to tell anyone about it.
The marquise gratefully licked her mistress's hand with her hot, rough tongue and yawned sweetly.
“Let’s go to bed,” Alice kissed the cat somewhere in the ear and was about to return to the warm bed, when suddenly she noticed something strange.
There was a long, crooked scratch on his hand. Just in the place where the skin was pierced by a bottle shard. Strange. When Alice went to bed, this scratch was not there. The girl definitely remembered this, because the day before she had stood in the shower for a long time, lathering her hands and shoulders with a new sweet-smelling apricot gel, which she just wanted to taste.
The girl lowered the cat onto the bed and rubbed her finger over the scratch. It did not disappear, however, there was no particular pain.
“She probably scratched herself in her sleep…” Alice muttered, accepting the most harmless and most obvious version. “It’s not for nothing that my mother calls my nails claws... Or is it Marquise’s fault.” Was it you, scoundrel, who scratched me?
The cat meowed indignantly, obviously denying any involvement in the crime.
“Okay, okay,” Alice said conciliatoryly, “I’m sure it’s really me.” Let's go to sleep.
She climbed into bed and closed her eyes as hard as she could - there were only a few hours left before dawn, and a difficult day lay ahead...

The rest of the night passed quietly.
The girl was woken up, as always, by a melody flowing from her cell phone - a signal to get up.
The marquise was already licking her paw, looking meaningfully at her mistress: wouldn’t it be time for some milk?.. Alice got out of bed and looked at her hand. There was no scratch. Well, of course it seemed. Reality remains unshakable, and, fortunately, there is no place for dense nightmares. The girl stretched and wandered into the bathroom. Here she washed her face with cold water, inserted lenses into her eyes with her usual movements and froze, meeting her gaze with her own reflection. A teenage girl with a triangular face, pale after sleep, with a small nose and slightly slanted eyes, looked at her. Blonde hair with a slight reddish tint was disheveled... She seemed defenseless and scared.
Alice quickly looked away and looked out into the corridor.
“Go, the omelette is ready,” mom called.
And Alice, padding her bare feet, walked into the kitchen, where the first thing she did was pour milk for the cat curling at her feet, then she sat down at the table and looked sadly at the plate in front of her, where, indeed, there was a lush and rosy piece of omelette.
“Mom,” she said, resting her head on her hand, “tell me, why am I so... scary?”
- Where did you get the idea? – the mother, who was pouring coffee from the coffee machine into a cup, looked back at her daughter in surprise. “I think you’re very pretty.” Or...” she paused, “or are you talking about the eyes again?..
Alice nodded.
– Don’t even worry! – Mom put a cup of excellent cappuccino in front of her and patted her daughter’s hair. – You know, this happens in our family.
“Yeah, a special genetic mutation,” the girl muttered and, taking a fork, began to pick at the omelette. - Sometimes, once every hundred years, a freak like me is born in our family...
- Fool! – the mother lightly slapped her daughter on the top of the head. - You make up all sorts of things! You are a beauty to me, and your great-grandmother was a beauty, despite the fact that she, like you, had problems with her eyes. Mom told me that my great-grandmother had a bad time. She was considered a witch and was once almost burned. Remember, your great-grandfather saved her. He fell in love with her, in spite of everything - not the strange eyes, not the rumors that superstitious and envious fellow villagers spread about her...
“Maybe there are no people like my great-grandfather and there won’t be anymore,” Alice raised her head and finally looked at her mother. – I’m probably the only person in the world who was prescribed lenses for aesthetic reasons! No wonder no one loves me! - She threw the fork so that it rolled across the table and fell with a clang onto the tiled floor, paved with squares.
Nobody meant first of all “father,” but neither Alice nor her mother tried not to remember him. He had another family for a long time, so, one might say, we moved on.
“There will be a guest,” the mother voiced the well-known sign, picked up the fork, rinsed it under the tap and served it to her daughter, “and I hope it’s not your class teacher who will complain that you’ve completely neglected your studies.” Come on, eat, otherwise you'll be late for school! As for love, it’s too early to say - you have your whole life ahead of you, you will definitely meet someone you love and who will love you with all his heart.
“Of course, he’ll love it,” the girl muttered, but still pricked a piece of omelette onto her fork. Her gaze was fixed on the plate and reflected such a thoughtful dreaminess that it became clear to the stasis: she had already met someone.
-Have you eaten yet? – Mom looked out of the bathroom, where she was putting herself in order, and shook her head reproachfully.
I had to stuff the already cooled omelette into myself, without even tasting it, and run to get dressed. At their school they wore blue, Alice hated this color, which made her even paler and more inconspicuous, but you can’t wear your favorite striped white and red jumper to class?! That is, of course, you will put it on, only then you will run into the notation of the class, who wants to see “their guys” the same, as if from an incubator. If she had her way, she would fill the entire class with clones. The training paragraphs are identical in appearance and answer synchronously letter by letter. In general, if you don’t want a scandal and increased attention to yourself, please dress standardly.
The only liberties that Alice allowed herself was her hair. A year ago, the girl began to twist her hair into funny horns or ears, perkyly located on both sides of her head. The hairstyle required a certain dexterity and practice, but it looked original and very stylish. Now that the hand was already filled, it took about fifteen minutes to create it, and at first I had to hang around in front of the mirror for at least an hour.
- I ran! Be smart, Alya! – Mom kissed her on the cheek, and soon the sound of a slamming door was heard from the corridor.
- I'm leaving too. Be smart, Marquise,” the girl, in turn, turned to the cat.
It was September, the school year had barely begun, but the days were cold, so I had to take my jacket off the hanger - pale pink, more like pearlescent. In fact, Alice suited brighter colors, but the jacket perfectly helped her to get lost in the crowd and not stand out, which is what she needed.
The cat, meowing pitifully, stood between the owner and the door. “You’re leaving me alone again!” – read in the reproachful look of yellow-green shining eyes.
“I don’t want to,” the girl sighed and, gently pushing her pet away, went out into the common corridor.
The elevator arrived quickly, but as soon as the doors opened, a large black dog flew out onto the landing and started barking hoarsely and desperately.
Alice backed towards the door, pressing her back against it. My stomach dropped somewhere and my temples began to pound disgustingly. How inopportunely I remembered today’s dream!
- Come on, sit down! – a tall, bald man shouted at the dog. “I don’t know what came over him.” Marty is actually friendly.
The girl swallowed nervously. Marty's friendliness was peculiar, to say the least.
While the man, clearly straining, dragged the struggling and barking dog back into the elevator, the girl stood there, afraid to even move.
- Ugh, Marty! Ugh! – finally, the owner managed to drag his pet into the already closing booth. - Well, girl, will you come with us?
She shook her head vigorously, flatly refusing the generous offer.
- Well, well, Marty is somehow nervous today...
The elevator doors finally closed, and Alice was able to catch her breath. She already thought that this torture would never end.
To be honest, she hasn’t liked dogs since childhood. Well, the relationship with them didn’t work out, it didn’t work out at all! One day the dog attacked her and bit her. Perhaps the matter would have ended more tragically if adults had not come to the rescue. But she already got the full brunt of it: stitches and the notorious forty rabies injections. In general, the memories are far from the most pleasant. Therefore, when meeting the dog, Alice literally froze. My legs weakened on their own, and I even felt nauseated from fear. Animals very clearly sense the fear of others, so each of the dogs they met, even the smallest one, a little larger than a hamster, considered it their duty to at least bark at the two-legged coward.
In case of an encounter with dogs, Alice even had a special repellent device, but now, not expecting an attack in her own home, she was confused and forgot to take it out of her pocket.

The dark red old school building seemed especially gloomy and even gothic today because of the lead clouds that had gathered in the sky. Stopping at the metal fence, Alice suddenly thought that perhaps she found herself in one of the horror novels that she had become so addicted to lately.
A group of junior high school kids walked past her, chatting and laughing. The bell was about to ring, but for some reason the girl hesitated. She took a maple leaf clinging to a fence peg - yellow, with brown veins - and thought that not long ago it was spring and this very leaf was just swelling in its bud, full of thirst for life, wanting to break free, believing in the sunshine, the vastness of the world and infinity life... and now...
- Aliska, it’s so good that I met you! – a cheerful voice was heard from behind.
Alice looked back. Her classmate Svetka Perovskaya beamed with a constant smile, from which dimples appeared on her pink, plump cheeks, adding to the girl’s charm.
“Hello, Sveta,” Alice responded without much enthusiasm, still squeezing the long petiole of a maple leaf in her fingers.
Alisa and Sveta were never friends, especially since Perovskaya was friends, as they say, with the entire school and was often the most reliable peddler of gossip of any kind.
- Why don’t you go to class? – Svetka asked, but then, without waiting for an answer, she began to say frequently: “Have you done algebra?” Will you let me write it off? I had so much to do yesterday – it’s terrible! First we met with Natasha and Tanka, and then Leshka came over to us, can you imagine!..
Alice sighed. Well, of course, the popular Perovskaya simply has no time to do algebra, while she herself simply has tons of free time for lessons.
- Good morning, girls. Well, why did you stand in the aisle?..
From this soft, seemingly enveloping baritone with a barely noticeable Baltic accent, Alice’s legs weakened, and some kind of painfully sweet wave spread in her chest. The girl timidly raised her head and came across the scorching gaze of gray-blue eyes, inhaled the smell of smoky-tart men's eau de toilette and, of course, was unable to move or utter a word.
Perovskaya pulled her by the sleeve of her jacket, pulling her out of the way, and easily, as if with an equal in age and position, greeted the young geographer.
– Good morning to you too, Vladimir Olgerdovich!
It’s easy for Svetka. She wasn't in love.
And the geographer, smiling absentmindedly, had already passed by, heading towards the school entrance. Alice just stared after him, amazed at his casual elegance. The tall, fit, fair-haired Baltic looked like a real European. Flawless to the very tips of always well-groomed nails. Even the greasy autumn mud seemed to leave no marks on his polished fashionable boots or stain his immaculate dark gray short coat.
- I heard, Olgerdovich, they say that he is putting wedges on our chemical plant! – Svetka shared her gossip. - God bless him! Will you give me a notebook?
Alice, as if in a dream, opened her bag and, almost without looking, took out the notebook she needed. Did she care about a notebook now?!
- Danke! I appreciate it! - Perovskaya blurted out and, immediately forgetting about Alice, hurried to the school entrance.
Left alone, the girl grabbed the metal grate until her fingers turned white. The news she was told in passing burned her like a brand burned on her forehead.
Students running past glanced sideways at the girl. Someone laughed.
– Our Alice has gone through the looking glass again! – another classmate told her faithful friends.
The girl shuddered and was about to step through the gate when a car passing by suddenly splashed Alice with mud from a large puddle. Here you go, and this to top off the morning’s misfortunes. It’s not for nothing that they say: if the day is not going well from the very beginning, don’t expect anything good from it.
She let go of the maple leaf, angry at her own sentimentality. Wow, I regretted the leaf! What a fool, honestly!
The leaf fell under her feet, and Alice, having deliberately stepped on it, nevertheless entered the gate.
Because of a passing reckless driver, I had to go to the toilet and somehow wash away the dirty stains from my tights and skirt, because the second lesson of the eleventh "a" was geography, and there was no way to show up in class like that. Vladimir Olgerdovich is a model of elegance and cannot stand sloppiness.
The mirror hanging above the washstand, as always, both frightened the girl and attracted her with its depth. And now Alice looked into it (everything is fine, the eyes look completely ordinary) and, unable to resist, stuck out her tongue at her reflection. The reflection, a second later, repeated her grimace.
- Hey there, in the depths! – Alice jokingly called to her reflection. - Come on out!
The joke turned out to be unfunny. The mirror seemed to tremble slightly and began to ripple slightly, and a chill ran down the girl’s spine.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and opening them again, she was convinced that everything was fine: the mirror was like a mirror, and the reflection was quite ordinary, only a little frightened.
The door opened, letting in a noisy group of girls, and Alice hastily turned on the water to clean the dirt from her tights and skirt.
Having cleaned herself and waited until her flushed cheeks paled a little, Alice entered her class, where the lesson was already in progress. Accompanied by the disapproving gaze of the writer, she took her place on the first desk, next to Olenka Krasnova, with whom she was friends not so much because of the similarity of views and interests, but according to the principle: “Well, you have to be friends with at least someone.”
And the lesson dragged on. Everything seemed to be going as usual, but Alice soon noticed increased interest in her person from her classmates. From the next desk, across the aisle, Kolka Sulifanov openly stared at her, and Mila Lisitsyna kept looking askance and giggling, almost pointing her finger at her neighbor.
“I probably didn’t wipe the dirt off my face,” thought Alice, but she could not detect the flaw, no matter how much she peered into the mirror, but she earned an angry rebuke from the teacher, who decided that her student was overcome by a fit of coquetry.
After the lesson, Perovskaya ran up to her, thrust the borrowed notebook into her hands, thanked her, giggled for some reason, and hurried to hide in the crowd of children already leaving the class.
– Is there something wrong with me? Please look, maybe they stuck something on my back? - Alisa asked Olya, remembering how in elementary school they often pinned pieces of paper on each other’s backs with inscriptions like “Kick me” or “I’m a fool from the alley” and others of the same kind.
- There is nothing! – Olya shrugged her shoulders dismissively. – Don’t pay attention to any degenerates.
I had to be satisfied with this answer, but still, before going to the geography class, Alice looked into the toilet to look around in the mirror again. But again I didn’t find anything criminal. True, for a moment it seemed to the girl that a vague shadow flashed somewhere in the depths of the mirror glass, but, of course, this was a play of the imagination. Like the night scratch.

2
Oleg,
or Hello from the past

He simply hated school. And what is there to love about it – lessons that are boring? Teachers who address him either with contempt or with pity? Or maybe idiot classmates, despite the eleventh grade, remaining mere children, playing their sand games and measuring off their “adult” show-offs - who hung out with which girl, who rode which motorcycle. Kindergarten, pants with straps! Actually, at some point Oleg was going to pass the exams as an external student and leave his native land without regrets, but the teachers were not going to let him out so easily.
“Yes, you know mathematics and physics very well, but you still need to improve your Russian and literature. Oleg, we only wish the best for you and want you to grow up to be a cultured, fully developed person,” the head teacher, Valentina Vasilievna, told him, shaking her double chin indignantly.
He responded to the words “fully developed” with a wry smile. There is no doubt that the head teacher was well aware that a cripple cannot be “fully developed.”
– I will try, Valentina Vasilievna. Will you also order me to run the 100-meter dash in physical education? – he asked and, without waiting for an answer, limped along the corridor.
Oleg had problems with his left leg for a long time, ever since he could remember. This injury ruined his entire childhood. Outdoor games, so beloved by boys, were no longer available. At first, he was still eager to kick a ball with his peers or play Cossack robbers, leaving pointing arrows on the asphalt, but who would want to take a lame person into the team?
But he actively surfed the Internet, and then became interested in technology, with which he suddenly found himself on a first-name basis, spent a lot of time in the gym, where, clenching his teeth in anger, he every time stepped over his pain, through fear, through fatigue.
He was also teased at school, but Oleg did not let the bullies get away with it and often appeared covered in bruises after again defending his honor in yet another duel in a vacant lot.
However, by the eleventh grade, Oleg had gained a certain reputation as a guy whom it was better not to meddle with unnecessarily, and besides, he had become very handsome and mature. From a thin teenager with a sunken chest and large, alert light brown eyes, he turned into a handsome, rather strong guy. Now even his limp, oddly enough, served as a plus to his image, and one day, walking along the corridor, Oleg heard one girl talking about him to her friend: “He is so mysterious and so similar to Lord Byron! They say he was limping too!”
These words seemed to serve as a signal, after which the girls began to fall in love with Oleg en masse. They wrote him notes and made appointments with particular insistence, because Oleg did not answer notes, did not agree to dates, and for the girls it became fundamentally important which of them would still be able to win the heart of the mysterious hero. No one succeeded, and gradually, but quite logically, the suddenly bursting popularity began to creep down sharply, and one of the girls, it seems, the same one who first noted his resemblance to Lord Byron, came up with a new nickname for him - Quasimodo. Oleg was not offended, he didn’t care at all.
So, this morning he was getting ready for school, as always, when the doorbell suddenly rang.
– Who are you seeing? – Oleg asked, looking through the “peephole” at a short, stocky man in a bright yellow uniform with a red inscription indicating that he belongs to a popular postal service.
It turned out that the parcel was intended specifically for Oleg. For some reason the sender’s name was not there, no matter how much Oleg looked at the strange long box.
After the courier left, he did not dare to open it for a long time, and when he unpacked it, he could not believe his eyes - under the corrugated cardboard and several layers of pimply cellophane, which is so pleasant to click in the troubled moments of life, there lay a black cane with a silver knob, wrapped in unusual paper. Slowly unfolding the paper, Oleg first drew attention to it. She seemed so amazing that it was incomprehensible how anyone could wrap anything in such a miracle. Quite thick, slightly yellowish, with brown splashes, the uneven paper was literally mesmerizing. There was no question of throwing away this beauty. Having carefully rolled up the paper so that there were no creases, the guy tied the roll with thread, put it aside, and only then took up the cane. The cane turned out to be very light and extremely elegant, with a silver handle in the shape of a griffin's head. Oleg immediately realized that this was a special thing in front of him. I also guessed who this gift might be from.