Darina Grotto - Unlimited

Victoria often asked herself why she could see it all. Why did she have to see all those sufferings and be unable absolutely to help anyone? Because of her own inability she was overcame with horror. She had to close her eyes or stoop her head, say to herself that she saw nothing, heard nothing and she didn’t care at all. She had to do what others did – just pass by. She had to leave the agony unnoticed in the middle of the great crowd. Victoria said nothing about spirits and ghost to anyone. She didn’t tell about it even to Kharon. Nobody had to know that she was insane.

A month passed after the deal was concluded. If there hadn’t been spirits, her happiness would have been unlimited.

Kharon studied to be a human, live like a human, tried to understand what to feel meant and what exactly he had to feel.

The jealousy issue was still opened: Victoria kept silence, the demon carefully waited until the time was ripe.

While Vic was at work Kharon studied people. He followed them everywhere, listening to every sigh and word said to anyone. He followed couples creepingly and got more and more surprised with speckled diversity of feelings. They were able to love, and it was important information for Kharon. His mind tried to understand how people loved. One thing was determinate absolutely: there was such couple whose feelings were the same. Someone loved too much to rave about his beloved and there was only his image before the eyes. The image was unchangeable and static. It stood to give a small chance, thin hope to look at the image in own subconsciousness. How strong the heart was beating! No. It was shaking and filling with life when the beloved appeared in life. The air stated walking inside the body, breaking up the breath. Pupils were madly black, dilated. They sucked into the face like big leeches. They sucked in, pulling out the image to keep it in memory. Adrenalin was injected into blood; a shudder ran over the body. Was it fear? No, it wasn’t. That was love. It had gentle touches, almost impalpable but penetrated straight soul, fondling it, desirous to touch it. And the beloved allowed to touch his soul.

Kharon knew Victoria to feel all of those. Almost a month of his own being with people, he finally understood why Victoria had done that crazy thing, why she’d been looking for meeting with Lucifer and what for or whom for she had sold her soul. She loved him. It buttered him up. Too much. It was the first time in his life. It was usual thing for him when women wanted more. But there was nothing about love but lust. Victoria…

Almost every night with scandals with her mother, Victoria stayed with Kharon. Every night his fingers barely touched her skin, her body, ran through her hair, unbuttoned clothes… His lips kissed her hands and body. But there was nothing serious between them.

Victoria fell asleep being embraced by him, broke down with love and passion but there was nothing more. Kharon didn’t even think that something was going to happen, but for sure he liked being loved for nothing. He was scared because of a thought what could happen to the girl’s mind when they used the bed finally not only in frames of a place where they could sleep. Sometimes he thought in what way his true face would change the girl’s love.

Kharon saw other couples in streets. There he and she hated each other. They were ready to kill, destroy but they couldn’t live without each other. He was absolutely surprised by such couples’ existence. None of them were neither demons nor angels but they had so powerful energy and invincible spirits. Maybe sly spirits deprived them from being together without scandals.

The relations with Victoria were far from the standards, fortunately. The girl was too complaisant and ready to do whatever the demon asked. She idealized and worshiped him. Kharon sometimes thought that if he had asked her to jump from a roof of a skyscraper for him, she would do it with no thinking.

Victoria texted Kharon to introduce him to Olga Vladimirovna and they both would be waiting for him at 8 pm at her place. For a long time Kharon was trying to find out why she needed it, but he wasn’t capable of reading her mind on the phone. That’s why he was on time before the door, contemplating the doorbell. He wasn’t scared but he didn’t get used to it. The demon could see through the walls Victoria putting on, combing her hair, her mother sitting at the table. Without coming into the flat he had already known that Olga Vladimirovna didn’t like an idea of her daughter.

As soon as Kharon heard the idea in the woman’s mind he immediately switched over her daughter, greedily picking her thoughts to seek for the idea . But there was nothing.

In thought the man came back into Olga Vladimirovna’s mind and heard again “Bad idea, Victoria, very bad” . Kharon frowned. Instinctively he turned out to be in Victoria’s mind, having immersed inside fully. He was looking for the idea. Demons had an amazing vice – excessive curiosity. But a new disappointment befell him again. There was no idea in Victoria’s mind. Being already irritated Kharon placed his hands at the door, burning through the erected obstacle by humans with his eyes, he immersed into Olga Vladimirovna’s mind. “What an idiotism, Vic… with your ideas. To leave your mother for a man… I don’t like it.” Kharon stepped back from the door and smirked. That was the idea Victoria glimmered. The demon was satisfied after he had found out everything that he had wanted to. He pressed the doorbell.

Suddenly Olga Vladimirovna gave a jump on the chair. Vic ran out of the room, zipping the shorts. Kharon had already heard her heart madly beating, joy being reborn into an indescribable admire, her soul wanted with awe to see the demon.

The door was opened, Victoria turned out to be in the beloved man’s embrace. She closed her eyes, basking on his shoulder and tenderly whispered: “It’s been a long since we saw each other last time. How much I missed you!”

‘It’s been a long?’ Kharon smiled, firmly embracing the girl, looking through the walls at Olga Vladimirovna’s mean face. ‘Oh, dear, what do you know about the infinity? We were together last evening at the very place saying good-buy each other, embracing. It was 18 hours 10 minutes and 35seconds ago. 18 hours is not an infinity, trust me.’

Victoria was listening to Kharon’s sentimental whisper and scarcely suppressed her admire and happiness. What could she know about infinity? What could he know about infinity being unable to love?

‘It is, actually. Even a second without you is infinity. Come in.’

Kharon came into the flat, squeezing the girl’s hand. Her mum was staying in the hall and trying to smile, pretending to be glad of a new acquaintance with her daughter’s man. The demon looked at the woman, greeted her with smile and stared at Vic. She held his hand and her happiness had no limits.

‘Good evening, young man,’ Olga Vladimirovna answered for greetings. Her voice was dry, stern and powerful. All the doctors usually had the same. The woman pretended easy to smile and be glade of that party. But the demon gloated as he clearly saw Olga Vladimirovna dislike him at all. He liked the beginning of the evening.

‘This is Kharon, mum.’ Vic introduced her young man.

The girl, being so blinded by unknown love, didn’t see that her mother’s amiability and smile had nothing to do with reality. She didn’t feel that real hostility from Olga Vladimirovna.

‘Kharon?’ she asked in a mentor voice. ‘What an unusual name.’

‘I was called different. Kharon is the name I gave to myself.’

‘How did your parents call you?’

The man gave the woman a playful look, dropped his head and slyly looked at Vic from under his eyebrows.

‘Parents?’ he grinned. ‘If I want everyone to know my name, I got from my… parents, I wouldn’t have used different one.’

Olga Vladimirovna took a sigh, making her displeasure public. Victoria still noticed nothing but only the demon’s magnificent face. He hypnotized her, extinguishing her mind neuron by neuron.

‘Shall we go?’ Vic took his hand.

There was a serviced table in the kitchen: snacks, salads and a bottle of wine.

The man sat to the table, Olga Vladimirovna was nearby. Her green eyes were scrutinizing the face in front of her. She was looking intently at the couple. The mother understood very fast what was going on in that relation in fact.

‘How did you meet?’ she asked, put the salad to the guest, saw her daughter holding his hand.

‘Four months ago, I was in metro. I saw a girl read intently something in her notebook…’

The demon retold word-for-word the story he had told before to Vasilisa. Vic listened to the fairy tale with pleasure but the same could hardly be said about her mother.

She liked the young man less and less. Unfriendliness was getting worse and worse. She did want to say to her daughter: “Break up with him, Vic, and run. Just run, without looking back.’

‘Do you have any intensions to my daughter?’ suddenly Olga Vladimirovna asked.

‘What do you mean intensions?’ Kharon asked in all innocence.

The woman’s face fell, her eyes filled with suspicion and indignation. At that moment she couldn’t hide her disappointment. Kharon had fun instead, as he enjoyed the woman’s evil thinking.

‘How do you see your future with my daughter?’ Olga Vladimirovna asked after she had counted to ten and took a sigh.

‘Very colourfully. Absolutely. Overpoweringly. Epochally. Pushy. Eccentrically. Extravagantly. Sometimes freakishly. Exotically. A little paranormally.’

‘We love each other, mum.’ Vic told in flurry of words, after she had noticed her parent to be agonizing and even irritating. ‘We wanna live together that’s why we’re here now.’

‘Live together…’ Olga Vladimirovna lowered her eyes. ‘Ok then Kharon, tell me about yourself: where you work, live, what your parents do. I want to know everything about you.’

‘I don’t have parents. They died. A long ago. I’m an orphan. I live in the centre of Moscow.’

‘Renting?’ the mother asked in surprise.

‘I am’

‘So, you have no your own place to live, right?’

‘Mum!’

‘A second please, Vic.’

‘I do but in another country. My own home is very far from here. It’s a diabolic distance, Olga Vladimirovna. It hurts me to remember about it.’

The woman was looking at the incubus like at an odious grub worm. She insanely wanted to smash it not to let be the bane of her daughter’s life. But she was enervated to lift her leg to kill the maggot, creeping up to her girl.

‘Well Kharon, do you work? Where? Victoria has told me nothing about you.’

‘Oh, I work for well-known company, but I’m forbidden to speak about it. If you worry about my affluence,’ Kharon clarified, having screwed up his eyes, after he had read the woman’s mind, ‘you shouldn’t then as I am enough financially backed not to let Victoria be in a downtrodden.’

‘We’re gonna be ok.’ Victoria tried to convince her mum.

‘I like to believe…’

Olga Vladimirovna silently saw her daughter looking at the cocky man, putting him on a high pedestal. Vic had never looked at anyone before. Her eyes had never shone like this before. Love for that man, whom Olga Vladimirovna didn’t like at all, was struggled out of her eyes.

The woman spoke with Kharon through clenched teeth after she had finally found something obnoxious and unpleasant of him. She was sure that the man of such face, such money, such body and speech couldn’t be a good man whom her daughter needed. She noticed his exaggerated and caddish self-confidence, mischievous countenance, lofty mien… “Big-headed asshole” was what Vic’s mother thought. All the evening she was waiting for him to leave finally.