RAIN

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RAIN
Based on a true story

Smoking is harmful to your health.
/Ministry of Public Health and Social Development of Russian Federation./

 

The outskirts of St. Petersburg, industrial zone. Year 2002. 21 h 32 min.
The air under abat-jour smelled like wed dust and fresh wind. It was the end of August, and in the atmosphere a vague smell of the coming fall floated already: a smell of coolness, falling leaves and the rains. This year the rains were surprisingly rear.
Andrey came out of a footstep of the warehouse and breathed deeply. The evening air filled his lungs and inebriated his body with juicy and exhilarating odor of a cool.
But soon this passed off.
A feel of emptiness appeared – a feel of something lack. The air was lovely and clear, but the fellow couldn't inhale it. Blindly his left hand stretched to a breast pocket of a shirt, when the right got a cigarette from a jeans pocket already. The fall motives soaring in the atmosphere couldn't substitute the thing for the sake of which he has gone outdoors. The old habit was much stronger than he himself.
Having squeezed a filter with lips, the young watcher put a lighter to a cigarette and pressed a button of the pieze. Having breathed the air slowly in, he brought a flint back to a pocket, then squatted. A feel of emptiness passed off.
Almost eight out of twenty-two years of his life Andrey smoked and couldn't give that up. At first he smoked because all the tough boys of his class smoked. Next he smoked because it helped him to concentrate when passing his college boards. Then he had a bitter experience in his love affairs, a hard examination period, domestic problems... and a dozen of any number of reasons engaging him to believe that cigarettes helped him to get through hardships of life. At the first he smoked out at most five or six cigarettes a day. Now he smoked about ten packs a week and that seemed to be just the beginning.
Having burned the cigarette almost to the filter, Andrey put out a stub on the floor and breathed in the fresh outdoor air (as if making expiation to his organism) last time.
But this time the air appeared different. While the watcher was busy with injuring his health, the wind recurved and brought a stinking, olid smell of the river nearby. Nobody remembered the name of this Neva's feeder, but after it became a home of sewers' waste, local loaders began calling it simply “Manky”.
Andrey covered his nose with the sleeve of his shirt and screwed up his face. Half an hour before, when he was passing Manky over the bridge, he had to hold his breath. The malodor coming from the drumly green slush was unbearable. There's a rumor that once in a while floaters are fished out here.
“As if there's no other basins in Peter to take one's own life” - Andrey sneered and raised his shirt colar. It was getting cold.
Two days before Grin – Tolik Grinevsky, his neighbor on the campus, offered Andrey this job – a job of a watcher in a small warehouse on the outskirts of the city. Certainly, of no great snakes, but the conditions seemed pretty attractive. The time schedule was one night after two; the wage was twenty dollars per turn. Such job could easily be double-jobbed with studies. What more could an impecunious nonresident student of SPAPI ask for? Andrey agreed. The only stipulation Grin's uncle (who was basically the warehouse's owner) set up was not to ask questions of the goods stored and not to smoke indoors. But that was small potatoes.
Tonight was the first turn.
The watcher opened the door and stopped on the doorstep. The smell changed. Withindoors the atmosphere of old fug, metal and wood predominated. There was also some residual “flavor” of tobacco smoke with acerbity, which was brought in with a gust of wind.
Andrey came in and looked around third time for today already. On the left, abreast the entrance, he saw the large metal gate double-locked. Nearby the gate, a shabby rotten writing desk was placed (evidently some guard or a gatekeeper was wearing out the seat of his trousers for the daily grind). On the morrow of the desk two magnifical roughed-out wooden boxes were placed, they were covered with wide canvas wrappers with bindings hanging down restlessly. On the right against the wall a flat metal electric panel was placed. A hand-made note on a rusted door run: “Don't get into – Will kyll!”. Just below a danger arrow was painted. A chalk stub lay about.
The student grinned to the author's scholarship and, picking the chalk from the floor, he corrected an error. In the moment he finished drawing the detail of the letter “i”, he noticed his fingers trembled. Oh, his criminal infatuation for smoking told on him.
Further in front, on his right and his left there were iron-clad containers arranged in wide ranges. Beyond them some huge aluminum barrels aligned in three tiers rose. Beyond the barrels the boxes towered again. That was all arranged on the big wooden trays. On the opposite side of the so-called corridor, at the end of it, a small (tightly fastened) door of the fire exit was visible.
External view of this multiform package couldn't show the contents. But Andrey suspected. Grin told once that his uncle could organize any firework or even the salute. Though not a penny the worse a salute held at the Red Square on the Victory Day... If these words of the neighbor haven't been on his bare word, it was quite possible that this warehouse full to the brim with contraband pyrotechnics. Inhibition of smoking and lighting of any kind was in support to this version. The enormously thick tubes of the fire-control unit on the ceiling also supported.
Andrey inspected the package with disgust and shuddered. It was terrible to think that all these trunks, barrels and boxes are densely filled with explosive. Just one little spark at the right place, and at the very same time all that staff would blow up...
It was better not to think.
To shift the thoughts, the watcher took up the book of R. Stevenson called “Treasure Island” which he brought with him, and sat on the chair stood beside the guard's table. Once, when he was a child, he began reading this novel, but then it seemed boring and terrible. Now, when he had been faced with the idleness for twelve hours, Andrey decided to carry that out.
So, chapter four, page twenty-three:
“The lock wasn't giving in, but she suceedep to unlqck it, und sne...”
Dim illumination of the room made reading impossible. There were some daylight lamps hanging in long rows on the ceiling, but two thirds of them didn't light economically. That's why the spacious chambers of the warehouse were drown into heavy, almost mystical shade.
“I should take a torch with me next time”, - the watcher thought and went seeking for a lighter place.
But there wasn't any. There was the only alternative. At the end of the building, in the very corner of it there was a steep metal stairway ending almost under the ceiling. The two lamps direct above it were lighting attractively.
Andrey came to the stairway, jamming the book in his teeth and, gripping the cold handrail firmly, he began climbing upstairs.
A footfall sound, causing to sink the flat steel stages, sounded booming in the fathomless silence of the room. The student moved upstairs warily, feeling a medieval knight conquering some impregnable castle.
Suddenly, in the distant corner of the warehouse a booming slap was heard.
The heart missed a bit and began hurting disturbingly. The watcher stopped halfway and had a look at the side the sound was heard. Pitch darkness.
Andrey put his book on a step and began going downstairs slowly.
On the left of his head the cold sides of the containers hung insensibly and ominously, on the right the gloomy brick wall shew up white, in front of his eyes the dark sinister uncertainty stood. The watcher didn't want to go there at any price – but job is job. Moving his feet with tumidity, Andrey went forward.
At the end of the way he expected to see anything. His alert imagination was drawing obstinately the thieves with black stockings instead of the faces, then the big tomentose calf-sized spiders...
Andrey approached his aim and, de bene esse, exposed his fists... and...
Spitted with relief.
It turned out foolish and simply: on the floor, next to the hand-made workbench, an empty plastic beer bottle lay. It just fell down.
Having read a lecture to the warehouse's staff, the student kicked the bottle and that, crackling with hurt, flew at the corner.
A dull knock on the wall, which has had to sound in a moment, hadn't sound...
Instead of this, a shrilly rustle and a deafening squeak rang out from the dark corner!
The boy shank back promptly and took a look on the floor with horror. In that moment a thick gray rat run next to his foot quickly.
Damn it!
Andrey wasn't afraid of darkness and wasn't afraid of rats. But he was afraid of surprises. That's why, when he saw a disgusting gray creature sliding noiselessly next to his shoe, he had a longing to jump up on the workbench and scream, clasping fists to his breast.
Didn't have to.
The rat disappeared, fleeing under one of the numerous trays.
Andrey shrugged his shoulders convulsively and, turning his back upon the unfriendly corner with fear, he went back to the stairs.
The nerves, worked-up with this unsuspected event, were desperately sick and insisted on some “sedative”. Having felt in his pockets, the student picked up a lighter and, forgetting of his book, he went to the exit with prompt step.

22.19 min.
Just like a transient thick flow, the noise of the out-of-doors burst into his head. The crickets were chirring with a random high-pitched trill, the toads were squeaking with monotonous polyphony, the wind was howling blindly.
The watcher picked up a cigarette, lit it and inhaled greedily. The inhailing extended to a colic in his throat and thin ache in his lungs. Andrey had used to them long time ago and took it for inescapable payment for the pleasure. He hold his breath for a moment and exhaled an opaque white cloud, then squatted down habitually. Together with tobacco smoke, all the anxiety and tension flew out off of his head.
It was light at the court. The projector mounted on the covering lighted up the entrance and surroundings lavishly, up to the big metal fence. Andrey finished smoking his cigarette and was ready to return to his workplace.
But then, after some thinking, he took another one. His nerves came to normal and now it was possible to simply smoke.
At that moment, high up in the sky, there was a flash of lightning. The immense glowing bow pierced the black dome of the sky, and in a flash the court had become lighted as if it was day; the turbid green plastic of the walls of the outbuilding was floodlighted with bright emerald light. A gun peal of thunder hadn't keep him waiting.
The rain began falling down from the sky. First that was rear lonely drops. Then they multiplied, and the storm sewage, hanging down almost to the very ground, began bleeding heavily with turbid rusty water. Virtually in a moment the gray concrete ground in front of the gate became dark and almost black from absorbed wet.
Andrey finished the second cigarette, came to the border of his shelter and, stretching his palms to the wet heavenly streams, he smiled. In his childhood, his elder brother and he liked to run under the warm summer rain very much. Sometimes he laid his arms in the form of a boat and, when taking a small pool, drank it with pleasure. At that time rain water seemed sweet and very tasty.
Then his brother grew up, matured and in the year nineteen ninety-five went serving as a soldier. He came back in a zinc coffin...
Andrey dropped his arms and wiped them on his jeans. The painful memories insisted on another doze of nicotine. The watcher took out a lighter and withdrew the third cigarette.
However, there was no smoking. The cutting wind gust removed his plans absolutely. Having flown into the tight outbuilding of the porch, it splashed into his face with fine water spray and put out fire. Additionally, the wind took the familiar s_m_e_l_l with him. In spite of the rain began, Manky continued stinking actively. Some bad apprehension twinged the student's soul for a moment. Appetite for smoking disappeared.
Throwing the wet cigarette in a bin, Andrey opened the door of the warehouse and came in.

22.36 min.
On entering the room, the watcher returned to the thing he began with, - the stairway. On reaching its midway, he stopped for a moment and looked around with suspicion.
Nothing was heard.
Andrey picked up his book and went forward. He ought to stop at the last steps. A wide metal ground the stairway finished with was densely blocked up with some boxes and cases. There was nothing to do. He had to content himself with a little island of the open space which was some kind of a seat.
The student opened the book at required page and sank into reading whole-heartedly. The book really appeared very interesting, and Andrey didn't even noticed that step-by-step the thin offset pages carried him gently to the world of the old England, treasures and pirates.
The warehouse lived its own life already. The containers and boxes stood silently on its pedestals-trays, the lamps still lightened the tight nooks between them scantily, and something around rustled and squeaked imperceptibly, as if being a hold of an ancient sailcraft sailing to the distant floating. Also a new sound added to this – the sound of rain drummed evenly on the thin metal roof of the building. Here above it was heard distinctly. But Andrey didn't notice that things. Shifting his eyes from one line to another, he plunged deeper into delicate and mystic magic of reading...
Suddenly all that came to an end.
Alike the sudden thunder of the gun in Petropavlovsk fortress, the silence was broken with a dog's bark!
That was Andrey's “colleague” which served in the closed cage on the courtyard of the building. Notwithstanding the walls of the warehouse were thick, her barking was heard perfectly.
Andrey startled and the book startled with him. The line he had stopped on, was lost irrevocably.
The watcher put his novel aside and began coming to consciousness. Good reading is like trance: when sinking into it solidly, it is difficult to come back to real world. But this time the anxious heartbeat gathered the process – the familiar apprehension pierced the boy's soul like hell.
Andrey half-rose and went downstairs. According to the terms of a verbal labor contract, the watcher must make his rounds three or four times a night. But the foul weather outside wouldn't encourage to the will of execution of any duty. One thing is to sit in a warm place listening to the rain with its comfortable drumming on the roof, and the opposite thing is to go outside under the cold piercing flushes to sight what this old dog had seen in the dark of the night.
Well, like it or not, he had to work his twenty bucks off.
Andrey went to the exit.

23.58 min.
The watcher came to the writing desk, took a couple of old magazines and came out to the porch.
The idle serenity predominating in the warehouse was the absolute contrast to what was happening outside. The rain was lashing down the court violently, pouring down more and more millimeters of precipitation. Its thin flushes was sticking into the ground like arrows, breaking into thousands and thousands of tiny liquid fragments. The wind still run about the court, attacking the falling dank shower with swift blows.
Notwithstanding with this exceptional rampage of the nature, the dog continued barking like mad. The student looked a nostalgic askance at the entrance, covered his head with a magazine and rushed outside.
The cold damp wind slapped Andrey in the face, wetting him from head to toe cruelly. The rain was lashing down the magazine hitting his shoulders and flooding his eyes. Spending several seconds in a short path, the watcher got soaked to the skin. At that moment Andrey wished good health to Grin and his uncle for the perfect, no-sweat job from the bottom of his heart.
The watcher approached the shorter side of the building. His “colleague”, a big German shepherd named Thelma, was dashing around in cold semidarkness of her enclosure and was barking hysterically, gazing at the gate. Andrey came closer and called to the dog. The shepherd calmed down a little and looked into the eyes of the man almost pleading and pathetically. But after that, she shut a glance at the gate and fell back into his old ways.
Andrey couldn't understand what caused such behavior of the animal, but he didn't want finding out what was the matter. The gates couldn't be seen because of the wall of rain, and there was no will to come to them covering himself with a soaked magazine. In addition, some unaccountable superstitious fear was wondering across his head persistently...
The watcher took a look at what the dog had been looking at again and came back to the salutary abat-jour quickly.
The wind wouldn't come quiet. Again and again it flew into the small outbuilding, wrapping the soaked student with sulky chilly covering. Andrey wanted to return to the warehouse in a moment, but the cynical nicotine God was claiming inexorably for his prescribed sacrifice.
Having given in to the intrusive habit, the fellow threw the magazine stuck from the water into the bin and entered upon the ritual. He took out a cigarette from a pack using his teeth and removed  a pack to the pocket. Then he picked a lighter up and brought it to the...
At the moment the gloomy sky had been cut out with a dazzling line of lightning. At the very same time the territory of the court lit up with the daylight again, and then plunged into the pitch darkness – the projector, lightened the area faultlessly, faded away.
Andrey startled with expectancy and dropped his lighter. Swearing to himself dirtily, he squatted and began seeking for it. But that was of no sense. Even if he could close his eyes now, nothing would change. The darkness was so thick that it seemed to be touched. The watcher raised and dropped his hands exhaustedly.
And then he heard something.
At first Andrey decided that it was a mirage. But then that gave him the shivers – through the slippery constant noise of the rain he heard slow squelching footsteps...
As if feeling the sign of an oncoming misfortune, Thelma stopped barking and began  whining indistinctly and monotonously.
For several seconds her howling and all the surrounding sounds sank in the roll of thunder. And then everything came back.
The ominous squelching footsteps came closer.
The fellow's body convulsed, and he began moving backwards slowly to the door. A foreboding of something terrible, disgusting, deadly dangerous hold his mind every inch.
Squelch... Squelch... Squelch.
Suddenly there happened a flash of lightning again and the turbid plastic of the wall got a print of a silhouette – the figure of a human-being!
And this human-being stood a few steps away from Andrey! They were divided with just a semitransparent wall of the outbuilding.
The student turned around, grasped at the massive handle of the entrance door and yelled:
; Who's there?
Silence. The footsteps faded away and a rustling, gurgling voice sounded:
- Come with me...
These three words cut into the fellow's heart like a butcher hatchet cuts into unprotected carcass of a pig. The voice was so unnatural, so uterine, - so nonliving, … that it curdled the student's blood. Quiet subtle fear developed into deafening horror. The mind fell into bestial coma, and the watcher froze couldn't hack lifting his eyebrow.
The footsteps resumed, the repulsive squelch seemed to be at arm's length.
Another roll of thunder crashed from the sky. And then something that Andrey hadn't hoped to happened. His organism, awaken with the self-preservative instinct, made up his mind. His hands  threw into action by themselves and opened the door. His feet brought the numb body to the warehouse and his arms shut the heavy door with a massive metal bolting straight away. Silence...
Andrey moved slowly backwards to the writing desk and collapsed on its cover drained of all strength.
At that moment a beat was heard!
The one who came here from a murk of rain banged his fist at the door.
The watcher shuddered in panic but remained staying put. The second knock was heard. The bolting tinkled in a low voice as if it was shifted. Andrey rushed to the door and pushed the huge metal bar with both hands.
Suddenly there was a voice outside again:
Open the door for me.
Andrey buried his hand in his shoulders and pressed the bolting stronger to the door butts. At that instant he was ready to smother with kisses a person who had set this big locking.
A knock was heard again and a wave of the door walked along Andrey's muscles with tip. As if that “someone” touched him with its invisible hand...
The fellow pulled a face with distaste and breathed out heavily. Repulsive cold sweat dropped off of his face. His hair wet from rain stuck on the forehead and a tip of a fallen fringe got into the right eye with impunity. But Andrey disregarded that. Now all his thoughts and his whole body were concentrated on the hands which were adhered to the cold metal of the bar. The student's head was free from reflections. Just somewhere far away, in the depth of the consciousness, one ugly and bothering idea was striking: “Holy cow, the job began...”
And again the knocks were heard, and again the sinister sepulchral voice boiled up:
- Open the door... let me in...come with me...
Since Andrey went outside to Thelma, not more than twenty minutes left; but now, standing at the doorstep, he thought that had been forever and a day ago and it seemed that now that would NEVER end...
But that came to an end. That came to an end as unexpectedly as it began.
The knocks stopped chattering the door, the heart-rending voice faded. After an instant, there were the squelching footsteps heard again, but this time they abandoned. They were growing fainter...

00.19 min.
For the first minutes the watcher was afraid to believe it. It seemed that if he released the bar for a second, then the one who had been outside the door a moment ago, would come back immediately. But time passed by and nothing happened outdoors. Soon the dog calmed down, then the rain stopped drumming upon the roof. And again the immense room of the warehouse sank into deep silence. And the light too.
The student stepped a couple steps backwards and looked around. It was only just he noticed, in spite of the died out projector outside, there still were the lighting lamps along the whole space of the warehouse. They lighted with the same dull and shabby light as earlier, but they lighted. “Fed from the other current line”, - the watcher guessed.
And also he realized he was deadbeat. Stress and horror sucked the lifeblood out of him completely. The body became flabby and stopped perceiving commands of the brain. The soul  collapsed into viscous, indifferent apathy.
Looking sideways at the closed door with hostility, the fellow crawled to the electrical panel and, leaning himself to the half-opened door, he fall into heavy stupor.

00.47 min.
Andrey came to consciousness when somebody touched his arm. He opened his eyes in fright, but that was just a rat. Andrey waved painfully and the rat disappeared hiding at a dark nook of the warehouse.
The student rose to his feet and glanced at the door. The door was closed. Then he went to the doorstep and, catching his breath, he applied his ear to the door.
Absolute silence.
Gradually the consciousness had come back to the fellow in full measure, and some questions came together with it: who was that, what was happening? Why had he claimed to let him in? Why did he have such strange and awful voice?
There were no answers. There was no will to go for the answers outside. But it was of no sense to sit and wait for HIM to come to break the door again. Andrey looked about.
The writing desk.
Grinding out, with squeak and riddle, the student moved the table up to the door. After that, looking at what he gained, he moved it closer. Now, if it... he..., that violent oligophrenic person came back, then he could get into the warehouse only driving a tank.
Andrey wiped his hands on his jeans, turned around and strolled to the stairway.
The fellow was exhausted and depressed. But that's striking, now he didn't want to smoke at all. The only thought of a cigarette would cause sick in his throat – a nonsense.

01.13 min.
The watcher sat at his chosen place – upstairs, and hold the open book in his hands. He couldn't read it for nuts. Thoughts of the events happened were tormenting his soul mercilessly. WHO was that? Or WHAT was that? Where he came from? What am I to do now? It was the worst thing to aware of that he was shut-in and there was no quarters to expect help from up to the morning. Naturally, there was no telephone at the warehouse.
And also the lighter was left outside...
He didn't feel like smoking, but the thoughts of tobacco began visiting the fellow's head more and more.

01.46 min.
One interesting feature of a smoker: one needs only to think of a cigarette, no matter what  the form of it is, let it be in the most negative, and the will to smoke awakes on short notice.
He gasped for a smoke. He was dying for a smoke. The thoughts of nicotine attacked his head mercilessly, but... the lighter... The memories of the importunate “guest” cut all the will to exit outside off.
It was necessary to find a way out.
Andrey picked a cigarette out, brought it to the nose and, moving his nostrils slightly, he inhaled. That was useless. The dry sweetish smell of tobacco just picked up the will. Then the fellow spilled out some grains of its content on his palm, licked it and began chewing. His palate and throat gave a feeling as if he'd swallowed a sponge. Andrey spat it out, pulled the cigarette off to the pack and sighed heavily.
A terrible struggle of strength of will and a deep-rooted habit began.

03.35 min.
The blood had risen to his cheeks, pulsing in his temples monotonously. The ears grew heavy and began aching. There appeared a vacuum in his lungs, and it seemed to Andrey he was suffocated. Lasting nicotinic hunger caused real withdrawal pains inside.
There was no way of smoking inside the warehouse, but if the lighter hadn't been left on the entrance porch, he would brake the ban without fail.
The watcher went his round for the fourth time seeking for any light, and for the fourth time he didn't find any. There was no match on the whole territory of the warehouse at all. Even in the writing desk. Even on the workbench and under the workbench. Even in the electrical panel. Nowhere.
The only alternative left – to walk outside. The lighter would lie somewhere on the floor (if only that bastard hadn't taken it with him).
But... - “come with me”, the heavy knocks at the door and that terrible squelching footsteps... - the watcher was scared, scared to death. What was that? A maniac? A psychopath run from the nearest mental home? Or, possibly, a zombie awaken and seeking for alive flesh?... Andrey pulled a face and pulled himself down  - the following reflections were burying him into the slough of horror and sick infantilism more and more.
The student came to the peacefully standing table and sat on its edge. He got a thin flask with water which he brought for the turn from home. A thirst for a smoke brought an ordinary thirst. From time to time he opened up the flask and took a couple of gulps. He seemed to feel better. But the water came to an end.
And what was that really?..

03.58 min.
A vagabond! - A stroke of genius came to him. - That was a pitiful homeless runabout! Had drunk, got caught in the rain, saw there were people in the warehouse and came to cry out for lodging for the night. And he – Andrey, just like a tumid teenager, rushed in, closed the door and, additionally, was holding the bar. And then, help matters, shifted the desk. What a cretin! - It'd to draw a round with chalk around himself and to craft a cross with two sticks! - The watcher stood to his feet, knocked himself slightly on the forehead with a palm and laughed. That was so obvious.
But the laughing sounded uncertain.
Notwithstanding persuasion of the arguments, anxious feeling didn't escape him. And he knew the reason. When Andrey had made his rounds together with Grin's uncle, he noticed the gate was in perfect condition. No hole, no scuttle. On the top, there was a barbed wire across the whole perimeter, and the metal gate was locked twice. Only he and the elder Grinevsky had the keys. After all, the watcher was ready to swear that the moment his turn began the gate was shut.
But he couldn't hit upon a satisfactory explanation.

04.12 min.
Noise rolled to the ears, the head whim madly – he wanted to smoke TO DEATH. And that wasn't a want. His habit to smoke grew to appetite, and this appetite now was spinning out of control. The water in a flask finished, but it hadn't helped much too.
It was time to act.
The watcher sent all the doubts away, rose up from the desk and brought all his weight to bear on it, shifted its edge aside. Then, after opening the door, he pushed it sharply forward and gazed at a splay opening stonily.
The door became wide open. Deep darkness of the night rushed into the building, but sinking into dull blinking light of lamps, suddenly it stepped back. The projector hadn't lit yet, but light abandoned from the warehouse to the porch was sufficient.
There was nobody in the outbuilding.
The watcher sighed heavily and coming to the doorstep he looked outside. The dark was pitch. There could nothing be seen farther ahead the abat-jour of the outbuilding. Burying his head into shoulders, the fellow exited.
The heart was beating anxiously, the nerves were strung down to the limit. Andrey was waiting. With repressed horror he imagined that from the cold night darkness there would the VOICE sound again. And then something terrible would happen.
But nothing was happening.
The lighter was lying on the floor where it had been left. The watcher picked it up quickly and, looking around once again, he came back to the warehouse.
The heavy doorbrand chinked hollowly on the door buts, cutting off all the sounds, which could be heard from outside. The student stood still and harkened. The familiar absolute silence was heard outdoors. He could only hear the shattered pressure ringing in his ears.
Having sighed with relief, Andrey picked up a cigarette and standing right at the door pressed the cherished button of the lighter.
At that moment there drops of rain can be heard again.
The watcher looked up and set his eyes on thick tubes of the fire-control unit. Along the tubes with the interval of approximately two meters there stuck out thin paps with water scatterers. If fire sensors caught danger, then a big shower would begin at the warehouse. And then..., to repair the damage to Grinevskys, Andrey would have to sweat his guts out at this warehouse for the lees of life. The student grinned to the open perspective dully and choked a fire. What am I supposed to do?

04.28 min.
Awareness of the fact the situation wasn't hopeless sobered up and calmed the fellow. He got a freedom of choice together with the lighter. To smoke indoors, in the building equipped with the fire-control unit, or to go outside where could everything happen to him... The range of choice wasn't wide, but it WAS.
Having sat on the desk again, Andrey began calculating the variants.
If there was pyrotechnics at the warehouse really, then there was no doubt there was water in the tubes. And if that was true, he would not only disable to smoke but also he would have a good opportunity to have it cost a pretty penny. On the other hand, the danger was waiting for him outside. Possibly that wasn't true, but who knows...
Andrey thought.
The dog hadn't been barking for a long time already. If a maniac had really been here, he obviously went to another place to find another victims – the danger was ephemeral. But the tubes with water were quite real. And how would I make excuses to the host?
“Definitely I knew there was not burning fire indoors, but you know, somebody had been knocking so violently that I decided it would be better to smoke here”...
Having grinned to the final thought, Andrey shifted the bark unwillingly and opened the door.

04.41 min.
The rain was drumming upon the invisible approach site. The water came from rain pipes was flowing out into the street with noise and running off the slope to the unguarded lawn. Being in darkness, Andrey didn't want to see that. He had just smoked a cigarette with pleasure and now he stretched his arm to pick another one. Prolonged abstention had asked for nicotine banquet and that, finally, happened.
The only thing spoiling the idyll was the familiar outrageous smell which was brought from the outside again. And that all was okay, and Manky's smell he was used to, but now the habitual rotten hydrosulfuric aroma was fit up with a new, obscure “odor”. And this time it wasn't like that stench emanating from turbid dark green river. This smell was something sinister, deadly sweetish and putrid. “Just like smell of death”, - Andrey thought.
The second cigarette was up and the fellow began thinking of coming back to his workplace. When suddenly, not far away, a noise of some motion was heard. The watcher dropped his cigarette and harkened with alert to.
At that instance something chattered on the roof of the building. Andrey looked at that side.
That was the projector. A blue haze appeared around its lamp and it began flaming up gradually.
And that very moment... Squelch. Was heard ten meters away from the porch indistinctly. Andrey glanced down. There was nothing seen but audibility was good. Squelch... The wind got up and the rotten perishable smell became heavier and thicker. The student dropped a butt into the rain and stepped backwards. Squelch. Squelch. SQUELCH. - Now that painfully familiar footsteps  were heard distinctly! The projector was warming up and the light became brighter, there the contours of a person in a blue haze of the approach site could be seen. And this person had been at the porch already.
The watcher spat out and made another step back.
Suddenly the projector lamp flashed and flamed up.
The watcher let out the screams of suddenness and terror and blanched. The silhouette colored with bright bluish light of the projector lamp and turned... into DEADMAN! A drowned man, swelled from continuous staying under water. His feet were covered with silt, the remains of clothes were hanging down from the rotten body with shapeless scraps. There remained practically no face, dirty greenish skin covered the bold smooth of the blackened skull just partially.
Dark empty eye sockets looked coldly into the fellow's face.
Run!!!
Turning to the doorstep instantly, the watcher flew into the door way with one long jump. Collision – shock, a dry wooden squeak. Pain pierced the student's right knee. - Andrey forgot the desk he had been supported the door with was still standing in door! Grasping the contused calyx, the watcher doubled up with pain and turned to the opened door. To lock, to lock it instantly!!!
Without going outside the doorstep, the fellow leaned with his right hand on the jamb, gasped the grip of the bar with his left and pulled it to himself with all his might. Terribly slowly the doorway reduced, but the monster was already here. The dirty swelled hand caught the door and jerked it to herself. Andrey kept in the doorway miraculously and, leaning on the jamb with the aching knee, he tried to extend the damned door firmly. He almost succeeded in that, but there the second hand of the deadman appeared.
The rotten bony fingers folded the edge of metal binding tightly and with impossible power torn it away. Andrey rushed forward and nearly missed the bar. He realized he couldn't hold the entrance. Shrinking back abruptly, he revolved on his axis and prevailing pain in the contused leg, he rushed to the far end of the building.
The drowned man, without seeing any resistance, entered the warehouse.
-Come with me, - the watcher heard a dead voice of the monster behind his back.
The fellow gritted his teeth and hastened faster.
Squelch...
Squelch...
Squelch...
Being hardly able to drag his swollen legs along, the dead man approached him inexorably. Slippery noise of his footsteps poured the student's soul with panic and horror.
Andrey run to the stairway and holding the handrails tightly went upstairs.
The corpse was getting closer.
Having quickly mounted to the upper site, the watcher stopped. Far was the blind alley – a barricade made from heaped garbage. There was a buzz downstairs – the drowned man began going upstairs!
In a split second forgetting the package could have contained explosives, Andrey grabbed the first box that came across and flung it downstairs. There was a crash heard and the sound of a falling body – he had fallen down! Without thinking twice, the fellow caught another box and threw it after the previous one.
Adrenaline causing fear gave way to noradrenaline causing fury. - The watcher caught each and all, everything that he could lay his hands on, and just like it was projectile, threw it downstairs.
After first boxes several sacks with something granular flew downstairs. Then went a light carton with some metal bottles inside. Then an empty, but weighty gas tank, then four metal barrels, then some more cartons, then a heap of edged boards, then plastic construction of obscure purpose, then a box again, then... The ammunition ended. There left one big unmanageable metal trunk on the site.
But behind the trunk a thin metal ladder leading to the roof was seen!
There a rustle sounded from downstairs. The mountain formed downstairs moved: IT tried to
struggle out.
After overcoming a new attack of fear, the student rushed to the ladder and, just like a sailor climbing at the pole, he climbed expeditiously up.
And then his heart was wrung...
The fury turned to fear, and then terror and despair – there was a heavy square lock hung on the horizontal door leading to the roof. The only way to survive was closed securely with a cubic piece of metal. Feeling impuissance, Andrey pounded his fist on it. The lock quaked, but still hang in the same way. It was impossible to knock it down even with a hammer.
The watcher went downstairs and holding his head with hands fatefully, squatted. Now the will abandoned him definitely. The fellow crawled behind the trunk and, squeezing up against it tightly, closed his eyes.
Two meters over his head, as if shaking a devilish feet, the rain thundered at a drum.

05.22 min.
Andrey sat on the cold metal floor and was waiting fatefully when the drown man would come for him.
But the corpse hadn't hurried to come. After some minutes of fruitless wambling, he calmed down. Obviously, the things collapsed onto him were two heavy to bear. Meanwhile, the rain was lulling away. Every minute it was becoming weaker and weaker until ended at all.
The watcher raised his head doubtingly and open his eyes. There was no rain, and the dead man gave no signs of life. The student realized: that all relates to the rain somehow! But there's no time to think it over. There's a need to get out of here!
With his back to the stairway, Andrey began going slowly downstairs.
It was terrible to look at the mountain the dead man lay on, but the watcher couldn't take his eyes off of it. Prickly icy goose pimples were tormenting his spine, his arms, his hind-head, the teeth ruffed. The boy tried to step as gently as possible and to breathe as quietly as possible. He felt if just one of the boxes on the heap shook, he would throw up right onto it without fail. The heap was approaching.
There were not more than one and a half meters to the ground. Andrey looked sideways, leaned on the handrails with both hands and, shifting the weight of his body on the healthy foot, flew down heavily. Thick soles of the sneakers absorbed a shock and there was no noise when he fell down.
Moving forward slowly, he tried not to look at the floor with all might. But after he made another step, he nearly fall over the sack lying in his way. Chill and numbness rolled across his body. Next to the sack, from under the crumpled carton box the bold hand of an “arm” stuck up. A turbid greenish moisture was spreading around it. The smell of decomposition here was simply intolerable.
To run, run – out of here!
Andrey run. He run fast. Much faster than his injury let him. Suddenly, from the back side of the heap a metal ping was heard. Without dropping speed, the fellow turned around sharply. That was just a barrel which had rolled onto the floor.
The watcher returned his glance to the doorstep and jumped out at the porch.
There was light in the outbuilding. There was a projector lighting above, but the sky had been colored into plum tones – the dawn approached.
Andrey rushed outside and, breaking numerous spots of the puddles with his sneakers, he threw himself to the gate. On his way he turned back to Thelma's enclosure.
The hatch of the enclosure was open. The dog was lying motionless beside her kennel stretching her paws to and fro and twisting her head unnaturally to the up.
The student pulled a face painfully and, without turning around any more, he run forward.
Thirty meters away from him there were the gates wide open, eighty meters away from him the bridge across Manky was situated, and in a half of a kilometer, behind some line of forest there would be a stop placed. Certainly, he'd hardly wait to see a bus at a time like this, but probably there, not far from here, he would be able to find people. People ALIVE.
The watcher flew out of the warehouse's territory and, running faster, he raced to the salvational bridge. The lungs burned just like the sun, there was a stitch in his side, the heart was torn by the value of circulating blood. The bridge approached.
There were thick clouds shown in the dawning sky.
The bridge approached, but instead of happiness and triumph the student's heart was laden with anxiety and misdoubts – there was something wrong there. With every new step this anxiety became more perceptible and deeper. The boy came running on the saving wooden surface and stopped.
The bridge...
Andrey's soul filled with ice and then collapsed into the abyss of apathy and weakness. The bridge across the river was broken from the middle. There were some tilted rotten wooden bearings and pieces of a fallen flooring stuck out of the water. In despair and anguish the fellow glanced at the lightening horizon and, without noticing his pain, he knelt.
The river still exhaled the perishable stench, and that stench was becoming stronger.
The daybreak dome of the sky was covered with the thick mantle of clouds. Drop after drop, the rain was drizzling from the sky, hewing thin rounds on the cold water. There was a slight and unnoticeable swirling at some spots on its turbid surface... It was beginning to shower.


Sometimes in the dank autumn evenings I am sitting by my window and watching the rain falling. Thin slanting flows are washing the ground getting cold, foreshadowing the end of a warm season and the beginning of the forthcoming cold…
And then THEY came. The sad memories about severe hardships of the childhood and the youth, about the unfulfilled wishes and dead hopes. They come when it rains, just like sinister fetid deadmen – just like drownmen from the river of time, and they stare you in the face now. You want to overcome this, to turn back the clock and regain what you've missed again. But... With the touch of bitterness, you light up a cigarette and, inhaling the acrid smoke, you realize it is impossible, it is of no sense. You cannot ford this river, all the bridges have been rotten and collapsed long time ago.
And then these memories take your soul with the cold bony hands and trail it after them to sink in the turbid water of anguish and grief.
They know no sorrow and know no mercy, they know no sympathy and give no quarter.
They come when it rains.


    Volgodonsk – Novoberezovka – Rostov-on-Don. May 2008 – August 2008




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