

Fairy tales for adults and other substances

by Sasha Yurodiver

All rights reserved©

# Contents

The Wizard of Oz 3

Cinderella 10

The Snow Queen 20

Sleeping Beauty 29

Peter Pan 40

Snow White 48

Alice in Wonderland 57

Beauty and the Beast 69

#  The Wizard of Oz

It was exactly twelve o'clock when the mass gathered on the main square in the city of Cuntas in Northern Oz. A gentleman with a pretentious posture emerged from the black Mercedes, in a costly suit and shiny black shoes, and stepped on the stage which was made of several wooden boards. That was Duo Karparo, the president of Northern Oz, a small country in the Pacific Ocean just along the border with Southern Oz. Karparo seemed to be drowsy, maybe even slightly hangover, and the blue taupe on his head was set on the side of his head. He stood in front of the microphone and took a look at the crowd.

\- Test... one, two! - he shouted into the microphone. The microphone loudly beeped.

Ten thousand people kept silent and looked at him, eagerly waiting for the speech of the great president Duo Karparo. There was a dead silence. President Karparo looked at the sky, then looked at the crowd and finally took a deep breath. He came closer to the microphone, and at the moment when he wanted to start his big speech, air stormed out of his throat and made a sound like a frog croaking. Karparo burped into the microphone.

The crowd began to frown and whistle. It became indignant. Karparo made gestures with his hands trying to calm down the crowd, but he didn't even think to apologize. He didn't even smile. Instead, he started rummaging through his pockets while frowning. From his left pocket, he pulled out a piece of paper on which his speech was written. He put the piece of paper in front of his clumsy head and proudly said:

\- Ladies and gentlemen! Dear fellow countrymen! We will make Northern Oz great again! -

One egg flew out of the crowd. Someone tried to hit the president with an egg. Fortunately, he managed to escape the egg and continued his magnificent speech.

\- Southern Oz should be watching out for us, otherwise they will feel our rage and our fire! While I am the President, Southern Oz will not harm any one of the inhabitants of this country... which will be great again! With our economic growth and investments worth billions and billions of dollars, our country will stand firm! - said President Karparo.

Right after, another egg flew from the crowd and managed to hit the president right in the head. Then, another egg followed, and another, and then a tomato... In quite a short amount of time, the furious people covered President Duo Karparo with rotten vegetables.

\- We've had enough of you politicians! – the crowd shouted.

\- You're done! – was being hailed from the crowd.

\- We want change! - people shouted as loud as they could.

The angry mass forcibly pushed President Karparo back into his Mercedes and let the automatic driver take him away far beyond the borders of Northern Oz. The nation was finally free. They banished the last politician who had made their lives miserable with his empty stories and false promises. People were celebrating, they sang songs about peace, and swore that they would treat the people of Southern Oz like brothers. The choir of Northern Oz stood right along the border with Southern Oz and sang a song of reconciliation and peace:

\- When the moon is in the Seventh House

And Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars! -

To make things even more interesting, in Southern Oz the same scenario had happened at the same time. Southern Oz banished all its politicians and joyfully celebrated a new era of peace and freedom. The people of Southern Oz rushed to Northern Oz in order to sing with their brothers the song about the Age of Aquarius that will bring peace and prosperity to the Earth.

The politicians were the only ones standing in the way for the two countries to unite and build a better society in which no one would suffer because of inequality. Politicians were the main culprits for everything, so claimed the people of Southern and Northern Oz. Without politicians, the country will become a utopia. Without the politicians, there will be peace. - Without a leader, each of us will become one small leader whose role in the development of the civilization and our society will be of immense importance. - they said. But just one question remained: how to unite all these small leaders, thousands and thousands of people from different parts of the great island, into a unique mechanism that will govern Southern and Northern Oz?

Suddenly, they came up with a solution: a computer! In the capital of Northern Oz, they set up a huge device that resembled a Turing machine. It was a central computer which was connected to all the devices in Northern Oz and generated the thinking process of every human being into a single entity on the basis of which, as indifferently and objectively as the machine could be, it would make decisions on how to run the country. The computer was so smart that it didn't generate only the data that people wanted to make visible, nor did it involve just a simple "yes" or "no" voting. This was a special computer which generated and processed all the activities of people on their computers: their statuses on Facebook, Twitter, their e-mails, photos, files and similar information. Based on this data, the computer had developed a unique personality of every inhabitant of Northern Oz and predicted what that person truly and sincerely wanted in relation to specific social and state issues. Based on the sum of all the personalities, the computer would make an intersection and amount an output that, to a greater or lesser extent, would reflect the will of the people. Due to its precision, speed and power, this amazing computer was called the "Wizard of Oz".

Northern Oz donated the patent to Southern Oz, which soon made by the exact same machine. The computer was unmistakable, and the civilization progressed so quickly that Utopia, for the first time in history, was guaranteed.

And then, Gordon Price decided to spend a peaceful afternoon on the river Hia located near the capital of Northern Oz.

Gordon Price was a twenty-one-year-old young man who lived in Northern Oz. He was a dreamer and passionate reader of old novels. Sometimes he would go out in the city to party, wearing a black tails, pretending to be a hero from those old black and white movies, impatient to meet the woman of his life, his femme fatale. Instead of finding the woman that he's always been dreaming of, he'd usually meet some boring writers of predictable weekend-thrillers, and some pop musicians with whom he'd sit in silence until dawn. Then he would usually return home drunk, lay in bed, and think about his life. Yes, this is Utopia. Yes, his life is beautiful. But his life is so boring; it resembles a flat line separating the gray sky of his existence from the gray soil of his existence. There's nothing. There is no woman in his life who will welcome him with loud sighs in hot passion. There is no music in which bass is so loud it shakes your stomach and your soul; there are no drums that follows the rhythm of a wild heart making it jumps until the dawn. There aren't any depressed writers that drink absinthe and smoke a strange, dry-green tobacco. There is no magic.

Gordon Price was very bored and that week he decided to spend the afternoon calmly by the river Hia, chewing the special, smelly, black grass. He read in an old book about people who chewed a special kind of black grass that opens the door to the world of another dimension, the world of magic and supernatural. Under the influence of the black grass, some of the consumers could predict the future. Some of them, according to the stories, died and came back to life. Some even saw God.

Gordon Price sat by the river, sunbathing in the breeze, holding a bundle of black grass in his left hand. He was a bit scared while his hand was slightly shaking, but his curiosity overcame his fear. He took one piece of grass, put it in his mouth and chewed it. Nothing happened. Then he took another one, and another one, and another one. He was disappointed since he didn't meet God, so he decided that it was time to slowly head back home. Then, all of a sudden, something made him fall to the ground. It was a spectrum of all the colors that existed in all universes. And those weren't just colors visible to the human eye, but all the colors ever made by the creator. Gordon saw a miraculously beautiful shinia color. He saw the inconceivable canoae color. Then he noticed, between the lemon yellow and the sunny yellow, a color that is called Ra. It was the most beautiful color that the multiverse could create.

After Gordon was overwhelmed with the feeling of unthinkable joy because of all those magical colors, he saw something quite different. It was a bomb blast. He saw people dying, burning in human-made fires of hell. He saw nations who were killing each other for no reason, just because some leader wanted them to do so. He saw the horrors of old mankind and felt the inconceivable human suffering. Gordon Price saw the past. But he did not know that. He thought he saw the future, which is why he ran in panic to the city square, stood on the old stage made from several boards and yelled:

\- People! They are going to attack! -

\- Who is going to attack? - a woman in the crowd asked.

\- Southern Oz! Southern Oz is going to attack us. They'll drop the bomb! We will all burn! Oh, we will ... we will suffer in a way that we cannot even imagine! - said Gordon Price and then burst into tears.

The people of Northern Oz were very upset. That's why they decided to contact the almighty Wizard of Oz for help. They entered the following code into the computer:

system.out.println ("Will Southern Oz bomb us?");

The computer responded immediately, and white letters raised out of the blue screen. The computer wrote: "I don't know".

Suddenly, someone from the mass concluded that the computer cannot know what is happening in Southern Oz. The computer only deals with the internal issues of Northern Oz. Simply, that's how it's programmed. Therefore, it is necessary to rephrase the question. The new question for the computer was:

system.out.println ("Do we need to attack Southern Oz?");

The computer immediately replied: "No."

\- We are hacked! - exclaimed one woman from the crowd - Southern Oz hacked our Wizard! They will attack us! -

One girl passed out. A few men came running towards her to bring her a glass of water. A couple of wise elders stood in front of the computer screen and started to calm down the panic in the crowd.

\- People, people! – said one of the wise men – We shouldn't worry! We have discovered their plans just in time, so we can react before it's too late. We'll organize a council for emergency situations and carefully plan our next step. Just stay calm, and don't panic. Stay calm, and I promise you, Northern Oz will be great again! -

The newly-formed council consisted of five members. The president of the council, Treo Karparo, had been holding a session for three hours. At the end of the session, at 23:00 in the evening, he came out in front of the people with a final decision: a bomb will be extracted from the museum and it will be used as a preventive defense against Southern Oz.

On September 23rd, 2022, Northern Oz bombed the capital of Southern Oz. Only a few days later Southern Oz answered with violence. The war has officially started. The Golden Age of Aquarius was over, and Gordon Price was no longer bored.

Gordon Price had nothing to read anymore, since all the old bookstores that he used to visit had been burned in fire. He didn't have any friends left. He had been losing them all in the army, one by one. He has never met his femme fatale. But, fearful of the new bombing, he has never felt bored again.

Gordon Price died in October 2022, at the age of twenty-three. That very same year, the computer known as the "Wizard of Oz" was burnt in a fire. People are still saying that Wizard, while it was burning, wrote its last words in white letters on the blue screen:

output.print ("You are complete idiots.");

#  Cinderella

She has never had a name.

She was born among the nameless, in a land of great poverty whose borders were surrounded by wires of hostility and segregation. In the city where she was born, which she barely remembers, they gave her the nickname Cinderella.

Cinderella was exquisitely beautiful. Her hair was blonde, her eyes were worm and black like Monday-morning coffee. Her face, although it looked worn out, still remained gentle and naïve. At the age of twenty-two she completed her studies while working and emigrated from her nameless country in search for happiness.

It was Wednesday, the twenty-fourth of September, when Cinderella celebrated her thirty-first birthday. She was still youthful and beautiful. Her beauty was so radiant that she shined like a bright summer star, unaware of the impression her beauty leaves on others. On that day, she was sitting in her rented apartment in London and lit a candle on a cheap biscuit-and-cream cake that she had bought in a bakery when she was returning home from work. "Well, happy birthday to me." she sighed. She looked around her collecting impressions of her life in a small, rented room in the attic.

Through a thin curtain, a beam of moonlight and brightness of the night stretched out entering the room, giving it a magical blue color. Cinderella looked at the window which had paint peeling off, and then at the spider that had moved in and made the left corner of the room his home. She looked at her little nook: there was an old chandelier, a computer, empty walls with no memories, one bed and a small closet. A life taken out of a suitcase. A life that she can easily put back into a suitcase. And move on. Always trying to get the job, trying harder, giving everything you have inside, fighting to survive, eating not to be eaten. Always being alone. That's life in a suitcase.

Next to the bed, there was a small night stand. She looked at it carefully. Everything that could summarize her life was on that night stand: an empty cup with an Earl Grey's tea bag hanging out of it, a cigarette box, a pipe and a small bag of weed. Body milk with the scent of coconut. A box of Xanax. George Orwell's book "Down and out in Paris and London". Seven euros and fifty cents. An ashtray with the inscription "Budapest Hotel" written on it. Red lipstick that she no longer uses. An organizer and a pencil.

She lit a cigarette and took the organizer and a pencil. She pulled out an empty sheet and wrote on it: "I hate my job."

Then she pressed the pencil strongly and repeated it with bold letters: "I hate my job."

Underneath, she wrote down a legible note written in small letters, like a little warning: "Maybe my life doesn't have a purpose. Perhaps nobody's life has a purpose. We are nameless. Maybe it's our only true meaning."

Cinderella worked a lot. She was waking up early, coming home when the night had already fallen, and her job was monotonous and uneventful. However, it was still a demanding and stressful job.

Every day she worked in an office with nine other women, all of whom, besides her, were preoccupied with the merciless struggle for promotion. Every morning, she would wake up with a familiar feeling of bitterness in her throat, just wishing that she could sleep and dream forever. Still, she'd get up and climb the stairs to her office, while listening to the same voice announcing orders over and over again:

"Calling - employee 142 - report to the office."

"Calling - employee 155 - contact the manager."

"Calling - employee 445..."

When the announcement would stop, the silence of the soulless stagnancy was interrupted only by the monotonous sound of the press from the production plant or the quarrels of colleagues who couldn't stand one another.

Every evening, Cinderella would return home to her small room in the attic, exhausted and a bit depressed. At the entrance, she would usually meet Maria. Maria was a bathing suit model. Her career was modest and one couldn't say that Maria had achieved some sort of planetary success. Still, her life was much easier than the life of the majority, and she was earning more than enough. However, she was twenty-six years old, which can mean only one thing - she is way too old for such a crude industry like modeling and it was about time for her to change her career. Maria was never talking about it, but, deep inside, she knew. Since she didn't want to fall amongst the nameless slaves, she had a plan to marry a wealthy nobleman, which is the reason why she was often visiting the royal balls.

Cinderella, on the other hand, had never been to a royal ball. If she ever even wished for it, the desire she had inside was already gone. Instead of the enthusiastically thinking about royal balls and princes, she would spend her evenings with a large portion of French fries and Xanax. On Fridays, she would sometimes take a walk, if the weather was pleasant. On Sunday night she would be in despair and fantasize about killing her boss, and the boss of his boss, and probably all the bosses in the world who enjoy their silly, bossy role because it makes them feel larger. But on that day, September 24th, on her birthday, she fantasized about her company, and all of other similar companies that had taken away people's lives and dreams, burning forever in a fire of the social change.

She thought about whether she should celebrate her birthday by smoking some weed while watching a boring romantic movie with Freddie Prince Junior, or if she should open a bottle of wine. She decided the wine was the right choice. She drank one glass, then another, and then she started drinking straight from the bottle. The sweet taste of oblivion melted in her mouth. She watched the city's bright blue sky while the pleasant dusk was painting the air, when suddenly a flaming blaze colored the sky in orange. It was a fire.

Screams and whistles were breaking the silence. There was a riot outside. The asphalt was burning. The people were protesting again. Or, better said, the urban guerrilla was pissed off again. And then, at that exact moment, Cinderella was pissed off, too.

She put on a black track suit and a black hooded jacket. She put a scarf over her nose and went to the protest. The sign of anarchy, written with fresh car-spray on the nearby window, was pouring down the glass. The police threw tear gas. Cinderella closed her eyes, and quickly put the scarf over her eyes. She was scared. She was hoping that those people in black weren't armed. It didn't seem like a good idea to be in the center of a civil war. Thousands of thoughts multiplied in her head. It seemed as if she just didn't know how to be a part of the crowd. She stood with a group of anarchists and repeated the words they were shouting. - We want justice! - yelled Cinderella. - Justice, equality, truth! - was being hailed from the masses.

The riot didn't last long. The crowd quickly dissolved. They didn't get justice or equality, but tiredness and eyes burning from the tear gas took them off the street. The anarchist who was standing next to Cinderella offered her a cigarette. They sat down on a bench, removed the scarves from their faces and smoked the cigarettes together.

She was observing him: he was a handsome man with dark skin, full lips and deep, black eyes. His hands were rough and cracked. Probably from the hard labor, she thought. He probably emigrated, just like she did. Maybe he also had a college degree, just like her, but nobody wanted to offer him a better job. And now, just like her, his work makes him sick and miserable to the bone. And all that just because he was born in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

\- No one cares how much you're worth, or how smart you are. - she said.

\- They don't benefit out of our intelligence, it just causes damage to them. - he laughed cynically.

\- Is this really the only way to fight for ourselves: ignition and demolition? - She asked.

\- It's not the only way for you. You are beautiful. - he replied.

Then, out of the sudden, he gave her an invitation for tomorrow's ball at the prince's palace.

\- Not all noblemen are fucked up, especially when they fall in love with a pretty girl. Go to the ball, find yourself a rich groom. Save yourself. - he told her.

Cinderella didn't want to go to the ball. She wanted to go home with him that evening. However, before she could ask him for his name, the anarchist left. She stayed on the bench with the invitation for the royal ball in her lap.

Maybe he was right, she thought. Maybe that ball indeed is her golden ticket of fate. After all, what kind of life could she have with a young anarchist without a permanent job, a mortgage and a loan for paying off the furniture from an IKEA catalog? What kind of future an unnamed generation that can fit their lives into a suitcase could ever have? Cinderella grabbed the invitation and put it in her pocket. "I'll go to that ball", she thought. She'll go, but the ball is tomorrow. Preparations are needed...

Her hands were trembling shaken by some kind of an abstract fear. She didn't know what she was afraid of since she had nothing to lose. One would think that the nameless workers had already become accustomed to fear and uncertainty. But no one ever gets used to fear. At the moment when you feel a familiar trembling in your hands and tightening in your throat, when you feel that hint of the terrible panic that has been breaking you down time after time, at the moment when the slightest thought of failure makes you sick, the only thing you can think about is fear. At that moment you know that your strengths will betray you, and no one will be able to help you. When you feel this growing, overwhelming fear, you know that not a single fragile nerve in your body will be able to bear the weight of losing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And then, for who knows which time again, you will experience something like a small death, after which life will continue as if nothing happened, and you will live on. You will live on, not even knowing that you are already dead.

Nevertheless, some kind of great power forced her to go to that damned prince's ball. She cursed the ball, yet embraced it like a gift. Since she thought that royal parties were surely snobbish, totally boring and snobbish, she told herself that she would go to that ball and that she would return home as if nothing had happened. She didn't want to hope. Still, her heart was pounding because of her desire and lust for life. She was putting her make-up with patience and combed her hair to perfection. Under the flash of the moonlight, she saw her reflection in the attic window and she saw her new face, white and blue, terrifyingly beautiful and so excessive in the world of factory ashes and industrial sawdust.

She was wearing high-heeled shoes, thin like they were made of glass. She could barely walk in them. She made small steps towards the door of the castle where the ball was held. What, you've been expecting horses and chariots? No, she went on foot. She was wearing uncomfortable shoes which made her walk like a duck. She reached the ball sweaty and her make-up was already smeared. Maria, the bathing suit model, was already in the ballroom. Maria was wearing a big and bulky wig like a modern Maria Antoinette, a "Versace" bag, long acrylic nails and a tight, branded dress that showed off her attractive body. Cinderella put her head down, expecting complete surrender. She ordered a double whiskey, drank it in one sip, and then she ordered another one. She smoked her cigarettes one by one, wondering what is she doing in a world where she don't belong, wondering whether there is a world for people like her or they are condemned to choose between naked rocks of poverty and false shine of the undeserved aristocracy.

The ball became more and more unpleasant. No groom had paid any attention to Cinderella. How could she be so stupid! You're not supposed to go the ball with such expectations! If you want to go to the ball, you need to be relaxed, ready for fun, and you need much more confidence. Balls are for partying. Balls are for having sex in the pool, drinking cocktails and sniffing cocaine. Even though Cinderella wasn't prude and the idea of sex in a pool or the euphoria you get from a cocaine dope didn't seem bad to her, she simply didn't belong there. Ever since she had to worry about the rent, bills and her job, having fun became somewhat a foreign concept to her, something she could no longer adjust to. She drank whiskey after whiskey, but she was still sober. Suddenly she ran out and hid in the bushes beneath the bulky ball curtains, far from everyone. She felt like she was about to break. She felt that, after so much bitterness, she couldn't belong to this world anymore. As much as she wanted to deny it, she belonged with the rebels and there was no force that would be able to bring her back to the path of worshiping money. Even if, at that very moment, millions of dollars fell from the sky and hit her in the head, she wouldn't change her mind. She hates money. She suffered so much because of money, and she can't look at money and see anything else but the evil demon Mammon who devours human souls and digests them in the depth of his greedy stomach.

Then, right underneath the balcony doors that were lavishly raised above her head, Cinderella suddenly heard voices:

\- He must get out of the room, he must! I don't care! All these women are here just for him. - Queen Mother shouted.

\- But can't you see that he can't do that, the boy is different... I mean, so what ... - said a male voice, most likely the king himself.

\- Biiird! - a guy's voice was heard. It must be the voice of the prince. Cinderella climbed the balcony and peeked into the room.

The prince was sitting on the bed looking at the photo of some kind of bird. His mother was furious, red in her face, and ready to do anything in order for her son to get married. The king was uninterested. He was watching the silhouettes of the ladies with his left eye through the transparent ball curtains

\- Who would marry him anyway? - asked the king.

\- Like it matters! It doesn't matter! Let it be a poor woman, blinded and charmed by the beauty of our castle. Let it be someone who would give anything for the title of a princess. Let her be someone nameless, hardworking, and naive enough to think that her work is worthwhile in this perverted system. We will find such a girl and we will use her. The whole kingdom will be on her back, but she won't be able to rule. The beautiful prince will be in her bed every night, but he'll never touch her. Until she realizes that the prince is only our puppet, it will be too late. -

\- You have just cursed the hope of the nameless. To those people, hope is everything they have. - said the king.

\- Biiiird! - the prince yelled giving his contribution to this strategic conversation.

\- Just shut up! - Queen Mother said to her son – Just stay quiet, stay beautiful and rich, and everything will be great.-

\- Please, get out, give him some time. \- begged the king.

\- All right, all right ... ten minutes ... in ten minutes I'm coming for you. Do you understand!? - said Queen Mother.

\- Biiird ... –

At the same moment the queen left the room, Cinderella slipped on the balcony pillar and one of her shoes fell down. The prince twitched and approached the window. He saw her.

\- You're beautiful. - he said

\- God, you're so beautiful. - He fondled her hair and told her that he'd like just to sit there and listen to some music with her all night long.

\- What is your name? - He asked.

\- Cinderella. -

\- I'll call you Star. Why do you only have one shoe? -

\- Because I couldn't walk properly in them. I just can't be what is expected me to be. I don't know how... - she went silent. What could she even say to a prince?

He sighed. He could understand her. He also couldn't be what was expected him to be. He stroked her cheek while he was hypnotized by her starry dress. He did not even notice when the Queen Mother came into the room again!

\- Whaaaaat ?! - She yelled. At the very same moment, Cinderella, in panic, slid down the pillar of the balcony, and started running on one leg. She ran straight into her room and, without even removing the starry dress, lay in her bed and covered herself over the head with her blanket. She waited for her heart to stop pounding so hard. The church clock began ringing at midnight, and the rain slowly began to drizzle.

On Sunday morning, Cinderella was woken up by the church bells. They were suggesting a wedding was about to happen. It was said that the prince, with the blessing of the Queen mother, is getting married to a miss named Maria. There was a whole fictional legend about the wedding. According to the legend, Maria, without any intention, accidentally walked past the prince's window and, as soon as he noticed her, he felt love at first sight. The entire army of the nameless admired this legend, except one taxi driver. He claimed that he saw the queen mother digging through cat's feces under the window in search of a shoe, into which she forcefully pushed Maria's foot. Maria humbly whispered to the queen that it wasn't her shoe, and that the shoe is three sizes smaller than her foot. But ambition was stronger than the pain. She pushed her bulky thumb into thin Cinderella's shoe.

\- There! There! Nobody will ever find out! - said Queen Mother in hysteria.

However, despite of what the taxi driver claimed, the people wanted to believe in the fairy tale.

The engagement was celebrated the very same evening. In front of the eyes of deeply excited crowd, Maria said to her prince:

\- Indeed, my love, who could have guessed that this would happen accidentally in a garden like this, and I didn't even want to go to the ball! What a fantastic coincidence! -

Everyone expected the prince's answer.

\- Say something! – said Queen mother while jerking him with her elbow.

He looked at his mother, then at Maria, then at the king, and then at Maria again. He grabbed his hair as though he wanted to pull it out from the roots and said:

\- Biiird. -

The Queen mother twitched, and then she began to clap her hands in front of the confused crowd. In order to make the situation less awkward, she shouted at the orchestra:

\- You've heard him! Play "Bird"! Let's celebrate this magnificent day! Free drinks for all the nameless! -

They were celebrating until dawn. Cinderella woke up in the morning by the alarm on her night stand, in her attic room, and she could still hear the song being sung from the Equality and Freedom Square, which will, supposedly, be renamed to Maria's Square. Apparently someone forgot to turn off autoplay. The music has been playing without any order and genre. Cindrella pricked up her ears to hear the melody that sounded so familiar to her. She came closer to the window and clearly heard one of the most beautiful songs of the past. The autoplay on the square sang: " Debout, les damnés de la terre..."

Cinderella stood up and went to work.

#  The Snow Queen

Once upon a time, there was a Wicked Spirit, the most mischievous of all spirits and indeed rotten to the core.

The Wicked Spirit was sitting on Ivy Gertra's neck. Ivy Gertra couldn't see him, but she could feel his weight and pressure creating a sharp pain which stretched all the way to her bones and moving along the spine. The spirit had marvelous horns like a mountain ram and his black head reminded of a Mongolian sheep. There was a red snake sleeping in his hand. He was only half-dressed, while his chest were naked and resembled to female breast. No one who doesn't know his name could say with certainty whether this spirit was a male or a female. He never laughed. He was a professional rider of human necks. But, Ivy Gertra couldn't see him.

Although the evil spirit was invisible for Ivy, she could feel his burdensome presence. His presence was like a magnet for the corrupted and filthy depth of human nature that Ivy has been experiencing ever since. That's why her heart was slowly turning into ice. And once a human heart turns into ice, life itself becomes ballast. That was the case with Ivy Gertra.

Then one night Ivy smoked a strange substance from a pipe in which a completely different spirit was living. As soon as she began to inhale the smoke, the spirit awoke from his hundred-year slumber and appeared in front of her. He was blue and had three orange eyes.

\- What are you doing, you perverted creature?! - He yelled, as he was coming out of the pipe.

\- Excuse me, I ... - Ivy murmured.

\- You people...you put in your mouth every dirty piece of shit you can find. Eventually, you will suck one another's c....nothing, forget it. - He said.

Ivy skeptically raised her eyebrow.

\- Who are you and why are you waking me up? - asked the spirit.

\- I didn't know someone was sleeping inside a psychoactive substance. Are you the spirit that fulfills three wishes? -

\- No, I'm one of those who fulfill countless wishes, but only if you participate in their fulfillment. My name is Papa Legba. -

\- And you live in a pipe? - asked Ivy.

\- I live where ever people look for me. Why did you call me, dear? -

\- But I didn't call you! –

\- Ah, you are ridden! Baphomet is riding you! - he shouted - Wait, wait, who are you? What do you believe in? -

\- I'm an agnostic. - said Ivy.

\- Riiiight, and I'm a ghost. Can you explain it a bit more? –

\- I believe in God and in afterlife. This world is hell from which our spirits will be freed once we learn the lesson we are sent to learn. Until we learn, we will be reincarnated into beings of pain and slavery over and over again. -

\- And how did you plan learning that lesson? -

\- I don't know. - she said. - God will tell me. -

\- And how do you speak to God? –

\- I don't. I'm waiting for Him to speak to me. And I live by his rules. -

\- Wait, wait a minute... do you have any idea how illogical that sounds to a spirit? We are here, we sleep in pipes, under beds, in rabbit holes and behind muted TVs, and the only thing you should do is call us. You call us, we come. Simple as that. We listen to you. We spit fire of various colors and dance for hours just to bring fullness to your lives. And what are you doing? You sit on your butt all day and you wait. You are waiting for God himself. Has it ever occurred to someone to actually do something?

\- Well, yes. We were rebels, we were rising revolutions. But it never turns out well. Then you start thinking: maybe I should try finding God again...-

\- Okay, and where are you going to find him? -

\- In my heart. - she said.

The blue ghost laughed.

\- Ha! In your heart! You're good! You're funny, I like that. -

\- I really don't understand what's so funny ... - Ivy was insulted.

\- It's funny because there is a spirit riding you, and you are silent. The essence of spiritual life is hidden from you, you are given this cowardly, religious story of suffering and apathy. You have preserved the idea of afterlife, but you have given up the power of spirits who are walking around the Earth. -

\- They don't exist! - Ivy shouted.

\- Yeah, they don't exist, yet you are talking to one. - said the ghost.

\- You know, while you are waiting, your great rulers use spirits, they put horns on their heads and they dance with the horns around fire of gold, while you are all trapped in ice and alienation... And they say: "That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing."... and they believe in the phrase, but only to a certain point. I mean, who's down can reach higher, but only if it's a white man willing to become a creature of two sexes... to be precise, a man can become a woman if necessary, if you understand what I'm saying...-

\- You are a very confusing ghost. - she said while shaking her head.

\- The thing is, the spirituality that you speak about is only half of the true spiritual life that is happening in front of you. You are only familiar with the afterlife. The other half, this life, it is completely hidden behind the red curtains of the privileged. Your imaginary God who is distant, even when you think he's close ... Well. he is so far away from most of you people that the world truly is becoming that place of hell you've been telling me about. So to speak, if your spiritual life consists of faith and magick, and your spiritual learning consists of religion and philosophy, you only took half of it. Religion without philosophy is dogma. Faith without magick is a living corpse. If you want to open your mind, you'll have to learn about philosophy. If you want to raise your spirit, you will have to learn about magick, of course.

\- But that's so primitive and stupid! \- said Ivy rebelliously.

\- Let me explain this to you more precisely. In 1118., a special order was established, and they were called the knights of Christ. It was a powerful organization of bankers and merchants, known for their wealth or, better said, their ability to acquire wealth. These knights were known as the Templars. The Templars had one single mission: to guard the Holy Grail. There are contradictory opinions about what the Holy Grail is. Originally, it is a cup from which Jesus drank from at the Last Supper with the apostles. According to some sources, it is claimed that the Grail is Judeo-Christian treasure. That would be, simply, money as such. Dan Brown once licked too much LSD and told the story about the Grail representing the secret descendants of Jesus himself. And since the ghosts and spirits have been living on Earth for about 8962 years, approximately, they had plenty of time to develop their own theory of the Grail.

Of course, the cup plays a certain role in our theory. Many of us spirits claim, although I personally haven't witnessed these events, that Jesus and the apostles practiced a special kind of ritual where they would drink the blood of sacrificed animals during the Last Supper. Jesus and the apostles were the first to understand the power of the unity of magick and faith. Magick without faith is a waste of energy. Faith without magic is apathy and emptiness. But together, their power unites the life of spirit and the life of matter, the treasures of both lives, this world and another world, man and God, God and animal, man and animal. That's the true meaning of the phrase "as above, so below" and vice versa.

The Holy Grail is the secret of original Judeo-Christian religion. Even to this day, it's a secret that is strictly guarded by modern Templars known as Free Masons. It's a religion that resembles modern religions which we know and practice today, but it hides something much deeper. Yes, there is life after death. Yes, there is a soul which separates itself from matter after it leaves the rotting corpse. Of course, there is a Creator. But there are other deities.

There are ghosts that walk around this world and with whom, by using ritual magick based on true faith, you can come into contact with. Once a person comes into contact with ghosts, they can fulfill countless wishes and desires of his. It is a kind of power that no follower of any official religion can imagine.

The Holy Grail is precisely this: an ancient secret about ways to get in touch with the divine. It is the knowledge that the original religion offers salvation and benefits not only in the other life, in the afterlife, but also here, now, in this life. -

\- Sounds incredible! - said Ivy.

\- Your skepticism is obdurate. Of course, there's only one problem with our modern Templars. First, for them, the acquisition of money is the same as supreme wisdom. They highly respect intelligence and science. That's not bad by itself. The problem is the fact that their intelligence and wisdom are deprived of empathy. In a word, that means: make money no matter what. Eat not to be eaten. A lie that makes money is worth more than the truth that drowns in debt. For them, there are slaves and there are slave owners, and that is the natural order of things. Also, women are not very popular in their circles. Their supreme god, Baphomet, the rider of slaves, the rider of those who suffer, is hermaphrodite. To be precise, he is both a male and a female. Knights consider that a man can, if desired, be a woman. A man has a hole that can enable him to be a woman for a while, if you understand what I mean. On the other hand, a woman doesn't have any necessary tool to be a man. So, when it comes to the attainment of the deity, a woman does not stand a chance. She is only needed for fertilization. The only goddesses in original religions to whom honor is shown are goddesses of fertility. -

\- That's too cruel. - said Ivy. - Why do ghosts work for the benefit of such beings? –

\- The thing is that living people communicate with the gods through the spirits of the dead. The dead should help a certain number of people, and thus prove that they have been cleansed of evil. Only pure souls can cross the river that separates the world of the living from the world of the dead. Until it doesn't prove its purity, the ghost will wander restlessly on Earth. As you can suppose, there are many impure ghosts wandering this Earth, open to be used for any corrupted purpose...

\- And where are the spirits that do good? - she asked.

\- That's the thing! They're waiting to be called. And you people don't do that because you are cowards. And even when you do call them, your wishes are selfish, dumb and self-centered. And let's not talk about how naïve they are. The greatest number of magic rituals is directed at, you're not going to believe me, attracting men! One, single man! Hilariously funny!

\- What do you want to say? That we should all be like those modern knights, to only seek money and power, slaughtering victims like plague and feed the world with suffering misery? After all, ghosts are avengers. At one point, they will ask the knights to pay for everything they've received. -

\- There are other ways to get to the ghosts, not just by secret of the Grail. In the east, there is something called the Vlach magic. Vlach witches, with burning coal in their hands and grave dust in their eyes, mix ancient magick with Orthodox Christianity. It's a powerful cocktail of the cross and bloody horns of pagan bull. They know the ancient secret...– he whispered.

\- And in the west? - asked Ivy.

\- In the West, the spirit of black Africa is wrapped in the colorful Haiti attire. It's the powerful Voodoo. -

\- Voodoo magic? – Ivy was surprised. - But they believe in Zombies and Zobops! -

\- Voodoo philosophy is created out of fantastic legends which really resemble pagan fairy tales. But, voodoo is a lot more than that. It's a unity of colors, fragrances and thoughts that make a wondrous mixture of spiritual ascent. Voodoo is a way to give back to the masters what they have given us: suffering. "As above, so below", right? -

\- But that's dangerous! - she yelled.

\- It's dangerous only to those whose hands are covered in blood. And for cowards, of course. - said the ghost.

He looked at his watch and then quickly grabbed the pipe. - Fuck, look at what time it is! I have to go back. –

As soon as he uttered this, he grabbed his right foot and pulled it into the pipe. In the glimpse of a moment, the pipe sucked him in.

\- But wait, how will I... - Ivy was trying to ask, but it was too late. The spirit was already gone.

After this event, Ivy Gertra often smoked DMT, but the blue spirit has never returned. Instead of him, Baphomet sat on her neck again and rode her.

It was August 7th, 2017 when the rain has stopped falling. The drought was unbearable. The northern hemisphere was burning in flames, and the air temperature was crossing 45C. Ivy decided to ask the ghosts for some help.

She made an altar with two silver candleholders and placed white candles inside. Two old filigree spoons with rubies and emeralds stood next to three goblets. In one goblet there was myrrh, in the other water, and in the third - Van Van oil. In front of it stood a bottle of cherry brandy, a lavish silver necklace and freshly incinerated incense. At the bottom of the altar, goat horns were proudly rising. Ivy Gertra was sitting in front of the altar and shaking. Her eyes were glowing, and her face became pale, almost transparent like ice. She took a paper and wrote on it: "Holy Loa Hudu, brother, please do something, don't be an asshole. I know we are to blame for the climate change, but calm down this damn Sun. You know, this country is a filthy toilet, and our elite is a piece of shit. And I'd shoot at shit, but then they'll scatter all over and make everything even shittier. You, dude, probably know how to handle feces. Take them somewhere, use them as some kind of fertilizer. Then they'll be useful. And shut down all the TVs. Especially those shows about the famous people fucking, marrying and divorcing each other. I can't look at Adele or that Beyonce girl. And Justin Bieber...Fuck.. Justin Bieber....I don't even want to think about it...so... yeah. Amen, Papa!"

As soon as she wrote it, Ivy took a piece of paper and rolled it into straw. Then she put cocaine on the altar and made a line. She put paper straw in her nose and snorted the cocaine. Right after that, she started the ritual dance with ghosts. Five colors and fifteen eyes were dancing with her following the beat of African drums. She was dancing until dawn and, finally, fell from exhaustion. The rhythm of the drums was replaced by a ballad. Ivy, completely naked, smeared her skin with incense and cedar oil and opened the window to hail the morning.

As soon as she opened the window, she really did have something to see! On August 8th, 2017., at 5:23 AM, it was snowing.

Ivy Gertra thought that Loa Hudu really is a cool dude.

It kept snowing for the next three days. The evil spirit was no longer on Ivy Getra's neck. Radio stations stopped playing bad music. And then, something unbelievable happened: what was down came up, and what was up fell down and completely changed the face of the Earth. The time of freedom has come.

As far as Ivy was concerned, her merits remained without prize. Ivy Gertra ended up in a psychiatric institution because she claimed she had summoned the snow. At the institution, she got an unusual and derisive nickname that followed her for a lifetime. They called her – The Snow Queen.

#  Sleeping Beauty

"Dying, sleeping - that's all dying is -

A sleep that ends all the heartache

And shocks that life on earth gives us

\- that's an achievement to wish for. "

Shakespeare's "Hamlet"

Mornings are the worst.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Waking up is difficult, tedious, empty. It's like waking up in hell. And waking up in hell is exactly like waking up in a place where you don't belong, in a place where time devours itself.

Every morning is the same. It's black and heavy, covered with the ominous, misty cloud of the upcoming future. Every morning is the same, except, of course, a Sunday morning.

It was Sunday, August 27th, 2017, exactly 9 AM.

\- Good morning! - Prince Philip was yelling while his wet kiss was touching my cheek.

I woke up looking at his distorted face that had left snot on mine while I wasn't in the mood for any company. I've tried to remember all the things that happened last night. I remember we were playing poker, I was running out of money, I offered Phillip my body as stake. He won, we took some crystal meth and went to my place. We didn't have any condoms. Oh, how wonderful! This desperate, soulless missionary sex on meth will likely result in a dumb consequence that's going to itch. C'est la vie.

My name is Rose. Unlike Prince Philip, who is currently standing over my head not allowing me to breathe, I wasn't born rich. I had to work hard for my wealth. I've pissed blood for the money I have right now. It's not much, but I can call myself an upper middle class lady. And now, instead of feeling calm and settled, instead of planning a family, the only thing I'm planning are the new ways of killing boredom and stopping the desire for eternal slumber of a living corpse.

I'm looking at Prince Philip: he is beautiful, young, rich, desirable. He is the son of respectable parents whose place at the court is implied. Five years earlier I was madly and maniacally in love with him. Why? I really don't know. I probably wanted to get rid of my previous life. Philip had several estates and 50,000 in cash, and that was the only reason why, in our fairy tale, the princess fell in love with the prince. But it wasn't just a matter of money. It was a cry for salvation from the modern world and all its manifestations.

Namely, my story started exactly five years ago, when Prince Philip pushed me away, and when I was left with no hope that I would be able to do the job that I love or live the life of a free human being. I was employed at the court as a telephone operator.

I'll have to explain this a bit better. I live in a country called the Far Away Kingdom and the country is ruled by King Stephan. It is a contemporary parliamentary monarchy. Unfortunately, the rate of unemployment and poverty here is high, and there is simply no other way to find your place but kissing the asses of the Lords of the Far Away Kingdom - even the ass of King Stefan himself in order to survive in the brutal market of business, politics and human flesh. And while ordinary people fight other ordinary people in order to survive, the Lords steal the people's gold and hide it under mattresses, sew it into pillows, and hide it under carpets. When they attain enough gold, they give it to King Stephan, but keep a small amount of it to themselves. They do it in a sneaky way so that King Stefan doesn't know about it. If the king were to find out that the Lords are keeping a solid amount of the gold to themselves, he would throw them out of the court and severely punish them.

The story about the gold is quite unusual. Namely, when King Stephan took me out of the mud five years ago and brought me to the court, I was wondering why would anyone need so many pointless golden rocks that have no real, practical purpose. Then I found out. King Stefan donates most of the gold as a sacrifice to Great Pharaoh, the ruler of the world. The great Pharaoh is not a human being, and he is not even interested in gold as such. It is actually fed by human suffering. A large amount of stolen wealth that Pharaoh appropriates means that many people are left without a single coin, which implies that people are suffering, producing the food for the Pharaoh and filling his plate with delicious human tears.

There is another interesting thing. In the Far Away Kingdom, the court is quite privileged. The ordinary people are the ones who are indigent. That's why Pharaoh must find another way for court personnel to suffer. Therefore, he divides the people of the court into two groups: authority and servants. Of course, I belong to the servants. There are strict rules for servants. They must always execute all the Lord's orders. Servants must behave like robots: they must be silent, humble, and military obedient. During working hours, which are often extended, each servant must be completely seamless. No caprices, creative outbursts, nor any act that can be interpreted as strange – nothing of such sort is allowed. In a nutshell, it is forbidden not to be absolutely average. It is impossible to have even a healthy imagination in our Far Away Kingdom.

There are different rules for the authority. The authorities are less numerous than the servants, and are in direct contact with the gold that is offered as a sacrifice to the Great Pharaoh. Therefore, the authorities are allowed to do anything they want. Because of the false image that the monarchy has to keep in public so it doesn't disintegrate, the permissible caprices of the authorities are divided into public and secret. Drugs and sex are consumed secretly, while huge amounts of spirits and harmless caprices are publicly allowed, aiming to slake that well-known, nationwide thirst for scandals.

Servants are generally in a better position than the ordinary people in Far Away Kingdom. In addition to being paid more, they were sometimes allowed to participate in partying organized by the authorities at the castle. Of course, there is a condition: if a servant wanted to attend a party, he had to know his place and be ready to serve at any moment, once ordered to from one of the Lords. Everything was soulless and dull as a result of the court's autocracy and general lack of imagination, and the servants were no different than average slaves. Unfortunately, the servants were way too blinded by the golden shine of the court to notice that fact.

Actually, we were all servants. The only thing that distinguished the aristocracy of the court and the ordinary people is that the aristocracy still hadn't lost the will to make love and burn up in passion. Contrary to modern tendencies, the people of the court remained faithful to the tradition that the male genitalia should touch female genitalia, even though their self-sufficiency due to existence of internet.

Unfortunately, the sex act of a traditional courtier was the same as "Philiposex" - socially acceptable and unvividly predictable. Driven by some misconception about sex as a game in which the main and the only goal is to break the record, a courtier would measure a quality of sex by its quantity. It has remained unclear how repeating something so tiresome can change the essence of that painfully boring and soulless process. But, then again, as an idiot, the one does the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

And indeed, the Far Away Kingdom is nothing more than a kingdom of ignorance, cruelty and bad fucking. The basic principle of our existence is the lack of imagination. We are created from the poverty of the mind, without imaginative and creative intelligence that would give our instincts some kind of particular taste, and as such, we are entering the money race like headless chickens. During this time, we fill our emptiness inside with gallons of brandy, which wasn't brandy at all but bourbon, and no one has ever noticed the difference.

In such circumstances, I became some sort of obsessed with the idea that I have to get a hold of the authorities at all costs. It was a hunger for power. It has been there, inside of me, three years since the beginning of my job as a servant, when I suddenly stood up, outraged and with my angry soul full of bitterness, I swore that I will never be anyone's servant again. It was a magical moment when I looked into the broken mirror and saw my own insanity: inside of me, the filthy desire for power was growing like madness.

I had the Cleopatra syndrome. From the dry sand of my little Egypt, I looked at magnificent Rome, wanting it with of all the desire and the depth of my being.

But one thing had still remained unclear: where was, and what was the power? Unlike the conventional opinion, power wasn't just the money. Prince Philip had the money yet he was still ridiculous. Power is something intangible, something extra-terrestrial, something you simply feel by looking at the feet of all those who are touching the golden throne. And while other women dreamed of white wedding dresses, I dreamed of well-paid fucking in a hotel room with the direct embodiment of power that would lead me to the magnificent Rome.

Unfortunately, Neron had burned down the Rome, and I've never been Cleopatra. I was, at the very least, foolish. Besides, in order to become Cleopatra, I had to be really beautiful, which I wasn't. Then, the backdrop of this imaginary situation is especially important detail in this whole idea. Among the connoisseurs of the illusion, the backdrop is known as "the background". Like in a stock photography business, there is a huge difference whether the beautiful girl in a bikini lies surrounded by palm trees or surrounded by snow. In the first case, she awakens desire, and in the second - she causes mockery. My background was cheap and unappetizing. It is virtually impossible to bring the embodiment of power into the maid's moldy room in the attic, but what to do when it's the only thing you have to offer? Fortunately, our whole kingdom wasn't far better than a cheap and humble room. The embodiment of power in Far Away Kingdom isn't really something one can relate to gods and rulers of the great Rome.

In our kingdom, everything I fantasized about seemed like an extremely witty caricature. Like a badly photoshoped photography, the background is a cheap room in some old motel called "O'Hara inn", our Caesar is a suspicious local businessman who prays to god every night that the royal dobermans don't send him back to the mud where he came from. And our Cleopatra? Our Cleopatra has belly fat, cheap acrylic nails and push-up bra with lace branded by "Mao ling chi". She has seen donkey milk only in an "Avon" brochure from colleague who, besides selling cosmetics, is also selling cheap jewelry and life insurance. In this illusion of ours, Caesar the conqueror probably has a scar from his appendix surgery, which he was whining about for a month while his wife was cooking him chicken soup and bringing it to his bed. What a mighty, magnificent Roman Empire!

You know the moment when something is so distorted that you start to think: well, why not? That's exactly what happened to me. Restless and full of expectations, I entered the castle during the term of the afternoon party. I ordered the small glass of brandy and drank it while observing my surroundings. The environment was particularly luxurious. Gothic royal ornaments were hanging from the high ceilings, giving the court an atmosphere of pure ancient magnificence. The only thing that was ruining the whole lavish picture was the image of cheap gentlemen and the even cheaper ladies, and a strange modern sign that was hanging above the front door. Something was written on the sign and which I couldn't really understand. The letters were red and yellow and it was stated: "Welcome to the machine".

I sat down and silently observed the situation. There is nothing that the true gentlemen value more than wise, female silence. Unfortunately, these were not true gentlemen. This was a childish feast of vices. Although there was some strange caste system which was highly respected in our kingdom and men from higher positions generally didn't interfere with women from the lower class, at the court parties everything was allowed. Thus, the Grand Duke, who was otherwise inaccessible, accidentally put his hand on my knee. After two liters of wine that he poured into himself, he started flirting with me quite openly.

The next day I went to the Grand Duke's chamber, thinking that everything was clear, and that only one word was needed for the game to start. Perhaps even that one word would be too much, maybe the game should start in complete silence, without a word being spoken. And, after all, it doesn't matter what you are saying. Once the idea of sex instinctively starts heating up, a man doesn't even listen to what a woman is saying, nor does the woman listen to him. The communication takes place at a level that is more intense and more understandable than words. Unfortunately, the Duke, although being fifteen years older than me, did not manage to figure out the game. I found myself sitting on the chair of shame, across the Caesar who just couldn't play his role. He was hesitating, blushing and blabbing, unable to refuse what has been offered to him. And he wanted to refuse, more than anything. In order to make everything painfully offensive as it was, our Caesar escaped faster than the fastest rabbit.

However, there's nothing to be offended about. It's nothing personal. He just wanted a little flirting. What he desired was not physical, but verbal sex. With some foreplay, of course. Unfortunately, instead of sweet flirting and timid smiling, his verbal foreplay turned into a discreet, but a wicked comment about women being quite strange creatures with whom both business and private cooperation are difficult. The Duke considered women uncontrollable, undisciplined, crazy, talkative, emotional and simple-minded. Those strange, dragonlike creatures named women are in every possible sense worse than men. Therefore, it's necessary to be careful and steady with them. Behold, my Caesar has spoken!

Thus had spoken my hero, the Great Duke, before he drank mint tea and escaped as far as he could from the danger of the threatening creature between woman's legs. After this funny man, I was deeply disappointed with everything that has ever touched the gates of our kingdom. And then, I went back, way back, all the way back to Prince Philip. Don't get me wrong: except the fact that he was having sex like he hated it from the depth of his soul, Prince Philip was quite okay. He was an intelligent guy with insecure and a bit aggressive attitude. He was tall and slim, he had dark hair and tiny dark eyes, and he was somewhat strange. He was prone to drugs and alcohol, but he was still a calm and good boy. If we neglect the fact that he was an incredible hypocrite. After a night on methamphetamine, brandy and sex, he would return home to his mother right on time for 5 o'clock tea, whispering sweet nothing to his dear lady Mary. Yes, Philip was completely okay, if we ignore the fact that he is one of the greatest insults to aristocracy and everything it has ever represented. Because of such aristocracy, you are ready to fall in eternal love with socialism and lead the people's march for guillotining a few heads to end the lives of those aristocratic parasites who suck the kingdom's tit while never actually doing anything, not even contemplating.

It was Sunday, August 27th, 2017, 9:30 AM. I was looking at my reflection in the mirror, and then, I was looking at Prince Philip. I was wondering who I was. He drank strong, black coffee and put some weed in his pipe. I'm still a servant. I hate every morning that makes me feel like I'm still alive and still here. I gave my youth, my passion, my life to this kingdom, and what I got in return? I'm still a servant, and my position is even lower than it was before. They're reducing my salary. They're cutting expenses. They're saving the budget. They are taking everything that I have in my life, walking over everything that I've given to them, all for profit. For gold. For human suffering, for feeding the Great Pharaoh. I bang my head against the wall. Philip goes to the bathroom. Philip is peeing. Save me, prince, I think to myself. Save me from all the kings, all the Lords, all the Dukes and the Pharaoh. Prince Philip continues to pee. He writes his name and his title with the urine in the inside of the toilet bowl. He comes out of the toilet, without putting the seat down, and says - This weed...that's some crazy shit, I tell ya. - I'm not responding. Prince Philip is one of them. He will not save me. My life is a reality show and there is no way out. It's like I'm keeping up with the fucking Kardashians, and I'm the only broke one among them.

I told Philip that I had to go to an important business meeting and I almost kicked him out of the apartment. That did not bother him. - Call me when you catch some time. - he said, and gave me a quick kiss.

As soon as I got rid of Philip and his Philiposex, I started eating. Recreational drug use always affects me that way. After each trip, two weeks of uncontrolled overeating would follow. It was like I was trying to eat the emptiness of my own soul. A terrible and quite stupid habit. But, it was no longer important. I hardly had the strength to wash my face in the morning.

I put on a sweater over the upper part of my pajamas and went to get some cigarettes. I bundled my hair into something that could be named as an aesthetic disaster. To make the failure complete, I had slippers on my feet that the ladies of the court wouldn't even wear to the piggery.

Well, after all, it's not like you could compare Far Away Kingdom and a piggery, since they both were the same!

I had to wait for a half an hour to get a pack of Marlboro. The Lords of King Stephan's court were making another party and were ordering hectoliters of alcohol, slowing down the queue in front of the cash register. One of them graciously grabbed me by the hand, shaking it for a few seconds while he was inviting me to come to the open air party in the woods at six o'clock. The only good thing about the Far Away Kingdom was the fact that the richest and the poorest layers of society were partying in the exact same way. I confirmed my arrival – and changed my mind at the last moment. At a quarter to six, I sat in a carriage and waved to the coachman telling him to drive us somewhere far, far away from the palace. I've told him to drive us as far as he can, until the horses get too tired to continue their gallop.

We were far away from the kingdom when the carriage suddenly stopped. It was standing still, right along the rocky coast of the ocean. I got out of the carriage and sat on the cliff. Everything was dead. Even water did not breathe, nor you could feel its usual, deep restlessness. Everything lived without rhythm, without scent, without passion, and it wasn't even standing still - it was moving backwards. I felt like I'm aimlessly sinking, drowning deep down into failure. Everything kept pulling me back into the mud, into the horror of life compromises. I slowly realized that neither the King nor the Duke weren't people. They were just like the Kingdom itself. They were institutions. Before attempting to seduce the Duke, I should have known that no one and nothing could ever seduce an institution. You can only kneel in front of the institution, and feel satisfied with the Stockholm syndrome that it gave you until all the clocks inside of you start ticking backwards. If you seduce a person who holds the title of a Duke, he will quickly remain without the title, and you will be left with the man only. But who needs just a man? In this situation where even God himself could barely help us, an ordinary man can't do anything but live stupidly and die even more stupidly.

And what is the difference between an ordinary man and a man who becomes an institution? You may wonder, Isn't an ordinary man better? No. He isn't and he can't be. It's that simple... An ordinary man doesn't fight. He serves. He lives the life he must live, instead living the life he can live. There's nothing worse than a man who surrendered himself to the system in which he serves at the lowest level of human existence while being helpless and dull in his gray, pointless life. There is nothing worse than the man who gave up the battle. The one must fight to death, for heaven, fight until blood and madness, fight all the way to hell and eternity!

And that was the last cry of the fighter in me. I was the last soldier of light, the one who remained alone and the one who has finally surrendered. My girlish fantasy of a great conqueror who would save me scattered like the smoke from my Marlboro cigarette. It disappeared like justice in front of the emperors, like money in the hands of the Lords, like the Great Duke after drinking his mint tea. I entered the carriage and returned to the city.

And what have I found! Far Away Kingdom was burned to the ground! One of the King's Lords threw a flaming butt of a cigarette on dry leaves and the whole forest flared up - the fire immediately spread towards the whole kingdom. At first, the flame swallowed the Great Duke and his subjects while they were trying to put out the fire. Afterward, the flame caught all of those who had tried to flee. Firstly, those who returned to the city to get their money got burned together with the money, and secondly, those who had nothing to return for got burned in the woods. The Open air party ended up as a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions – a handful of frenzied idiots demolished the magnificence of the ancient castle that had been built centuries ago. The fire was just a logical consequence and the peak of destruction which had been bleeding for years from the wounded institution of the court, its wounded soul and its lost tradition. The only thing left was a music player, hooked onto a barely surviving pine tree, from which you could hear a disc skipping:

"The drops from the rim are now falling on the rope and the wreck

I am free

And the silk scarf is hanging from my neck

catching the wind... "

I was looking at the high walls of the old castle, crying for the remains of the wiped out court. What am I crying for? For an institution that tried to kill the time and progress? For Philip, Philiposex and methamphetamine? For the gold and the money which they stole and devoured like parasites?

No way.

I feel sorry for the country. I don't know why. Maybe because of what it could have been. Perhaps what our country could become would extinguish the fire and establish at least a partially correct order that would still take money and gold, but would at least let the tradition breathe with its heroic soul of an ancient legend. Maybe I'm just being delusional. Maybe the meth is still inside my head, maybe the "dope of the reign" still affects me... But no. It's probably the LSD I took, with an image on it showing Cleopatra in delirium, swallowing Ceaser's big sword.

I took all the pills that I could find in the castle that hadn't been burned to ashes. I went into the main hall of the castle and sat down on the throne, touching what has always been so far away from me. The cold symbol of power was laying under my feet, black from the char and burned by the fire. Its coldness was so calming...

Well, that's it.

The damage is done. There's no return.

Now I just have to sleep, sleep for a hundred years, sleep until eternity...

#  Peter Pan

\- Train 455 arrived on platform 7! – a female voice announced. The door of the train opened. I took a fresh breath of the ocean scent mixed with boat paint and looked at the wild forest that was surrounding me. Just like decorations on a Christmas tree, the restless fairies were glistening in the forest. I moved off the platform staircase and stepped on the ground of the Independent Country of Neverland.

The captivating nature of this land was in contrast with the wild spirit wrapped around its newly formed civilization. Independent Country of Neverland was the homeland of Peter Pan. Peter was a famous writer who, at the age of 19, wrote his brilliant novel called "Growing up and death for dummies". At the age of 20, young Peter died and the public never had a chance to meet him. An unknown person, who posthumously published young Peter's novel, is a mysterious outcast that now lives in Neverland.

My name is Pete K. I'm a journalist and I work for "Sunshine", a magazine about pop culture and the life of celebrities. I got the exclusive right to interview the unknown subject who used to personally know young and exquisite Peter.

The afternoon had just passed and the sun was slowly fading away, when I stepped on the floor of a messy, wooden cabin. I was overwhelmed with fear and excitement because of the unknown man that was waiting for me in the cabin. I was expecting a gentleman with top hat, an elegantly engraved cigarette case, holding wine made in 1989 served in elegant, crystal glasses.

The floor creaked as the log cabin was old and unsightly. The hall was empty and quite humble. The rough voice of a man snarled:

\- Come in. -

I obeyed and stepped towards the room.

When I entered, I froze. Seeing the person who was waiting for me, I saw something that I could not imagine in my wildest dreams. It was a gray, Canadian wolf, strong and muscular, dressed in a black suit. He was standing upright on two legs.

\- Don't be scared. - he said - I'm just an old man. –

Lightly and carefully, while holding a walking stick, he poured us some whiskey and then sat in the chair. The wolf lit a cigarette.

He offered me a cigarette from a metal case on which the sickle and hammer were engraved.

\- I tried, you know. - He was speaking while inhaling the smoke. - I tried and I failed. I'm remembered as the bad guy, and to be quite honest, I didn't even know that girl, Red Riding Hood. I don't know the goat or her seven little ones. The goat was eaten by a man, you know...The goat was eaten by a shepherd, and the girl with the red hat suffered more because of human...human has done more damage than wolf or any similar animal would ever do.

It wasn't quite clear to me what he was talking about.

\- My pack... - he continued while rolling a new cigarette - ...we believed in something. Perhaps we were not quite right, as you can see. We didn't have a clear picture of what we were fighting against. Our enemy was very powerful. And we failed. But defeat is just the beginning of victory.

\- How did you meet Peter Pan? - I asked.

\- Ah, great little Peter. - He said - He worked in an automotive parts factory with me for two dollars per hour. He was writing at night. His manuscript "Growing up and death for dummies" was turned down by forty-four publishers. I think that they didn't even look at the manuscript. I believe that they didn't care for it at all, I mean, who is going to read the manuscript of a poor boy who works in a factory?

\- And, eventually, who read it? The forty-fifth publisher? - I asked.

\- Nobody. I took his book in order to read it. I had to persuade him for a long time, you know, he was certain that reading his manuscript was a waste of time. They convinced him. Obviously, I am an old wolf, and I needn't to guess twice to know what was wrong with the book. You know, Pete, people want to believe that poverty is the fault of the poor. If they realize that it's like plague that is eating the whole nations, it will shake the foundations of their American dream. Thus, people work every single day, believing in a better tomorrow that will never come, believing in their five minutes of fame, their reward, their bright future. They spend their whole lives working for someone, believing that they will succeed someday. Someday, of course, never comes, and the man remains humiliated and robbed, but firmly convinced that it's all his fault and that he just didn't try hard enough. The tower of his dream is crashing, but its foundation remains intact. And so he keeps trying, he keeps trying in order to earn money for someone else, trying to save as much as he can out of a miserable percentage that he gets for his work, hoping that someday he will become that someone else. Who that someone else is, and when someday will come, nobody knows. But the foundations of a corrupt society are still intact. And Peter...he was seriously shaking those foundations with his book. –

He coughed because of the rough tobacco and then continued his story.

\- Basically, that day... I think it was Friday, I finished reading the Peter's manuscript and turned on the radio. They played that old song, it kinda goes like this: "I didn't have to be better, to be the first or the hundredth, it didn't have to be bigger, it didn't have to be longer..." It's a song about a guy whose girlfriend left him and now he sits and watches porn, and comes to these stunning conclusions that he's got nothing to prove to no one...-

\- Okay, and what does it have to do with Peter? - I asked.

\- Well, then I remembered! Electronic publishing! Electronic publishing is available to everyone, and you don't have to prove anything to anyone. - He laughed.

\- Interesting... - I yawned. I was thinking about how to improve the article about Peter Pan. The editor will throw it in the trash right after he read a story about a poor boy and his wolf friend. A beast that speaks would be somewhat interesting, but not to readers of tabloids. Tabloid readers like sex, cocaine and night clubs. The editor also likes more sex, more cocaine, and twice as many night clubs. A circulation of twenty thousand copies is forty thousand dollars, and the editor likes it all - times two.

\- Tell me in detail, Mr. Wolf, how did you get to know Peter? - I asked.

\- As I said, my pack and I were all working in the same factory, and so as Peter Pan. He was 18 years old when he got hired. Without money for college, without a perspective, he came to that factory young, naive and eager for life. The factory manager, Mariane Sisi, reminded us on a colonial ruler or prison guard. She was a sadist, not a leader. She had a black, burnt hair that looked like a broom. Every Monday morning she used to go to the most expensive make-up artist in the city, and every Friday she would go to the hairdresser. She was obsessed with her hair. All her attempts to beautify her robust hair had been failing. Just like herself, her hair was aging. She could slow down the aging process only by sucking out someone else's energy. That is why, from the depths of her soul, she enjoyed the sufferings of her workers, especially the suffering of young ones like Peter.

Oh, and the working conditions in that factory! Those jobs were too hard even for us, old, lonely wolves and outcasts, let alone a boy like Peter! His mind, his spirit... The diamond of hope and the expectation that was shimmering in his eyes... It all rotted away and burnt down in a dirty plant that stank of oil and petroleum. After two years in the factory, when I saw that the boy had started to slowly and irretrievably sink in the strange condition of mind, I tried to get closer to him. I told him that we were planning a rebellion. He was terrified. Yet, he didn't betray us.

Two days later, a united pack of wolves stood in front of the factory and shouted slogans against the terror of Marianne Sisi. They came for us and started to beat us. Sisi stood on the balcony of the building as if it was some kind of throne while she was feeding herself with the chaos that she had caused. She was hiding her grim hair from the wind under a red scarf. At one point, a strong wind blew, slapped Marianne Sisi and stole her red scarf. The red scarf fell into the mud among the rebels. At that moment, I looked up and saw the horror on the face of the great mistress for the first time. The sight of blood never made her stomach turn and it could never change her facial expression. She always had a ghostly, vain smile on her face. But the wind that threatened her hairstyle – that and that only has been a reason for Sisi to get seriously worried. I grabbed the muddy scarf and put it in my pocket.

Under the strike of the force, my pack and I had escaped into the forest.

We were living as exiles, but we were sleeping peacefully and we were waking up happier. I made a flag out of the red scarf, the symbol of the first fear of mistress Sisi. In less than two months, young Peter joined us. He was eighteen and a half years old.

Peter and I didn't talk much. He was the only human among us wolves and was still adapting to the raw soul of the wilderness. Once I accidentally caught him crying. He silently gave me the rejected manuscript. He said there was no way out for him. I laughed and told him that there is no way out for any of us.

We were looking at each other, young Peter and me, but we didn't talk. He was extremely silent. It seemed as if every word was stealing energy from the flesh of his youth. He was so silent, as if a single word costs him at least a year of his life. He was saving his energy using silence. He was trying to keep himself alive, just like he wasn't deeply aware that he was already dead.

In the evening after I received his manuscript, I read the first chapter. It hit me deeply. I went out of my den, raised my head and aguishly stared in the black mantle of the night. The big, round moon was shining like a divine eye. The night was white, silky and glossy from the moonlight. I could smell that special scent of autumn in the air.

I'd been looking at the moon for a long time before I started to howl. My voice was hoarse and deep. It sounded like a song, but actually, it was a cry. It was a sound of pure bitterness.

Soon enough, the rest of the pack joined me and we were singing an anthem of injustice, without any spoken word, knowing beforehand that we will be declared as criminals, traitors and idlers. We knew that we were condemned to death and lies. Being condemned to death wasn't so bad and we had expected it. But the lies...it hurt us. At that very moment we knew: when we decide to keep silent for ever, there will be no one to tell the truth instead of us. Except, of course, Peter's book.

The next day, I told the leader of the pack, Blackie, that we have to publish Peter's book. Blackie was suspicious.

\- Are you sure he's not a spy? - he asked about Peter. His eyes were revealing an unbreakable doubt.

\- Why would he be a spy? - I asked.

\- He's different from us. He's a stranger. -

\- What is so different about him? He is suffering as much as we are. -

\- Well, for the beginning, we are black, and he is ... I do not know ... somehow gray. - said the leader. - Then, our skin is covered with fur. His skin is smooth. Our eyes have the color of red wine. His eyes are blue. -

There was no point in saying anything. I realized that many of the pack think like the leader. Peter simply did not belong here. He was alone.

He was fully aware that he didn't fit in and that he was alone. But it wasn't matter to him. And he did not care for it out of one simple reason: deep inside, he knew that he was already dead. All other creatures and beings, even wolves, still hoped for something, they believed that they will love, laugh, and travel the world. But not Peter.

Peter never grew up, although he had already grown old in his nineteenth year. He died several days after his twentieth birthday.

As far as I'm concerned, I couldn't find peace in my pack. A lot of things in the structure of our society were wrong. I could live with it, I mean, I was strong. But I knew that many wouldn't be able to live that kind of life and that Marianne Sisi will win eventually. And, because of our stupid mistakes, that's exactly what happened. She has finally won.

I was already too old to wait for a new battle, and that's why I ran away to Neverland.

I knew that Sisi will rule as long as I'm alive and that I won't achieve anything better than the life I lived in that terrible factory.

And so, I gave up.

But I've published Peter's book. That's something, right? -

The old wolf lowered his head, took more tobacco from his cigarette case and lit it. He offered me some more whiskey.

\- Don't be offended. - I said - But your story ... it is not interesting to our readers. -

\- Maybe your readers are not interesting to our story. - he said.

\- You know, in the era of money ... -

\- There you go! The era of money! That's where all the problems and confusion come from! You love money too much! You've killed Peter because you love money too much.-

\- How could we have killed Peter? – I said and frowned.

\- Very easy. You all killed one Peter... inside of you. - He smiled.

I didn't know what to tell him.

\- Pete, Peter is dead in you. But remember my words: there is still a wolf inside of you. Inside of you there is a black god who hates injustice and he's very angry. Wake up your wolf. -

As he spoke, his eyes were bloody and glowing. There was a hell burning inside of him. The fear froze me.

\- Sir, all I currently want is to improve the sales of the "Sunshine" magazine. - I said, while trying to remain smooth and brave.

\- In that case, I wouldn't waste any more of your time. - He said politely and headed towards the door to see me out. I rushed towards the door.

I said goodbye to the old, angry wolf and ran away. My heart was pounding. I was running until I knew that I was far enough from the old cabin, until my fear fell silent and anger disappeared. How did I allow myself to come here? To travel to a country at the end of the world, to smoke for hours while listening the saga of a speaking wolf, and not even get some quality material for my article! Damn, I will never get a journalist of the year award! Find the woooolf inside of yoooouu blaaah blaaah ... what a bullshit!

I was nervously walking and silently kicking garbage that stood in my way. I was going to the train station, angry because I had wasted the day. Then I noticed a blond girl who was fighting with her own shadow.

\- But ... what? - I said.

\- Good afternoon, Sir! - said the girl \- My name is Wendy. -

\- But what are you doing? - I asked.

\- I'm fighting with my shadow. Sometimes, it's quite a useful thing to do. Sometimes you have to hear what your shadow has to say. -

\- But how? -

\- Just like that. Shadows are like wolves. -

\- How's that? -

\- Simply. Not all shadows are bad. And it's always useful to hear the other side. -

\- But it makes no sense! - I yelled.

\- Depends. If your goal is to get a load of cash, then it doesn't make sense. If your goal is to stop craving for money, then it does make sense. - she explained.

\- But ... I don't even have a goal now! -

\- That's even better, isn't it? –

Suddenly, her shadow began to laugh at me, mockingly and vindictively. I ran towards the station, eager to get on the train and escape this madhouse called the Independent Country of Neverland. And then I woke up.

What a twisted dream!

It's because of stress, I thought. I'm pressed with deadlines. I'm sniffing some bad shit. The rhythm of a big city is killing me. Too many drugs. Not enough sex. Fuck it all, I need to get out of this room. I've been in a solitary confinement. For 4 years there has been nothing but a constant chase in my life. My head is about to explode.

I took a jacket and checked my pockets.

Mobile? Here.

Cigarettes? Here.

Condoms? Here.

Ecstasy? Here.

Cash? Here.

It's all there. I opened the door and went out.

Just as I got out, I realized that I forgot only one thing - my shadow.

#  Snow White

"Human is a political whore."

Aristotle

"Sorry, whores, he didn't mean to insult you."

Fyodor Dostoevsky

\- Look at her! Who is she, Marco? - Said the queen, looking out the window while she was nervously pushing the curtain aside.

\- Snow White, Your Honor. Nobody important. – said Marco, a servant and a member of the State Security Service.

\- She's young. She's gorgeous. - said the queen.

\- But she's nothing special. -

\- But she's charming, from what I've heard. –

\- A little bit. But then again, she's nothing special, nothing that threatens you. She's not beautiful enough to be considered a threat to you. She doesn't even have the ambition to be a threat to you. -

\- Right now she doesn't have any ambition. - said the queen. - And besides, ambition is not necessary, the fate imposes itself. For the reign, a woman needs to know only two things. The first thing is that secrets must never be revealed, at any price. Neither your own, nor someone else's. I think she already knows that. -

\- And the other one? - Marco asked.

\- The other thing is that there is no queen without a king. She still doesn't know it, but she will figure it out soon enough. -

\- You are the queen without a king. - Marco smiled.

\- Please! - the queen frowned. - Just remember the deceased king. He was always a gentleman. If there was a lady in his presence, she would never stand, he'd always lend her a chair. Even if she was a pleb, he would immediately stand up and give the lady his chair. I can't forget that day when he stood up and let Lady Mary rest her tired feet on his throne. Such a simple woman like Lady Mary was sitting in the royal throne for the whole hour. Degrading! But he was a gentleman, even at the cost of degradation. And then I came to the court. And I was standing! He was sitting on the throne, holding it tight, and I was standing there all alone. I was wondering what kind of man is capable of letting the most beautiful woman of the kingdom to be the only woman who has ever been humiliated in his presence. And then I realized: the urge to defend the territory is the strongest drive of every healthy man.

Territory, power – those are the strongest instincts, not sex! There is no doubt about that. I couldn't believe that he would ever see me differently than as a threat to his goddamn throne. I wanted to tell him that he could freely piss on his beloved throne, that nobody needs his throne and crown, and I wanted to turn around and leave. I wanted to leave in order to show that I would not tolerate any insults towards my femininity, but I didn't. That's when I learned to control my anger perfectly. Because of that, because of enduring that whole act, I have learnt everything that a Queen should know. He considered me a danger. He kept me under control. In small doses, he allowed me to be present at the court, even though the gates were always wide open for everybody else. He allowed me to lightly touch someone else's power, and as soon as I became captivated by the sense of reign, he would immediately take it all away from me. And he knew from the very beginning how I am weak as a woman can be when it comes to male power. Then one day, we stayed alone.

\- And? - Asked Marco while smiling with innocent curiosity.

\- And... nothing! I told him that he was a coward! A mouse, not a man! And how can one mouse be a king and a god to a woman like me! I rolled over with my eyes, yes, yes. He stood at the door, and I came towards him; my lips tightened with fury, and I demanded to leave. I told him: "You are not my king!" -

\- Anyone else in that situation would have been executed on a guillotine. - concluded Marco.

\- Anyone else, but not a beautiful woman. Everyone gives in and surrender to a beautiful woman at the end. Of course, the king came close to me and we laid in bed, drunk from passion. He couldn't resist a beautiful woman. Therefore, it is clear why Snow White is so dangerous. - said the queen, being deadly serious.

\- But, Your Honor, she is not as beautiful as you were! You were a goddess, she is...well... ordinary. -

\- That has nothing to do with it. Beauty is not dosed nor calculated, beauty is sufficient as a minimum, as the first condition. In all the millions of fields on which beauty fails, the mind prevails. –

\- Your Honor, different time has come. A time of absolute greed. Today, nobody is interested in sex. They don't really care for both beauty and mind. They don't care for women in general. Today, everyone loves money and money only. -

\- Marco, Marco, Maarco ... no one is ever sick and tired of sex. - She laughed, and then suddenly put on a facial expression of seriousness. - Did you say "Another time has come"? Comparing it to what time? Are you suggesting that my time has passed and that I'm old?

\- No, Your Honor, no ... I ... no. - He got confused and went silent. He was covered in cold sweat.

There was an unpleasant silence. The queen sighed.

\- And what are we going to do about Snow White? - asked Marco in a clumsy attempt to change the subject.

\- Kill her. - said the Queen.

\- Your Honor! There is no need for that! - Marco said.

\- Do you have any other suggestion, Marco? -

\- Be a diplomat. Allow others to think differently than you. Allow it to Snow White, too. Everything that has legitimacy should also have legality. Let's call it – opposition. And let the opposition speak. Let's allow Snow White to speak and live. Even allow her to be politically active. At the moment when five hundred and one men out of one thousand get on her side, invite her to come for an apple pie and negotiate. –

\- Are you out of your mind, Marco?! - screamed the Queen.

\- I always thought that such a system could work in the future. You know, like, some kind of new post-Greek democracy. -

\- I've never heard anything so stupid. \- She said, shifted her curtain again, and watched Snow White through the window. - Is that Damian with her? -

\- Yes. It wouldn't be his first time. \- Marco replied.

\- For God's sake, he is in charge of State Security Service, and he is working against me! Call him! -

In less than two minutes, Damian, the head of State Security Service and a handsome young gentleman, was right there, standing in front of the Queen.

\- Damian, dear Damian, I don't know what to say... - mumbled the Queen while boiling with anger

\- I didn't do anything illegal! - said Damian in order to defend himself.

\- And Snow White? How long have you been flaunting through the kingdom with her? How long have you been sleeping with her? I've found you a beautiful woman, is this parade really necessary? -

\- The boy is just playing, Your Majesty! – said Marco, defending Damian.

\- He's not a boy, he's an officer. And he's very popular among people, right Damian? - she was speaking louder and more decisively. - He is someone who has the power to pacify the "evil queen", and everyone sees him as a god and a rescuer. He is "saving" them from me, from the evil women! That's what people say, you know? Yes, yes! Pretty Damian can make anyone with whom he appears in public popular, and he is walking around – no more, no less – but with her! -

\- It's not my fault that you have a reputation of an evil queen! - Damian shouted. - Everybody is saying that you've killed the king. -

\- Killed the king?! - she was horrified – H-h-how? What are you talking about?! -

\- With apple pie. - answered Damian.

\- Apple pie?! - she screamed.

\- Pie, yes. - Damian confirmed.

\- Made of apples? - asked the Queen in disbelief.

\- Yes. With cyanide. - he explained.

\- Jesus, you really are mad, people! - she shouted. - I loved the king. After all, everyone knows that there is no queen without a king. He was a deserving bearer of his crown and everyone would be proud to be the first lady of such a king. -

\- That's hard to believe. Everyone says that you have a perverted desire for cutting heads off. - Damian was speaking calmly, letting the dissatisfaction that broke out of him flow naturally.

\- Well, I'm a woman! I have the desire to cut off someone's head at least once a month. - she said, trying to be witty. Nobody laughed.

There was another long and unpleasant silence.

\- Okay, okay, okay.. - said the queen while shaking her head - There will be no executions. Take Snow White out of the Kingdom, give her a small estate, and...well, I don't want her to appear in front of my eyes anymore. And you...– she was speaking to Damian - You...go home to your wife and stay there! -

\- Yes, Your Honor. - Said Damian.

Both Marco and Damian bowed and left the court's premises. It was about time to start their urgent jobs.

***

\- But Hunter, don't leave me here! - Snow White was kneeling in front of the Hunter and begging.

\- It's nothing personal, sweetie. I received an order from the Queen to expel you from the court and leave you here. I'm sorry. - Said the Hunter.

\- But Hunter, I ... call Damian! -

\- Honey, he won't come. Do you really think that any man would sacrifice his golden throne for such a ridiculous farce like the one you're making right now?! - said the Hunter.

\- But ... I won't survive! - She cried.

\- Believe me, nobody cares about that. Everyone is responsible for their own death. After all, this is your land now. Do some farming. Here, I'll give you some money to buy a couple of sheep. There you go, guard the sheep and cultivate the land. – He said, pointing at some poor-quality humus that was hard as stone. Snow White took the hoe and swung it in a poor attempt to do something that she had never done before. She didn't know how to cultivate the land. The tool fell out of her gentle, feminine hands. She fell down to the ground and started to cry. The Hunter knew that the Queen had made a great mistake. Making Snow White's life harder isn't going to kill her. On the contrary, it will make her strong like steel. And one day, sturdy and experienced, she will come back to the kingdom and take over the throne. As the Hunter was walking away, he could see Snow White's silhouette in the darkness, running through the forest in fear, as the night was falling and a heavy fog was drifting down.

Snow White was having a panic attack. She ran into the arms of wolves. All around her there was the mysterious presence of horror that appeared in every sight and every sound. Everything that existed wanted to devour her, and senselessness, the worst of all the creatures of the forest, was swallowing her whole. - Awful, terrible helplessness! - she cried. \- Is there anything in this world more horrible than you? -

Snow White's all-night panic attack was interrupted by the bright and white morning. She was not sure if she was imagining it or not, but she saw a tall building whose gates was wide open. Above the building was written "Colliery – The Institute for Youth and Adults". She entered Colliery and saw a small production workshop in which seven men were working. A forty-five-year-old man in a wheelchair approached her and kindly greeted her:

\- Welcome to "Colliery". The bedrooms are upstairs, make yourself comfortable. I'm Kevin. -

\- Snow White. – she said - Thanks for the hospitality. -

\- There is nothing to be grateful about, the Institute is open to all who need help. -

Kevin showed her the environment. The workshop in which seven people from the Institute "Colliery" were working was a small recycling factory. Besides the small production unit, there were bedrooms, sports fields, a TV room and some offices where doctors were sitting and doing nothing all day long. Kevin introduced her to other workers in "Colliery". The workers had only first names or nicknames, from which you could conclude that most of the people in this building don't know where they are coming from, nor who their parents are. Snow White thought that they must have been expelled from the kingdom and exiled because of the crazy queen, just like herself. She wondered how many lives were ruined by the vain, freakish kings and other rulers during history. She wondered how many insane rulers are ruining lives even today.

Thus, as luck would have it, the beautiful lady had found herself in the company of people who called themselves: Wacky, Kevin, Donald, Tourette, Napoleon, Nero and Wanker. Wanker was the only one who didn't shake her hand. He was facing the wall, looking away from her.

\- What's wrong with him? - Snow White asked Kevin pointing to Wanker.

\- He has some kind of weird syndrome. He is very sensitive and he can't speak. He will act hostile towards you for weeks, even months. Don't say anything to him except "good morning," every day, at the same time. That's the only way for him to start relaxing. If you only lose control once and shout "who the fuck do you think you are, Wanker?", the whole process of his retreat into himself will begin again. And one more thing... - Kevin added - Always lock the bathroom and put something in the keyhole so that he can't peek through. He's not dangerous, he's just a serial masturbator. I think you would be uncomfortable if he kept staring at you. –

\- Thank you. - said Snow White, and again started to quietly cry.

The beautiful lady was slowly getting used to her bizarre fate that had brought her to "Colliery". She told her new friends about the queen, exile, cyanide apple pies and her confrontation with the injustice of reality. Even Wanker symphatized for her in his own, unique way. Snow White was obsessed with her fate and self-pity, that she hadn't even remembered to ask Kevin why he was in a wheelchair. One month later, she finally asked.

- Suicide attempt. - He said calmly while drinking cold coffee.

\- Oh, my god! - shouted Snow white. She has finally realized. - I'm in a madhouse! -

\- We prefer to call the "Colliery" institute or a hospital. - said Kevin.

\- Fuck this! - She jumped up and started packing. - I'm going back. - she said.

\- Back to the kingdom? Aren't you afraid, Snow White? - he asked.

\- That whore has put me into a madhouse, she is the one that should be afraid. My personal devil will persecute her forever. -

All six of Snow White's newly-acquired friends cried like babies when she was leaving the Institute. Everyone except Wanker, of course. Wanker expressed his sadness in a unique way and gave Snow White a T-shirt, on which large red letters were printed:

\- You cannot scare me, I'm from the "Colliery". -

***

At the entrance of the kingdom, the first thing that Snow White saw was a white smoke. White smoke was the symbol of the inauguration. The new king is chosen. Namely, the queen was dead after being suffocated by the apple pie and the throne was taken over by no one else but Damian. Damian was the new king, and Marco was the new head officer of the State Security Service.

Snow White asked for admission to the new king. As soon as he saw her, the wine he drank came out of his nose.

\- You! – Snow White screamed. - You killed her! -

\- Good evening, madam! What's with all the anger? I thought you wanted her dead. - said Damian

\- Why didn't you help me? You knew that I would never betray you, you knew that I would be mute like I always was! I just wanted some help in order to survive. -

\- What do you want me to tell you now? \- he asked almost motionless.

\- The truth. Why did you do this to me? -

\- Because I'm a piece of garbage. And because I'm dumb. Is that what you want to hear? -

\- And someone like you deserves to be a king?! - She screamed while anger was boiling within her.

\- What else did you expect? In our world, the worst of all worlds, being a dumb garbage is the best thing you can possibly be. Someday, stupid people will be the head officers and state presidents and, eventually, they will rule the world. -

\- You are not my king! - she said, and at the same moment she turned towards him, stabbing him with a knife until he coughed out the last drop of blood. At that same moment, State Security officers surrounded her with the intention to arrest her and cut her head off. But suddenly, the new head officer of State Security Service appeared – it was Marco. He waved his hand, ordering officers to let her go and get out of the room. Marco and Snow White were left alone behind the closed doors of the castle. They've been talking for hours, burning the midnight oil.

In less than two days, white smoke surrounded the kingdom announcing the crowning of the new queen - Snow White.

It was more than clear that Marco and Snow White had been lovers for years. The conspiracy between the two of them had been arranged before any of this happened – it started a long time ago, when Marco was newbie in the Service and Snow White was on the threshold of adulthood. Her flirtation with Damian and Marco's service to the old queen were only a camouflage.

\- We've made it! \- Snow White was screaming while throwing herself in Marco's embrace.

\- All these years I've never had any doubts about you. You were born to succeed! - he said with a proud smile on his face.

\- I feel so strange...somehow ambivalently, like I'm sad and happy at the same time ... -

\- Why, my dear Queen? – asked Marco.

- I've been thinking...Couldn't everything in the world be fairer? - asked Snow White, looking at him with the naïve eyes of a little child.

\- It could be, but sadly, it's not. - Marco replied.

\- But what are we trying to leave for the future generations by doing this? We are telling them to be dirty, cruel, even killers? Wasn't the point of taking over the throne - creating a better homeland, a better kingdom, a better world? What is the lesson behind all these conspiracies, all this blood? - her eyes became sad and filled up with tears.

\- The lesson? The Emperor rules until he pisses off the intelligence? \- he said. - After all, wasn't giving people a chance for better future the only thing you wanted? -

\- I don't know, I think we should write a slightly different story. We could embellish the fairy tale about Snow White just a little bit. Please, call those brothers who write stories and tell them to put a prince in there, a witch ... you know... to make a classic fairy tale. We should at least try to change the course of history. \- she explained.

\- Anything you want, my dear Queen. Just promise me one thing. - Said Marco, while hugging her.  
\- Promise me that we shall never, ever eat apple pies. –

#  Alice in Wonderland

"It was much pleasanter at home,' thought poor Alice,

'when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller,

and being ordered about by mice and rabbits.

I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole,

and yet - it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life!

When I used to read fairytales,

I fancied that kind of thing never happened,

and now here I am in the middle of one!"

Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"

The snow had just started to fall, and the view through the balcony window was magical. The night was waking up, promising a long and windy weekend in idyllic peace. Alice poured red wine into glasses. She gave one glass to her husband, keeping one to herself and took a modest sip.

Unlike the situation in other fairy tales, Alice's situation was somewhat different. Her husband wasn't a prince. He was a rabbit. Still, he was unusually handsome, though tiny, and when he was approaching her from behind, touching her shoulders with his soft and gentle fingers, she felt like she didn't need a prince. But then, his phone rang.

Namely, Alice's husband was a bank officer and his flexible working hours were killing every short breath of intimacy they've both been craving for. The moment when his phone starts to ring, suggesting he has to go back to work, is the moment of that infamous remorse for Alice and she just can't stop wondering why she hadn't married someone else. One needs to marry a wolf, not a rabbit! Still, Alice got no marriage proposal from a wolf. Nor from a prince. Maybe she should have tried harder. Now there's no point even talking about it. She shouldn't think about that. She just needs to make her husband stay at home. It's necessary to save at least that small spark between them that is worth saving.

She dragged him by the arm and begged: - Just tonight, darling, tell them your aunt is sick and you have to bring her the medicine. You're in Barcelona, yes! Tell them you're going to Alaska, you're going to the edge of the world! -

He put his top hat and his wristwatch on, looking like an important Wall Street broker, and muttered:

- Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late! -

Alice thought that she shouldn't have gotten married. When there is no prince, and when life can't be calm and stress free, it shouldn't have been like this.

\- Why is my fairy tale different?! - she called Bella, complaining through tears, crying as if God-knows-what kind of catastrophe had happened.

\- How can I know? You shouldn't have married a rabbit. – said Bella, completely calmly while she was sitting in the Calandrian darkness that is about to fall apart and waiting for a disaster, knowing that there are worse destinies than Alice's.

\- It doesn't matter who you marry, it's all bullshit! - said Alice. - Do you think he's cheating on me? -

\- I don't know. Cheating takes courage. That rabbit of yours doesn't have the guts. But, wait, I'm saying these things with so much contempt and despair! Maybe to someone he is a God. But not to you. You will never find yourself in that marriage. You will run after him wrapped in paranoia and fake jealousy, looking for proof that he is cheating on you, when in fact you will only feed some weird hunger for adventure. A woman usually projects her own desires in the imagination of his unfaithfulness. It's most likely that he is faithful to you. But the truth is worse than that. He's empty as a man, or a rabbit, can be. –

Bella was one of those way too honest women who you'd never wish for a friend. Instead of calming Alice down with some kind of pleasant phrase that will make her reconcile with her boring female role in the world, she felt a strong and somewhat philosophical desire to change something.

The first step towards female degradation is the desire to change the established living rules that are made for her to obey. It is wide known, if you can't be happy in those circumstances, then you are the problem, not the circumstances. That's why, twenty years ago, even in scientific circles, it was claimed that eighty percent of women were frigid. Today, it is said that eighty percent of women cannot build a career in jobs that require men's power and men's coldness. It's such a contradiction! Today, you're too cold; tomorrow, you're not cold enough.

Although it was clear to Alice that Bella was somewhat prone to idealizing, she still envied her. She was jealous of Bella's beauty and wit, jealous of everything that was given to Bella for free, and everything that will be given to her, paid only by smile and a sparkling, sad look in her eyes. Alice felt something she thought she will never feel. It was the terrible disadvantage of female friendships: eternal envy. It was a disgusting, concealed and hypocritical envy because of which women will never have the luck to feel the deepness of a true friendship. Under normal circumstances, a woman takes on her snakelike shape, absorbing as a sponge all the negativity of a marriage that she can't express somewhere else, and gets rid of that negativity by looking at someone else's Sun as something that she could have, if only she was smarter, braver, and prettier. If only she was someone else. If only she was Bella.

Nothing throws you in despair as much as the feeling of eagerness and weakness. The horrible role of a passive woman, a woman who is sitting and waiting all day, threw Alice into a state of permanent impatience. Everything that she used to do, everything that used to make her happy before, suddenly became too boring, too slow, too worthless. Her husband, the rabbit, was usually saying that her condition is caused by boredom. Then she would overwork herself, but things would only get worse. She felt like nothing could change the way she feels. She wondered if others feel that way too. "It's so hard to believe in someone else's god, and it's even harder to believe in one of your own!" she thought.

But that's the way it is. If you think that you can survive in the world as it was created by the mental inquisition of the average, you have to keep quiet. And you have to find a way to kill time, counting down the days until nothingness. Alice was thinking for a long time, wondering should she drink a bottle of whiskey or eat some psychedelic mushrooms, and then she decided – she took both of them. During the first half an hour, she was watching a documentary about sea turtles, disappointed that the combination of whiskey and mushrooms "wasn't doing the trick" and that she will probably just fall asleep while watching TV. And then she noticed that her husband, the rabbit, had forgotten his gloves. "He is surely freezing!" she thought, grabbed the gloves and hurried to find him, breaking through the increasing snowstorm that didn't seem so idyllic once she stepped her foot on the crystal, fairy looking snow.

***

\- Where am I? - Alice wondered as she was falling down a tomb, surrounded by clocks - Bad trip, fucking bad trip! -

But, the more she was falling, the more she was feeling calm. Actually, it wasn't really a fall. In order for a person to fall, there must be a bottom. The bottom is actually the only thing that makes the fall – fall. If there is no bottom, then one could say – it's flying. Yes, Alice was flying. And it felt so good. At the moment it seemed that she would calmly fall asleep in the eternal flight, a strange hand caught her and pulled her into the ocean.

When she took a better look, she saw that it was not a hand at all, but a paw. A mouse was drowning in the ocean, clinging to her in panic.

\- What is this? - she asked.

\- Your tears. - The answer came from a distance in which she saw millions of small animals drowning. - Your tears are devouring us. -

\- But why? - she asked startledly.

\- Because we're small. If we were big, each of us would have a handkerchief to give it to you when you start crying. To you and to all the others. And the handkerchief would be big enough to absorb all of these tears. But since we are small, we have no way to stop the crying, so the only thing we can do is to drown in it. -

\- Isn't it easier to just prevent the tears? –

\- It is. But we are small. We don't think about these things ahead. In fact, we do not burden ourselves with things until they happen. -

At that moment one of the rats, floating in its improvised boat, raised his paw and pointed it to Alice.

\- Everyone, attack her! - He said to the others. - It's her fault! –

The water withdrew and everyone wriggled out of the water. There was no life threat anymore, but the animals were rising in a terrible rage. They have made a stake for Alice. The mouse lit a flame that, suddenly, turned into a fire.

\- I knew it! - yelled the rat. - She's guilty, grab her! -

Alice ran away from the fire and crazed rodents, not even considering where she is about to go. Suddenly, a path with a signpost showed up in front of her, and on the sign was written:

"Mad Hatter's tea party, go left. Or go right. It does not matter."

***

The two very special guests were attending the Mad Hatter's tea party. Those were March Hare and Piglet. The Piglet was going left, March Hare was going right, but somehow they both ended up in the same place. And they've been here for twenty years, maybe even longer, maybe even half a century.

\- What are we going to do today? - asked Mad Hatter while pouring whiskey into glasses.

\- Let's piss on the poor! – shouted March Hare.

\- I wanna go see some whores, oink. – said Piglet.

\- Let's play ... stabbing! - said Mad Hatter.

\- Well done! Stabbing! I love that game! -

\- Oink, oink! -

\- How do you play that game? - asked Alice.

\- You need to take this... - The Mad Hatter was explaining it to her right after he took a pencil and stabbed it randomly into some sort of list - ...and you stab one name from the archive of the living creatures. Yeah, I got it ... I got it...Wait, let's see what it says... aham, it says: A-d-a-m. -

Only a few moments after the Mad Hatter said his name, a handsome man appeared in front of him. His name was Adam.

\- Where am I? - Asked Adam as he dusted himself off.

\- We have just called you. My name is Mad Hatter. These are March Hare and Piglet. –

March Hare kindly waved, and Piglet oinked.

\- Now, tell us Adam: what do you do for a living? -

\- I'm a philosophy student, currently a taxi driver. –

\- This is going to be interesting, oink! – said the Piglet.

\- Come on, stab! – the March Hare shouted.

\- Okay, Adam... - said the Mad Hatter and prepared his pencil. This time, he stabbed the pencil into another list. - Adam, it is written here that you need to be ... I'll stab it now, wait, wait... Woooow, a mayor! The mayor of ... hmm ... uh ... let's see the city... oh, here it is! You should be the mayor of the Calandria city in Calandria state! -

\- Perfect! Well done! - said March Hare.

\- Oink! -

\- But please! - Adam murmured. - How can I be such an important person? I don't know ... I can't do that. Where is Calandria anyway? How many inhabitants does it have? -

\- Who cares! – laughed March Hare. - All you need to know is that there is an economic crisis in Calandria now, and when there is a crisis, it means there are many young, easy girls for the mayooooooor! -

\- To the whores, oink! – Piglet shouted.

\- But, but ... I don't have a degree! I don't have a diploma! – said Adam, unsuccessfully trying to defend himself.

\- No problem, we'll solve it right away. - Said Mad Hatter, and opened a bag full of papers. - What kind of diploma do you want? Economy? Here, an engineering! -

\- But I don't know how to work with computers! - Adam complained again.

\- It doesn't matter, you dumbass! – Mad Hatter laughed. - Piglet will give you a diploma right away. -

The Mad Hatter placed the diploma on the table, Piglet dipped his snout into a plum jam and stamped the diploma with its sticky, purple snout.

\- There you go, you have officially graduated! - Mad Hatter shouted and gave Adam the diploma. - Why are you looking at me like I'm some kind of cuckoo? - asked Mad Hatter. He was suddenly quite annoyed. - Piglet has been certifying the diplomas with a plum jam since nineteen sixty-eight! -

\- Since 1959, please! Oink! – Piglet corrected him.

\- There you go, and where's the problem?! – said the Mad Hatter with a sharp voice while threateningly looking at Adam. March Hare was already drunk: he was laughing and rolling under the table while roaring: - Send him to Calandria! I wanna see what's going to happen! -  
\- To the whores, oink! - Piglet said.

\- But, how will I ... I don't understand ... Am I a member of a political party? Am I the left wing's or the right wing's representative? - Adam asked.

\- Ughhh, man, it doesn't matter! Piglet was going to the left, March Hare was going to the right, and they all ended up sitting at the Mad Hatter's table! Whiskey? - Mad Hatter offered Adam a wide glass filled up to the top.

\- He needs a suit, oink. - Piglet commented.

\- Ha-ha, a suit, yes! - March Hare laughed while he was falling onto glasses, black out drunk. And, at the moment, they put Adam in a suit, put a tie on him, pushed the diploma into his hands and threw him in Calandria. The only thing he wanted to ask was: And what am I going to do theeeer... - but he couldn't even make it to say - ...e? - he was already teleported to Calandria.

\- Who cares what he's going to do there! He's so dumb, he is going to do some good deeds! - said Mad Hatter.

\- Oh, what a jackass! – drunk March Hare was giggling.

\- What exactly was all this about?! - asked Alice. - Wasn't there supposed to be a voting for this? -

\- Ooo, Miss-knows-it-all wants to vote! - said March Hare.

\- Voting, oink! -

\- All right, all right, let the lady vote. - said Mad Hatter. - Okay, young lady, you can vote by answering with 'yes' or 'no'. Do you, Miss Alice, agree to participate in our game? -

\- I cannot adequately vote by using only 'yes' or 'no'! - she protested.

\- In that case, I'll put it this way: Do you, young lady, agree to vote by answering questions with 'yes' or 'no'? -

\- No! - said Alice.

\- Okay. Do you, young lady, think that the stabbing game should be played in this spot or do you think we all need to move one spot to the right? -

\- But... what kind of farce is this? - she shouted. March Hare choked with laughter and Piglet oinked.

\- You see, young lady - Piglet got serious - if you don't like our tea party, you can stand up and leave! And we will, of course, go to the whorehouse. -

Alice suddenly felt dizzy and she seemed like Mad Hatter, March Hare and Piglet began to move away from her until they were completely out of her sight. She remembered that she had left home to bring gloves to her husband, the rabbit, but she had forgotten the most important thing – the gloves! She turned around and hurried home.

***

\- Aha, there you are! - said Alice and grabbed gloves from the shelf. - But, what is this? -

A few more mushrooms were standing on the shelf next to the gloves, looking at Alice and laughing at her. She decided to take one more. But as soon as she swallowed it, she felt that she uncontrollably started to grow. Her hand was hanging from the window, her foot made its way through the door, and her head went straight up through the chimney. The house became too small for her.

\- What are you doing, you crazy woman? – yelled her husband, the rabbit. - You want me to be late?! You want me to lose my head?! -

\- I just came...to get ... your gloves! \- she was trying to justify herself.

\- Ugh, gloves! What are gloves compared to the head! - he yelled at her, and then angrily and urgently went back to the bank. Alice tried to tell him to wait for her. She wanted to run after him, but her head was stuck in the chimney. She was desperate. But then, she remembered - she had one more mushroom in her hand.

\- This mushroom will definitely reduce my size. - she thought. Swallowing the mushroom, she felt that her limbs are returning to their normal size. When she managed to size down to somewhat below her usual dimensions, she flew out of the house like a hailstorm. She ran as fast as she could in order to follow her husband, but she only saw his silhouette.

\- Aha, you birdie! - She whispered victoriously. - Now we'll see what you're up to! -

The rabbit was indeed going to the bank. Alice was disappointed for a moment, thinking that she must have gone crazy. Her husband didn't go to see another woman. He really went to work. But what if the other woman is in there, at work? The devil was dancing inside of her, so she went after the rabbit and stepped into the bank.

***

Above Alice's head stood a huge red sign on which was written:

"The Hertz Corporation".

The hall of the bank was long and scary. Thousands of people with top hats and wristwatches were rushing around without any order, uncontrollably repeating: - Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I shall be too late! I will not succeed! I'll lose my head! -

Papers were flying all over, people were crashing into one another while putting their legs in front of one another in order for the other to fall, the nerves were snapping. From time to time, an ambulance would come and take a man or animal gone mad from stress. Alice didn't understand who was threatening them with head cutting, but for a moment she felt like having your head cut off was certainly not so terrible if you compared it to life under such pressure.

Her husband, the rabbit, climbed up the stairs, heading towards the offices on the second floor. Alice thought that his mistress will surely be there and decided to follow him. But there was nothing up there that would be nearly as interesting as the rabbit's mistress. The rabbit entered the office and sat down on the lowest chair, apologizing for being late. At that moment one of the attendants said: - You must not be late, she will cut off your head! - A-ha, she! Who is she?

Alice was observing the situation through the keyhole. In the office there were: a rat, who was obviously the head of the sector, and a mouse, who was his deputy. Among the subordinates, besides Alice's husband, there was a pink flamingo and a terrified elephant who was constantly trying to push his butt in the corner in order to stay imperceptible. The rat was giving orders while the mouse was nodding his head and blowing into the rat's tea to cool it down faster. The mouse handed some papers to the rat.

-Is anyone absent? - asked the rat.

\- Just the cat. - his deputy muttered.

\- Cut his head off! -

Mouse pulled out a list from a small briefcase and put the cat on the guillotine list. - Six more lives and the cat is over! - he smiled as if he was completely pleased with the list. And yet, maybe he was glad. However, he is a mouse - it is quite clear that the natural superiority of the cat disturbs him and that he would be happy to eliminate him. Alice thought the mouse did not even inform the cat about this meeting, and that it was all a trick to eliminate him because of his natural superiority. To be completely honest, it was clear that the rat did not enjoy the cat's presence either, and was ready to play along.

As soon as the list of executions was taken out, the meeting became chaotic. The job was there, waiting, while the animals were arguing with each other who was guilty and screaming at each other ready for slaughtering amongst each other. The rat seemed to be satisfied with this unproductive horror among Hertz Corporation employees. The elephant's face became green, and it seemed like he wanted to escape or explode. Then, someone's footsteps were heard. It was the sound of high heels. It caused a scary silence amongst the employees. It was Queen Hertz herself.

Queen Hertz was a great CEO who has been using sex as a means to improve her career since she was twenty-six. She was a person without a soul, an empty bag of skin and bones with nothing human left in her. Queen Hertz was thirsty for blood and power only.

Everyone was scared. More precisely, everybody's always frightened, but now she just gave them a reason to be scared. She's been working for a particularly important boss whom no one had ever seen. She was, obviously, the main head cutter in this branch of the "Hertz" corporation.

How terrible place is this place where the rabbit is employed! But, why do all these people endure this? Why don't all these people and animals rebel? There is only one Queen Hertz, and they are many. And yet, everyone is afraid of her. It's like they don't see their strength. They were shivering in fear of the few powerful people who have deemed themselves gods against everyone's will. And why? Has anyone in this corporation done anything useful in the past month? Did anyone grow food, build a building, invent some kind of innovation, improve human life? No, in this building papers are just being moved from one spot to another. People are busy doing nothing. In fear of getting their heads cut off, they are living a life that is worse than death, not knowing that it doesn't have to be that way.

Those thoughts took over Alice every time she would look at Queen Hertz. Looking at her, she only saw what she didn't want to become. She didn't even know if she was overwhelmed with horror, the selfishness or the power of the moment \- she heedlessly ran out of the Hertz corporation before she saw how everyone is playing by the Queen's rules. She could not silently observe such injustice. She was running and running like she wanted to get away from the question that was haunting her: will her husband, the rabbit, remain alive today or will the Queen Hertz cut his head off because she doesn't like the color of his tie.

Running through the forest, she hit her head straight on a huge mushroom.

\- Fuck, what a trip! – she mumbled determined not to take even a single bite of those damned psychedelic substances anymore. And then, Alice looked up and realized this was not an ordinary mushroom. A cat was sitting on the mushroom and was laughing out loud.

\- Ha-ha, you should have seen him! - The cat was chuckling. - Prince Philip ... ha-ha ...I've sold him a crystal meth, he paid through his nose for it. The stud wants to bring home some chicks. What a funny guy. You see, everyone is a prince today. –

\- It's not nice to laugh at people with special needs. – said Alice reproachfully.

\- But it's nice to laugh at people who are constantly trying to be something they're not. -

\- What kind of psychedelic mushrooms are these, you freak! They make me sick. I think I'm going to die! -

\- Ah, this kind of mushroom shouldn't be mixed with alcohol, you silly little gluttonous girl! – the cat was insulted. - Besides, if you don't like them ... -

He didn't even manage to finish the sentence when Alice fell to the ground and started crying. She was crying and sobbing like some kind of terrible catastrophe had happened.

\- Everyone is so easily insulted here! \- she yelled through tears. - And I don't know ... what to be... I can no longer be anything. It's too late for me to be what is needed. -

\- All right, there, there... calm down. – the cat said while trying to comfort her. - It couldn't be any different anyway. Whichever way you go, you end up at the Mad Hatter's tea party. -

\- You don't understand ... - she cried.

-The Siamese cat-loser who is dealing drug doesn't understand? - the cat smiled. - What do you think, that I couldn't become something better? Fuck it, the mice and rats are ruling this place, and they would do anything just to get rid of me because they know what would have happened if they had played a fair game with me. They would disappear in one bite! But, in this place, the fate decides. You are being ordered around my mice and rats, you never know if you're big or small and, in the mornings, you are waking up with one single motive: to keep your head on shoulders.

\- Stupid life. And what if it was different? What if I didn't marry the rabbit? What if I had become Queen Hertz myself? What would change? When you are a woman, then you can't even become someone meaningful. -

\- You can never become something or someone meaningful. And when it comes to your marriage, you should've married a wolf. Or a cat? – he smiled.

\- I shouldn't have gotten married at all! - She cried even harder, so hard that the sky started to shake.

\- I was always convinced that life is remorse. That's why I'm not bothered by things that much. I could have been the CEO of the Hertz corporation, if it weren't for those mice and rats. Now, I'm a drug dealer. And so what? Nothing. It's all the same. You earn money, you eat money. And you keep going in the same circle over and over again. -

\- Everything is so fucked up ... –

\- Come on, little girl, I'm taking you home ... - said the cat, holding her under his arm - it's just a bad trip ... just that. -

Alice didn't fall asleep that night. The next day, when the rabbit came home from the bank, he found an empty apartment. The psychedelic trip had left something behind, it sowed its evil seeds and nothing could be the same anymore. She had to leave. And she'll always leave. And nothing, nothing in this world will change her willingness to rush into the madness and magic, into the world of Wonderland and psychedelic mushrooms, into a ridiculous belief that meaninglessness can become something else only if you beat your head against the wall hard enough and strongly believe that it will break, although it never will.

#  Beauty and the Beast

" We hold these truths to be self-evident,

that all men are created equal,

that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,

that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights,

Governments are instituted among Men,

deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

There has always been something strange and alienated about her. She was not particularly beautiful and she didn't understand why her name is Bella. She didn't understand why, when she enters a room, suddenly an unusual and quivering charge takes over the place, nor she understood why no one ever speaks to her using a normal voice, without a strange tone of admiration or envy. Yes, her name was Bella, a French word for "Beautiful". It was a very rare name in Calandria country, and whenever that name was mentioned, no further explanation was needed: everyone knew it was her.

That afternoon, Bella was sitting on the bench in Calandrian park. Next to her, there were a few books which she borrowed from the local library. She took one of the books and put it in her lap. The book had red covers with the engraved title - "Albert Camus - The Stranger". Bella flipped through a few pages of the book and commented to herself: "I don't understand what's so special about this... I don't understand ... how did you do it, you damned, lucky bastard!". Then she left the book on the bench and took another one. She opened it randomly and her finger stopped at page 54. She began to read:

\- Not long ago, in a charming dream,

I saw myself - a king with a crown's treasure;

I was in love with you, it seemed,

And the heart was beating with a pleasure. -

\- I don't understand, I really don't understand... - whispered Bella. - Although, maybe it sounds better in Russian ... -

She pulled out a pack of Luckies from her pocket and lit a cigarette. She took the next book with soft, blue covers on which a voodoo face was painted. She looked at the cover and whispered as she was talking to the face on the cover: - Well, the ghosts know that I've always wanted to be a writer ... why can others do it and I can't? Why did the wise spirit, the great ruler of the sea and all the waters on earth, blessed only a few to be accomplished? Ah, big Loa, I'm modest, I don't want much money. I want just a cabin in the woods, I want to look at the sky and feed the hens and ... I just want to write books. I just want to be alone. I want to get out of this city, out of this madding crowd, out of all the chaos and the heat. These cities are crowded and dirty. These places, named the future Polises, are the hearts of pollution, prostitution, dirty, hot asphalt and cheap, synthetic drugs.

Ugh, how silly is my imagination... and Calandria will bankrupt soon. Calandria is falling into the grave. It only needs another major economic crisis and everything will collapse like a house of cards... and I will never become a writer. I'll be a whore, because that's the only thing I can be. Supply and demand, that's all there is. Income and expense. Gross and net. It's all about the money. There is nothing else in this world but money. –

Right at that moment, the music in the center of Calandria had abruptly stopped. The song was interrupted by an important announcement. The announcement came from a city hall: Calandria has declared bankruptcy. All public jobs, apart from the indispensable ones, were abolished. Since Bella was working in the archives of the city library, she has just lost her job.

Not knowing what to do, Bella threw away a half-smoked cigarette on the ground and went to see her old friend, Victor. Victor welcomed her and made her some mint tea. They were sitting right across one another, unwilling to look at each other in the eyes, fearing that in the eyes of the other they would see nothing but rising fear and dark hopelessness.

-Help me, Victor, please. What should I do? - she said, asking for Victor's help.

\- I don't know, Bella, there are no jobs, no welfare, nothing. - he said.

\- Hunger. - concluded Bella.

\- I never thought it would happen so suddenly. -

\- Me neither. -

\- Great depression ... nasty things are rising above us... -

\- What can we do? - she asked while grabbing her forehead with cold and sweaty palms that were shaking from despair and panic. - Help me and I'll return the favor. –

He was looking at her like he was trying to assess whether she was telling the truth. In times of crisis and hunger, nobody is your friend. A suspicious look is what you get instead of "good morning" and empathy is replaced by instinct for survival. However, in such situations, there are those who use the opportunity to get richer. Victor knew these kinds of people quite well, and he could get Bella on the right track to fight the crisis.

\- Go see the president of the "Future" regional union and tell him I've sent you. There is money in the union fund. Try to get close to the him and let him appoint you to the position of the union assistant. You're probably not going to like him, but that's the only way to get some kind of job. You might not get money, but there are certainly vouchers and coupons for bread and milk. -

\- Thank you, Victor! - she said and jumped as if minutes were deciding her fate. And the fate seemed so wicked, dark and pointless like the blurring boundary between life and death, and, just like the horizon, it looked close and secure, but slipped away at the very moment you decide to take a step towards it.

The meeting with the president of the "Future" union was not at all a simple matter. In the queue to the president's door there were former workers of the drug factory, a meat processing plant, workers from "The Railway" and from the cosmetic industry of Calandria. But Bella was privileged because she was – Bella. She was the first person invited in the president's office.

The president of the "Future" union, Nicolas L. Hallow, was an immature man, but quite kind. In addition, he didn't look scary as she had expected. He was relatively young and even cute. That was enough for Bella to start flirting with him. On the other hand, Nicolas Hallow, even though he had a wife and two children, did not take long to understand her signals. He took her to the warehouse next to the office, took off her clothes and turned her body over a few sharp, wooden pallets. He was semi-potent and it took him a lot of time to achieve full satisfaction. When he was done, Bella looked at him with a fake smile. He was big and caused her pain, so that night she found it quite difficult to sleep. The next day, she was wondering whether to continue this game with Nicolas L. and decided to see him again. And that's exactly how it happened.

Next Saturday - the same place, the same pallets, the same boring and painful half an hour, the same tiring stories of the union president Nicolas L. and the same Bella's lies about how everything is "oh, so nice" and "ah, so perfect." And every week, the same story was repeating as she was spending time with the same president of the "Future" union. The time was passing by while Bella was feeling sorry for him and despising him at the same time. On one hand, she felt sorry for his barely useful big gun that was killed by all the alcohol he was consuming, and on the other hand, she was furious because she was slowly realizing that his presidency wasn't a particularly influential position. Their strange relationship lasted for two months when Bella started to doubt that she would ever receive any serious help from Nicolas L. Hallow. And then, she suddenly swallowed her pride and asked him to appoint her assistant of the union.

\- Oh, yes, yes, good, good. We'll see what we can do about it. Want a sip? - he was offering her a glass of wine.

\- No thanks. - she said while her eyes were flickering.

\- Why being so blue, you pretty girl, you are not hungry?! - said Nicolas L.

\- I'm living off of my savings which are slowly disappearing. I'm not hungry right now. But I will be. -

\- Ah, you won't! You'll figure it out somehow. You're a smart one. Line? - he asked while giving her a thin line of cocaine that he managed to get from a rising republican diplomat.

\- The union assistant is protected from being fired. - she said.

\- Yeah, yeah, we'll see, we'll see... \- he was mumbling. - Damn, this shit is working! Coke as sweet as candy... Hey, have I been telling you when I used to be in love with Kitty Hamp? Oh, what a hottie she was! Everyone wanted her and no one could have her. I proposed her several times. Kitty kept rejecting me until she got drunk with this sweet kind of brandy that had just hit the market. I remember Kitty... ugh, Kitty had a tiger-print tights, full, big lips, you know, perfect for ... ugh, perfect for everything. -

Bella was looking at him in a way that no man ever wanted to be looked at. It was the look of pity and despise.

\- What will I do now, Victor?! - she was crying to her old friend right after she ended the affair with Nicolas L. Hallow.

\- What can I say... Maybe we've made a mistake with the president of the "Future" union. How about I introduce you to a representative of an investment fund? The one ... what's his name ... David? - asked Viktor.

\- David Duchovny? He's gay. -

\- All right, then I'll schedule you an appointment with Ivan. -

\- Ivan Virt ... The Ivan? -

\- Yes, the Ivan. - Bella remained speechless.

The Ivan Virt was the rather unbeloved mayor of Calandria. At the beginning of his career he was well-respected, but the respect towards his work and intellect at one point began to decline. The moment when he got the power, he showed his true face. It was the face of a psychopath. It was said that he's merciless, manipulative and that he will step on corpses just for a little progress in his career. From various stories about his affairs, each of which contained at least a grain of the legends about his inhumanity and rudeness, he received the nickname Ivan The Terrible. Bella wanted to avoid contact with him, at any price, suggesting that no one could ruin her like he could. Still, she had no choice.

Grabbing the doorknob of the mayor's cabinet, her whole body was shaking. Her heart was in her throat, threatening to jump out and escape. She was so scared of Ivan that it was driving her mad. But what she saw wasn't even close to her terrifying expectations.

The mayor's office was spacious and brightly colored. Pictures of buildings and industrialists that the cabinet is known for were removed. Ivan replaced them with warm images of spring flowers. The desk was moved and now it was looking at the Sun. On the desk were Ivan's family photos and decorative pots full of greenery and life. Ivan was sitting on a chair slightly higher than the other chairs that were evenly distributed throughout the huge room. He offered Bella to take a seat and he discreetly smiled. He enjoyed the optimistic kitsch of his sunlit cabinet. Bella, dressed in black, with dark-red lipstick on her lips, looked like some kind of witch who showed up uninvited in the castle of light and flowers, right there where she doesn't belong.

Ivan kindly introduced himself. He was talking to her like she was an old friend. The whole conversation was like a game of two carefree children in the north of Europe who knew that they will have certain bread every day. His optimism, his confidence, everything that was shining out of him revealed that he believes he can do anything. Nothing can stop him in his decision to live surrounded by spring flowers. Bella was confused by her feelings - she felt both fear and attraction, both alarm and magnetism. She saw herself as black, pale, wicked and desperate. She was sitting in front of him guided by the lowest motive he was completely aware of.

They both agreed to go out on a date that night. Ivan took Bella to a luxurious restaurant and lit her cigarette like a true gentleman. As they smoked, he leaned over the table and whispered with a charming smile:

\- I don't want to make you do anything. If you don't want to be here with me, leave. -

\- I don't know ... – she was confused.

\- I must warn you that I'm a very demanding man. - he said.

\- This sounds just like a cheap novel. \- she laughed.

\- I'm also a very generous man. - he whispered. - I'll help you as much as I can. –

He reached out to her and Bella went after him. They went to a hotel room number 218 and drank some champagne. Ivan spilled some magic powder on the table, made a line, and then took a hundred-dollar bill. He rolled the bill and put it in his nose. He snorted the white powder and loudly exhaled. He also offered it to Bella. She shook her head off.

\- As you wish. - he commented. - But, did you know that Sigmund Freud was using cocaine? All modern anesthetics, even lidocaine, are cocaine derivatives. Good, old Sigmund, he surely know how to live... -

Bella's heart was clenching. She just wanted to escape that room, that hotel, the city, the country. But Calandria was firmly standing all around her and nobody could escape it. She took the straw made out of the hundred dollar bill and snorted the white powder.

Ivan opened a black, business briefcase. It contained chains, whips and similar toys which were completely strange to her. She got to know them quite well that night.

The night was long and cold. At three o'clock after midnight, Ivan lit a cigarette. He gave Bella the hundred dollar bill, a bit stained from the cocaine.

\- That's it? - Bella asked

\- You're welcome. - answered Ivan.

\- I thought you would help me. I thought you'd find me a job. With this money I can live for maybe two or three weeks, and that's it. - she said.

\- I can't help you. -

\- You can. But you won't. -

\- Come on, honey, take the money that you earned and leave. You are testing my patience. -

It was her last conversation with Ivan. Bella went out of the hotel room number 218.

The strong wind was blowing outside, carrying a pleasant breath of late spring. The street lights were glowing with incredible strength, and the sounds were dull and muffled. The white powder was still dancing inside of her head. Still unaware of everything that is happening around her, she just went home and laid in bed. She fell asleep at dawn, and woke up late in the afternoon.

The day was gloomy and heavy. The white powder had stopped working and Bella felt that her whole body was aching. She looked at the bill in her hand. She will pay off a weekly rent and still have some money to buy bread. But what will happen then? She got up, washed her face and left the apartment. She bought one third of a bread loaf and ate it. She was wandering through the Calandrian square while observing the countless beggars on the streets. A gypsy woman in a colorful dress got all up in her face and roughly took her hand.

– Let me look at your palm, let me see your fate! - said the gypsy.

Bella silently pulled her hand back and came across two old men playing chess.

\- There will be a war. - said one of them.

– No, there won't. - said the other. – The ghosts will help us. Tonight is Walpurgis Night. -

Bella was breaking down. She ran to the park, sat down on the bench and silently began to cry. The Walpurgis Night is a big holiday in Calandria. There will be a magnificent masquerade ball in the city square. Spirits will come down to Earth. The great Loa of the dead, the great spirit of Baron Samedi, will drink rum with people. The dead will dance with the living. And they will help them. For the first time in her life, at the Walpurgis Night on April 30, 2017, she had no strength to be part of a great celebration that can bring humans closer to gods.

So Bella sat on the bench and cried while the darkness was falling. People under masks were coming out on the streets. Regardless of the crisis, the Walpurgis Night was more attended than ever. At one point, there was a power cut and the city has fallen into complete darkness. Illuminated only by the modest light of the candles, the magnificent masks didn't stop dancing. Bella had only one more cigarette. She lit it up. She took a plastic glass that someone had thrown next to the bench, picked it, raised it up to the sky and said: - Well, baron Samedi Veve, let's cheers to our fucked up future! –

Suddenly, she saw a man dressed in a black cloak, with a white Venetian mask on his face. He was reaching his hand out to her.

\- Come with me if you want to live. - he said.

\- Arnold, is that you? - she laughed.

- Close enough. My name is Adam. I want to help you, from the bottom of my heart. - said the man under the mask. Bella observed his hands: a magnificent silver ring in the shape of a goat's head was shining on his fingers dressed in white leather gloves. Bella took him by the hand. He was walking with confidence and she was following, until they sat down at a nearby fast food restaurant. Bella was suspicious.

\- Take off your mask. - she said.

\- Of course. I have to tell you something first. You know, I was a poor young man from Roubaix. I've been trying to graduate philosophy in Paris while I was financing my studies by driving a cab. Indeed, it was an unnecessary torture. I don't even know why I did it, but I did it, and I've been highly motivated in doing it. I was dreaming that, someday, I will succeed. I thought I'll be a prominent professor of philosophy. PhD or something. I believed in an American dream. Yes...in twenty-first century, in a twisted, filthy society, in a civilization which is one step away from the grave. Funny, I know! I'm funny, and my dreams were funny. Deep down inside, I was aware of that.

Of course, I had a terrible mental breakdown when I saw how the world actually works. One evening, while I was walking alone along the street, all of a sudden, a strange thing happened. It wasn't evening anymore. It was daylight. And I wasn't in Paris at all! I was standing in front of a table where Mad Hatter's tea party was held.

There was a Mad Hatter...and...oh, what a madness...on his left side there sat a talking piglet, and on the right side \- March Hare. Out of pure entertainment, those strange creatures have sent me to Calandria to be its mayor! - said Adam.

\- You are Adam! The Adam! Former Mayor of Calandria! The whole city thinks you're dead! - she shouted.

- Pssst, someone will hear you...Wait, please... Let me tell you the full story. When they sent me to Calandria, I had no idea where I was or what should I do. For Mad Hatter, my confusion was the funniest part of his game. But, I couldn't be the mayor. I didn't know how to do that. On that night, I think it was Saturday eve, I was sitting by the fireplace and I was praying to the ghosts to save me. And, then, as you remember, the fire broke out. I ran towards the exit, but the metal safe that had fallen prevented me from escaping the flame. The intense fall opened the safe. It was full of diamonds. I quickly pulled myself together, picked up the precious rocks and put it in a bag, but I wasn't quick enough. The fire caught me. - after he said that, he slowly took the mask off. The right side of his face was covered with scars.

- My God! - screamed Bella.

\- I'm a Beast now, dear. But I'm a happy Beast. I've bought a house on the outskirts of Calandria and hid myself away from everyone. And I swore that I will help someone in need the same way that ghosts have helped me. Well, not exactly the same way, but...I will help you. And I'm not asking for anything in return. -

Bella went with Adam that night. He took her to his place.

\- This will be your room. \- he said, pointing to a spacious bedroom. - My room is upstairs. -

Bella didn't know how to thank him. In fact, during all these years, she knew only one way of showing gratitude, but it was something that Adam has never asked her to do.

Indeed, it was a glorious twist of fate. After a while, Adam became both a God and a King of hers. She no longer felt the need to thank anyone, or to justify the admiration she felt for him. She was finally liberated and didn't have to do anything in return. But this time, she wanted to. And it happened.

It happened and it was different, gentle, deep, and beauteous. It was like a dream. It was love.

And after all, Bella was looking at her reflection in the mirror, smiled and alive, taken from the edge of misery, saved and reborn.

Character is destiny. And the character of the former beauty named Bella was a wolf ready to devour itself with the despair and pessimism of the human weakness. The weakness that was fettering her, that eventually have made her a woman, humiliated and contemptible, but also voluptuous and cunning, was a mark that could stigmatise her as a small Calandrian whore. Before Adam, she believed in a theory that life is just chaos and luck. If you are born as a slave, you'll die in the cotton field, no matter what you are ready to do to change the destiny that cursed you by birth. Before Adam, Bella surrendered because the fight had no purpose. After Adam, it seemed to her that everything was exactly like Machiavellus used to say: the destiny exists only when there is no male power to stop it.

But then, one Monday, she told Adam that she has always wanted to become a writer. Adam encouraged her and arranged her a business meeting with a publisher from Paris. Calandria was still starving, but Bella sat in the train and went to Paris to become a writer thanks to someone else's diamonds. She seemed to have forgotten the night when she was raising her empty cup and toasted the great Baron Samedi, the ruler of the dead, desperately asking for help from the ghosts. She forgot that she should also help someone in return for all the goods that the ghosts had given her. When it comes to forgetfulness, she was not the only one. Whole Calandria was drowning in filth and inhumanity. That is why the ghosts decided to avenge to the Calandrians for their selfishness.

While Bella was in Paris, a war began in Calandria. It was April 30, 2018 when Calandria was bombed. That night was the Walpurgis Night when Adam died while dancing at the masquerade ball.

After Calandria's crash, there was no record of whether Bela was still alive. There was no record of where she went or how she lived. There was only one book left behind, sold in only 250 copies. On its first page, it was written:

"To all the beasts that are actually kings.

Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! "

Unlike the famous legend, Bella was not the Beauty and Adam was not the Beast. Nevertheless, history had been neglected, and the legend was transformed into a fairy tale that beats the death. Who or what Bella used to be, remained blurred. But one thing was quite certain: Adam was the man who stopped the fate.

 "Stand up, damned of the Earth", lyrics of "The Internationale"
