Priestess Itfut. Вадим Зеланд

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ doubt out of habit. But then he got a slap. The maid was supposed to be left untouched until it had finally been determined who she really was: ‘mana’ or simply an edible maid.

      Matilda’s situation was aggravated by the fact that she was desperate to go to the toilet. ‘At least I only want a number one for now’, she thought. ‘But there’s the thing. How to go about it? What sex are they, I wonder?’ She had not observed any outward indication of gender. And then she was struck by a terrible thought. They might not only eat her but abuse her body to their hearts’ content, who knows in what awful ways.

      She trotted along hurriedly in her platform shoes and stubbed her toe against a rock. The poor girl would have given anything to be back in her own world again. ‘I’ll never be capricious again.’ she thought. ‘I’ll be obedient in everything. I’ll never take off my wonderful bow ever again. I’ll do anything, just send me back!’

      Remembering the bow, she experienced again that same weird feeling in her back. It was not clear why, but it seemed to give her strength and for some reason caused Matilda to feel that she had the ability to control events. It was as if she could choose what came into being and what did not.

      She suddenly realized that she was separate from everything that surrounded her and all that was happening to her. She was the reality in which she found herself. She existed of herself, independently just as reality did. Matilda suddenly understood, not with her mind but with all her being, that here, she had ended up in a book and she was supposed to wander through the pages playing out the plot.

      It was like a movie, which you watch as you immerse yourself in a fictional reality. If you concede and give yourself over to what is happening, you have no other choice than to play the role assigned to you. But what if Matilda chose not to? What if she remained separate and the movie separate from her?

      ’Can this really be my reality?’ thought Matilda. ‘No, this is not my reality. Something is wrong. This kind of thing happens in dreams, but this is not a dream. Although what difference does it make, for God’s sake? Everything will be all right with me, whatever happens. I don’t know how, but I know I’ll be ok. I have no other choice. What other option is there? That’s what I’ve decided, period!’

      Immediately after this thought, something happened. To her surprise, Matilda noticed a slanting black strip flash from the sky down to the ground as if some unknown force had turned the page on reality. The gray ones seemed to pay no attention to it and continued their same grim procession as if nothing had happened. Matilda, however, suddenly felt much better and was confident that from now on everything would be all right.

      Meanwhile, they reached the buildings they had been heading towards. It was not a town or a village but something quite odd. Everywhere, there were simple, cubic houses with smooth, gray walls made from a material Matilda did not recognize. The houses were interspersed with empty recesses with the same cubic frame. And there were stairways everywhere, some leading up to the rooftops, others down into pits, and still others twisting senselessly and disappearing into nowhere. The fanciful intertwining of cubic structures and niches along with the many stairways created an absurd scene.

      By an indirect route, crossing from one stairway to another, they exited onto what looked to be the only open space, a square, in the middle of which stood a construction, no less strange than anything else in this peculiar place. The construction was a black monolith with an oval perimeter enclosed by protruding columns, which bent gently upwards to form a ribbed dome.

      By all appearances, this was the very same ‘sacred hlevjun’ although its sinister form was more reminiscent of a spaceship. The glamrocks could not have built such a structure themselves, or the rest of the city for that matter.

      In the same moment that the procession approached the megalith, the construction produced a startlingly powerful trumpet sound in a low tone, which permeated the surrounding space. As soon as the sound reached the glamrocks’ ears, they began to fuss and rushed inside. Matilda followed them with a mixture of curiosity and fear.

      The megalith had the same form inside as it did on the outside. The black pillars that extended outwards from the walls rose smoothly upwards into a high dome. A green glow emanated somewhere from a niche near the floor. The floor was black and as smooth as a mirror. The place was empty except for a single element at the center which looked to be a rectangular-shaped altar or plinth made of the same material as the floor. A head was growing up out of the plinth, bald and gray like the glamrocks.

      The head writhed with grimaces not making a sound. The glamrocks surrounded the altar, shoved Matilda inside the circle, fell to their knees and with raised hands began making invocations.

      “Glamo’c! Mana-glamo’c!”

      Without changing its expression from a grimace, the head spoke in a low bass tone.

      “Read gibberish. You must not read the letter. I am mana. I can. But you can’t.

      Mana-veda, mana-sana, mana-una, mana-mana.

      Mana-oma, ata-mana, mana-okha, mana-dana.”

      The glamrocks muttered the mantra obediently repeating the words the head spoke.

      “Mana-oga, makha-mana, mana-osha, mana-shana,” continued the glamorck (obviously, this was him). “Read gibberish.Then you will be full. Don’t do the things that aren’t allowed, otherwise there’ll be a crash!“

      The savages put their heads in their hands and groaned.

      “Aboo! It’s aboo!”

      “Who is mana here?” asked the head. “Who do you need to kiss around here?”

      “Glamo’c! Mana-glamo’c!” they responded and began rubbing their faces along the floor, mercilessly squashing their noses.

      “Praise me!” the glamorc shouted ominously, accompanying the words with horrible grimacing and sending out a monotonous murmur. “О-a-oo-khomm, о-a-oo-homm.”

      “О-a-oo-khomm!” the glamrocks repeated.

      They droned on for a while longer following the head’s lead but then gradually became quiet and turned their gaze to the maid inside the circle. Matilda stood completely at a loss not knowing what to do with herself. They clearly expected her to do something. It was time to take urgent action and as she correctly surmised, it had to be something extraordinary as her authority had diminished rapidly in the presence of the glamorc.

      She was also desperate for the toilet. Matilda could not understand what kind of head this was, whether it was alive, and if so, why it was growing out of the monolith. As she watched, it continued to mumble and grimace. Then Matilda spotted something mechanical about the head. It was periodically repeating the same movements over and over again in a cycle.

      She had nothing to lose. It was now or never. If she did not take the situation into her own hands this very second, she was finished. Without further hesitation, Matilda climbed up onto the altar, undid the zipper on her jumpsuit, crouched down and relieved herself right on top of the talking head.

      The glamrocks stared at her completely dumbfounded, a look of indescribable horror appearing on their faces, formerly devoid of any facial expression. They observed the entire spectacle without making a single sound. Having completed the sacrilege, the diva rose and calmly zipped herself back up again. In that moment, the head began sending out sparks, then it twitched and with a fading mumble stalled, completely paralyzed in a pitiful grimace.

      Matilda understood now. Standing on the plinth, she gave the savages a triumphant look. Their glamorc was СКАЧАТЬ