Alina sank to the floor right next to the chair where her brother was sitting and began to cry. But even her sobs were inaccessible to Kostya’s hearing.
Pity, bitterness, hopelessness… all this overwhelmed the girl. Why did fate treat him this way? For what? First the parents, and then she… Although, no, she is alive. Mom and dad aren’t around. They died when Alina and Kostya were nineteen. She remembered that terrible day perfectly… as if in reality, as if it was repeating itself in her memory even now, after the so-called death.
It was summer. Heat. Alina came back from her exam. She was then graduating from food college. Kostya is not a coward, he did not run away from the army, in those years he served Russia somewhere in the Ryazan region. So the girl lived alone with her parents. Having returned from the exam, she lay down on the sofa and fell asleep. A phone call woke her up. She immediately felt that he was not kind. That’s what it turned out to be: they called from the hospital – my father and mother crashed near Berdsk. Since then, she has already lived for four years with her only relative, her brother, earning a living, being in fact the head of the family. True, Kostya himself was also not known as a slob and got a job at the same factory as Alina, as a truck driver, delivering «Kirieshki» throughout Western Siberia.
After the death of her parents, the girl increasingly began to show strange abilities: as if she could see someone else’s future using cards, all the food she prepared had the desired effect, and, oh, horror, she learned to make fire by snapping her fingers. This is how Alina began to do without matches, the quality of which was simply skimped on by manufacturers. True, the girl began to use magic sparks only after the flashing fragment of one such match hit her in her left eye with all the ensuing consequences. And it’s not worth talking about cutlets with love spells and hangover cabbage rolls. And all these miracles are at the behest of the pike, Alinochka’s desire.
Remembering her extraordinary gift, the girl decided to try to set fire to her brother. If she succeeds, she will quickly heal him with the help of her own homemade jelly. But her magic turned out to be invisible, like herself. A fireball the size of a tennis ball flew through Kostya’s chest, and then through the monitor, and then went out completely, hitting the wall.
– Cool! – Alina smiled to herself. – Invisible fire is an original thing, isn’t it?
Two days ago she would not have started making such jokes, but now she had no time for that. Well, at least someone would have noticed and understood that she was alive, but no: her brother is killed and thinks that she is no longer in the world.
The girl was offended and went into her room through the wall. What’s wrong with that? If slippers do not fit on your feet, then why not overcome fifteen centimeters of concrete rock? She imagined that the wall was parting in front of her, and… she succeeded!
When Alina was five years old, she kept asking her mother: what was there in the thick walls. Mom answered that the brownies lived there, and there was no point in disturbing them. Now, when she grew up, she saw with her own eyes – nothing special: grayness, dust and not a single poltergeist.
It’s good to be dead. From time to time. You go wherever you want. But how terrible it is when no one sees you, and you cannot turn on the light in the room, put on your shoes and simply pick up a telephone receiver or an automatic pencil.
