The girl arrived in the morning at the Sibirsky Bereg factory, where she had been working as a technologist for three years. Just think, the whole country ate crackers and beer snacks, the quality of which it controlled. In general, many technologists worked at the factory: two for each workshop. But in the fall, Alina was unlucky: her partner went on maternity leave, and the poor thing had to work for two until a replacement was found.
From birth she had a heart with a defect, that is, with a defect, and the double load did not benefit her health. In winter, the director, however, took pity on the unfortunate Alina who overworked and paid for her to go to a sanatorium for the Christmas holidays. Treatment and rest are wonderful, but when, upon returning, double work fell on her again, all the results of healing baths and procedures went down the drain.
The overworked technologist only dreamed of going on vacation to the Black Sea when she got to leave. It didn’t work out. Alina’s heart couldn’t stand it. It has always malfunctioned until today. There’s nothing you can do if you were born sick.
The last thing the girl remembered when she was conscious was the line for packaging fried kirieski. She stood by the belt and carefully watched as the finished product poured into a large basket, but suddenly her vision grew blurry, she clutched her heart, feeling someone stick a thick stake into her chest and turn it. A gentle male voice muttered in her head; at first she thought it was her brother’s, but he spoke not in Russian, but in some similar language. In Ukrainian, or something. The man repeated the same words. It seemed as if he was calling someone or weaving a spell. And then she saw him, a stranger: a tall, broad-shouldered, blond-haired man in something blue, like a sweatshirt, and tight leather pants, his gaze full of fear: his yellow eyes, distorted with horror, like those of an owl, looking straight at her, the victim. His gaze cannot touch, but at that moment it seemed to the girl that these amber eyes with black pupils see right through her, feel every internal organ, and it is because of this that her arms and legs refuse to move, not the slightest sound comes out of her open mouth, her lungs as if covered in cement, they stop breathing, and only the defective valve in the heart begins to work furiously. The stranger took her hand and whispered: «Calm down’… But the girl was still scared, and… opening her eyes, she found herself at home lying on the bed and for some reason immediately decided that everything that happened to her was death.
Why she thought that is not clear. Death is something that no one can describe. Everyone experiences her, but having met her, no one has ever had the happiness of returning to the living and telling their descendants about everything. Alina didn’t think long. There’s nothing to wiggle around here: a heart rupture, and that’s it, the end of life, and the foreigner in a long blue dress is an ambulance orderly who tried to pump her out. And now her soul, having remembered its last appearance, says goodbye to the house where she lived for almost a quarter of a century. How did the talkers broadcast on the radio? The soul wanders around the home for three days, walks around the world for forty, and then looks for a new body.
Mirror. Once upon a time it reflected her, a tall, thin, not very beautiful girl with an oval face, a narrow nose, and shoulder-length black hair with dyed strands. Now in the mirror one could only see jars of cosmetics, which Alina forgot to close in the morning: she was in a hurry to get to work. It’s strange why the mirror doesn’t reflect the tall, narrow-shouldered Tatar girl? Was she really dead? Is she no longer there? She will never turn on the TV on the opposite wall of the room, and the bed will no longer be useful to her, and in the family photo above her head, her brother will draw with a felt-tip pen exactly the same red cross as above her parents, aunt and grandparents.
Taking a breath, the girl went into her brother’s room. Anyone, he just has to look at her, living, breathing, talking, thinking. Even if she is not able to put on slippers or find her reflection in the mirror.
Afraid of making a lot of noise, Alina crept up to the chair where Kostya was sitting and put her hands on her brother’s shoulders. Wow, mother-of-pearl varnish, on the index finger of the right hand, slightly chipped. This is a small work-related ’injury’ after the girl tested the strength of a closed bag of crackers shortly before her death.
Alina’s twin brother, Kostya, a short, heavy-set brunette, very unlike his sister, by the way, was sitting at the computer, constantly distracted from his work. Typical gamer brother pose, however, this time something was different. In his left hand the guy was holding not a cup of coffee, but a half-drunk bottle of cheap vodka, and next to the keyboard lay three black crackers from the kind his sister had roasted in the oven a couple of days ago. It’s clear and without words – he tried to drown his grief in vodka.
The girl read the text of the message that was written by her own, yes, her brother.
You, friends, are probably waiting for a letter from Alina. Alas, there is no point in doing this. Because she is no longer there. She died. At work. She was very sick, and did not tell anyone about it, did not show her weakness.
Then she was unable to read and grabbed Kostya by the shoulders with both hands and tried to shake and scream: «What are you doing? Here I am! Next to you!» But… he didn’t even feel the touch of her hands?!
– Kostya, what are you writing? – the girl whispered, hopelessly dropping her hands, – I’m alive, Kostya.
But the answer to her was only the lines in the letter.
Now I have no last close person.
– Kostya, how can you?
Why doesn’t he hear? Why is he writing this! And he will also send it over the Internet to all of Alina’s best friends. And none of them will write a single line anymore, they will all suffer and cry for their untimely departed friend. But she is alive! Hello! Maybe we’ll even be able to have some fun when we get out of this strange story with invisibility. What if a magic cap or robe just fell on her at the factory. Everyone thinks she is dead, but she continues to live.
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.
