The panel buildings, painted in all the colors of the rainbow, stood impassively amidst the oak forest. They soared several hundred meters high, as if trying to reach the clouds with their rooftops, equipped with helicopter landing pads—clouds shimmering with every hue of a watercolor palette, diluted in warm water and poured into the clear mold of the sky.
Rain was falling, and I walked down the alley soaked in dark hues, wearing maroon-black-white sneakers ordered from a neighboring country, black shorts, a pink T-shirt, and a purple backpack slung over my shoulders. The streetlights hadn’t been installed yet, and everything around me reminded me of her.
My thoughts were immersed in a boiling pot of water, held there by long metal tongs wielded by an unskilled chef, until my head throbbed with pain. In one part of my skull and then another, an inner fencer delivered pinpoint stabs to my weakest mental spots.
Just yesterday, I had walked hand in hand with her through the evening park: a warm breeze caressed our faces, and the sprouting grass tickled our feet and toes, slipping in between them.
Today, I was accompanied by a moss-covered caterpillar-snail, somehow moving at my pace. I crouched down and spoke to it.
“What’s your name, sunshine?” I asked with conviction, peering into her beady black eyes.
“I’m a caterpillar in a snail’s body,” the divine creature replied with a giggling tone, hiding and poking out her small head with antennae every few seconds. “I belong to no genus or species, hee-hee. I’m a faceless creature, like a burned-out icon, and swift like a panther.”
(Her small lips curved into a smile, something like a hard-won joy.)
She continued, softer now, with a painful tone:
“If you want, I can help form your scattered, extinguished coals in the barbecue-pit of your belly into something that will blaze with a powerful orange-black flame.”
“Yes! I do, I do!” I screamed hysterically, hopping in place like a child who’s just been granted their most cherished wish, clapping my hands.
We crawled forward—unbelievably fast, as if a train were chasing us, its warm lantern light pulling us in, only to slash us into blood and flesh with its metal blade.
I crawled on all fours, slicing the oncoming wind with my twig-like hairs, until my companion began to grow, becoming my size—no, even slightly bigger.
We were the perfect duo, complementing each other like the state and the mafia, like bread and butter.
My friend had an incredible gift for transformation—and in the next moment, having latched onto my collar with her hook-legs, a giant yellow-winged butterfly with black speckles across her body carried me above the green forest that stirred the soul with its serenity—toward the roof of a skyscraper.
We landed softly—barely a sound, a gentle touch. It felt comforting to look at buildings devoid of people—I saw no one, the emptiness had swallowed everything. Dark apartments without light, interspersed with curtained penthouse windows, created an atmosphere of despair. I knew nothing awaited me in this world—nothing good or bad, light or dark—only emptiness with veiled memories.
My friend became a little spider, spinning a web down from the sky, straight from the clouds—he landed on my nose and crawled into my eye. Through his bead-like cluster of eyes, I saw the insides of my own memories, marveling at how much my memory resembled compartmentalized apartments in an underground world. My free eye absorbed the glow of the bright orange moon and directed that light toward the chamber about her.
Her name was N.
A beautiful broad face, compact plump lips, and laughing eyes. I only walked with her in company—never alone.
I met her in the fifth grade, a withdrawn, shy boy. She was always with someone, surrounded by friends, but never with a boyfriend. Although, maybe she had someone she kept secret from the others. I didn’t know.
In ninth grade, she began paying attention to me—noticed my beautiful handwriting, my stylish new haircut.
I closed up.
I felt like a clinging bug on the stalk of tall grass, watched by a large, maybe even gigantic, yellow-black spideress, piercing my worthless small soul with her huge eyes.
I tore at myself, tried to conquer my fears—and everything changed by the end of school.
I grew more handsome, bolder—like a pitiful bug turned into a regal tracking prince, galloping into the sunset on a sinew-laced, massive black horse.
Seeing her from afar and approaching, I invited her to ride with me.
She said nothing. Not a word came from the once-lively and loud girl. She couldn’t even meet my gaze—she stared down at my seven-league boots.
Suddenly, she was joined by a bulky, gray, big-eared elephant, a small hissing opossum, and a medium-sized, unremarkable donkey.
With a flick of her hand and a spell I didn’t recognize, she teleported me onto the elephant—a saddle snapped into place beneath me.
In the next instant, she was a lioness. The opossum leapt onto her shoulder, she tucked the donkey under one arm—and we charged toward a stone city, kicking up clouds of dust and trampling the sprouting dark-green grass.
The stone city was small and narrow, its alleys choked with animals.
Spotted giraffes, whose necks reached any end of the city,
dark-blue jellyfish living in the stream
that pierced the city like a feathery arrow,
its banks paved with cobblestones,
and sharp-beaked eagles soaring overhead—
proud and aloof, like a clocktower without clocks, installed near the center.
We entered the city descending from the highlands by a bridge laid with oak planks,
suspended from top shutters by titanium chains that absorbed the sun’s vital rays.
Cheetahs spun around us in a whirlwind,
sniffing and inspecting the items we brought (we had none),
and let us in through an arch
made of dusty, unhewn stone,
with carefully carved words upon it:
WELCOME TO N.’S LITTLE WORLD.
Ten golden-furred lions formed a pyramid in the main square. At the very top, one with an oversized paw flattened a platform for the most dominant and seductive male. The opossum broke away from our group, climbed up the black wet noses sticking out of the pyramid, and reached the summit. After clearing his throat, the leader spoke in a thin voice:
“Do all those present believe in me?”
I made a face of confusion and dissatisfaction.
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” shrieked the animals, bouncing with joy and tearing off their city garments in mad ecstasy.
“Then let the Survival Games begin. The victor shall win N.”
The animals clashed. Jellyfish leapt from the stream, pecking at the first lions entangled in paw and claw combat. Giraffes, their foreheads expanded, used their skulls as battering rams to slam ground fighters into the dirt—chunks of flesh scattering across the cobbles, turning the gray city into gray slop. Proud eagles devoured the spilled joy.
I climbed the central tower in the form of a giant mustachioed cockroach and screamed with such magnitude and force that the entire city shattered into splinters.
Everything perished.
Only the angel N. ascended—with a halo above her head, her translucent naked body hypnotizing me.
We rose higher and higher. Black wings with dirty-gray veins tore forth from the space between metal ribs on my back. In a few seconds, we reached the clouds. Dense, fluffy islands of hope became our thrones. We sat facing each other, and she still avoided my gaze. Everything in her body language screamed how heavy it was for her, yet she remained silent, not offering me a single word.
A a pale silvery thread linked our navels, and shadows formed near it—her family appeared: a small brother, a younger sister, her mother, and a flabby father. They stood beside her, staring at me with a look of torment, as if I were their savior.
The pitiful sight enraged me. I stood up sharply and severed the cord with my claws. Her family, along with her, vanished—as if they had never existed. The clouds disappeared too.
I fell. And if not for my wings—I would have splattered against the ruins of the city, leaving behind acidic insect juice and chunks of coarse meat.
I hovered by her window.
She slept heavily under a fur blanket; only her pale head peeked out from coarse linen.
Through a magnifying glass, I saw her eyeballs twitching under the lids—N. was waking up.
I ordered the cockroach in the room to knock over a cardboard box filled with things. It crashed with a heavy thud, and the shockwave rushed to her ears—waking her.
I pounded on the windowpane with bloodied knuckles—both hands.
N. rose involuntarily—like a marionette controlled by strings from above—put on bright green slippers and approached to close the window, through which cold air was blowing. She didn’t even see me.
Enraged by her indifference, I began stomping the window frame with the soles of my transformed black boots, until I smashed it.
The glass crashed onto the wooden parquet, shattering into tiny shards.
From one of them, a tiny beetle emerged—N.
Bursting into the small apartment, I was startled by the dried-up corpses of her grandparents who had raised her. They were stuck to the leather sofa, locked in an inseparable bony embrace, and the beetle bounced across them like on a mattress, reaching the ceiling. I swiftly unrolled my tongue to one and a half meters, stuck N. to its pinkish tip, and flung her to the center of the room under the cold glow of an electric lamp.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked sternly.
“Meep-meep-meep,” she replied.
I lifted my knee high and slammed her into the floor. Black ooze spread around her corpse, and a soft female voice hissed enticingly:
“Juuuuump! Come on, jump.”
Shedding my clothes and sinew-laced wings, I dove into the unknown.
Crimson and cobalt stars greeted us with blinding brilliance in space. We walked hand in hand, and a translucent mist wrapped our thoughts in utter darkness, veiling our souls like a stage curtain.
D. Avern (Dima Antipov) is a writer from Moscow. His work blends surreal imagery, psychological depth, and lyrical language, often exploring themes of memory, transformation, and hidden worlds. He is currently working on a larger body of fiction that aims to merge visionary storytelling with emotional intensity.
Image: kr.pinterest.com
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Heavy Feather Review 