First chapter of the story.
Audio at the bottom.
Chapter {1}
{In Hell’s Basement}
Natasha my love, you’re rapidly bleeding out. Your delicate and beautiful body has been pierced by treacherous bullets. Your precious life is slipping away and there’s nothing I can do. We are all helplessly trapped in this basement, Dmitry, you and I.
Please my dear, hold my hand and call me Mr. Pickles as much as you like. Just do it for me…
I won’t tell you to stop… call me as you like, do as you please. I’ll do anything… just come back to me, my love. This is all my fault, I regret the moment that I accepted to do this job. We could be having holidays in Bali as you insisted, but I didn’t listen to you. I’m a damn fool!
Why… I curse you destiny!
You’ve put us in this precarious situation without an exit. These thugs knew we were coming, it’s all been staged. I won’t be surprised if the police is on the way here, filthy pigs.
“They are all in this together!” I shout.
“Bratan, this door won’t hold for long, they are coming!” Dmitry says. “Do something fast! We are cornered here!”
“Bang, Bang, Bang”
A shower of bullets falls on the black iron door. The door is thick, but not thick enough to remain intact. A couple of vicious bullets make it through, leaving behind small little holes on the metallic door. The iron door now looks like some kind of shiny and metallic object, made out of fancy Gruyère cheese. It’s just waiting there, to be cut, sliced and eaten.
By The Butcher.
Inside the room, stray bullets chaotically ricochet against different surfaces. One hits a Chinese flower base, instantly fragmenting it to small little pieces of nothing. Another one hits Dmitry in the leg, it went straight to the bone. He is now in terrible pain trembling on the floor.
The rest of the ammo randomly hits the walls, causing no further damage. The bullets just keep chaotically raining on the door nonstop, like a vicious unstoppable storm of doom.
It’s all here, right in front of you.
A rough and old voice outside the door shouts, “Stop shooting, damn it”. The fireworks momentarily stop.
“You dumb fucks, we need them alive.” An old man says.
He knocks on the door with his closed fist.
“Surrender now, hands high in the air. We’ll let you live, I promise.” He shouts.
The three friends inside the room are hiding under a metallic desk, looking for shelter. They are trying to escape the fury and wrath of Mr. Popovsky. He’s the big fish in town, hardcore Mafioso who owns everything and everybody.
It’s a well-known fact that you just, don’t fuck, with him! Unless you’re retarded, if you’re stupid enough to do it, only a very painful death awaits you. There is nothing else for you but… a very slow and agonizing death. The Soviet Mafioso from Rublevka will chop your head with an old rusty butcher knife. It’s his construct by megalomaniac design.
Precarious destiny unfolding.
It’s just an illusion.
These three cunning friends thought that they could cheat destiny and life itself. Dmitry, Natasha and Mr. Pickles, thought that they were smarter and wiser than the old man. Riding on Pegasus towards the scorching sun, they tried to choke destiny with their very own two hands. They are youthful and fearless warriors, hopeless dreamers perhaps.
Regretfully they failed miserably.
Now this is their most deserved judgment, all in the hands of Mr. Popovsky, The Butcher. He has billions of dollars in his bank account yet, there is something money can’t buy. At least for him… it’s respect. A priceless commodity that’s scarce and very hard to get.
In the criminal underworld the only thing worth anything is respect, either you have it or you don’t. When three people openly try to steal from him and betray his trust. It doesn’t matter if it’s a million dollars or simply a lunch-box with a peanut butter sandwich inside. Stealing is stealing, doesn’t matter what nor how.
He can’t let this insult go unpunished.
They all have to pay, one way or the other they all do.
He personally likes to hear them scream as he tortures his victims. Mr. Popovsky is very talented in the ways of pain, he didn’t get to be the big boss just by sitting on his ass doing nothing. He got to the top by stepping on a pile full of rotting corpses and by getting his hands soaked in the tainted blood of his enemies. The psychopath even enjoys it.
Hence the nickname, The Butcher.
“Come on children, say you’re sorry and I’ll let you live.” The old man says while he deviously laughs. “Ha-Ha-Ha”
Natasha is on the floor bleeding out, minute by minute… her consciousness is slowly slipping away. Her promised dreams of remembrance will never come to fruition. She will soon cease to exist forever, and there is nothing to be done about it.
Or is there?
“Don’t die! You cannot leave me here! You promised to be with me forever.” Mr. Pickles says.
She puts her hand on his face, slowly caressing his cheek. “This is not the end my love, life is but a dream, remember.” She dimly whispers with her dying breath. Her delicate hand suddenly falls lump on the cold gray floor. She’s dead…
Salty and sorrowful tears slowly run down Mr. Pickles’ face. His reality is now completely shattered, or at least what he knows as reality. To him, everything is fake, even death itself. He regrets the moment, before the moment.
When he naively decided to be clever enough to steal from Mr. Popovsky. He got too cocky for his own good, now this is the result. A great and irreparable loss that can never be fixed. This is him, in his darkest moment of truth.
“Dmitry, do you have the bag?” Mr. Pickles says. “Did we retrieve the package?” His face is red like a pepper.
Dmitry is in pain, he can’t think clearly. Exactly in this particular moment in time, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the package. “Fuck, I don’t know. The bag’s here somewhere, just open it.” He replies.
The old man knocks on the metallic door.
“knock, knock.”
He says, “Children, anybody home?” Ha-Ha, he laughs. “I give you one minute to surrender, and then we’re coming in.” This is his final ultimatum. Take it or leave it.
Mr. Pickles is looking inside the bag, there’s a complete set of fake passports, two new and unopened smartphones, a fat wad of American dollars, and a suspicious brick wrapped in gray plastic. This is what he furiously desires, the package. This was meant to be sold in the black-market to the highest bidder. This is what they naively intended to steal from Mr. Popovsky.
Absolute failure… or perhaps not.
This has now become… a desperate suicide mission.
Righteous revenge in a box, a priceless fancy brick made out of Octanitrocubane. The most expensive and most difficult explosive to create, still very experimental. Nobody’s able to mass manufacture, just yet. It packs a murderous punch, speeds up to 10,000 M/S, temperatures up to 6,000 Celsius, pressures up to 300,000 Bar. This can literally melt a building absolutely in the blink of an eye.
In layman’s terms, dynamite on fucking steroids for horses.
“Don’t do it Bratan, you’ll blow up the whole building.” Dmitry says while trying to tourniquet his wounded leg.
”I want to live, there are still many beautiful Ukrainian prostitutes that I want to meet.” He winks.
Mr. Pickles deviously smiles. “I’m going to blow up the whole neighborhood with this.” Ha-Ha he says.
A cold ghostly shiver runs down Dmitry’s spine, he feels his very own human mortality catching up to him. All those years spent in Siberian Alcatraz were for nothing. All that pain and suffering, was absolutely in vain.
“Curse you destiny.” He shouts.
Yet he’s not afraid to die. Just like Mr. Pickles, he’s a survivor. There is always a very beautiful moment in time when, each one of us fortunately or unfortunately dies. If this is the day that happens, he will fearlessly choke destiny with his own two hands.
He will ride on the back of Pegasus towards the scorching sun, and ultimately reach blissful nirvana.
Dmitry grabs a shotgun, he looks at Mr. Pickles with a very serious and thoughtful face. “Life is but a dream… always remember that. We are just but… helpless witnesses of time”
Mr. Pickles quietly smiles and slowly nods one time. This is their secret agreement, words needn’t be spoken.
“Yes indeed my brother.” He replies.
Dmitry reloads the shotgun, “Natasha and I, will be waiting for you Bratan, don’t be late.” He says, and then… like a mad Kamikaze he furiously runs towards the door fearlessly shooting his weapon. One bang after the other.
“Die, you motherfuckers.” He shouts as he runs.
A mad spectacle of violent fireworks has just begun.
The bullets from his shotgun randomly pierce through the wall. Lost bullets ricochet all around the room, sparkling and flashing as they hit metallic surfaces.
Time is still, it’s all silent.
Dmitry’s entire life is shown before his eyes.
He sees the place where he grew up, a small village in Siberia. The forest in the Taiga completely surround his shabby home, the sweet scent of ghostly birch trees charm his mind. His caring mother, tenderly feeds him a spoon of Borsch. The smell of burning wood inside the stove warmly entice his delicate senses.
It’s all in the past… what’s happening now?
Unfortunate luck is in front of him.
He sees death, in the shape of an old man. Mr. Popovsky is pointing a machine gun right at Dmitry’s face. Slowly the bullets starts rolling, instantly the weapon bursts an endless and mercilessly rain of furious death on him.
It’s all over in milliseconds.
“Mother this is how I end.” He says as he falls on the floor unconscious. His heart stops beating, life slips away in an instant. A quick and almost painless way to end his journey.
“Mother here I come.” He mumbles.
There’s a pool of vivid red blood on the floor. The old man steps on it, he’s making sure Dmitry is completely dead. No one could survive the machine gun, but just in case he makes sure that he’s not breathing.
He kicks away the shotgun with his left foot.
“Come out, come out where ever you are Mr. Pickles.” He says with his old and coarse voice.
Mr. Pickles stands up, hands high in the air.
“I give up.” He says.
Is that all?
His heart is madly beating, blood is rushing through his veins. This is the moment before the moment, when he inevitably dies. Revenge is sweet like pistachio ice-cream eaten with a silver spoon on a Sunday morning. Ecstasy and pleasure will intertwine into a single feeling when the old man finally ceases to exist.
All in the hand or Mr. Pickles.
Push the red button.
The big red button is temptingly waiting.
One minute away till combustion starts, and then… we shall all be free.
Wake up, wake up little butterfly.
Just wake up already.
