Ash flew from the end of the cigarette and gathered into a gray mass. Julian stood by the window on the stairs between the fourth and fifth floors, looking at the night city lit by street lamps. Cold air entered the room in thick swirls, washing away the smell of tobacco. He rarely smoked in the stairwell of his building — he didn't want to disturb his neighbors — but today was an exception. Today was September 10.
He took a drag, filling his lungs with smoke. His hand, holding the cigarette, was pale and milky, covered with a lace of blue veins. The rest of him was the same. His hair was so light that it seemed silver in the dim light, and it was long. On his nose were glasses with thick lenses that covered his gray eyes.
Birthday. Twenty-nine. A time when others already have nice homes, cars, families, children, some obvious life path. And he... nothing, except perhaps the latter.
Although... this morning started with a pleasant surprise. When he entered his office at the Department of Middle Age and Byzantine Studies, he saw a small bouquet of yellow asters and a jar of homemade jam on the table. There was also a card signed by everyone: from the head of the department to the female lab assistants. The card had a drawing of a bear in a robe with lecture notes in its paw. He smiled then, feeling a warm wave of gratitude. They were good... at least they tried to be. Then there were the routine greetings, a few interesting questions from students after the lecture on the Thracian dynasty, coffee, and a heated debate with a graduate student about the Holy Roman Empire and the reign of Otto I in particular.
Everything seemed to be fine. Very good, even.
He exhaled smoke from body, and his thoughts, blurred like his vision without glasses, returned to the past. To the abstraction that had haunted him since he first learned about it. "Sick man of Europe" That's what they used to call the Ottoman Empire on the eve of its collapse. A body decaying while still alive. A conglomerate of diseased organs that could no longer function as a single entity.
Julian Kushnir, was that man. Not literally, of course. Physically, he was almost healthy, except for skin that burned in five minutes in the sun, eyes that failed him every time he tried to make out a bus number, and his general physical weakness. However, the disease was in his very essence.
He was an anachronism. His mind lived in the past, in the 12th century, near the walls of Constantinople, in the monasteries of Mount Athos, in the intrigues of the French court. He could talk for hours about dynastic crises or dogmatic disputes, feeling like every historical figure was an old friend. But the modern world, the living reality outside his window, was incomprehensible to him. He did not understand the logic of social media, experienced physical discomfort at noisy parties, and was confused by simple, everyday conversations. He was like a mosaic accidentally inserted into bright, kitschy graffiti.
The rain intensified, continuing to tap on the roofs of cars and window sills. Julian finished his cigarette and threw the butt into a jar standing in the corner. He frowned at his glasses. Climbing the stairs to his apartment, it occurred to him that there was a cake waiting in the refrigerator. A chocolate one. Like the ones his mother used to bake.
For some reason, the yellow spot from the hallway did not cross the threshold when he opened the door, forming a clear dark border. He did not notice this.
"For today, the modern world can be forgotten," Julian thought as he stepped inside.
His foot landed on the familiar carpet in the hallway. But for some reason, it was incredibly soft, as if sinking under foot. He took another step, trying to regain his balance, and reached for the switch on the left to figure out the reason.
But... his fingers did not touch the cold plate. His hand passed through it; for some reason, the wall simply did not exist. He did not understand anything, only felt his body falling steadily downward.
"What?!" he cried out.
Julian did not have time to bend his arms to break his fall. His body, light and frail, hit the floor with a muffled sound. Pain, sharp and intense, shot from his chest through all his ribs, knocking the air out of him.
At that moment, the floor beneath him ceased to be the familiar linoleum. It was alive. A wet, sticky swamp that quickly began to envelop his body. The professor realized that it had seeped through the thin fabric of his sweater and jeans, reaching his skin—a vile, slimy touch, as if he were being wrapped in giant slobbery tongues.
"What the fuck?!" His scream was short and hoarse.
Frightened and unable to comprehend what was happening, he closed his eyes. The thick sludge pushed his glasses aside, filling the hollows of his eyelids, creeping into the corners of his eyes, trying to seep under them. Julian opened his eyes in pain, and the sludge, consisting of countless tiny hard particles, like sand or crushed bones, rushed into them. A pain spasm, sharper than any knife, pierced his eyeballs, radiating to the very depths of his skull. Roaring, his mouth opened wide, and a stream of coarse, earthy mass took advantage of this, filling his throat.
His body, twisted into an arc, rose in a convulsive attempt to cough up the filth. But instead of air, a stream rushed into his lungs, filling his trachea, expanding, tearing it apart from the inside with cold pressure, then spreading through his bronchi, filling every alveolus with this foul-smelling sludge. Oxygen stopped flowing.
His nostrils spasmodically dilated, trying to draw in at least a drop, but the stream immediately filled them too. Julian felt the thick, grainy matter penetrate deep into his nasal passages and sinuses, biting into the mucous membrane with painful particles. The pressure in his head became unbearable, as if it were being inflated with a pump, but for some reason he just couldn't lose consciousness.
Julian struggled, breaking free blindly, like a beast. His hands, covered in the trap, tried to push away, but they just sank deeper, meeting no resistance, sinking more and more. With incredible, predatory force, the blackness pressed on the soft tissue under his nails, tearing them apart, pushing the nails themselves away — a dull, bursting pain that darkened his eyes, which were already blind.
Then it reached his ears. Viscous streams crept into his ear canals, drowning out the last sounds — his own wheezing and gurgling — with a monotonous hum coming from inside his head. The pain in his eardrums was unbearable; they were about to burst.
He... stopped considering himself human.
Julian was aware of its every movement, every advance through his organs. It filled his stomach, pressed on his diaphragm, enveloped his intestines, moved down, up, sideways, eating away at every cavity. The pressure in his skull reached its peak. The sludge seeped through the smallest openings, enveloping his brain membranes, squeezing into the furrows and convolutions, wiping his consciousness like a sponge.
He didn't have time to think anything else. A final, silent spasm ran through his body, which collapsed into nothingness. Then darkness. Complete, total, final.
***
White flames. Faces emerged from them. Mouth after mouth, crooked and silent, shouted something. The voices merged into a hum, like a swarm of mad bumblebees. Julian caught individual words, but they did not make sense: "...always...", "...mistake...", "...look!". One voice, female, piercing and familiar, stood out from the others: "Juli..." He reached out his hand, and the flame licked his fingers, not burning him, but leaving a sensation of cold honey on his skin.
The blue sky, deep, bottomless. It was too close, like a glass roof under which he was trapped. And then drops began to fall from it, heavy, metallic, and when they hit his body, they shattered into tiny fragments.
People are swimming. The water was not water, but something oily, with a golden tint. They laughed, but their smiles were painted, motionless masks. One of the figures, a woman with long dark hair, turned to him. There were no pupils in her eyes, only two tiny reflections of that same blue sky. She beckoned him with her finger, and he obediently followed, stepping into the water. Suddenly, the idyll shattered. From beneath the painted smiles, from the eyes, from the open mouths of all the people, blood began to flow in a uniform red river. It mixed with the oily water, turning it into a horrible paste. He felt no horror, only a sudden collapse through the film of reality, falling into an abyss where there was no bottom and no top.
Everything spun, broke, and shifted. White flames merged with blood and the blue sky into one bright, crazy spot. Voices turned into screeches, the sound of the surf, the distant ringing of bells. He fell through this whirlwind, and each fragment left its mark on him — a burn, a prick, stickiness.
Suddenly, everything froze.
Light.
It was annoying, very real, living through his eyelids.
Julian Kushnir opened eyes.
And squinted in pain. The light was bluish and hit his pupils, piercing his brain with sharp fragments. He tried unsuccessfully to turn his head, but his neck would not obey.
The associate professor tried to raise his hand to cover his face, to protect himself.
His right hand did not come off the cool surface. The limb was incredibly heavy, weak. He did not feel his muscles, only a dull, aching heaviness in his joints. His bones seemed to have increased their weight a hundredfold.
He focused all his will on this action.
Shoulder jerked, forcing a hoarse groan from him. His elbow bent with a crunching sound. Fingers, dead and numb, barely moved.
Slowly, unresponsive hand crawled upward. He felt every inch of the way as a separate torture. When his fingers, trembling and bumping into each other, finally closed his eyes, it brought no relief. The pressure on eyeballs was painful, but worse was the touch of own skin — cold, alien, as if he were touching someone else.
He lay there gasping for breath, trying to understand what had happened, feeling a desperate urge to wash his body, from his brain to his toes.