hand she is marked on Wikipedia as a foreign movie star. It’s possible, of course, that Russians have become accustomed to foreign cinema. And that happens. After all, art is international. Wherever a creative person finds work, that’s where she works. Foreigners were often invited to work in Russian cinema, too.
“And what nationality are the angels?” Athenais, as usual, answered a little arrogantly.
“Don’t fool my head with angels again. You’re alive, you’re real.”
“All angels are alive and real.”
“Do you count the myths alone?”
“You don’t believe in angels?”
“I believe in you, because I see you. By the way, how do I get you to video chat again? Are you in the mood to show yourself to me again? And what did you use the razor for? Don’t tell me the razor is a prop to make a movie.”
“Sometimes a razor is enough to commit suicide,” Athenais replied cryptically.
“You’re not going to kill yourself, are you?”
“No, but others have done it.”
“Who are the others?”
There was a brief silence. Then the chat window was filled with dots. It meant that Athenais was typing a reply.
“Did you know that angels are creepy, cold-blooded, emotionless creatures?”
Communicating with Athenais began to resemble puzzles and riddles. Nikita felt like he was doing a crossword puzzle, not typing the answer.
“You’re an angel yourself.”
“It doesn’t matter?”
“You blacken your own kind.”
“There are exceptions everywhere.”
She’s got a point. Nikita also believed that no one should be labeled or tagged. The quality of people is not determined by gender, age, or nationality. In any category there are both bad and good people. Can the same criteria be applied to the angelic race?
“I was fascinated by your movie about Lucifer’s rebellion,” Nikita confessed.
Athenais must have thought he was flattering her on purpose.
“It wasn’t the movie that impressed you,” she protested. “You were impressed by Lucifer’s beautiful face.”
That’s true! It wouldn’t have looked as good as it did without Athenaïs beauty. But she was perfect for the type. After all, Lucifer (his Old Russian name was Dennitsa) was revered as the most beautiful angel in heaven. It was his beauty that became the apple of discord. The angel became proud and decided that he had to have the world by himself. After all, his beauty was the brightest thing in the world. Because of it, the angel had to lead.
According to the Bible, Lucifer lost his beauty after he fell. But in the movie, the angel remained beautiful. The screenwriter rewrote the Bible quite successfully.
Nikita never would have thought that movies based on the Bible could impress him so much. He thought the Bible was very boring, and suddenly it became vivid. All thanks to the Lucifer episode that was brought to the forefront. The whole history of the world, judging from the movie, revolved around Lucifer’s fall into the sands of Egypt.
In Nikita’s memory, a phrase he had heard somewhere long ago resurfaced:
“How thou hast fallen from heaven, Denitsa, son of the dawn, to become king of the earth…”
Where had he heard it? Something here seems to have been paraphrased, as in the movie. The history of the world has been rewritten in favor of the fallen angel.
Who came up with this? You have to read the credits.
“How does it feel to be a star? Are you very proud of yourself? Do you feel on top of Mount Olympus? Are you looking down on ordinary guys like me?”
“That’s not what you wanted to ask.”
“How do you know?”
“You’ve got other things on your mind.”
“Like what?”
Does she really think she can read minds? That’s too much.
Suddenly Athenais typed out the questions that had really been plaguing Nikita ever since he’d logged on to the website with notes about how crowds of fans had gone berserk after a visit to a movie, staged massacres and acts of vandalism, killed and burned temples, made sacrifices. That’s what he wanted to ask about.
Athenais caught the trend and repeated his own questions:
“What was really going on in the temples? Why had Lucifer rebelled? What made the most beautiful angel of heaven became the devil?”
“I can answer,” Athenais typed at the end of a very long list of shocking questions. “Only you won’t like the answers.”
“Why is it not?”
“You’re human.”
Nikita felt a slight shock. Was the word human a sort of insult? Like, you’re not of the angelic kind. You don’t understand me.
“So what if I am only human?” He got angry.
“There’s a lot that people don’t understand.”
“So tell me! What was going on in the temples your fans destroyed? Why did Lucifer rebel? And, after all, what exorbitant ambition drives movie stars to trade their bodies to get to the top of show business Olympus through the beds of their directors and producers?”
The last question was an insult. The chat broke off instantly. Nikita waited for a complaint to be made to a moderator and to be temporarily blocked. Nervous girls complained even about a compliment if it came from a different user than the one they wanted to chat with. Athenais didn’t complain. She did the meaner thing – she cut off communication with him for the rest of the night. That turned out to be the worst punishment. Nikita had become accustomed to communicating with her as a kind of drug.
Athenais would appear after midnight, like a fairy tale genie released from a bottle, and entertain him with tales half the night like Scheherazade. But now the chat room was empty and boring. The annoying girls that Nikita used to chat with from nothing to do had long since forgotten about him. Too carried away by the movie star, he lost all his girlfriends.
All that was left was to be amused by movies starring Athenais. Nikita clicked the link again. The familiar video file popped up on the credits. Nikita was taken aback when he noticed that both the director and the screenwriter of the film were Athenais herself. He seemed to have insulted her for nothing.
In the Horror Genre
Athenais had to wait an unbearably long time, but eventually she returned to chatting.
“Are
