Nonsomnia

About the aurthor

Maria Raven is a Russian-born Cypriot writer whose gloomy stories and novels draw your attention from the first page and keep you glued till the last one. Being an orphan, she was brought up by her Christian fanatic Aunt Luisa, who never truly loved the girl and was even scared by her dark imagination.

Maria grew a lonely and weird child with few friends. Worried about the girl’s nightmares and daydreaming, her aunt decided to put Maria into a psycho clinic where she spent several years and was discharged without a special diagnosis, except sleep disorders.

After her aunt’s death, Maria left Russia and moved to the small island of Cyprus. Inspired by her own unhappy childhood and creative imagination, she writes about our fears and nightmares, illusions and hallucinations, daydreaming and horrors. She lives alone with her cat in a small village in the Troodos Mountains, away from public eye.

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Dedication

Für einen Schweizer frechen Kerl.

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Nonsomnia

Published by Austin Macauley at Smashwords

Copyright 2018 Nonsomnia

The right of Nonsomnia

to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the publisher, or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

A CIP catalogue record for Nonsomnia

available from the British Library.

www.austinmacauley.com

ISBN 9781788234115 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781788234122 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781788234139 (E-Book)

First Published in 2018

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

CGC-33-01, 25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf, London E14 5LQ

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I want to thank all my friends who supported me while writing this book. You know I had difficult times.

My mom and dad for everything they did for me and still do. I love you guys!

And my genius dog who literally saved my life!

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Content

And All Those Callas

Arium

Babies in Hell

Boris and the Chest

Bye-Bye, Sweetie

Maria and the Raven

Nonsomnia

Picking Up Mushrooms

School

The Drugstore

The Paintings of Hans

Wedding

Medicine

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And All Those Callas

White carnations, red carnations, pink carnations, yellow carnations, roses of all possible colours and shades, tulips, freesias, daffodils, chrysanthemums and callas stand in high metal vases along the walls. They are the best and the freshest. Here, you can find the first-class service and a professional approach to your problems…to your ex-problems to be precise, as you are dead…and I am your personal assistant and V.I.P. ticket to Heaven or Hell. It depends on where you go, but we are not responsible for the final destination. This is written in our agreement.

I can admit that the second place can be more competitive, taking into account our type of work and the method of transportation. Tell me who would like to rot in a wet, cold ground with worms eating their flesh, when you can simply order a personal fire and a pretty funeral urn. Oh, I beg your pardon! I forgot to introduce myself. I am the general manager of the city crematorium (number one). Here is my business card. Please take it and do not hesitate to call me any day or night. I do advise you to contact me beforehand, while you are still alive, as your innumerous relatives (after having dragged all your property into their pockets) will give you such a funeral that you would roll in your coffin if you knew about it.

Who can guide you better than me? I have seen a lot here in my thirty years of work. They come and beg for a discount, like a beggar in a church. Can we have synthetic upholstery instead of silk? Do you still have flowers from the previous funeral? Shame! What a shame! And, they stink…God almighty, how they stink! Old sweat and fried onions; rotten teeth and menstrual blood; pee and dried sperm. Still, this is my duty and I must help everybody…and I do. Thank God, there are exceptions, sometimes. Oh dear, what exceptions!

And now, bow your heads. We will always remember you, Patrick Howard O’Raily. Rest in peace. This beautiful creature, so young and stunning…and a widow. Such a very, very rich widow. Not everybody is so lucky, yeah. Her smooth black hair is tightened into a knot and her thin lips are scarlet and wet. Her white, almost translucent skin is perfect, with traces of tears on her alabaster cheeks. She is not a woman. She is a masterpiece! She will become the diamond of my collection. Now, she orders all the best for her late husband. Not because of her legacy, but because this is the way she settles things and repays her debt to him and to our good Lord, who she is going to meet soon. I show her our best and most expensive funeral urns made of blue marble. She orders red Japanese silk for the coffin. She then smiles sadly and chooses red callas. Look at this! She actually chose my favourite flowers. Devine woman! Pure angel! I am so sorry, so sorry to do what I have planned. She pays the total amount all at once and promises to come back in two days. I need to prepare.

You know, I haven’t worked all of my life as a manager of a crematory, yet I have to admit that this is my best place of work. I tried many things. I have a diploma in taxidermy. I know perfectly well how to gut a carcass or sew up animal skins or whatever you want. I know everything about chloroform, formaldehyde and cyanides. Sulfates can be just irreplaceable if you need to hide all signs of your experiments. If I may say, my diploma in chemistry helps me here. I spent hundreds of hours in a lab mixing and shaking tubes with all kinds of blends and mixtures. Yes, I prefer science to human relationships. I don’t hate people, but I despise their arrogance, envy, dullness and rat fuss in shit.

In fact, my Master’s degree in Sculpture changed my situation. I began to appreciate people and look at them differently, as they became an important material for my exposition. Like an artist appreciates the canvas for a future painting that will make one sob in front of it, I have only two days to imagine how the young widow’s long, fragile, white neck will glide under my hand and if I press my fingers too hard, how it will leave ugly, black bruises on her skin. Don’t worry, though. It is quite easy to conceal this with a powder muss, shade number two—ivory. My beautiful Galatea will be the final accord of my symphony. All other bodies are just the background for her. I burst into laughter when I think of all the empty coffins that I sent to the oven, filling them with old roses. But, I must hurry. I need to sell my car and close all my bank accounts and bring my cat to the old lady next door. She loves my Smithy and will take care of him. Sooner or later, they will discover my little secret in the vault and my collection will become a sensation. All the newspapers will write about it and some director will, maybe, shoot a film. Not Fellini, as he is dead, but in my situation, I cannot choose. Now, what dress should I take for my widow? Red or black or, maybe, white? Perhaps, I will even keep her husband for a family scene. I have not decided yet. All of these callas will burn in a fire instead of them. We all will die at the end, but not today. I will be far away soon, doing something new, interesting and exciting. You know, I was always amazed by genetic engineering.

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Arium

Petros had a passion for history ever since he was a child. He liked going to excavations and archaeological museums on his journeys to various countries. As he passed by the majestic Roman columns or examined the thermae, deep inside he had a feeling that he had travelled in those early times of daring heroes and the rampant gods of the ancient myths. When his friend, Mihalis, told him that the position of a night guard at the Arium Museum was vacant and offered this job to Petros, he did not hesitate to take it. Petros had been unemployed for two months; the crisis had not side-stepped him, but this was not the worst thing about their family. Two months before that, his mother received a breast cancer diagnosis. She needed expensive treatment and chemotherapy sessions. Still, there was the chance to save his mother. Petros was nervous about the night shifts because he had always been afraid of the dark. He had failed to banish this fear even when he grew up. He was to start his job the next day; the next night, to be precise. In the morning, Petros saw the head of the museum, filled out all of the necessary forms and took the guard’s uniform, a hand-lantern and a rubber truncheon.

It was still a museum, though open-air, and vandals could go everywhere. His mother made him a thermos flask with hot sugar-free coffee, as Petros liked. She gave him sheftalies with a quarter of a lemon and sliced onions, which she wrapped in two layers of foil. Petros was his mother’s baby. It goes without saying, in a family with three daughters, that a boy was always a hoped-for child. She was against his living apart from his parents and his night shifts, but she could never say no to him. At night, when Petros dropped in to see his parents before going to work, his mother silently gave him his lunch bag and thermos flask. Petros was excited and chattered joyfully about Mihalis and the favour that he had done for Petros and about Arium and the excavations that were to be restarted in the autumn, despite the reduced financing of the museum. His mother listened to her son with a smile, but she felt a tug at her heartstrings and her heart was aching a little. What she thought to be anxiety turned out to be a forefeeling. People on the verge of death are more sensitive to things like that.

From his parents’ house, Petros went right to work. The day guard was leaving at ten in the evening. There was some time left, but Petros wanted to question him on the details of the job. Arium could be seen from far away, raising its columns above the ground, above the sea, above everything. Driving along the roadway in his old Fiat, Petros admired (for the thousandth time) the grandeur of the ancient city that the Romans had erected on the hill. There was a fault line under Arium. When he drove up to the museum parking, it had gotten completely dark. The black of the sky was spangled with glittering stars and cicadas were chirring in the grass. The Mediterranean Sea rustled softly below. Petros deeply breathed in the rich air of the summer Cyprian night, took his bag out of the car and headed for the guard’s house. He had put on the uniform at his parent’s and now, he was walking leisurely, examining his looks with a censorious eye—whether he had crumpled his jacket or mucked his pants. Everything was ‘just the ticket’. The barrier was down, only the side passage remained open, and Petros entered the territory of Arium through it. The day guard was an affable guy named Yanis, almost the same age as Petros. Yanis had known Petros would be the new night guard. Upon shaking hands with Petros, Yanis offered him coffee with loukoumades—sweet Cyprian doughnuts.

Take a seat, Petros, and have some coffee and doughnuts with me.

Thank you, I don’t have a sweet tooth, but I could do with some coffee. Petros sat down on the chair beside him.

Yanis poured some hot coffee into