Her thoughts belong only to her. She is free to think about what she wants. But she would not have dared to tell someone at the film studios in person that he brazenly promotes the creature of people who are beneficial to him instead of selecting actors by talent. People, although they suffer from injustice, are silent so as not to lose what little they have.
“But if people had nothing left but pain, everyone would become criminals and rebels,” someone’s insolent ringing voice rang out. “And the world would have drowned in terror, as in the days of the French Revolution. I remember those times and I want a repetition.”
Annette had already convinced herself that the voice was only heard in her head, so she didn’t turn around. The heads of the spectators in front of her remained motionless. If other viewers, like her, heard the voice, they would also begin to turn around at the sound and hiss viciously.
The film began, and Anetta was involuntarily glad that the audience was few. When the rows are overcrowded, you want to run away from the cinema, like from a nest of hooligans. Someone crunches with popcorn, someone whispers with a girlfriend, some couples kiss with relish, making unpleasant sounds. Those who come to watch a movie, and not to squeeze, become uncomfortable. In the theater, it is different – discipline is the first rule there. But Anette did not like theaters. There is no full-fledged illusion of reality created by the special effects of cinema. Everything is possible in the film: show a bloody war with many deaths, demonstrate ghosts and vampires, arrange an apocalypse, create a demon.
The demon has been created! The most powerful and beautiful demon performed by Athenais. How good she is! Previously, Annette scoffed at the sight of the faces of stars in glossy magazines, which were no different from the average saleswomen and hairdressers. Any young girl who sits at the checkout in a supermarket is more beautiful than all the Hollywood stars put together. So where does so much noise about the beauty of actors come from for inexperienced people in life, it is not entirely clear. With Athenais, the opposite was true. All articles about her beauty could not convey even a little bit of her charm. Either the journalists failed to do it, or words could not convey her greatness.
The film flickering on the screen was called “Angel for Nero.” According to rumors from the film studios, Anetta knew that at first they were going to give him the name “Lions and Angels”, which was changed immediately before the rental. The last name conveyed the essence more accurately. Although the film was about the emperor who persecuted the first Christians with lions, the mass scenes were only a background for the romance between the angel who came from the darkness and Nero. The plot turned the whole idea of good and evil upside down. The fire of Rome was associated with a repetition of the pogrom once experienced by the heroine after the uprising of her angels in the heavens. And there, and here she impulsively staged an apocalypse, but the viewer’s sympathy remained on her side. Although after watching the word “angel” began to scare.
Annette was not worried about the grandiose plan of equating Christian sects with evil and exalting a fallen angel. She, as a starlet, liked the heroine’s lover much more. Is it difficult to take over the whole world if your patron is the most powerful emperor in the world! In those days, Rome was the greatest empire. The demonic heroine Atenais very wisely did, coming from the darkness of nothingness, straight to the bed of the emperor Nero. From his imperial chambers, she could easily rule the whole world.
“I would have such a patron,” thought Annette, “and I would become the number one star, the same as Athenais, because outwardly I look like her.”
Although the similarity is not complete, but a beautiful image on the screen is naturally created with the help of special illumination and the titanic efforts of makeup artists. In addition, when you watch a movie in a dark cinema, everything seems much more spectacular and attractive than later on the TV screen. The same movies in the theater and on the tablet make completely different impressions. It’s all about the visuals.
Annette was struck by the greatness of the demon embodied on the screen. With a less beautiful actress, the film would not be so amazing. Let it just be that she has a slightly fresher and better basis for the efforts of make-up artists than other actresses. But how did such a beauty even pass through the wall of cinematic intriguers? Except as the intervention of the owner of the film studio or the president himself, this could not be explained. Every actress needs her own Nero, or even several, to achieve star status.
Curious who is behind Athenais? Who are her powerful patrons?
“All the demons of hell!”
Annette turned towards the sound. Someone walked behind. A silhouette in a red hood was visible in the beams of the projection booth. Just for a moment! Could it be imagined?
Something vibrated under the floor, as if a whole flock of demons were in a hurry to get out into the world, as is happening now on the screen! It seemed that the leg was touched by someone’s sharp claws. Couldn’t there be rats in the cinema?
The girl turned her gaze to the screen. The winged beloved Nero just had a rival – her twin from the society of Christians. Both roles were played by Athenais. With different hairstyles, she looked great. You can’t even tell who is better: a graceful angel living in a palace or a demoniac beggar who tried to cut her face off so as not to look like the archangel Lucifer. The skin cut from the face turned into a living mask of gold, and the demoniac girl remained a beauty and entered into a conspiracy to kill her divine double. The intrigue twisted abruptly. Palaces, wars and senate disputes were interspersed with witchcraft under the guise of religion. Fallen Angel and Nero turned out to be the perfect match.
Annette stared with envy. One crazy idea was beating in her head.
“I want to be like her! Like Athenais! I want to take away from her everything that she has, like that demoniac Christian woman who was born absolutely like her. I look like her too! I, too, can be a star like her!”
“You’re on time! She just needs a body! She cannot attend social events with wings behind her back!”
Someone touched Annette’s cheek with a black claw. Oddly enough, she was not scared. The closeness of a creature that seemed to breathe fire resembled a fragment from a film. Here in the theater, it was as appropriate as the 3D effect.
“Do you think that fame is just a matter of luck?” mockingly croaked a voice like an animal. “Do you want the same patrons as hers?”
“And who are her patrons?” Annette half turned. A dark-skinned man in a bright red cape with a hood froze in the back row. There was little light from the glare from the screen, but it was still possible to notice that his face was disfigured almost to the point of an animal.
If there is no psychologist nearby, then you can pour out your soul to him – a stranger in red, resembling a monster.
“The same patrons as hers could have been mine. Why was she lucky and not me?”
Someone behind him gave a dull laugh and bent down to Annette. The sleeve of a scarlet cape slapped her cheek. The fabric was hot as fire.
“The king of kings does not need patrons. He himself decides which of the rulers of the world to give power, and from whom to take away. My mistress rules over kings, heads of republics. So it started long ago.”
“This is the plot of her first film ‘And his name is Dennitsa’, for which she became famous and all.”
Annette herself did not watch this film, but according to reviews in the press she remembered that Athenais played the archangel Lucifer there, who after falling into the Egyptian desert took a seductive female appearance and began to rule over the pharaohs.
“It’s not easy to rule people,” rare gold jewelry flashed on the stranger’s black fingers, as if stolen from a museum. “She rules!”
“In her role! On the screen!”
“Everywhere! But she needs you.”
“What for? To play in public the role of her sister or a poor relative who has benefited? – or what other tricks do movie stars have?”
“That there was no second Octavia.”
Annette frowned. Octavia! That was the name of the demon-possessed Christian woman from the film who, with a charmed dagger and a magic mask, entered the palace to attack the winged mistress of Nero. She could win this fight, but she no longer survives. If the stranger speaks symbolically, then she is lured into a trap.
“I’m making you a lucrative offer,” he seemed to object in response to her thoughts.
“And if I refuse?”
Black claws scratched lightly on her shoulder under her thin blouse.
“And what will you be left without Atenais? Dullness of life and emptiness?”
Annette understood the meaning of his words only when she left the cinema on bent legs. Together with the session, the whole life seemed to end. Splendor and luxury remained behind the shabby wall along with the extinct screen. Under the doors of the cinema, only darkness reigned, the daily routine and the ugliness of filthy cities.
Where did the fairy tale go? Gloomy neighborhoods, pale neon signs, ugly faces of oncoming people are all around. The human world has become like hell. She wanted to take a knife and cut everyone, as Octavia tried to kill an angel, and then herself. Now she could be understood.
As a child, Annette read fairy tales about people who visited the land of fairies, talked there with magical creatures, and then returned back to the mortal world and realized that they could no longer live in it. How can you live among people if you have been in the company of fairies!
Annette walked along familiar streets, which suddenly turned into a cloaca of abominations. The masses of people around looked disgusting, like crowds of demons. She wanted to go back to the cinema, even if at the cost of her life. Back to Athenais and her amazing world of emperors and fallen angels.
Annette vomited violently, although she did not eat popcorn or cotton wool in the theater. The girl leaned against the wall of a shop. The vomit left on the asphalt looked like a puddle of blood in which something was stirring. From the outside it could seem that she spit out her own intestines. The whole action resembled a nightmare.
“Even if people return from the fairy world with generous gifts, they still climb into the noose, because they are drawn back to the fairies!” hummed a chorus of children’s voices around the corner ominous counting rhyme. “And there is no turning back!”
What do you mean no? There was a way back to the cinema. You just need to get money for a ticket. Annette suddenly understood the addicts who can kill for a dose when withdrawing. If she didn’t have enough little change to buy a ticket for the session, she would definitely kill someone to take the money. Has the film made her mad? Is there something hypnotic in it that acts on the audience like a drug? Some kind of psychiatric syndrome or an insidious mixture of the twenty-fifth frame with angelic philosophy? All this struck her in the brain like a strong drug.
“Do not go to the fairies to visit even once, if you do not want your soul to remain in their claws forever,” they continued to sing around the corner. “The body without a soul is only a loop. Therefore, those who have left the kingdom of the fairies also leave life. Unless there is a way back. But the doors are usually closed. A narrow gap opens only once in a century, with the arrival of a winged deity.”
The intonations became mocking and threatening. It feels like it’s not children who are singing, but monsters imitating children’s voices. Annette glanced around the corner. Children’s figures were dancing there. In the darkness away from the lantern, they seemed ghostly. It’s not Halloween today, but they’re wearing costumes with wings and horns. Pranksters, in a word! One of the children glanced at Annette. He saw her, even though she was hiding around the corner. His eyes and grin were not childish at all. He could still paint his lips a bloody color, but where did the children get their red eyes?
The shocked Annette turned away and walked away, back to the dark movie theater called Akhetaton. Despite the late hour, the audience was invited to the next session. The ticket cost twice as much as the previous one, but she paid without hesitation.
“In order to get back into the world of fairies, a man of heads at everything,” the children’s choir caught up with her here. “But what are you going to do if the back door is closed?”
The door of the shabby building, oddly enough, really resembled a mythical creature with a hole-mouth, eyes-bas-reliefs and a ring instead of a handle. How did Annette not notice this on her first visit? They said that “Akhetaton” is a chic chain of cinemas, but here only the cast-iron door, decorated under the mouth of a manticore, was chic. When you enter it, there is a feeling that the cinema has swallowed you and will not let you out. And in his womb they show horror films about the rebellion of angels, and how demons take over the world.
For some reason, children on the street sang about fairies, but according to the Atenais films, fairies, elves and all magical creatures are just a cohort of rebel angels who were the least guilty and partially retained their beauty. But there was even more evil and deceit in them than in full-fledged demons. All magic comes from the fallen Lucifer. But for some reason, magic was practiced in the Christian community. To understand everything, you need to watch the film twice, Annette assured herself. In fact, without glancing at Atenais’s beautiful face again, she would definitely fit into the noose.
