By the time Toomas had made it back to his hotel, the downpour had resumed. It was a regular rainy day in the Nameless Town. It had been pouring since morning and the clouds of dark gray hanging low in the sky seemed to have not moved at all. There was no sun and the whole world looked dim and heavy like a late night in early summer. If the weather had been only slightly warmer, the streets would have been filled with children playing in the puddles which had appeared on grass.
The streets in the Nameless Town were also partly under water. The drainage system was essentially at capacity but the water level on the street was still even with the edge of the sidewalk, sometimes even with the edge of the first step. And yet Toomas had met people outside. Those few people not warming themselves in front of the fireplace back in their homes or in Leopold’s bar to sit apart from the surrounding world and take glass of beer or a shot of vodka to warm one’s insides. And eat sandwiches with smoked fish. It seemed like a downpour lasting the whole day was nothing special in the Nameless Town and people had long since learned to live with it.
In the reception of the hotel, a surprise was waiting for Toomas, however. The old woman who usually sat behind the counter and did not raise her her eyes off her book even when somebody entered, was now standing behind the counter and smiled as she handed him a yellowed envelope.
“What’s this?” Toomas asked, staring at the envelope.
“There’s a letter for you.” The woman said, pushing the envelope towards him.
“A letter? I did not know mail works in this town.”
“We don’t have mail service as such. The post office is more for sentimental values too, and to gather letters for Tontla and Valgepalõ. But we have Ets, who rides around his motorbike with a sidecar and carries letters and notes around. He’s the one to bring this letter to you.”
Toomas took the envelope from smooth acrylic-covered wooden counter and headed towards the stairs.
“If you want to reply to the letter, please let me know!” The old woman shouted after him. “Ets runs twice a day!”
Toomas did not replay to her, only continued along the hallway covered with carpets knitted from rags.
Having finally reached his small and cozy room two stories above the entrance, he hung up his waterlogged coat in the bathroom. He sat down by the desk near the window and opened the envelope. In it was a short message that a man named Neighbor-Arno or Arno the Neighbor wants to see him in his house and have a conversation in the evening when the rain finally lets up. According to the explanations in the letter, his house was located on the edge of the cottage district near the Forbidden Forest, one of the last houses before the area belonging to the Underground Base.
“When the rain lets up?” Toomas said to himself, looking out of the window. “How can he be so sure that the rain will ever let up?”
His attention was suddenly grabbed by a big red two-door car with tan cloth roof and rectangular body lines. The red tail lights in the shape of steeples had a devilish shine to them. The hood alone seemed longer than a Sapak cat. It was strangely frightening to see how much this vehicle dwarfed the two Soviet era cars. As if it had emerged from some other parallel world.
Toomas sighed and looked at the clock on top of the cupboard. It had stopped. Although he was certain he had wound it up before leaving his room in the morning. This meant that he had to find his notepad and a pen. Every strange event, no matter how minute, had to be taken note of.
*
As the man who had sent the letter had wished, Tomas again put on the coat with the black hood. After he had the old lady at the reception draw him a map of where Arno the Neighbor had his house, he started toward the cottage district.
What surprised him the most was that in his letter Arno had been correct. The rain did indeed let up. The whole day it poured and the air was wet and cold, but then the clouds started to move again and the rain weakened. By the time Toomas had walked a few kilometers, the dark rainclouds faded and for a moment he saw pink evening sky above the Nameless Town and the setting of the pale sun. He could even feel the temperature rise.
But the sun was falling fast. Slightly before Toomas made it to the cottage district, it had gotten dim, and suddenly all was dark. So dark that he could not even read the map the old woman had drawn him. He was only able to know about being on the right track by the gravel road he was walking on, as the gravel made the road slightly brighter than everything else around him.
Actually he did not really need the map the old woman had drawn him. In the wet and cool post-rain dark of the night, the cottage district was clearly visible as the only collection of lights anywhere on the horizon. Toomas had hoped that there would be more of those lights. That the cottage district would be something similar to a small suburb or a village with some life left in it. Considering what he had heard in the town, they should have even had a decent and bright street lighting.
But there was no life here. The lights of the cottage district were few and they were so far that they seemed unfamiliar and dreamlike. Unreachably far from him, walking along a potholed gravel road full of puddles in the middle of the night. And the cottage district in the distance walked had in hand with him, stepping deeper into the darkness. There weren’t even any stars in the sky. Only the nature around him dripped with the rain.
Only by chance did Toomas find the correct building. Somebody had hung a lit oil lamp on the wooden fence the side of the road. Further down the oil lamp he could see a small fire giving off flames in a private yard of a small cottage. From the road it looked no brighter than a candle.
“The stars are out.” A raspy voice right in front of Toomas uttered.
Toomas too raised his eyes towards the sky, seeing many different stars shining with varied brightness. He could almost make out a river of stars running across the sky. And yet as he had walked here from the Nameless Town, the sky had been cloudless yet dark. Without the Moon. Without a single star.
“The Milky Way is bright tonight.” The raspy voice continued. “Or maybe the darkness is more restrained today than usually.”
Somebody took the oil lamp hanging on the fence and raised it to his face. Toomas could make out a long coat at and a hood attached to it. Under the hood there was a male face of roughly sixty years in age and his beard as white as the snow. Also small black eyes sharply staring at Toomas.
“Let’s go.” the old man took the lantern and started heading towards the back yard.
Only now did Toomas notice that what he had seen before was not a simple fire, instead it was a flaming upright log somebody had cut slits into. Besides the lantern, this was the only source of light. The house itself was ominously dark. However it also seemed that in the back yard, it was slightly less dark than on the road. The burning log did not give off too much heat, yet in a strange manner, it did also not give off much light. It only burned, standing aside of the world it was located in. And yet Toomas could see the outline of the house. The brick wall, the cut grass and the garden well cared for. As well as a large garden swing the old man now sat down in, placing the lantern on a thick log next to it.
“Come, sit down.” the man said.
The swing creaked as Toomas sat down on it and the old man pushed it to move back and forth in a gentle manner. Both were quiet. The black nature surrounding them was still dripping with the day’s rain. Somewhere out there was wind blowing and shaking water off the leaves and soon a warm breath of wind reached them as well.
“I am Arno the Neighbor.” The old man finally said, as if the wind had given him a permission to speak. “I asked you to come here to talk to you about a thing.”
“About a thing?” Toomas asked. “What would it be?”
“At first, I wanted to talk about a dream I had, which turned out not to be a dream at all. But when I started to contemplate it, I realized that I would have to tell you of so many other things for everything to be understandable to you. That’s why I ask you to listen to everything I have to say.”
“Okay then,” Toomas said.
“Very good.” The man replied.
Both of them silent, they kept swinging back and forth while the old man gathered his thoughts.
“Sometimes I come here and look at the sky.” He said. “The world is so strangely gray. All that we see and have lived, that is everything that could ever be. And it is all so gray.”
“Gray?” Toomas asked.
“Yes. There is no mystery. Everything exists. The world is done. There is nothing left to add to it. There is nothing left to discover nor to repair. The world is like a sandbox for me. But I don’t want to play. I don’t know how to play. I see so much and yet I can do nothing to change or even influence anything. People will still follow their paths, much like the moon and sun in the sky. I cannot stop them. All I do is useless and the world remains the same. And gray.”
“There is no mystery?” Toomas asked. “Even around these places?”
I understand what you mean.” He could hear the old man smiling. “This secrecy that lies here, this mystery. It does not make the world more mysterious. It does not make the world more likable to me or more colorful. This mystery is flat. Neither is it capable of changing the world or overcoming it. It cannot surprise me, all there is has already been seen and repeats itself. All this world, all our lives are but a faded photograph.”
Toomas could not say anything with regards to this. For some time again they swung back and forth in silence, staring at the flaming log in front of them.
“And then something surprises me.” Arno said.
“Surprises?” Toomas asked.
“When I lie here like this and look at the sky, so many times have I found myself contemplating if this is really the sky. Is this the world? That sky is so black, so full of stars hiding all sorts of mysterious secrets. Secrets I can almost grasp, but not with my mind. It feels like I am looking at a perfectly ordinary sky somewhere far away, someplace normal. But as soon as any of the trees enter my field of view, as soon as a faint wind rushes across my face, I sense that this is not an ordinary sky. This is not an ordinary world. It has depth. All the mysterious secrecy does not lie there, in the depths of outer space, it lies here in the darkness around me. As if everything lying outside the yard of my cottage was a cold and distant outer world I have no business entering. And should I step into it, I will lose everything.”
“I feel the same heavy mystery every day I spend in this town.” Toomas said. “I feel I am never alone. This heavy presence the air is thick of. I thought that when I grew up, I would no longer fear the darkness and the mystery. But here, the childlike unfamiliar world has come back to me and with it all the fears I once had.”
“So I am not alone?” Arno asked pensively. “Good to know.” He fell silent again for several swings before continuing. “In the past years, the cottage district has run out of people. I am one of the last ones here. Maybe even the last one.”
“Everybody’s leaving for towns?” Toomas asked.
“I don’t know.” The old man replied. “To be more honest, I don’t believe it. I think they are just disappearing. One night the house is warm and the lights are burning and in the windows I can see people living their lives. And by the next morning the house is cold, distant an empty. The doors are wide open as if the house no longer belongs to anybody and when I go to take a further look, it seems like nobody has lived there for years. That’s exactly what happened to my neighbors.”
“They disappeared overnight?” Toomas asked.
“Yes. Once upon a time, an old man and an old woman lived in this house. Albert and Maiu. Their grandchildren lived with them. When the grandchildren were young, the old man swore to the depths of hell but nevertheless he dragged home a launching anchor for a nuclear missile. But back then the forest was utterly contaminated with all things military. The old man fell ill and died. The doctor from the town spoke of a hard case of a simple cold but in reality it was the hydrazine that had seeped into the ground that finally broke him.
“After that, the house was empty for some time until the grandchildren as young adults returned to it. A young man and a maiden who drove around in a dark green vehicle which was not much bigger than a Lada Niva but had the engine sound or a truck not too dissimilar to a ZIL. They say the youngsters had bought it from the North. It was quite recently that I saw them minding their business, but recently, I haven’t seen either of them. I don’t know when exactly did they disappear but one night I noticed that in their house, the lights no longer burn at night and there is no green off-roader in the yard any more.
“What happened to them? When did it happen? How many days, weeks or years back it was? Every day that passes, the past grows further away from me than there are actual hours in the day. While future never really arrives.”
“In your opinion, what happened to them if they did not move anywhere else?” Toomas asked. In this darkness he could barely see his notepad and the text he had written on a random page of it.
“I think.” The man started. “That it is impossible to answer. Maybe one of them got lost during their nighttime wanders and the other one went to look for her. Or him. The cottage district is located at an unusual place. Nearby is the Forbidden Forest, old nuclear base, the Underground Base. What lies in the South beyond the concrete wall, even I have no idea of. Even though I still remember my childhood when I could freely wander in the Southern forest picking berries and mushrooms. Even hunting.
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“Life in an almost derelict cottage district is more dreamlike than one might think. The fact that the town is only a few hours of walking away does not matter. The difference between the town and the village here is much greater. Sometimes it feel like this village belongs to a world of its own. Not to a world where the town also exists but instead to a world where the mysterious Southern Forest lies, the Underground Base and only the devil knows what lies to the East. The people who disappeared from here, they did not just leave, each of them brought along a piece of the cottage district as they left. And now all that remains here is a hole. An opposite to an existence.
Sometimes I feel like I am not here at all. That we are not here. That I am dreaming. That the town and the world is somebody’s dream long since forgotten being repeated again and again. I would like to meet the person whose dream I am.”
Toomas’ fingers stopped and he raised his eyes to look at the old man still staring at the flames.
“And you don’t want to leave this place because…?”
“Because this is my home. I have lived here as long as I remember. Sometimes during the nights, when I look at the skies and listen to the stars I feel like I could never leave here. That I am stuck in this place. That I have not been given the right to neither die nor to leave this place. That I am the last person who still lives in this village and thus allows this village itself to live.”
“Is that so?” Toomas asked, still in thought.
“Recently, this place has grown to be more and more like dreams.” the man continued.
“How?”
“Sometimes when I lay here and stare at the sky, I feel like I’m still just a little boy. Just like I felt myself years and years ago playing in this very same grass. When suddenly, right before the sunset, a flying saucer hovers across the sky without making a sound. At these moments I really feel like a young boy who has fallen asleep early in the evening and is seeing a strange dream.”
“A flying saucer?” Toomas asked.
“Yes.” The man said. “As a child I saw them all the time hovering around this place. Almost every night near the sunset I could see starships of different shapes floating across the house. They seemed to hang so low that they would bend the lightning rod on the roof. During the summers not a week passed until I saw yet another one fly over.
“By now it feel strange even to think about it, how back then I had no fear when I saw them. Although I am almost certain that even back then I knew what a UFO was. I played my games and they played theirs. And at the same time I spent every available moment witnessing the wonder of them.
“In recent times it has again been active like when I was still a child. They seem to go to and fro between the Underground Base. The road to the base passing the cottage district is like a landing strip fro them. But really they land into the lake behind the base.
“In the town, nobody has seen or heard anything about it.” Toomas said. “Only Robert keeps talking about his anaks.”
“Anaks have about as much common with the starships as with me or with you!” Neighbor Arno raised his voice. “No anaks walk around the Underground Base. If you haven’t noticed there are at least four different species of ufos hanging around the town. Including Boys from the North who don’t touch the floor while walking on it and who never get wet in the rain. Rops’s anaks, star folk of the Village Hags and those that go about their business in the Underground Base. All of them are here for different reasons. They have always been here for different reasons.”
“If there are really different species of ufos here, then it is more noteworthy that they are all congregating here.” Toomas said.
“That’s what I wanted to get to.” The old man said. “Something has been set in motion, but we cannot even understand it. Those who arranged and guided the process last time are all dead or forever lost. Lifespan of humans is fleeting, the world changes too fast for us to keep up with. And now they are back, expecting everything to be the same.”
“You think it is only about them?” Toomas asked. “People are again dying in the Forbidden Forest, townsfolk see nightmares in broad daylight, strange musicians are gathering in the town to perform, practice and write songs...”
“If my grandpa was still alive than he would only come to one conclusion: demonic forces are again rising in our town. But you and me, we are no longer as religious as him. We want to explain everything with science. However, considering how after the end of the Soviet era everything has fallen into ruin and disuse, we no longer have science that could explain anything, never mind religion.”
“The mayor said that they plan to go to the witch in two weeks..” Toomas said.
“To the witch?” Arno spat. “What for? Do you know when was the last time the villagers went to the witch? During the pre-war Republic. At the end of it. I think. In the spring of 1940. And the witch told them to go pound sand, she had no interest in human competitive crapping. That she would outlive both Russians and the Germans. My father oft repeated this story after a bottle of vodka.”
“Isn’t the witch’s business to to help when she can help?”
“If you’re lucky.” Arno said. “Usually the witch only helps those that are useful for her to help. Considering how invoking the witch is to be done, there is nothing particularly special about the witch constantly being in a bad mood and unwilling to help.”
“How then is the witch called?”
“Usually it is talked of as a great secret that on the night of a Thursday when the Moon is full, one must go to the crossroads and bring along a black goose. And if you don’t have a black goose, then a black cat will also do.”
“That would be a sacrifice to the hell dweller?” Toomas asked.
“Not quite.” Arno said. “Calling out the witch or the hell dweller is a dangerous thing to do. Black cats are favored by both witches and the hell dwellers as beings to possess. Strangling a black cat on the crossroads is not a sacrifice but… more of a disturbance and annoyance. Something neither witches nor devils like. And when you do not have a good reason why you killed a cat and invoked them then they will drag you to down to hell.”
“That’s an interesting approach.” Toomas said.
“It is tried and tested practice. It may have been at the end of the 1970s when one of the village folk got drunk and promised to call the witch out. He took his neighbors’ black cat and strangled it on the crossroads on a Thursday night in front of his other drunkard friends. At first nothing happened. But then out of nowhere a huge black rectangular ZIL limo appeared, with brightly burning lights front and rear. Just like the one you could see the premier ride on TV in Moscow. It reportedly made no sound when driving.
It stopped by the men, the rear side window descended and a girl in black sitting in a cabin awash with red light asked what the hell they were doing. When the man admitted that he had strangled a black cat to call out the devil, the doors of the car opened, 3 tall men in black suits emerged and pounded on him with their fists, eventually stuffing him in the car. The car took off with the tires squealing and disappeared into the fog.”
“And the man went missing?” Toomas asked.
“Yep. His clothes and shoes were later found nearby in the ditch by the side of the road. But the man was never seen again. Maybe the KGB special service abducted him and later shot him in the forest. For being drunk and playing around with forces he had no idea of. Or perhaps the devil really brought him to hell.”
Neighbor-Arno became silent and raised his gaze towards the sky. The nature around them was still dripping. Sometimes the wind shook water droplet from the trees and they could hear them dropping from higher leaves to the lower ones, sounding as if the rain had returned but only above the trees.
Arno rose from the swing and stretched.
“Come. There is something else I must show you.”
Toomas followed Arno along the edge of the house into darkness. It really seemed like there was slightly more light in the back yard than there was on the road. And true darkness awaited on the paved heading towards the left. Darkness that you could not discern anything from. No sky, no road, no forest. As if the darkness was flowing out of the Underground Base.
“You’re seeing it too, aren’t you?” Arno asked. “There is more light in the yard than there is here. And the more you head towards the base, the darker the night gets.”
“Yes, do you know what causes this?”
“No, not really. Maybe the amount of darkness correlated with the amount of the unknown and the mysterious. Or maybe an aspect of it. In my back yard it is quite innocent but in the Underground Base something profoundly evil lurks. But that was not the thing I wanted to show you.”
Arno led him across the road to a small patch of grazing land that bordered the Forbidden Forest. With a careful step and trying to find his way with an arm stretched out in front of him, Toomas walked in tall waterlogged grass. He did not need to walk far until the ground got so soft that water started flowing into his shoes.
“Where are we going?” he asked. “I must admit, I cannot see a thing.”
“Neither can I.” Arno said. “But because I have lived here for years, I have no need to see in the dark. Every step I take here is as familiar to me as my own back yard. Only you must be careful to not hit yourself against that thing.”
“What thing?” Toomas asked. “What do you want to show me?”
“That.” Toomas could now hear knuckles being hit against a thick steel piece.
Soon Toomas too made it to the unknown object and from his first touches recognized as the Russian willy’s, a 469 UAZ model. By touch he located the steel roof and the door latch. He opened the door and slid his hand along the dash of the vehicle finding a lone key in the ignition. He pumped the pedal once and turned the key. With a small powerless rumble the engine started, a few dials and the interior light of the vehicle lit up.
He also switched on the headlights, but even the full beams only lit up some ten meters before the vehicle.
“It really works, and no we can see as well.”
“That’s the mayor’s willy’s.” Arno said in a quiet voice, staying out of the beams. “The one you came with to examine the Forbidden Forest.”
“This car?” Toomas asked, staring at Arno. “Is the mayor here as well?”
“You misunderstood me.” Arno said. “It is the mayor’s car from the night when you with the town drunk came to examine the Forest Lake. The mayor parked his car here, went to the forest and hasn’t been back for his car since.”
“That’s not possible.” Toomas said. “We took the mayor’s willy’s back to town! The mayor has continued using it in his day to day business.”
“I don’t know what you drove back to the town, but I was awake that night and I remember it clearly. Nobody has any business here when the night comes. The neighbors moved away and nobody dares to visit the base day or night. That’s why the engine noise woke me. The mayor came here, left his car on the side of the road and went into the forest. I haven’t seen anybody come out of the forest.”
“And I remember the mayor driving back in the night with his willy’s. And the next day when the whole village came together to look at the lost lake, he too was present with his willy’s.” Toomas said.
“As it is doubtful the mayor has two of the willy’s cars, either of which he considers as disposable, there are two options.” Arno said. “Either you drove home with a car that was not the mayor’s willy’s or...”
“Or?” Toomas asked.
“Or you did not drive back with the real mayor.”
“In what sense?”
“The mayor came here, left his car on the side of the forest in the tall grass, and went to the forest. That’s it. He hasn’t come out since. Maybe he is still wandering the forest like so many before him.”
“And the one who drove back to town with us?” Toomas asked.
“It wasn’t the mayor. It may have been a shadow of him, but not himself. Because it is much more unlikely that the mayor left his car on the side of the forest and unwittingly from some other place took the willy’s of some other person who also had left his keys in the ignition. And it would also be unlikely that the mayor is the correct one, but the car is ghostly.”
“Can a car really be ghostly?” Toomas asked.
“Why not? There are ghost planes, ghost ships, ghost trains. Why not ghost cars?” Arno asked. “They say that all those strangers who have recently found their way to the Nameless Town have made it with ghostly cars. Cars which nobody has seen other than the newcomers and few mysterious townsfolk. Those flying saucers I mentioned before may well have been ghostly. Something is happening either in the Base or our in the world, and it is bringing back to life the traces left in the world by the flying saucers.”
Arno opened the passenger side door and climbed to the front seat. “Okay, go drive to my house. There is something else I have to show you.”
“Something else?” Toomas asked.
He wrestled with the gear stick, finally managing to get it in gear and then drove across the wet field back towards the road and parked by the side of the fence.
“Yes. I can show you a real ghost car my dad left me several years ago.”
“Where did your father get that ghost car?” Toomas asked as they used their hands to find their way to the garage next to the house.
“From the same place one usually finds ghostly girls. Off the road. In a dark and rainy night.”
The old man opened the door to the garage and waved to Toomas to get in after him.
“I apologize for having so little space in here but the car is pretty big. I would love to show it to you with the doors wide open, but I can’t do it at night. That damn darkness gets in and then nobody can see anything, even if there were a hundred lamps alight.”
“I get it, I get it.” Toomas said.
“So here it is.” Arno closed the garage doors, dropped the latch and then switched the lights on.
The whole garage was taken up by a low yet wide rectangular military vehicle with riveted bodywork. The deflated tires with big knobs were partially off the rims, and on the rear bumper there was a rusty Soviet license plate. The bumper itself only had surface rust but the strangest thing was that the bodywork of the vehicle did not have a single rust blemish. It was impeccable.”
“My dad said that the body is made of aircraft aluminum, that’s why there is no rust.”
“How big are the tires?” Toomas asked.
“When they are full of air then about a meter in diameter. The body would then sit at about 60 centimeters from the ground. If I start the vehicle it will pump the tires up on its own.”
“It’s like a truck.” Toomas said. “Red trailer lights in the rear, amber in the front. And it is really wide.”
“I once took a tape measure to it. 2.25 wide and 4.6 in length. Abut 2 meters in height. But there is little room inside, only four seats. Reportedly built like this so it could follow the same tracks as tanks and armored personnel carriers.”
“You’ve driven it?” Toomas asked.
“No, I have not.” Arno said. “I have only sat inside. There are only two pedals and so many dials, levers and little buttons that my head starts to hurt. It has been sitting like this for 40 years. I think 40? A few years after I was let go from the Russian navy, it was left here.”
“It looks to be in quite good condition, considering.” Toomas said. “I really cannot say anything either way. Maybe you should talk with Peeter the Village Dude. He already has one off road vehicle the size of a sauna. Or with the Professor. The girl in black might actually be your best bet.”
“Yea, I’m never going to talk to that girl!” Arno said with a determined voice, while leading Toomas to the house. “I trust no man who regularly goes to the Underground Base!”
“You’ve seen her going there?”
“I have.” Arno nodded. “She drives a car similar to all the suspicious people coming from outside the town. Long and low like a ZIL, makes a sound that reminds me of big military trucks, and curiously also the flying saucers of my youth. It is red like blood, only two doors, tan canvas top and bright red tail lights the shape of church steeples.”
“I think I saw it in town today.” Toomas said.
“In any case she is the only one I have see going to the Underground Base and coming out of the Underground Base. And this I find very suspicious considering that everybody else is afraid of the Underground Base like hell itself.”
“If I meet her, I will ask what’s she doing in the Undergound Base.” Toomas said.
“Please never mention my name anywhere in the conversation.” Arno said. “I don’t want that girl stopping in front of my house in the middle of one of her nightly drives.”
“You don’t have to worry about that.” Toomas replied. “I haven’t been here, I haven’t come here. Just like Rops has never seen anaks.”
“Rops may well have seen anaks. And Rops would not be the first.” Arno explained. “Reportedly they kept hounding the local kolkhoz and the vodka factory back in the 1970s. What happened many times was that a truck would leave the factory fully loaded, and then a blinding light would flash, the driver loses 9 minutes of time and the wooden crates, still nailed shut, are present but the bottles in them have disappeared.”
“Really!?”
“Really-really.” Arno continued. “This whole area from the cottage district to Tontla and Valgepalõ was once a dry region, because anaks stole all alcohol and even industrial ethanol. They finally managed to stop it when the officers decided that a limit has been reached and vodka shipments were shadowed by mobile triple-A batteries. At the same time there were helicopter gunships in the air and above that patrolled Migs with free fire against any non-friendly aircraft in the airspace.”
“Interesting that it helped at all.”
“It only helped for a little while.” Arno smiled. “A week later the premier of the local kolkhoz was having a party, where vodka flowed like water. He was named Anatoly Tereshkov, if I recall correctly. His wife was a short and stout one named Valentina.”
“Like the famous cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova?”
“Indeed. The premier and the accountant had barely managed to hit their glasses together when there was a sudden flash and in the middle of the hall, there stood three young men in black leather jackets, white shirts and blue jeans. The looked so similar to one another that they could have been triplets. And the also looked like movies starts from America. But then the show started. The young men emptied every bottle they got their hands on. It didn’t matter whether it was beer, liqueur, vodka or whiskey. There were several strong men at the party but none could fight the youngsters, all were sent flying across the room like ragdolls. Sharp implements like knives or forks could not injure them and even the local militsiya officer was dumbfounded after he emptied both magazines of his TT pistol into the chest of one of the men but could not even break his shirt.”
“How were they dealt with then?”
“They weren’t.” Arno said. “The young men ate and drank everything without discern. Hearing the kolkhoz premier yelling his own name repeatedly and making demands, one of the young men made his way towards the wife of the premier. He forced the woman on the table belly first and started taking her right then and there. To some onlookers it was even funny to see a young man with considerably good looks taking a fat woman from behind and throwing everybody who try to stop him across the room with one hand.”
“So the anaks raped that poor woman?”
“Yes. The whole village suspected that the reason was the name of the woman – Tereshkova. The kolkhoz premier was red in the face with shame and did not show his face for weeks while the whole village was full of stories of the rape and how the anaks dragged three crates of vodka and two pigs into their flying saucer before leaving. The militsiya officer was the first to speak of it as rape. But they only person who did not speak of it as rape was the woman herself.”
“Wait? What!?” Toomas could not believe his ears.
“The marriage of the kolkhoz premier soon hit the rocks. There was a story circling the village that mrs. Tereshkova had herself said that she had never been fucked better before in her life. That her husband has never offered her such passion like that anak smelling of vodka. Soon another story started. That the wife of the premier was sleeping around with young men to re-experience even a little bit of that which the ufo had offered her.”
“That is a funny story.” Toomas smiled.
“Yeah, it is.” Arno said. “That’s also what I wanted to tell you. The world is changing, things are happening behind the shadows and Rops in not as crazy as one might think. I won’t hold you any more, I bet there is a lot you need to think about.”
“Thanks for inviting me.” Toomas said. “It was a pleasant conversation. I will try to look into these matters when I get back to town.”
“And most importantly.” Arno said, raising a thick index finger in front of his face. “We have never met.”