LITMIR.BIZ

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with his hand a wound on his stomach, from where a thin stream of bluish smoke was floating out. “What will Sardanapal say, what will Medusa say? I’ll now disappear! The end for me! Another minute – and I’ll be no more!” He became more and more transparent, shrivelling in front of her eyes.

      “I… I didn’t mean to…” Tanya was at a loss.

      “Ah-ah, you didn’t mean to…” the ghost groaned, fading in plain view. “Didn’t mean to, but killed me, a foolish but inoffensive ghost, who wished harm to no one… Really I’ll never see beloved Tibidox, I’ll not hear the sound of ocean surf?” Lieutenant Rzhevskii looked up at Tanya reproachfully. His incorporeal hand, light as a puff of wind, touched her hand imperceptibly.

      Tears welled up in Tanya’s eyes. “Please forgive me, I didn’t mean to… What should I do now?” she shouted.

      “What should you do now?” Lieutenant wheezed. “I want you to know one thing: it was a dishonourable duel! But remember, I don’t agree to die alone! Still a last shot for me!” With these words, Lieutenant Rzhevskii extracted from the air a very large machine gun and, rising slightly on his elbow, started to pour long bursts onto Tanya. Spectral cases flew around the room. This firing did not cause any more harm. “Rat-a-tat-tat! A last shot… one more… The last dozen cartridge clips! Pushkin smears d'Anthès on the wall!” Lieutenant howled, coming alive right before her.

      General Cutletkin living on the other side of the wall got woken up by the clatter, fell from the sofa, and dove under the table. Half awake, it seemed to him that a war had begun and hostile parachutists were stealing the boxes of toothbrushes and toothpastes from his balcony.

      Meanwhile behind the wall the finally revived spectre discarded the machine gun and started to jump on the bedspread, spilling feathers from a pillow. Tanya, still in tears, looked at him spellbound. “Well, you look at this little fool: she thought that it’s possible to kill a ghost! Really possible to kill a ghost! And she believed it!” Lieutenant Rzhevskii laughed loudly.

      Tanya with relief understood that the fight spark caused no harm to the spectre. To frighten off ghosts there is another reliable spell Briskus-quickus. Tanya already intended to utter it, but first she decided to clarify by what means the ghosts managed to get out. “Why are you not in the trunk?” Tanya asked.

      “Because we were thrown out of the trunk! Thrown out insolently and inconsiderately!” a sad voice from the cabinet complained, and Unhealed Lady floated out through the door. By some mysterious means, Aunt Ninel’s lilac scarf was retained on her neck, and the nose, powdered by something, turned red from tears. Likely, the suffering Lady poked her nose into moth-eaten small packets.

      “Who threw you out of the trunk?” Tanya asked quickly. She tried to talk as little as possible with Unhealed Lady, because that one could chatter anyone to death.

      Unhealed Lady winced, “And it’s interesting to you? Really? It was an unpleasant girl with a fat face. She didn’t want to hear about my ulcer. And she squeals simply abominably. If I were alive, I would have had a cardiac arrest on the spot. But, fortunately I’m already dead…”

      “Pipa! So that’s who let you out!” Tanya exclaimed. Suddenly everything became clear. For some reason Pipa returned home alone without Aunt Ninel, and got to her trunk after all. “Excellent! Well, you did me an ill turn!” Tanya said bitterly. “And now Pipa most likely is already rushing to bowling in order to broadcast everything to Aunt Ninel!”

      “Not likely! She isn’t rushing anywhere! She’s frightened and sitting in our trunk! It’s the only place we can’t penetrate into because of the Minotaur skin!” Unhealed Lady stated.

      “What? Pipa’s in the trunk?” Tanya did not believe it. She rushed to the sofa. The seal with Sardanapal’s personal stamp was dangling on one wire. However, the stamp itself, fortunately, was whole. Someone was wheezing quietly in the leather trunk.

      “Now you believe that she’s there?” Lieutenant Rzhevskii was interested. “She hid there when I – hee-hee – asked her to repair a little knife in my back. We occasionally moan so that she doesn’t get bored there. Here watch!” Issuing blood-curdling moans, the spectre started to fly above the trunk. The trunk began to shake a little and bob up and down. The daughter of Uncle Herman began to squeal.

      “Rzhevskii! Leave her alone, I say!” Tanya ordered, after considering that Pipa could go completely crazy from terror. Moronoids are quite unfit for such encounters. But Lieutenant was not thinking of stopping. The more violently the trunk bobbed, the more worked up he got. He even started to pour ketchup onto the trunk, groaning, “Blood! Blood everywhere!”

      “Well, stop! Briskus-quickus!” Tanya shouted angrily. The spectre was pulled with a loud chomping sound into the floor, and Unhealed Lady, becoming a grey fog, quickly darted into a vase. “Never handle ghosts this way. Terribly dusty in here! I have choo… aller… choo! gy!” the vase immediately began to moan.

      The trunk stopped shuddering. The one sitting in it was clearly listening. “Come out, Pipa! Otherwise you’ll suffocate,” ordered Tanya.

      “I’ll not come out! It’s you, guilty of everything! Cursed witch! Must burn you on the stake!” Pipa answered from the trunk, managing to sob and hiss at the same time.

      Tanya was angry. The daughter of the Durnevs, as always, stuck to her own repertoire. “Come out, I say! Who asked you to look in there anyway? Did I ever ransack your things?”

      “So what? This is my apartment, my parents’. And all the things here are mine, nothing here is yours… Oh-oh-oh! I’m scared! Fo-o-ol!” Suddenly Pipa’s voice trembled, and she burst into tears. Tanya almost went deaf. Lieutenant Rzhevskii with his frightening howl was simply an amateur compared to Pipa.

      Unhealed Lady, hiding in the vase, had just been describing some of her regular sores. On hearing Pipa’s sobbing, Lady decided that Pipa was crying from sympathy and also burst into tears herself. “How touching! Didn’t think that the history of the corn on my heel would upset you so. Not exactly like all these insensible donkeys!” she said, sobbing.

      Lieutenant Rzhevskii, already recovered from the action of the restrain spell, carefully floated out from the corridor. This time the restless spectre was in a dark-blue work robe, with a mop in his hands. He had clearly borrowed both from the cabinet of the maid who came to the Durnevs three times a week. “Little lady, I very much apologize! A cleaning woman was called? I’m here!” Lieutenant asked and, without waiting for an answer, started to fly around the room, grinding red tracks onto the ceiling.

      Tanya understood that if Pipa was not immediately driven out of the trunk and the ghost returned there, this could end with anything. Once and for all, the ghost completely letting himself go would destroy everything in the apartment and start to fly through the entire building frightening the neighbours, and Pipa would sob and squeal until someone called the police.

      “That’s it, Pipa, come out! Out of there quick! I need the trunk!” Tanya ordered. She tried to open the lid but Pipa clutched with a death grip and held it from within.

      “Wait! Now I’ll drive her out!” Lieutenant Rzhevskii made use of the fact that the lid of the trunk was slightly raised during the fight, and, holding the mop atilt, infiltrated through the slit. “And here’s also the brigade of maid-psychopaths with new rags for the nose! Need to wipe your tears?” he cooed.

      From the trunk was heard no longer a screech but a howl. The lid was thrown open, and Pipa jumped out like she was scalded, pursued at her heels by the off-his-rocker spectre and by Unhealed Lady. Moreover, Lady got the idea into her head to tell Pipa how once during an operation the surgeon left his glasses in her stomach.

      Pipa howled non-stop, arbitrarily rushing along the room and trying to force her way through into the corridor. But every time Lieutenant Rzhevskii appeared in her way, with a straight face juggling his own ears and nose. Pipa waved her hands at him and jumped back.

      Tanya sat on the bed and, having propped up her head with her arms, was observing all these disgraceful goings-on. Then she recalled that she had left the double bass on the stairs,

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