and not just beckon. Some overwhelming power emanated from her. It seemed as soon as she shed her robe, and real black wings would move under it.
He wanted to say “I love you” as soon as she came closer, but now she was already there, and her tongue did not move. The lips were numb. It seemed that next to him a living statue, which shines like the sun, and its beauty hurts the eyes.
As if by magic, Athenais, almost oblivious to the others in the audience, stopped right in front of him and grabbed his hand instead of taking a pen and notebook. Kiril felt how he crashed into the low metal partitions at the aisle. Only they shared it with his dream. Atenais’ face breathed cold, but it seemed that she was now dying in fire, like a real dragon.
Her gilded fingernails ran over his wrist and cut in a way that a knife would not have been able to do. How did she do it? Blood flowed instantly. And the crowd around took everything for granted. Precisely, there are rumors about her that she signs autographs with the blood of fans, Kiril recalled. That’s why she hasn’t given one yet today. When she gives them, blood flows. His head was spinning with blood loss. If such a deep wound is not bandaged, he will die. But no one was in a hurry to call an ambulance, or at least sympathize. Everything was perceived as a special effect, and, frankly, from the outside it resembled a scene from a horror movie.
Atenais, as if nothing had happened, dipped the tips of her nails in his blood and signed an ornate autograph in a notebook. Already losing consciousness, Kiril could not figure out why the coveted autograph scares him off with a thick bright red color.
Suicides sessions
America, California
The cinema was almost empty. And they said that there is nowhere for an apple to fall on these films. Annette was a little disappointed, although solitude was just what she needed now.
Her dreams were quickly crumbling. A career in Hollywood was not for her. The name of Annette Fiore never became popular, although sometimes it flashed on the strips of newspapers. She’s just a starlet and will obviously remain her until her hair is gray. The world of the movie business is cruel. Only those who have grandiose connections are promoted here. The new star, which burst into the screens with a series of mystical films about Lucifer, as a meteor, had these connections.
Annette knew that no one just became famous. Talent doesn’t matter. You can’t go through the casting with him. You, of course, will be praised, but they will carefully look in the questionnaire, what is your pedigree, whether there are star parents or influential friends. The actors are kept under control. Only those who are satisfied with the grandiose promotion in the press and on television become famous. There will be many beautiful false words that the main thing is talent, not the stars’ striving for fame. In fact, the main thing is the influential people who pull the strings and the press, and all the other necessary structures necessary in order to turn an ordinary unremarkable actor into a mega-star.
Anyone can become a movie superstar if they have the connection to do so. Anetta’s trouble was that she had practically no connections. Yes, there were two or three acquaintances who organized her the roles of the second and third plan, once even the first. By acting in films and not having influential acquaintances who organize your advertising campaign, you can expect fame as well as winning the lottery. Annette was much more beautiful than all the vaunted beauties of Hollywood, but no one noticed her, except for young guys who idly scurry about the streets in the hope of meeting at least some pretty girl. On the contrary, nowhere and no one paid attention to movie stars, except at the premieres. All of them were repeatedly abandoned women who bartered with the right people and used them to keep out talented outsiders to fame. Everyone at the film studios was someone’s acquaintances, relatives, lovers, and sometimes the children of some business partners. For someone’s creature, the green light is everywhere. Hence, there are so many mediocre stars who are completely invisible to no one without promotion in the press. Hence, there are so many articles about the legendary beauty of women and men, who look no different from ordinary passers-by in the crowd.
But the rising star could not be said to be devoid of unique beauty. Probably, in connection with her, they used some new special effect not yet known to the masses, which helped to create the impression of a divinely beautiful face. Atenais on the screen looked like a creature from a fairy tale. This is why she favorably differed from all the average stars, whose vaunted virtues exist only in articles. Curious: does Atenais have this beauty behind the scenes when he washes off his makeup? If so, then it is clear why she so quickly eclipsed all the stars who successfully made a career before her. However, if the envious actresses still have not torn her to pieces, then the patrons behind her are very powerful.
“You have no idea how powerful they are,” a hoarse voice whispered in the darkened cinema hall. Annette glanced around, only empty rows of unoccupied chairs stretched behind her. She was not surprised. The sensation was as if the voice was coming from everywhere: from above, below, and to the left and to the right. Probably it seemed.
Several people who were present, besides her, in the cinema, were hardly in the mood to joke. In addition, in order to connect some kind of audio system with insidious phrases in response to her thoughts, they had to first become magicians themselves in order to learn how to read these thoughts.
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