11:57

Kostya drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he kept impatiently glancing at the time.

He had been waiting for Anya for the past fifteen minutes. He sat in his car, parked next to the subway station, and watched the street market taking place in the nearby square.

The stocky ladies with weather-beaten faces, who stood inside the stalls with cheap trinkets, stared into the steady human flow indifferently. Sometimes they muttered answers to the rare person who paused at the booth and asked a question. Most of the askers would then reunite with the flow of people; the others would retrieve a few bills from their purses to exchange them for the item they pointed to.

11:59

The sleepless night had filled his eyes with sand, making him blink more often than usual, but his blood was hot with adrenaline that kept drowsiness at bay. Kostya was feeling surprisingly focused and put-together, despite the lack of sleep.

12:03

Where is she?

It suddenly occurred to him that Anya could be late on purpose.

Why bother counting every minute then? He stopped drumming his fingers.

It was not these few minutes that actually concerned him. It was her voice. The voice he had heard earlier that morning. He hadn’t spoken with her by phone before, but still. There was something really, really off with her voice. Could it be Anya’s older sister answering her phone to play a trick on him? But as far as he knew, Anya had no siblings.

Could it be a friend of hers? Or some distant family member coming over for vacation? No, no, no.

The voice definitely belonged to Anya and no one else. But it was different. No more of her childish twittering; the voice was somewhat lower-pitched, calm, and composed. She seemed to have no fear or anxiety about coming to meet a practical stranger twice as old as she was.

At some point while listening to her unconcerned voice, Kostya came to believe she was only going on this date because she was bored to death of staying at home.

He hated that.

At 12:10, his mobile phone rang with “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode.

“Hello?” Kostya cried out.

“Hi. Where are you?” the same calm and confident voice asked.

Shit.

“Here, in the parking lot.” He glanced at the pedestrian crossing, looking for a brown-haired teenage girl. “Where are you?”

“Almost there. What car?”

“Dark-red Golf. At the very end,” he added a moment before he saw Anya coming.

It was definitely her and no one else. But something was really, really off about her.

She looked older. More mature.

Stepping up to his car, she opened the door and plopped down into the front seat, scanning him with a brief flash in her focused eyes.

“Hi,” she smiled.

“Hi,” Kostya answered.

“Let’s go to your cozy restaurant. That is where we’re going, isn’t it?” she asked. She stressed the last words slightly but firmly enough to make it clear that she remembered his words from last week and she would tolerate no deviations from the approved plan.

“It is,” he muttered, driving out of the parking lot, feeling like he was in a bad dream.

What’s wrong with her?

Kostya stared silently at the road lines running to meet his car. All his attempts to engage Anya in conversation had stumbled and failed. The girl sitting on his right looked several years older than the Anya he remembered.

And that wasn’t all. She was different in more than one way. This aura of…of strength. And cold determination. As if she were a military veteran who had seen and survived too much to be shaken by anything anymore.

She listened to him with impassive, dominating condescension.

He hated that.

His common sense and gut were quarreling. His common sense assured him that the girl just looked a bit older and had more confidence. All the rest was the work of his imagination—a trick played on him due to weariness and lack of sleep.

But his gut kept screaming that this was a totally different person sitting next to him. A harsh, cold-blooded, and dangerous person.

He was no longer fantasizing about Anya the same way he had been over the past few days. Her new appearance and manners were totally putting him off.

Immersed in thought, he drove his car down the highway, answering her questions absent-mindedly and pondering over what to do next. His plan stood no chance without its cornerstone: the timid fourteen-year-old, blushing and pleading.

He could forget his cellar and all his preparations.

Annoyance was boiling up inside him, black and burning like tar, as he realized that his day was completely ruined. Even if he somehow managed to get her inside—by knocking her unconscious or strangling her slightly or scaring the shit out of her (however unlikely the latter seemed)—he wouldn’t be able to proceed to the next step. The change in Anya had stripped her of the easy-prey sort of attractiveness that turned him on so much.

He felt deceived. Deprived of what he held sacred. Betrayed in the most cold and cynical way. By this cold, self-assured little bitch in the next seat.

He hated her.

Glancing at her reflection in the right rearview mirror once again, he saw a strange thing in her hair.

A leather snake.

His eyes lingered on it. Roughly patched in places and encrusted with veins of dark metal, it looked like a piece of medieval armor.

Kostya had no idea why he was comparing this feminine accessory to military gear. His gut screamed that this leather thing had something to do with Anya’s transformation. The snake emitted a strange, otherworldly aura. Same as he had sensed earlier in the morning when talking to Anya by phone.

He suddenly saw the visions from his dream. The letter train. The sky lantern spreading its paper wings and craning its serpentine neck, acting as the gyroscopic stabilization system.

A cold wave of terror came rushing from his temples to the nape of his neck, just like back then.

He shook those visions off.

Bullshit.

But his gut insisted that the leather hairband was the root of all his trouble. His nightmare. His ruined day. Anya’s off-putting transformation.

Had he had more time for thought, he would’ve probably figured out a solution to his problem. He could drop Anya off right away, making up some excuse, and then find another actress to play the leading role in his cellar performance.

But he had no time, as the car approached his turn with only a few miles left to go. He couldn’t let Anya see which way led to his house. Or he could still get her inside and punish her for his disappointment.

The latter idea was very tempting.

A blinding wave of loathing came over him. Turning to Anya, he muttered, “What’s that thing in your hair?”

He already had a plan. He wouldn’t drive her past his turn to deceive her. No. He would take her inside and strangle her to death. Without having sex. Without taking any pleasure in that. Just as his revenge for a ruined day. Then he would hide the body.

You will pay, bitch.

He reached for Anya’s leather hairband and ripped it off.

Her face froze.

For a split second, Kostya seemed to see the whole world around them freeze.

Tearing the sticky air apart, he clutched the leather band in his fist, feeling it wrap around his fingers.

With her face unchanged, Anya shot her left arm out, tugging at the wheel.

The trees, the clouds, and the road flashed past, as if in a kaleidoscope, changing places several times before Kostya lapsed into black, ringing silence.

He never wore his seat belt.