Kuplinov Shows "Omen IV: The Awakening"

"It was like this: in our barracks there was a young officer who, in civilian life, was, funny to think, a ski coach," Tai Minamoto began his story. "This weirdo got the nickname "Kuplinov" from all the other soldiers, because he was crazy about buying and selling (untranslatable pun in Russian). So, it turns out, this same Kuplinov became very famous among our children's battalions because he got hold of a projection screen from somewhere - I don't know whether he stole it from the officers or bought it himself - in short, he got hold of this projection screen and set himself the task of showing all our guys all sorts of films. Well, it's a well-known fact that there are no women in the barracks, so they have to use improvised means..."

At this point in his story, the young man's cheeks turned red.

"In general, he placed this projection screen in a small closet, which was next to the door leading to the toilet; a tiny room, where before that they kept buckets, mops and other inventory. So, this Kuplinov secretly stole these buckets and mops and sold them to some friend of his, Warrant Officer Pounce, so that he could then distribute them to markets and other fairs. And he pretended to his superiors that there was nothing special about it - like, come on, stop grumbling in vain, no one needed these buckets and mops anyway! But the most important thing was, of course, not this, but the fact that in the room that had been cleared of inventory, our Kuplinov took and installed his projection screen, brought in five chairs there - it was impossible to bring more into this closet anyway, they physically wouldn't have fit - and, having installed a projector stolen from Colonel Boner Ghouler himself on the ceiling, connected it to an old battered DVD player, which he had already stolen not from one of our guys, but from his elderly mother - what a heartless asshole! - he began to show all sorts of films for one and a half thousand rubles - more expensive than in a normal movie theater! At first, he showed only porn - our guys were sick of shelling out one thousand five hundred rubles for anything more artistic. But then, when the guys got into it, they resigned themselves and started to be capricious - like, what's the matter, only porn and nothing more! - started playing the contents of his personal film library in his movie house, which, as you, Mister Tairymbayev, have already guessed, was also stolen from his mother's house. The films there turned out to be very different... But you and I are only interested in one horror film, a Analdian production from the early nineties of the last century, namely "Omen IV: The Awakening" - do you remember this bullshit, or haven't seen it yet?"

Nar-Tai, of course, did not remember, because it was the first time he had heard of such crap from the film industry, and therefore he did not know what to answer to such a question from his young interlocutor, who, taking his silence as a sign of agreement with his words, continued his story.

"So, imagine an oil painting - the end of July, evening outside, and at this time in a small dark and stuffy closet five sweaty and tired people are sitting in front of a projection screen, flickering with blue light in the middle of this gloomy environment. Can you imagine it, Mister Tairymbayev?"

"Well, you've imagined it, so what's next?" Nar-Tai couldn't wait to hear the rest of the young man's story.

"That's great!" the guy praised him and continued:

"So, our guys are sitting around the screen, and one of them - this is important! - Anton Skovorodnikov himself. He, by the way, was the only one who didn't yelp when this Kuplinov was ripping off one and a half thousand rubles from him, like everyone else. Either he was tongue-tied or something else, but if all our other guys were angry at the appetites of the movie house owner at first, then Anton for some reason never spoke badly about the whole thing. And at the same time, it's not like he was such a coward or anything - no, he just didn't yelp for some reason and that's it. Oh well, that's later, and now you and I, Mister Tairymbayev, are interested in that hot July evening. So, this Anton Skovorodnikov is sitting with four other guys in a stuffy little closet, and on the screen at that time our Kuplinov showed not another action movie with Iron Arnie or Stallone, but - which was uncharacteristic for him - a horror movie. And this, by the way, was the first time he showed a horror movie in his movie house. For some reason, this had never happened before - apparently, his mother, from whom he stole DVDs, did not like them very much. Well, never mind. In short, he started his player, and the picture flickered on the projection screen..."

At these words, Tai suddenly fell silent, as if trying to emphasize the absurdity of the moment with this dramatic pause, but soon continued.

"So the picture flickered," Tai began. "First, of course, the title card, twentieth сentury fox and other cloddish flox... Then the movie itself began: some monastery, two nuns, and then some sweet couple walking through this very monastery and, as I recall, there were a bunch of kids there. And then one of the nuns meets this couple and leads them somewhere, and then the frame shows some screaming brat in diapers. The guys who are sitting and watching this movie, of course, immediately start whispering among themselves, like, what the fuck? One even says to another - "That's our colonel, the spitting image!" or something like that... In short, our soldiers are whispering, and at this time there is already some action going on on the screen - they are showing some kind of holiday or some similar bullshit, only it is not clear exactly what they are celebrating there - either a birthday, or just some The Omen Ican holiday, but, in general, the most interesting thing about this holiday is that that screaming asshole, whom I already told you about, Mister Tairymbayev, takes and bites his mother by the cheek! And everyone on the screen is like - wow, what the fuck is this bullshit, we need to call the doctors immediately! Well, in short, they called the doctor, he looks at this mother, mumbles something there and then the action suddenly moves again to the monastery. Or not a monastery, but just a church - who the fuck can understand these catholics! In short, on the screen again all this pompous paraphernalia, candles-fucking, bullshit-bunnies, and right there is our sweet couple with the twat. And the abbe stands there so affectionately and smiles, the twat is crossing them. The twat, of course, is stupid, like a Papuan's pith helmet; they cross him, and he screams like he's been cut. His mother carries him away, and the abbe remains, and when this happens, the cameraman - a dumb asshole, - begins to film the prete-e-e-entious close-up of the abbe's face, and not only his face, but also some bullshit like the statue of the personal jesus from the Depeche Mode's song and all that other religious crap. And the abbe himself suddenly falls down and then suddenly the editor - also a man of limited intelligence, - starts showing footage of this sweet couple, and eventually the guys start grumbling, like, what have these faggots-filmmakers done, why didn't they show what happened to the abbe? Oh well, that's not the point. Anyway, then the whole thing starts to get really cheesy - the sweet couple is making out with some loli, and that twat has suddenly disappeared somewhere, well, fuck him, really. But now this loli with her black hair is in the center of attention on the screen. She's so beautiful, all dressed up, glamorous to the point of impossibility - you can't help but want to puke right in front of the projection screen where all this crap was spinning. In general, at first the filmmakers pretend that nothing special is happening around this loli, not counting some caramel-syrup nonsense like holidays and running around with dogs - by the way, there was some dog there, but it doesn't matter. In general, at first some boring blizzard was happening on the screen, so that all five viewers yawned and said to each other something like: "Well, fuck your mom...". And then finally some kind of movement began. This Nabokov-like Lolita sits in some kindergarten and yapped something in her nasty little voice, and it is clear that she yapped to get lost, only because the stern uncle-director made her. But that is not the point. So, they show us this trash, bullshit, bullshit, and then suddenly some dandy jumps out on stage and acts like a fucking eight-year-old macho, that's fucking hilarious, what the fuck did those stupid movie makers come up with! He steals this loli's little red box - who the fuck knows what the fuck that is, I know nothing about kids' stuff - so, he steals her thing and runs off somewhere, and the loli runs after him. He does something with her box, I don't remember what, and a minute later this girl suddenly takes it and BLAM! - starts beating this dandy with that same box! All four soldiers who were watching the film couldn't hold back at that moment and started laughing like crazy. But - I ask for your attention, Mister Tairymbayev - Anton Skovorodnikov, who was sitting with everyone else, did not laugh."

"And what did he do then?" Nar-Tai, who had been listening attentively to his confused story all this time, decided to interrupt Tai.

"That's the point, I didn't do anything at all!" the young man answered him, his face ablaze with the excitement of the storyteller. "While his four fellow soldiers were laughing like horses, Anton sat quietly in his place and stared with all his eyes at the projection screen that was constantly flickering due to the poor quality of the barracks' electrical network, and at the same time his face looked as if... Have you ever fallen in love with someone, Mister Tairymbayev?" the young man suddenly turned to Nar-Tai.

"What are you getting at, boy?" Nar-Tai was surprised by this question.

"Yes, I mean," continued Tai Minamoto, "that if you loved even a little, you would know what love at first sight is and what kind of expression the person who fell in love has on their face."

"Hm-m-m-m," Nar-Tai muttered thoughtfully, rubbing his chin with his hand.

"When a person is in love with someone," the young man continued to rant, "a happy idiot's smile appears on his face, or, on the contrary, he frowns to such an extent that it seems as if he is about to cry bitter tears of remorse for the crime he has committed against humanity."

"So what was Anton Skovorodnikov's face like when that loli appeared on the screen and started beating the goldfinch?" Nar-Tai asked the young man, using words from his own story to define him.

"A face of the second kind," the young man answered. "He, as I remember now, sat, pressed into a chair, and looked at the screen with a face that seemed about to burst into tears. The other four soldiers who were sitting in the closet didn't give a shit what was wrong with his face, they were just laughing like horses at the trash happening on the screen and that's it. And only Anton sat, as if he had fallen into water, and looked, looked at the screen as if he was seeing all this for the first time. I think that for him it really was the first time, because who the hell knows what kind of films he watched before he turned seventeen. Oh well, what can I say about those assholes... In short, the following was going on on the screen at that moment: they weren't showing some kind of crap about goldfinches and pizdyuks in kindergarten anymore; Now the cameraman was filming some kind of home video, where one of that sweet couple - well, more precisely, it was the daddy - was making out with the aforementioned loli right on her crib. He wasn't fucking her in the ass, of course, he was just squeezing her, but it didn't really matter. The daddy looked like a very pleased with himself man of about thirty-five or forty with a pleased face, and the girl was just a miracle - a little angel with huge eyes in such cute white pajamas. In general, I even envied those two idiots on the screen a little, because I myself had never had anything like that in my entire life! Anyway, I remember that they were showing this scene, and the cameraman kept bringing the camera closer and closer to the bed on which the daddy and daughter were sitting. And then suddenly the angle of the filming changed abruptly, and now on the screen there was a close-up of that loli's face. At first I shuddered in surprise, but quickly pulled myself together at the sight of that little face, on which such a sweet grimace of a happy smile was frozen. And at the same time, Mister Tairymbayev, do you know where she was looking? Straight into the camera, that is, practically at the spectators, at all five of the soldiers who were sitting at that moment in a stuffy closet next to the toilet and laughing at the nonsense that their fellow soldier with the funny nickname Kuplinov was telling them! And that's when, Mister Tairymbayev, the most interesting thing happened in everything that was happening in that place!"

"So what could have happened that was so special that it made the Antichrist sick?" asked Nar-Tai, surprised by the young man's dramatic intonation. "What exactly surprised you so much, my dear friend?"

"You see," said the young man, smiling sheepishly, "the point here is not at all that the cameraman was filming the loli's face in close-up, although I personally felt a little uneasy about this scene, but how this scene affected Anton Skovorodnikov. I already told you that when this loli was first shown, he already looked like he was in deep water. But as soon as the cameraman brought his camera a little closer to this girl's face to film her cute smile in close-up, our Anton - it's even embarrassing to say! - blushed deeply and looked away from the screen at that moment! And at the same time, such an idiotic smile played on his lips, as if he had been caught doing something shameful. Well, do you understand what I'm talking about, Mister Tairymbayev?"

"Well, I understand, so what?" Nar-Tai urged the guy.

"And then," the young man continued, "that Anton Skovorodnikov completely lost his head when he saw that very smile on the loli's face! It looked so wild, ridiculous and even funny at the same time that all the other soldiers who were sitting with him in that closet also started laughing when THIS was shown on the screen! Only, Mister Tairymbayev, they laughed because they thought it was funny, but Anton smiled not because he found it funny, but because he felt ashamed - you see, he felt ashamed in front of a loli who never existed in real life, but was only a figment of the imagination of the entire film crew! Can you imagine? Anton is a soldier, he is well over thirty, and he blushed and looked away when the camera showed a close-up of the little girl's face!"

"Listen, my dear," Nar-Tai took advantage of the pause to ask a question, "why do you want me to pay attention to this episode so much? So what, there's a loli on the screen, and one of the viewers is blushing! What's wrong with that?"

"Mister Tairymbayev," Tai answered him, "but this is the key to solving the mystery of why Private Skovorodnikov abandoned his native Pet-el-burge for some whore from Analda!"

"I don't see the connection," Nar-Tai remarked sternly.

"You'll see," the young man persisted, "when you listen to my story to the end."

Nar-Tai remained silent, and the young man, for the sake of decency, kept silent for a while after his long tirade, soon began a new one.

"Anyway," he began for the umpteenth time, "on the screen after that loli's face they showed a kindergarten again. There was that same loli again, and even that goldfinch that she was beating with her red box. And then that same boy suddenly went and chased after her, only his heels were flashing. The girl climbed the stairs away from him - and the goldfinch still caught up with her... And then they climbed up the stairs together and froze there - she on top, he on the bottom. And the cameraman was filming that same girl so strangely that I thought: "Was it Humbert who was filming all this, was this cameraman a pedophile for an hour?" You see, Mister Tairymbayev, the camera was filming her from below, which gave the viewers a "beautiful" - I say this in quotation marks on purpose, so that you wouldn't think anything bad about our soldiers - so the cameraman deliberately filmed the whole thing in such a way that the frame clearly showed the girl's rear end, dressed in pajama pants. At the same time, as I remember now, the girl looked around so strangely and waved her hand, that it seemed as if she was telling the viewers, "Hey, look, boys! Look at my butt, boys!" Honestly, it was some kind of fucked up mess. I was even scared at first when they showed it, but it turned out that it was just such an edit with the purpose of showing the viewer that, like, this is all being shown through the eyes of that goldfinch, like, according to the plot, he was the second one to go up the stairs after her, and that's why he saw her butt covered in children's pajama pants in front of him. But still, Mister Tairymbayev, this is the Antichrists knows what! You have to think of something like this! And if she was wearing a skirt? Then would that asshole cameraman have taken the same angle, or would he have been embarrassed to show off a loli's panties in front of the audience? No, excuse me please..."

And the young man, breathing heavily, lowered his head. Nar-Tai saw that he was seriously excited by his own story. He understood his feelings, because he himself had experienced something similar when he was chasing girls around school. Only then it was, hmm, not in public, but between them, and no one, except perhaps the teachers and head teachers, saw all this.

And here, in fact, there is something wrong - it seems like adults were filming a movie, but without any shame they showed all their viewers that very place called "a child's butt" in all its glory, and they pretended that, well, what's the big deal, during editing they accidentally forgot to remove an unsuccessful take with a child's butt in the frame, this happens sometimes to all cameramen in the world every single day.

And the fact that the film, as Nar-Tai remembered, was not shot in the Soviet Union, where they would slap your hands for such things, but in capitalist Analda, which was much more loyal to such things, also played a role in the filmmakers' carelessness.

However, why be surprised by the fact that such films exist at all - after all, how many of them are filmed even today? Every year several thousand new films are released, which are watched by millions of people, and therefore it is not surprising that in some ancient film by today's standards there could be unsuccessful takes.

Be that as it may, Nar-Tai was not worried about this at all, but about how private Anton Skovorodnikov fell in love with some cunt from Analda and left his unit for her sake. In order to find out, he asked the young man to continue his story, and he happily agreed.

"Anyway, later in that film there were all sorts of special effects like a car that crashed and a guy who lost his mind - well, that's the tradition of those dumb Analdians who just want to kill a couple of characters on screen, and so that there's more blood! Everyone had long since gotten used to that, and even all five soldiers, including Anton Skovorodnikov, just yawned at that moment, because they'd seen worse in action movies with Iron Arnie or Stallone. Anyway, when some fat guy's head was blown off, the screen started showing some silly girl showing up at the sweet couple's place, and then they showed that same girl in the yellow skirt. She was so incredibly touching and her face expressed such sadness that it was funny to watch. And that fool, in short, tries to do something with this loli, either teach her something, or just talk... I remember she was walking with her at some fair, which also managed to burn down. And this girl was looking at the camera with such a spiteful-malicious face, as if the director had specifically given her the task of looking at everyone as if they were shit. But the most important thing happened when, at the end of this fair, that fool secluded herself with the loli in her room and began to do some strange things there: first she sat her on her knees in front of her, facing her, and then she began to have some idiotic dialogue with her, and at the same time she moved closer and closer with her whole body to the girl... And when I thought that, like, some sedition was about to happen, the girl suddenly takes and unexpectedly spits right in the face of this lady! I still remember the delight of all five soldiers who watched this film. They even applauded with joy when they watched how this fool ran away from the girl in horror from the room and then threw herself out of the window, falling on some multi-colored rotating round thing, a carousel or not - who the fuck knows. Then the film became boring, because they started filming some kind of horse race, where this loli, packed in a suit like a diver so that nothing was visible except her eyes, saddled some kind of horse, which - hilarious! - dropped the girl on the ground. Why the fuck was it necessary to film this, I don't understand at all, because it's very stupid and not funny, but then they at least showed a scene in the hospital, where this loli was lying in a bed and some kind of dick was hanging over her face - a doctor, I think. Well, and then, alas, the screen showed some boring-boring footage of some shopping trips, I remember there was also some lunch where this loli was angrily yapping at her mother, who was played by some blonde, and vague moments with this girl's father, who was either the president or the minister - I didn't understand a fucking thing in this stupid movie. In short, after these boring shots, the real trash began about some fat and smelly old man, who walked around the entire movie in the same gray raincoat and bulged his eyes at the camera as if he was about to shit right in his pants. The soldiers who watched the film, sitting in the closet in front of the projection screen, were all happy when this old asshole was thoroughly fucked by a construction crane - at least because after this scene the old fart never showed up again. Although no - that scene with the crane was valuable because right after it they showed a cute loli who, having picked up a bunch of balls in her little hands - chicken eggs, of course, not leather balls - dropped a couple of them and at the same time her eyes were so cutely half-closed and her lips were trembling slightly. It seems to me that it was this moment that made the whole picture especially interesting for Anton Skovorodnikov, who, if you haven't forgotten, was clearly partial to this particular loli. I think he remembered these shots for a long time afterwards, when he was scribbling... Okay, I'm getting too far ahead of myself," Tai Minamoto suddenly stopped.

Nar-Tai looked at the young man, but he seemed not to notice his gaze and continued talking about what happened that July evening in the movie house that was set up by a soldier with the funny nickname "Kuplinov".

"Anyway, when they showed that loli with the chicken balls, - it was hard for the young man not to smile at these words, realizing how funny these words sounded if taken out of context, - the sweet couple sparkled on the screen again, and at the same time it was hard not to feel the feeling that this had happened before - the thing is that the mother was holding in her arms that same brat who had been shining on the screen at the very beginning of the film! Just one to one - the same white diapers, the same stupid and chubby face and the same nasty squeal for no reason!"

"And you, my dear," Nar-Tai interrupted the young man, "have you ever thought for a minute that that brat at the beginning of the film later grew into that very loli that you admire so much?"

"You are insulting me, Mister Tairymbayev," the young man answered him in a capricious tone. "Firstly, I myself have not seen this film, and I am now retelling you the impressions of Ilya Silantyev, who on that memorable day was in the Kuplinov movie house together with Anton Skovorodnikov and three other soldiers. So you have now formed a false opinion of me if you say that I, supposedly, admire this loli and that I, supposedly, am such a fool that I did not get to the bottom of obvious things. All your claims that you address to me, - Tai continued in a didactic tone, - I reject, because I am simply retelling you the words of another person."

"Look at you, you're even speaking in officialese!" Nar-Tai exclaimed ironically. "The milk hasn't even dried on your lips yet, and you already dare to speak to your elders in such a tone!"

Tai Minamoto pretended not to understand the obvious hint at his arrogance and instead of admitting his guilt, began to argue heatedly:

"And secondly, Mister Tairymbayev," the young man continued in the same arrogant tone, "I'm not talking about myself personally! I'm simply telling you about the circumstances that forced Anton Skovorodnikov to abandon the barracks of the Pet-el-burge branch of the VRLJ corporation and rush at full speed to stinking Analda into the arms of some whore with the last name of either Whoreira or Vagineira! You ask me why there? You will find out if you have patience and listen to my story to the end, otherwise you will continue to lie in this very bed and not know what happened in the world during the entire time that you spent twenty years lying in a bath of liquid nitrogen. Well, Mister Tairymbayev, do you agree with me?"

Nar-Tai realized that his friend Ando Minamoto's sonnie had not only inherited his father's good looks, but also an enviable impenetrability when it came to goals and means to achieve his intended results.

If this boy was really fired up with the idea of telling him in all the details the story of a soldier named Anton Skovorodnikov, who was of no interest to him at all, then he would do it, no matter what hints they tried to throw him off his game - Nar-Tai had already managed to understand this during the entire time he had been listening to Tai Minamoto's story.

And so he thought it best not to answer the question addressed to him and just waved his hand, as if to say, continue, I'm listening to you. And the young man continued:

"So, after that twat flashed on the screen again - no matter whether it was the same one from the beginning or a completely different one - the film became unusually dull. After a scene so powerful in its emotional load, when the loli touched that same twat and her mother yelled at her for no reason - what a fool, the soldiers watching the film thought then - nothing more interesting happened on the screen. Absolutely nothing. No, of course, the cameraman continued to film the stupid dialogues of this mother with some abbe and then there was even some action, where this same mother first pierced some doctor's palm, and then shot some gothic lady in a white dress in the stomach, who then rolled down the stairs in a funny way, but all this caused only boredom and yawning in such a simple audience as the five soldiers, because these scenes were far from the action of the films with Iron Arnie and Stallone. Only at the very end, when the mother burst into the children's room, clutching a revolver in her hand, the audience suddenly came to life: some laughed with pleasure at the sight of a little girl who, with a stern face, held a twat in her arms, some froze under the impression of the sight of a huge revolver aimed straight at the camera, and some completely lost the power of speech out of respect for the loli, who was the center of attention in this scene. This last one, Mister Tairymbayev, was, as you might have guessed, Anton Skovorodnikov. But I have to tell you something else... Anyway, when the mother, pointing the gun at her little daughter, said a few pompous and cliched words to her and pulled the trigger, a shot was heard, but the editor's treacherous trick, which was that instead of showing who the hell the bullet hit, he only showed the windows of the house where the scene allegedly took place, so infuriated all five viewers that they all started cursing the asshole editor and the idiot cameraman for their botched work. Ilya Silantyev especially distinguished himself in this regard, from whose words I am now retelling the events of that memorable evening. "What a condom, huh? How could he screw it all up like that, the degraded faggot, so that in the next world he would be fucked in the ass and mouth simultaneously by nine thousand Antichrists and Mikhail Boyarsky himself to boot!" - these are the words he used to describe his impressions of the botched ending," Tai Minamoto said in a completely calm voice, not matching the words he was saying, looking straight into the eyes of his interlocutor.

"Well, what happened next?" Nar-Tai urged the young man.

"If you want to know what happened next in the film," Tai Minamoto began, "I don't know myself, because Ilya Silantyev, who told me all this, couldn't answer me anything about it, being furious after the moment I described above. The only thing I can remember is that in his tirade, peppered with obscenities and curses, there were words like "and also this fucking funeral, who the fuck needs it?", "that asshole can go to hell with his underage cunt!" and "an inverted, motherfucking cross, so that the asshole director will be empty"! That's all I can remember from his words regarding what happened at the end of the film, which he was watching with Anton Skovorodnikov and three other soldiers. And now, please excuse me, Mister Tairymbayev," and the young man lowered his head over the scales of his mind - apparently, he decided to first weigh his words before continuing.