Wearily pressing her chest to the bed, then hugging the pillow tightly, Leah closed her eyes. Memories were coming with renewed vigor, dragging towards her thoughtlessly, and completely aimlessly. Inhale from inhale, and again, as instant fatigue poured into the dance of her infinitely fanatical thoughts, rising crowns one gentle night and several morning hours. And gradually, more and more vulnerability began to spread through her light body. That unbearable feeling that was increasingly woven into her bronze-brown eyes, frozen with sadness, now forced her to calmly go into the warm embrace of daytime dreams, familiar only to her. Leah’s eyes were impossibly heavy. And consciousness was leaving her slowly…
In the middle of the pastel wallpaper of the room, the cream door, in the soft glow of the bedside lamp; with her arms spread over her head, the gentle Lia was sleeping, as if, just as in childhood, a child of six or seven years old. Because of the slightly open window, the frost was gradually felt, slowly binding the skin free from clothes. The room was calm and quiet. Only a light tapping of the heart created an unobtrusive, pleasant melody in it. Gradually, the coolness reached Leah’s bare legs. Hoarse breaths were applied to her rosy cheeks, and the eyebrows, those, seemed to frown from the lifelessly cold touches of the sharp edge of a brush or a hard ink pen. Strange sensations, completely unusual, it seemed, small wet spots appeared one after another on the heels and ankles of the girl. Along with the cold, something else seemed to appear in the room. Ice.
The moaning snow wind outside exhaled blue wings that chirped softly, reflecting off the whitewashed walls. Butterfly… The whole floor turned into frozen clouds of smoke. The wings walked on them as if mechanically, without any life, they then slowed down, almost without moving, then beat wildly against each other, holding the necessary balance. Her body was changing more and more, growing into the shape of a monster that chilled the soul with swelling eyes, wings that began to look like sails torn to shreds. The creature that had easily entered through the window was now only able to crawl and could barely cross the doorway. In an effort to climb the wall, it lost control of its paws, and, falling on its wings, hopelessly tore them apart again and again. The movements stopped, and when silence fell, the light around Leah’s bed dimmed. Everything had lost its brightness, it was getting dark, literally disappearing from sight, that only faint signs of things could barely be guessed. Poor, poor little girl. After a while, in a room freezing to death, on the far end of the blanket, a black, black, with tarry, tough scales, a disgusting cobra appeared, and its eyes, burning with yellow darkness, hung in the air.
An impossibly loud, metallic creak was her incessant hissing, turning into the roar of a huge beast. It sounded like a razor-sharp little needle, now beating off every second of life in Leah’s little ears. Plunged deep into the mists of her dreams, the girl did not dare to wake up, while the gloomy creature, embittered even more, opened her creepy hood, enlarged to the size of the victim, and, as if by a click, with a crossbow arrow rushed to the prey struck from head to toe, to her innocent, moist face. Feeling its superiority, the cobra crawled between the closed, fluttering scarlet lips, as if nothing could stop it and got stuck deep in the girl’s throat. Leah suddenly pulled herself up, groaned, feeling an impossible disgust from all this creature, but did not find the strength to finally wake up. Trying to sting, swallow her quiet, tormented heart, the cobra began to writhe its body over the room, until suddenly, once and for all, it disappeared from one piercing, blood-curdling scream, the words of which could not be made out. The bloody cloud swallowed the creature, chewing it like a worm right in front of the bed, leaving no trace. A whirlwind appeared over the girl with a blackened image inside, bordered the bed with dark blood and reached out to her
Two red pigtails fell right to Leah’s face. A plaintive cry escaped from the child’s cheeks.
– Call someone. Let go. Please help me, I’ll do everything —
– Help me, Leah, I beg you, Save me, honey, honey, it’s not right… —
Leah opened her eyes, but her pupils completely dissolved; it was as if an icy door had crushed her red, warm heart, as if thousands of cobras’ mouths had pierced her hands with their fangs, biting through her fingers like grapes. As if from a thousand lacerations, the corners of her mouth poured heavy sea water on the bed. The neck burned as if from the clicks of a match. One, two. Blue tears were falling from her eyes. The face cracked in half, giving an oblique crack all over the right cheek. It was unbearable. Sobbing harder and harder, she would have liked to wipe away all the tears, but her hand was lost in the smoke… Trying to remember herself as soon as possible, Leah screamed. She jumped up in a sweat, covering her face with her hands and restraining her screams; in the midst of the dazzling white images of her room, a real fear hovered like a small butterfly.