Mutiny of the Little Sweeties

“Father! Come here!” Peter called from the next room. “Cool! Seems like they’re cutting up someone!”

“Who?”

Everybody rushed to Peter. Peter was standing with binoculars and looking at a four-storey block, which was a short distance from them. At the most two rows of low-rise houses over. All its windows were dark or if lit, dimly yellow, normal, except for the top floor, bathed in a bright blue, almost otherworldly light. It was visible how figures were floating slowly, like shadows dragged by a draft, from the window across the middle and gathering in the centre. It looked ominous.

Papa took the binoculars from Peter and noticed that all the figures except two were in blue robes. “It’s probably a hospital, and the top floor is surgery. Or maybe resuscitation, because where else would they be operating at night?”

“My nerves can’t stand this! We’ll be living here and they’ll be cutting someone up over there!” Mama lamented.

“Memento mori.[9] Easier to pray. Are you putting Rita to bed?” Papa asked.

Mama looked anxiously at Rita, who, singing monotonically, was already hanging from her shoulder like a scarf, and agreed to go crazy a little bit later.

“That’s all! I’m calling it a night!” Papa said and closed the curtain.

The hospital immediately disappeared. Together with the blue robes bathed in otherworldly light. Everything unnecessary vanished.

Mama set off to put Rita down. Peter locked himself in his room and began to try the password to the neighbour’s Wi-Fi. At the same time, he was laughing demonically and tapping the tabletop with his elbows. Vicky smoothed out her sheet and moaned that there was a wrinkle near her pillow and that the mattress was puckered.

“I’ll release a rat!” Kate warned seriously, shifting the cages.

Before climbing onto the top bunk, Alena went to the bathroom and got a basin of water. She brought the basin into the room and put it under the bed. The children watched the installation of the basin rather maliciously but kept quiet, and Costa even walked with Alena and, helping her, supported the basin with his right hand.

Everyone knew that an invisible dragon flew to Alena at night and drank water from the basin. If there were no water in the basin, the dragon would die, because dragons need to drink a lot. It is well known that they are hot, and water cools them. Once, two years ago, Peter decided to play a joke. He dropped a fizzy aspirin into the basin and stated that it was a poison pill, and that the dragon would now die for sure.

Although they then changed the water in the basin a hundred times, Alena cried all night and calmed down only by eight in the morning. From then on, no one touched her dragon and no one meddled with the water. Only Kate occasionally dared to put into the basin the red-eared slider Mafia, which, though it devoured all living things, was not dangerous to a fire-breathing dragon.

Having taken care of the dragon, Alena climbed into bed. Papa lay down on the spare bunk under Alena. Costa and Alex immediately came to him, kicked each other a couple of times as a formality, and one squeezed in on the right side and the other the left. It was necessary to keep them exactly the same, each head had to be strictly at the level of Papa’s armpit, otherwise intense jealousy would start.

“Tell a story!” Alena demanded.

“I want to sleep!” Papa rebelled.

“You slept yesterday! Alex and Costa, shout ‘story’!” Alena ordered from above.

“Story, story!” shouted Costa and Alex, who did everything Alena ordered except in those cases when it was unprofitable for them.

Papa raised his head and scratched his forehead along Costa’s forehead, because his hands were occupied.

“Fine,” he said, starting to make it up on the go. “Well, once upon a time, there was a girl. Her name was Lena.”

Papa was talking in a dull voice, constantly yawning, and Alena was keeping an eye that he did not fall asleep, because when Papa fell asleep for at least thirty seconds, his processor would overload and he would forget the story he was telling. Then the children would shake him and ask, “What comes next?”

“Huh? What? The hedgehog went on!” Papa would answer randomly.

“You said that the hedgehog died!”

“Really? And you believed it? Have to read between the lines, clearly see the author’s secret plan! So, it ate a magic mushroom. Or it was a hedgehog-zombie!”

On hearing that the girl’s name was Lena, Alena hung from the bed and lit Papa with the phone flashlight.

“What’s her name?” she asked suspiciously. Alena could not stand it when the hero of a story had her name. Papa knew this but loved to tease her.

“Well, let it be Luna!” Papa corrected himself.

“It’s not me?”

“Of course, it’s YOU! Who else?” Kate said from her wardrobe.

“Not me! Not me!”

“Not you, not you at all!” Papa yielded. “There are all kinds of Lunas in the world! In short, Luna (Not you! Not you!) was walking down the street. She saw a dirty coat, falling apart, so wet and disgusting, but with shiny new buttons! Luna felt sorry for the buttons. She snipped them off with a nail clipper and took them.”