I sat down to write.
My head was spinning.
I lit a cigarette.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
Out of rage I started throwing furniture around.
I hurled a chair into the wardrobe
and smashed everything that was on the table.
I hate this. I hate it.
Fear and anger sat down beside me —
Hades’ little lackeys.
“What do you want?” I snarled.
They snickered nastily,
in thin, vile little voices.
A grotesque fairy-tale hag —
the one who once lured the boy with the long nose —
kept up her tedious, obsessive motion.
Her pipe stank, carrying the smell of rot.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
I snapped again
and trashed everything around me.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“No,” I barked back.
“Then you should’ve stayed in your little swamp.”
“Shut up.”
“And what are you going to do to me?”
She blew steam straight into my face.
I flew into a rage.
“Everyone out.
All of you — out. Now.”
…
I woke up over the papers.
Typed — and deleted everything again.
Typed — again and again and again.
Damn. Damn. Damn!
Rage took over once more.
Aaaah!
In fury I tore all the manuscripts apart
and went outside.
I needed air.
“And whiskey,” Hades added.
Thank God it was night.
No one could see me.
No one would crawl up with their stupid what happened?
I hate it.
I hate it when people ask me what happened.
Hate it.
I prayed Nate wouldn’t show up.
That he would be asleep
and just leave me alone.
I went back to check if he was sleeping —
otherwise I couldn’t relax,
I’d stay tense the whole time.
I quietly opened the door.
Nate was sleeping the way princes sleep in fairy tales.
So beautiful. So perfect.
I kissed him on the cheek
and prayed the spirits would watch over all of mine while I was gone.
All five bears went out with me.
I took a thermos of hot tea
and some bread.
Everyone started making faces at me,
so I had to take two huge baguettes.
We went for a walk.
I lit another cigarette —
and immediately dropped it.
“Come on, Nazokat.
We’ve been through this already.
Let’s not do this.”
“She didn’t even take whiskey — it’s just tea,”
Mushu snapped, stepping in for me.
I shrugged — fair enough, it was tea.
But the spirits were still annoyed.
I told them to get lost.
Sat down in the snow.
The dogs devoured everything they could
and only then scattered in different directions.
“So,” Hades said, lighting a cigarette and crossing his legs.
“Back off.”
“As you wish.”
He vanished, flashing rotten teeth.
The Devil appeared.
We bumped fists.
“So. What happened?”
I laughed. “You jerk.”
“Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“No.” I lowered my eyes.
“So what will you do?”
“I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I need to think this through.”
“?”
A deep, heavy sigh.
“You see — the brighter and more well-known I become,
the harder it is to hold everything together.”
He offered me a cigarette.
I refused.
“How about…?”
“Right.”
I nodded,
and we went to the kitchen together.
I took vodka with blackcurrant
and Frangelico — oh, I adore it.
Then I stopped.
“Will you hold this?”
“I’m not manifested.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Fine. I’ll do it myself.”
“Listen — aren’t you supposed to be somewhere,
torturing people and all that?”
He shrugged and lit another cigarette.
“I’m a damn good leader.”
I smirked.
We bumped fists again.
I respect that. I like it —
everyone doing their own job,
and the boss just keeping a hand on the pulse.
Isn’t that the whole point of leadership?
He nodded.
“So.
The thing is — as I grow more popular,
my field becomes denser, more concentrated.”
“Okay.”
“But the problem is the quality of those people.”
He raised an eyebrow.
I took a sip of Frangelico.
Brrr. It made me shiver.
What a fierce little thing.
“You see — they turned out not to be idiots.”
Suddenly it became hysterically funny to me,
and the Devil laughed with me.
We couldn’t stop —
it was so absurd.
But it was true.
I was writing, not really thinking about who or what.
And then suddenly letters started pouring in.
And I thought:
who is actually reading what I write?
What kind of people are they?
“You’re an idiot.
You’re supposed to check your audience before you sell.”
I laughed and spat Frangelico in his face.
He lost it and kicked me.
I doubled over.
Jerk.
I hit him back.
He got even angrier —
imps appeared.
They held me down,
and he punched me in the stomach.
Bastard.
I folded in half again,
but even through the pain
I managed to show him my middle finger.
As soon as it eased a little,
I kicked him with all my strength.
He flew into a snowdrift, cursing.
We laughed.
And sat down to keep drinking.
“Damn,” I said and took a drink.
“That’s exactly the point — I wasn’t planning to sell anything.
I just wanted to write.
So I wrote.”
“Got it,” he said and drank too.
“And what about the field?”
“Well…” I dragged it out.
“Well — because they’re not idiots.”
And again we burst out laughing,
spitting everything out in ridiculous fountains —
it was just that funny.
It suddenly turned out that the people who love reading me
are grown, serious men —
thinking men with very important asses.
Maybe not all of them,
but most of them definitely aren’t obvious idiots.
“So what’s the problem then?”
I spat in his face again.
I just felt like laughing.
He got angry again
and charged at me.
I braced myself —
and the moment he was about to ram me,
I kicked him between the horns with all my strength.
He froze, stunned, and fell.
I laughed.
He got up and rushed at me again.
I whistled —
and the dogs took him down.
In the end he gave up,
and we sat down to keep drinking,
like hardened alcoholics.
“So,” I said,
“because of the sheer power of these men,
I start losing focus.”
He bit into a pickle.
“And?”
“They put pressure on me.”
“Are they threatening you?”
“Oh God, no.”
He twisted his face.
“God, you’re so stupid.”
“Their energies start pressing on me.
I feel them demanding something of me.”
He twisted his face again.
I took a deep breath.
“One wants more sex.
Another wants more depth.
A third wants the family to be together.
In short — everyone is pulling in their own direction.
If they were idiots, to hell with them.
But they’re strong.
And their strength pushes against mine.
They’re practically forcing me to write
when I don’t want to,
or to write things that aren’t natural for me.
They want their own scripts.
Got it?”
He nodded.
“So what are you going to do?”
I shrugged.
“The same thing I always do —
endure the pressure.”
“Is it hard?”
For once, he wasn’t mocking me.
“Yes.”
“Maybe you should tell Nate.”
I howled like a wolf,
letting the pain out.
“Oh, I don’t know.
I probably should,
but he’s such an important asshole —
I don’t want to dump this on him.”
“Maybe sex?”
I laughed.
He stayed serious.
And I thought —
that’s actually not a bad idea.
Sex could lower the pressure
and help me live through it more gently.
“Boxing?”
I threw my head back.
“Aaaaaah.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
“To withstand their energies,
I’d have to pump up mine.”
“?”
“Ahhh. You see —
sex and boxing and adrenaline
will drag me back to whiskey, drinking, night escapes.
They’ll pull me back into male energy.”
“So?”
“So what!
I’m sick of it.
I’m not a boy,
and I don’t want to compete with them.
Let them measure their balls against each other.”
“Fair enough.”
“So then what?”
I lit a cigarette.
“I don’t know… I don’t know.
Maybe… maybe I’ll try to sleep it through.
Just endure this pressure with my body.”
And suddenly I felt happy.
“Exactly.
That’s what I’ll do.
Because the problem isn’t physical pressure —
but I still experience everything through the body.”
“Right.”
“So that’s the conclusion:
I’ll just sleep all the time until I level out.”
“And Nate?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t want to burden him.”
“Oh, come on.”
I drifted into my thoughts.
How strong these men are.
How do they withstand such energy?
I’d heard before that money energy is heavy,
that you have to be able to hold it —
especially big money.
But the moment this weight touched me,
I understood why I had resisted for so long.
Pocahontas sat down across from me.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Money changes a person.”
She nodded.
“It’s not about strength, is it?”
She nodded again.
I drifted back into thinking.
“Money isn’t natural for women like me.
My money comes through the immense strength of my men
and reaches me already softened.”
She nodded.
“So that’s how it is.”
For a long time I thought I was doing everything right,
but the understanding — the logic of the moment —
kept slipping away.
And then the images surfaced.
I constantly see this:
women who are strong and successful,
but their aura — their energy — something is off.
I always caught the signal
that something wasn’t right.
And then I understood.
There is almost no feminine energy there.
Money has subordinated them
and turned them into men.
Pocahontas nodded.
I thanked her and lit a cigarette,
slowly walking along the path.
So that’s how it is.
Money energy. Money energy.
This is about men.
They can carry it,
because money is purely masculine energy.
Money doesn’t just come —
it trains you.
People with weak energy won’t withstand it.
They’ll break.
I remembered women laughing at me,
saying I was weak,
that I couldn’t earn money on my own.
But that wasn’t the key.
I didn’t want to earn it.
It contradicts my nature.
I can’t be a boy —
and when it comes to huge money,
a strong, enduring man,
someone capable of keeping such a beast on a leash.
And if I had…
If I had gone down that path…
Hm.
Then…
Then I wouldn’t be with Nate.
No kisses, no tenderness, no affection.
All my nature, all my resources
would have gone not into seducing him,
but into competition.
I started crying.
No “kitten.”
I would be at the wheel myself —
strong myself,
carrying everything myself.
I didn’t like that version of Nazokat.
“So how did you build your empire?”
“Oh yes. Simple.
I grabbed myself by the scruff of the neck and said I was stronger,
ground all the boys under me —
and here I am, strong and successful.
But there’s no happiness.
No love.
And absolutely everything goes against my nature.
I’m almost a man —
just in a female body.”
“Got it.”
And the interview would end right there.
A nightmare.
“Do you judge them?”
“No. I don’t care about them.
They don’t come at me — I don’t go at them.”
“Got it.”
“But on the other hand…”
Suddenly, something in me stirred.
Now I felt calmer.
Sometimes I worry that all those business women are close to Nate —
all those conferences,
all those women who know how to operate facts

and pee standing up- Hades
I laughed.
“Damn, you’re ridiculous.”
“But tell me that’s not funny.”
“I can’t, my friend. I can’t.”
“So you do judge them after all?
And judgment is— yes, yes, yes?!”
He started provoking me.
I took a drag.
“On one hand — yes, I’m jealous.
I think, damn, they really are their own masters.
But hell, I don’t know…
You’re a couple, right?
If you’re carrying everything alone,
then he’s weak —
which means he’s not really holding the role of a man.
And if there are two of you,
and he’s not a man —
does that make you the man?
Damn. That’s creepy.
I don’t even know how to respect him after that
if he’s weaker than you.
Now he’s the feminine one.
Brrr.”
He nodded.
“That’s how it works.”
“But on the other hand,
money hardly holds me at all.
I don’t need it.
I’m with Nate because I love him,
not because I don’t have the money to leave.”
“But before—”
Brrr.
Both Hades and I shuddered.
“Yes… there were times
when without money you couldn’t even move.”
“Whatever. That’s not the case now.”
I spat.
“Fear makes people superstitious.”
“Hm.”
“Well, whatever.
In the end, if he wanted
one of those I-do-everything-myself women,
he would’ve married her.
Right?”
I took another drag.
“I don’t know… Nate is so powerful.
Would he even allow something like that —
a woman carrying him?”
Brrr.
I suddenly felt cold.
Nate is a predator.
A shark.
No. No. He wouldn’t.
Damn it, I hope we never have to find out.
There was no one around.
And I was so tired
that I sat down in the snow
and fell asleep.