Crematorium for Phoenixes by Nikola Yanchovichin

a
ladder whose view is worth every step?
    “Life with His paintings doesn’t work in
such a way. You know that much better now.
    “He often takes everything about us,
including and finally, us.
    “But you know, no matter how diligent the
sadness is, it cannot destroy everything.
    “And when I traveled with the battered van
selling books, in which everything is much more meaningful, I was
not happy because I knew where there are hidden treasures. No, I
was happy, because I gave a kid a sheet of imagination in which he
could find such things.
    “Because in this world, dreamers are a lot
more than we can imagine.
    “To increase it within one person, hmm, this
is something worth fighting for,” he finished, pulling a few
handles through which the conductors rumbled. The swings of the
propellers increased, and the submarine started to bear down like
an arrow through the icy waters.
    So it was that the vessel changed its
direction. Now it was headed southwest, leaving the shiny chrome
glacial waters of the white North Atlantic. A lot of hours had to
pass before the ocean released its embrace, but the friction eased
their way, and I will say that they did get past it. After that,
warm water, heated by the Gulf Stream, was in front of them.
    The Caribbean Sea glittered like burning
acetylene mixed with immortal grass-green hues. Like a coveted pie,
it stretched out and heated the souls of these men that had been
chilled by the thousands of miles.
    Even so, swimming in the swirling, patterned
tops, as dense as gasoline in water, the Leviathan headed to the
Yucatan; it approached like a tucked sickle, mowing in the sea-blue
waves.
    Chapter
Fourteen
    The spinning motor rotor pushed the frozen
air, squeezing it through the fins like the arrows of a ticking
clock.
    The Behemoth strained its surface,
shimmering like a scaly fish or thousands of budding diamonds while
brick-red fallow hung like curly hair to the Earth underneath.
    In the bridge by the oriel windows, bent
into a horseshoe globular basket, were Tammuz, Sharukin, and the
rest of the crew. They watched as the view stretched out before
them.
    Behind them, the space mechanisms operated;
they were clicking and periodically altered their evidence. They
blazed as if the rubberized buttons were made from twinkling
stars.
    The Behemoth flowed in the air streams
through rivers and great heights, leaving Crete as migratory birds
remained in the horizon.
    Nobody talked. The sea was pleated like
links and links of beads were floating and poking glimpses into the
water.
    They had seen a lot, but they still had a
lot more to do in the earthly directions that would keep them
intertwined forever.
    The desire of these banished people overlaid
their compulsive cravings and dreams for home. They worried as if
in their minds something had been caught, like a bug stuck in the
nets of a spider.
    They sighed as one, leaning on the railing
of their lives, and looked into the abyss that swallowed all living
creatures without any issues; the abyss would digest them in its
corrosive gastric fluid.
    Being at the Earth’s focal point, at the
junction, the bridge between continents, this fellowship wondered
where and what to keep.
    They set the machine, pressed the keys, and
pulled the throttle, watching the flight and feeling in their heart
the weeping wound that drops of salt-bitter sadness that evil had
left to its taste.
    The men were amending their course, walking
forward and backward. They were busy with something unimportant.
Through the thumbnails in the vestibule, Sharukin said in his
sorrowful voice, which only somebody cleansed of sin who has once
again experienced it, intentionally or unintentionally, would
understand, “What was that all about? To get rid of all the evil in
which we are struck, we had to sink him and twist ourselves with
hanging ropes?”
    “Sometimes, besieged by darkness, it is our
only option,” Tammuz said, staring at the plastic, imitation cherry
wood