Granny

 — Lisa!  An irritated falsetto voice rang out from the room.

It was the middle of a slightly cloudy summer day, which illuminated through the battered windows a modest studio apartment, furnished with old, motley furniture; the street light contrasted with all the roughness of the faded wallpaper with an unpretentious pattern, which had once been salad, and the peeling places on the ceiling that had not been whitewashed for a long time. A large clay pot with a withered plant stood alone on the windowsill, pulling a stunted stem towards the window. A thick green fly circled around the three-horn chandelier, buzzing bassily.

— Li-isa-ah! — the same old woman's voice repeated a second later, as if expecting the immediate fulfillment of all desires. "Are you waiting for me to starve to death?"

 A thin girl with a pale, anemic face, dressed in a housecoat, entered the room, carrying a tray with two plates, a cup of hot tea and several pieces of black bread from the kitchen. "Already, Grandma."…

She helped the old woman who was lying in bed to sit up. After settling in, she shot angry eyes, looked into the lunch tray and pursed her thin, wrinkled lips skeptically. But then she picked up a spoon and started eating.

When Grandma reached for the bread, the girl hurried into the kitchen without waiting for her to speak again.

Lisa always addressed her as "Grandma." It wasn't because she didn't know any other forms of the word, it was just that her grandmother couldn't say it. It so happened: for Lisa, grandma and grandma had completely different meanings, as if these words even had ... the opposite meaning — like the same number, only with the opposite sign. Her grandmother did not fit in the girl's mind with that naively pictorial image of benevolent, smiling grandmothers who cherish their grandchildren from the very cradle, and after a few years (after waiting for them to grow up enough, and then without any restrictions in years) pamper them with delicious muffins. And so on… For as long as Lisa could remember, Grandma was always sick, grumbling angrily at everyone who was around, and never smiled. Never. Perhaps she even lacked the necessary facial muscles or had long since atrophied as unnecessary. Grandma was completely convinced (or... was she just pretending? — Lisa sometimes suspected) that the main goal of others is to "put her in the coffin early" because everyone wants her dead. And she talked about it all the time. One day, when Lisa was in fifth grade, her grandmother had indigestion, and she called the police, saying that they had tried to poison her.

Back in the days when Grandma could get out of the apartment on her own, she almost managed to convince some neighbors that her daughter and even her little granddaughter were doing everything possible to send her to the next world, a "helpless elderly woman," accusing Lisa's mother and the girl herself of unthinkable crimes.

In addition, it was never possible to please grandma in anything (had the old woman ever met at least one person?..  Lisa thought), and the house shook dozens of times every day from her curses. Their studio apartment had heard so many of Granny's curses that, if they had real power, it would have been more than enough to take out an entire city. But the flowers did not want to grow, as if sensing the poisonous atmosphere of their home. Fact: he and his mother tried to plant herbs more than once, but within two or three days the leaves would wither and the plants would wither. Even on the balcony.

Returning to the kitchen and starting to cook for herself, as always: first for grandma, then for herself (which, by the way, a perfectly healthy person could envy grandma's appetite), Lisa remembered her mother. A bitter lump rose up in her throat as usual: poor mother, she faded away, caring for her eternally sick mother, meekly enduring all her antics and whims, giving the old woman her last strength. And not once, until the memorable day, without responding to her incessant reproaches. "Except for you two, I have no one else..." my mother said, meeting Lisa's eyes in the most unbearable moments. She was aging right before our eyes, as if she existed in some kind of her own time - this became especially noticeable after grandma almost stopped walking.

Back then, the three of them lived together, if, of course, such a nightmare could be called life. Her father was not with them—in fact, Lisa had never seen him at all; according to her mother, he was the first and last mistake of her youth. When Lisa got older, she accidentally found out that Grandma played a fatal role in her parents' relationship. Perhaps if my mother had remarried, everything would have turned out differently in their family, but…

Could Grandma, having made herself the Center of her mother's life, have allowed such indecency?

...Four years ago, my mother died, literally collapsing at my grandmother's bedside. Barely realizing what had happened, Lisa almost plunged a large kitchen knife into the heart of this ghoul, which she imagined the old woman to be. But she came to her senses in time.

She just graduated from high school and applied for university admission.… but instead of the journalism department, she took her mother's place of worship to an idol. Then she got a part-time job as a cleaner in a government office near their house and started living for her grandmother.

Within a few months, she had lost all her friends; they had become just acquaintances, whom they greeted briefly, bumping into each other on the street, and immediately went their separate ways.

That's about how the last four years of her life passed. During all this time, Lisa has only left her neighborhood a few times. As if in a terrible dream, the world had narrowed to the size of one of their streets, where she lived, worked a block and a half from home and went shopping. Not because she didn't want to appear in the city, but at least once a month she could afford to go to the movies or sit in a cafe with one of her old friends (or, for example, start dating a guy - many of her peers have been married for a long time, they babysit their own children— "not a grandmother- a vampire, ha ha!.."). However, now she could only dream about all this, falling asleep in bed, because she simply could not leave her grandmother alone for a long time.

In addition, Grandma took all the money Lisa earned and hid it, along with her pension, under the mattress of the bed, from which she almost never got up. She always gave it out herself, planning expenses without her granddaughter's participation, and only for the most necessary things. Then she meticulously calculated the change and constantly grumbled that Lisa was cheating on her. Concepts such as inflation, rising prices, and so on — for the old woman, they were the howling of the wind in the attic window, and Lisa had long since given up on it.

That's all. Granny, granny, Granny… And not a single thank you for these four years. She didn't have a grandmother, she had a grandmother.

"Come here!" How many times do I have to repeat myself?!

Pushing aside the plate, which she had barely touched, Lisa hurried into the room, wondering which of the dinner dishes the old woman did not like today.

"Does Your Lordship require a special invitation?"  Granny's eyes narrowed into two narrow slits, and as she spoke, her full, flabby cheeks shook and turned purple like the beard of an angry turkey.

"Have you already called?" I'm not…

"Do you think I'm stupid?" — the "turkey beards" waved.

Lisa knew it was useless to argue.

"Maybe she really called, and I was just thinking about something?" - when they constantly make a scarecrow out of you, you inevitably start to doubt over time.…

The girl took a tray with dirty dishes and went to the kitchen.

— LIZA! — the old woman barked, only she managed to disappear into the corridor.

Lisa left the tray with the dishes on the kitchen table and went back into the room, feeling a long-pent-up rage rising from inside.

- what?

"What's that?"  Grandma mimicked in a squeaky voice. "If only you could get rid of me as soon as possible..." and added one of her favorite swear words in a whisper, but Lisa caught it anyway. — Learn to listen to the end, I haven't said everything yet. Fly… She's bothering me... but send her away! What are you staring at?!

Lisa pulled aside the tulle from the window, giving free access to the window, took off her slippers and stepped towards the fly, which at that moment settled on the closet door, watching when finally these two — a young and an old woman — would bite each other's throats, and who would get the main prize. The stakes are rising, gentlemen!

— Are you going to break all the furniture?!  His purple, flabby cheeks seemed about to burst down, and two poisonous streams would splash onto the floor. — With your hands!.. Or roll up the newspaper!

There were no newspapers in the house, and the old woman was well aware of this; they were not bought out of economy, even those where the television program was printed. However, there was no TV either, or rather, there once was, but it broke down and had been resting in the basement for five years: grandma never loved it.

"...to spite me!"

Lisa remembered that sometimes free flyers were dropped into their mailbox. But suddenly she didn't care. Completely.

"...fuck!" How much more do I need?…

She put on a slipper and looked straight at Grandma.: "Lucky for you, old bitch, that one day I had the great stupidity to swear to my mom: if anything ever happened to her, you wouldn't go to the poorhouse, where in one day there would be no trace of your arrogance, or you would be strangled by one of the staff. Your lucky ticket, old witch, is that... mom was gone the very next day. But, God knows, I've been close for a long time to break even such an oath."

—That's enough.  Lisa said surprisingly calmly, forcing Grandma to stop in mid—sentence. — It will fly out on its own. I still have a lot of important things to do.

"IMPORTANT business?" — The "turkey goatees", filled with crimson, fluttered with redoubled force, — Oh, you trash! She's just as ungrateful as your mother!

At this mention, Lisa felt that all her fragile assumed calm had disappeared somewhere, and a tantrum could happen to her. She rushed out of the room, then out of the apartment altogether and found herself on the street.

Granny's curses followed.

In recent years, her nerves have been thoroughly shattered. It's not surprising if in a few years she'll bend over like her mother, Lisa thought, absently watching the fuss of two twin toddlers who were trying with inexhaustible enthusiasm to turn over their own stroller, while a girl of about thirteen, probably an older sister, turned away and talked to a friend; in the end, one of the hard workers accidentally poked the other in the eye, and both burst into bitter tears. The girl hurriedly wheeled the stroller home.

Lisa suddenly remembered the words spoken by someone who had known their family for a long time: "This old woman will rot you before she dies, I tell you for sure," to which her mother was mortally offended and pointed the guest to the door, after which Lisa never saw him in their house again.

She accompanied the girl with a screaming duet in a stroller, trying her best to imagine a young grandmother who had once pushed her little mother in a stroller like this, or her eighteen or nineteen years ago.… Nothing came out. Lisa knew practically nothing about that period. Just imagine Grandma when she was young.…

It was easier to imagine those two toddlers as old men.

Once, when she was a child, she asked her mother why Grandma was like this. And I got an answer.: "Because she had a very hard life"... and a hard slap on the back of the head. Was it easy for you, Mom?

How many times over the past four years had the sweet and sour desire to kill her grandmother returned to her (it had been haunting her almost daily for the past year) - to destroy this monster, the monster.

But even more often, Lisa thought how nice it would be if the old woman died on her own. God, that would be nice! Such thoughts had long since ceased to seem wild to her. These were her usual thoughts about Grandma. Life WITHOUT her seemed like a fairy tale, an impossible, unreal dream that Lisa, no matter how hard she tried, was unable to imagine to the end. Not even half of it. After all, her grandmother HAD ALWAYS BEEN and lived with them all her life. Lisa remembered her from her earliest childhood, from the very moment when the dark period of time was ending, which she knew nothing about and which even her mother did not want to tell, when it came to their family. It seemed to her that Grandma had not changed at all over the years, remained the same, even externally.

And yet, how nice it would be if she were gone. But she lives, she lives… Mom has been gone for a long time, but she…

After spending about half an hour outside, Lisa returned home.

The old woman met her with a scathing look, but only pointed to the "duck" who occupied post No. 1 next to the bed.:

— Take it out…

The smell of the ship was unbearable. That damn stink! Because of her, it was impossible to invite anyone into the house. It literally permeated their entire apartment—the well—established smell of excrement-especially since Grandma had almost stopped getting out of bed. Sometimes it seemed to Lisa that a normal person would probably have to feed dead rats for six months to do this.… Grandma got up very rarely and mostly in Lisa's absence at home to rummage through her things. Lisa caught her doing this several times, but she was not at all embarrassed and, returning to her bed, each time confidently stated that she would definitely find the money that Lisa steals from the change, taking advantage of the situation, and hiding somewhere. One day Lisa couldn't help but say that she would have been smart enough to hide money outside the apartment if that were the case. The old woman took her words completely indifferently.

Lisa took the boat to the toilet and looked at the clock: the moment will come soon when she will leave for work. Those two special hours she spent in the office, carrying buckets of water and swinging a mop (who would have thought, but now she was supposed to graduate from university with a degree in journalism), served as her only respite from her grandmother, two hours — without which she probably would have gone crazy long ago. One hundred and twenty minutes... seven thousand two hundred moments a day. When the weekend came, she was already living on Monday—a long, three-day Monday, at the end of which she would run away to work.

And Grandma will be waiting for her at home.

The old woman croaked that she wanted tea, and added that Lisa, after washing the ship, would not forget to put it back by the bed before going to the office. A year ago, being late, she really forgot to do it. Grandma lost control of herself and always remembered that incident. Neither did Lisa. Oh, how disgusting it was to wash Granny's flabby body, smeared with branded shit, with her wrinkled, porous skin, as if eaten by thin worms. Lisa hated nothing more than washing her grandmother's body and cutting her nails, and especially that time.

While waiting for the kettle to boil, Lisa looked at the neighboring house across the street: a blond guy lived in it, about her age, or a little older. Whenever possible, she watched him from the kitchen window, watching him leave the entrance, smoke on the fourth-floor balcony, or stop in front of the house to talk to a friend. Lisa couldn't remember exactly when the surveillance from the window had started. Until now, she had never spoken to him or even seen him up close. I think I only heard his name once, when someone called him loudly on the street. The guy's name was Pavel.

Despite the fact that Lisa's time at work served as a respite from the domestic nightmare, she rarely really forgot about her grandmother; for example, she wondered what she was doing in her absence from home (except that sometimes rummaging through her personal belongings, of course). She had to do something! When Lisa was at home, grandma could usually stare at the ceiling for hours, listening to all the programs on the radio in a row, or — which happened no less often and, most importantly, with precise regularity, like a metronome — drove her to white heat with her endless remarks and remarks. Sometimes it seemed to Lisa that grandma's gaze was able to follow her into the kitchen, penetrating through the wall, and even into the toilet.

Grandma loved to ask thousands of different questions, often very strange and baffling in their surprise: she once asked Lisa at what age her periods began, and how much their cycle had changed since then. Or she demanded the immediate fulfillment of another extravagant whim (in most cases, Lisa preferred to obey anyway — the old woman was extremely resourceful in terms of petty revenge), after which she invariably remained unsatisfied and poured out her favorite proclamations.

Oh no, Grandma wasn't crazy at all—Lisa could swear to that by anything. Did you suffer from a severe and debilitating form of senility? In this case, her insanity should have been included in the Guinness Book of Records as the most stable and earliest insanity of the century.

In general, when Lisa was at home, there was always something worthwhile for Grandma to do. But what was happening in that—empty—time? The old woman didn't spend it learning the wallpaper pattern from memory—knowing Grandma, it was hard to believe.

One day, when Lisa was going to the office for another shift, Grandma asked her to find her something to read. The old woman despised books, but Lisa was not surprised by the request; she handed grandma the first one she found on a small hanging shelf. It turned out to be a Bible, which had come to their house from nowhere and had been gathering dust for many years among the few other books. Lisa herself usually used the library's services, visiting it on her way to work. When Grandma brought the Bible up to her eyes to read the title, which had once been embossed on the dark blue hardcover in gilded letters, but now had almost completely crumbled off, Lisa thought the old woman would leap out of bed and grab her by the throat. A moment later, with unexpected force, grandma threw the Writing directly at her, and the book flew right by the dumbfounded girl's ear, crashed into the wall with a crunch, falling apart into several pieces. Then Grandma said in a completely unfamiliar voice: "Jehovah made up these fairy tales for his clay!" And she turned to the wall.

Lisa did not understand anything of what was said, perhaps because she was much more frightened at that moment by her voice than by the sudden throwing of a thick book.

This voice…

In the future, Lisa preferred not to remember that incident, otherwise, in addition to hating her grandmother, she also began to feel fear of her.

On the way home from the office, Lisa almost had an apoplexy attack — she forgot to PUT the SHIP BACK IN ITS PLACE!

As luck would have it, it happened today, after Grandma's special reminder.

"God, if only she wouldn't go down on herself..."

Lisa rushed home as fast as she could.

IF ONLY SHE DIDN'T…

Running up to her house, she almost knocked down a young couple and, ignoring them, rushed on.

If only she didn't

Lisa flew up to the third floor with the key she had prepared in advance and burst into the apartment.

...And immediately tripped over something big, soft, towering across the corridor, and fell.

It was Grandma.

She was lying on her stomach with her arms spread wide. Her long gray hair was spread out in a silver crown around her tilted head; her eyes were closed. There was a huge purple bruise near his temple in the visible part of his forehead.

The door to the bathroom was ajar; it smelled nauseatingly.

So, not finding the ship in place, she decided to get to the bathroom on her own this time; but on the way back, she probably tripped over the threshold and, falling, hit her head on the wall of a narrow corridor... or on the corner of the door jamb of the room located almost opposite... Lisa thought distantly, looking at grandma.

About three years ago, the old woman had a heart attack, she even lost consciousness before the ambulance arrived, and Lisa decided that grandma had died. But now Lisa saw a striking difference between then and now: granny's facial features had sharply sharpened, and the face itself had acquired a pronounced waxy hue. The short sleeves of his nightgown revealed the arms of a drowned man stretching out as if from a quagmire.

Grandma was dead.

Lisa sat on the floor next to Grandma for about ten minutes, numb with shock—grandma was GONE. She was completely unprepared for such sudden changes, although she thought about the old woman's death every day for all these years. The idol has fallen, however, to believe that she is now free…

Finally gathering her courage, Lisa dragged Grandma into the room. Then, one at a time, first the torso, then the legs, I laid her heavy body on the bed. It took almost all of Lisa's strength. Apparently, in her youth (which she could not imagine), grandma was an extremely large woman, and even now she was one and a half times heavier than a girl.

When Lisa finished all the moving of Granny's body, the clock showed around seven in the evening. There seemed to be no need to call an ambulance — most likely, they would tell her that she just needed to take her grandmother's passport and go to the clinic to report her death. "Then to the funeral home..." — Lisa still remembered how she was doing all these procedures when her mother died. If they had a phone installed in their apartment, a lot could be done today, or at least plan tomorrow in advance, but she would only have time.… And I also had to take money for possible expenses. The money, like the passport and other documents, was under Grandma's mattress. Lisa grimaced, which meant she would have to touch the dead body again. However, it was NECESSARY.

She looked at Grandma. There seemed to be a threat in her expression: "Just touch me again." Lisa suddenly imagined how Granny's cool, pale hands would reach out to her face when she got close enough to the bed. Glazed eyes will open, looking deep into her…

And only now did Lisa realize that she had to spend the night alone — in an apartment with a dead grandmother.

She began to move Granny towards the wall, trying to stay as far away from her waxy face as possible. The soft, still warm body seemed pliable only at the first moment: it pushed through, shuddered from the shocks, like a bag full of old rot, but almost did not budge, as if resisting.

"just touch me..."

inch by inch, Granny's body moved to the opposite side of the bed — back and forth... back and forth...-until finally it was right next to the wall, and enough space was freed up to lift the mattress.

Lisa reached in and pulled out a bulging plastic bag from under him. Then she retreated five steps and collapsed exhausted onto her bed in the opposite corner of the room.

A minute later, she cast a wary glance in Grandma's direction and decided that it would be much safer for her to look through the contents of the bag in the kitchen.

It contained a large notebook with a dark brown, worn cover (Lisa had a fleeting thought that it might contain the addresses of relatives who should be informed of her grandmother's death, but she immediately discarded it), a yellowed photograph of a young man in a military uniform (she saw him for the first time, however however, she guessed right away that it was her grandfather; her grandmother had never shown her this photo); There were also some documents in the package, including grandma's passport, several old letters, and another smaller package carefully wrapped in a thin cloth, which Lisa set aside separately to view its contents later. And the money.

There was a lot of money. At least for Lisa, she had never held so much in her hands. About grandma's pension for a year, and maybe more. It was unlikely that she was collecting for her funeral, — despite the situation, Lisa was overcome with sullen irritation: some bills had long been out of circulation, others had been devoured by inflation for years, — and she was used to denying herself everything every day.

However, the amount found was enough to live relatively normally for several months without working. Although it hardly seemed like an equivalent compensation for the four nightmarish years spent alone with Grandma.

Unwrapping the smaller package, Lisa was surprised to find her mother's belongings: several gold jewelry (which she repeatedly tried to find after her funeral and, in the end, decided that they either disappeared without a trace in some mysterious way, or — which Lisa believed more — her grandmother silently laid her hand on them), a handkerchief, In the corner of which Lisa herself had embroidered her mother's name for her birthday at the age of ten, and an unsigned envelope without a stamp. A piece of paper rustled inside him. Lisa took it out and unwrapped it.

It turned out to be a letter... addressed to her.

From my mom.

"My beloved daughter!

The last thing I want is for this letter to fall into your hands. Because it means that you found it by accident while sorting through my things. After the funeral.

(Lisa started to cry, but she just brushed them away mechanically, continuing to read on.)

I hope I'll tear it up myself someday if I get better. Lately, it seems to me that I have cancer. The forces are disappearing somewhere, as if something is sucking... (then the whole line is thickly crossed out in ink) But you probably understand, or you'll understand someday, that I can't now... (crossed out again)…therefore, I prefer not to know for sure.

What worries me most right now is your dislike of Grandma, which is why I decided to write this letter. Remember, you promised me something today (Lisa read the last line again: today you promised me something... - it turns out that the letter was written less than a day before Mom's death), but I'm afraid in a year or two today's conversation won't seem so important. I ask you again: please, Lisa, don't forget that she is my mother. I'll say even more — she's the best mom in the world! Anyway, I remember her like this until that terrible day when she... I don't even know how to explain it to you—didn't die and didn't rise again? I think they also call it clinical death. I was only nine years old at the time, and I only know about this case from other people's stories. Grandma fell out of a boat on the lake and almost drowned. Rather... (crossed out) She had never been able to swim. By the time they pulled her out of the water and the doctors arrived, she was already… She was considered dead and did not even try to do anything, because the time of clinical death has certain limits, and a much longer period has already passed. Much bigger. But on the way to the morgue, she suddenly started coughing, she started vomiting water from the lake, and then she came to her senses. The doctors said it was a miracle.

But she has changed a lot since that day (the last word was highlighted in bold ink). I think it's because of the experience. It's a pity you've never seen her the same. Whatever happens, don't leave her. At least for my sake.

I pray that you will never read this letter.

I love you very much, Mom."

Then, calming down, Lisa read the letter again.

"I kept my promise...— she said aloud, wiping her almost dry eyes with her fingertips. "I kept my promise, Mom.

Her gaze returned to the envelope with the letter, and a look of bewilderment appeared on her face. Why did Grandma hide his existence? And why did the old woman have the letter at all?

But it seems that Grandma took all the answers with her.

In addition to her mother's things, Lisa found something else in the smaller package: a small white cardboard box folded in half, which looked like the cover of a thin book or an entomologist's pocket folder - the resemblance was caused by the low, five millimeters, sides that did not allow the sides to touch when folded.

She opened it. One side was completely clean, and on the other... Lisa froze in amazement.

Because her own face was looking at her. Not only was the image strikingly similar to the original, but at first it seemed alive to Lisa! Perhaps because of the relief, because it was made up of many (hundreds!) yellow-orange translucent scales. Those elongated, thin scales even reminded her of something.

However, upon closer inspection, Lisa noticed that the portrait was not fully finished: the corner of her left eye was missing the finishing touch.

She held the image at arm's length: how much work and time did it take Grandma to... and why?! Hardly, of course, to give her a pleasant surprise.

"Well, at least now you know what she spent those two hours on every day, except weekends."

Whatever it was, Lisa would never have dared to suspect granny of such abilities: the portrait was simply amazing!

Except for those weird scales.…

Lisa suddenly remembered how often she had noticed Prussians sneaking around Granny's bed, and in broad daylight, although there were practically no Prussians in the apartment as a whole, including in the kitchen. Once, I remember, she even thought that cockroaches must love Grandma very much.

Lisa dropped the strange cardboard in disgust; it gently slammed into the air and plopped to the floor.

Time flew by while watching the contents of the package. The sun was already setting; twilight was slowly taking over the kitchen. Lisa turned on the chandelier.

It was too late to declare death.

And she's got a whole night ahead of her with Grandma.

That's right, four years of madness are over—the monster is dead. Soon she will be able to start a new life, now she is free.

Except... this night.

After all, dying makes the monster even more terrifying.

Lisa stopped in front of the room and put her hand on the door handle. But she didn't open it. She suddenly imagined that Granny would not be there, and then cold hands would reach out from behind and lay on her shoulders.…

After spending a full minute in front of the door, Lisa returned to the kitchen. There was nowhere else to spend the night except at home. Visit a friend? Which one of them after these four years? — there were no such people on the list. Maybe to one of the neighbors? As luck would have it, everyone on their landing went on vacation for the summer, and she wasn't familiar enough with the other floors to just come and say, "Let me spend the night, there's a dead grandma at home..."

In extreme cases, of course, you can spend the night in the kitchen. Although... Lisa suddenly got angry: why in the kitchen? The old woman had mocked her for as long as she lived—would she let her do that now?

N! О!

Now she's going to go into the room and do whatever she sees fit, and she doesn't give a damn about this old witch, and she's dead.

However, the closer she got to the door of the room, the less angry she remained. When Lisa took hold of the pen, not a trace of it remained.

But this time she decided to take the fight and abruptly opened the door. Grandma was standing right in front of her in her rumpled nightgown and grinning with purple bloodless lips…

Lisa was petrified for a few seconds. But when her eyes adjusted to the twilight (the light fell over the threshold of the room from the corridor from a forty-watt bulb), she realized that it was only a mirage. She stepped into the room and turned on the light. The first thing Lisa's gaze stopped at was the lying grandmother. Her position on the bed doesn't seem to have changed. Everything is the same. Or... no, nonsense.

"So," Lisa thought, walking around the room. "Now..." Her gaze returned to the dead body. Well, of course, how could she forget: Grandma needs to be covered with something. All of it, from head to toe. Lisa didn't know why it was customary to do this to the deceased, or rather, she had never thought about it, but now she felt the relevance of this procedure. She took a fresh sheet out of the closet and, walking as quietly as possible, as if she was afraid to wake her grandmother, approached the bed. Then, trying not to look at the waxy face, she covered the body.

The result was completely different from what Lisa expected: the figure under the sheet became even more sinister. It seemed as if she had only to turn away and she would slowly begin to rise. In the end, Lisa decided that she could do just that. The main thing is that the body is lying correctly ... although, probably, it would be worthwhile to adjust grandma's left arm, which has slightly slipped off her chest. But that meant touching the body again.

The wall clock in the room showed half past eleven. She definitely needed to sleep at least a few hours—tomorrow was going to be a hard day. And she can only rely on her own strength. She's alone, completely alone. And it didn't happen today, because Grandma died, but much earlier, when Mom left.

Lisa spread out her bed, did not undress, and hesitated for a second before turning off the light. It's all over tomorrow, just a little bit of patience, just a little bit. One night.

Just for one night…

She lay there for two hours, feeling a throbbing tiredness in every cell of her body, but she still couldn't bring herself to fall asleep. Opening and closing her eyes, she turned from side to side. Her vision had long adapted to the darkness, and she tried not to look at where the shapeless elevation on her grandmother's bed was blurring. Lisa was happy to give up several years of her life for the opportunity to switch off now and wake up only in the morning.

It's still three hours before dawn.

At about two in the morning, the neighbors' front door slammed loudly, and excited voices were heard, but the words were indistinct. Lisa assumed that there had been a scandal. Then there was silence again. Lisa bit her lower lip: up there, just a couple of meters away, a completely different life is going on, as if on another planet. I turned around, replacing my side, which was numb from intense insomnia, and began to think about the blond guy who lives in the house opposite. Does he have a girlfriend? And at that moment, Granny's bed creaked.

Lisa couldn't believe it. But the sound was distinctive—she could recognize it from a million others. As a little girl, she often woke up at night when Grandma turned in her sleep. But as I got older, I got used to it and stopped paying attention. The creaking stopped suddenly (she heard a car honk somewhere far away). But Lisa saw that Granny was still moving under the sheet. It looked like she was looking for a way out. Even when Granny's body fell heavily to the floor, Lisa still could not believe that all this was really happening, she only heard how grandma was getting rid of the sheet, in which she was entangled, as if in a shroud. And then the dark mass on the floor clumsily crawled towards her.

Silently.

Lisa finally managed to shake off the icy shell of stupor, and she jumped out of the room, painfully catching her hip on the headboard of the bed and barely managing to slip between her and the creeping mass on the floor.

Already running into the kitchen (and somehow managing to turn on the light at the same time), she heard heavy footsteps behind her.

When Lisa turned to close the kitchen, a massive bulk in a nightgown had already blocked the doorway, advancing on her.

Grandma was terrible.

Her body, overcoming rigor mortis, moved in a series of quick short jerks, like an image from a faulty movie projector; one clouded eye was wide open, the other was only half open, exposing a strip of gray-yellow white. A huge bruise on his pale forehead near his temple looked like a smudge of black mascara, and there was a slow flow from both nostrils.…

Lisa backed away until her lower back rested against the hard edge of the windowsill. Grandma also slowed down somewhat, however, Lisa, trapped between the windowsill and the massive figure advancing on her, already had nowhere to go. With a strained bubbling sound, Granny sucked in the air into her lungs, which her body absolutely did not need for the last few hours, because it was dead.

"It's probably like then... almost like then — on the way to the morgue from the lake... only now everything is much worse..." — Lisa flashed through her head.

Suddenly Grandma spoke up:

"You've ruined everything... you dirty girl!"..  A terrible stench wafted over Lisa. — A few more days!..

Grandma moved towards her again, stretching out her arms as if wanting to embrace her in a loving embrace. A small dead cockroach stuck to his lower lip.

...the best mom in the world…

Suddenly Lisa understood everything.

Now Granny was speaking in the same voice she had heard once before, when she had thrown at her…

... "Jehovah made up these tales for his clay!.."

Grandma—her grandma—DIED a long time ago, drowning in the lake 47 years ago. And all these years, she and Mom have lived…

"...the doctors said... it's a miracle..."

...with someone who, having managed to revive a still warm body, then entered it. And now He wasn't going to leave just like that.

And in the next few days, He planned to…

"Leave us alone!" You can't do anything else, I know!  With all her might, Lisa pushed the pressing granny away from her with both hands and she managed to slip into an empty seat.

As she turned around, Grandma stepped on a cardboard box with a portrait of Lisa made of cockroach wings, and there was a soft, crisp rustle. She looked down at her feet with a disappointed grimace.

— Girl!..

There was a deep rumble in Granny's chest, she regurgitated some gray stuff and fell to the floor.

When the echoes of Granny's wheezing finally subsided, Lisa sank onto a stool and covered her face with her hands.

"What did he do to you, Grandma... Grandma."

She sat like that until the morning. And when dawn broke through the window, her gaze fell on the trampled cardboard, and Lisa thought quite calmly: "I'm just lucky."

Grandma's funeral was quiet, and no one attended except Lisa. No one offered her condolences or consolations about the "death of a loved one."

Grandma was just buried.

In the early days, Lisa suddenly began to fear that she might be accused of murdering the old woman. But the pathologist pronounced it "accidental death." (A little later, in a private conversation with one of his colleagues over a glass of good cognac, he did say that in twenty-six years of practice he had never encountered such rapidly progressive decomposition. And he didn't tell anyone that nine—tenths of the "client's" brain was an old rag web.)

Five or six times her grandmother came to her at night — in a dream — and demanded to return the change, which Lisa stole, collected and hid for four years.

Then everything stopped.

In the fall, Lisa successfully passed the university entrance exams for the evening department of the Journalism Faculty. I changed jobs and started preparing for the first session.

At the end of November, she bumped into Pavel in one of the university corridors.

"Have I seen you before?" "What is it?" he asked, clearly forgetting where he was in a hurry a minute ago. "Your face looks familiar to me."

"Really?"  Lisa laughed sheepishly. "Maybe in the window of the house across the street?"

— Exactly!  He looked at her as if he'd never seen her before, but maybe he had.

— My name is Pavel.

—I know,— Lisa blurted out (and she blushed deeply), "And I'm Lisa.

It turned out that he was studying at the same department, only in his senior year.

We drove home together.

The next day, he invited Lisa to the cinema, and since then they began to meet regularly.

A few weeks later, they were returning home from university as usual, chatting about various little things. Pavel escorted Lisa to the entrance.

"Don't you finally want to invite me over?"  Lisa asked.

She was the only one who had them before.

He smiled in momentary embarrassment and shrugged his shoulders.:

— We live together. Do you want me to introduce you... to my grandma?