ISBN 978-5-0051-4091-3

      Created with Ridero smart publishing system

      A movie star from the hell

      Summer, 2013, Blue Lotus Cinema

      The film is about to begin. Most likely, it will shock the audience, suppress their will, deeply shake, completely deprive them of consideration. It would be nice to cancel the premiere before the film starts, but the audience has already gathered. The whole elite is here. All around there are stars, the press, even politicians. What he conceived is impracticable.

      Mikhail looked around. Not only guards can interfere with him. The most dangerous thing here is people who are not armed to the teeth. His attention was drawn to marble statues in distant boxes. They glowed pale in the semi-darkness. The outline of the wings was somewhat reminiscent of movie posters. One statue is located near the screen. Its marble fingers were pressed to its lips in a sign of silence. The statue’s smile seemed sinister. Is it just a play of light and shadow? And what are the only statues doing in the cinema? As if no one noticed them.

      But the appearance of a young star attracted everyone. Atenais came, accompanied by grim-looking bodyguards. Her curly golden head stood out sharply from the crowd. She is the same as in the film, he noted with horror. As if she had just stepped off the screen, crossing the line of worlds: real and surreal.

      Mikhail’s attention was drawn to the living lotus in her hair. And where did she get it? In the local climate, lotuses do not grow. Where did he hear that the lotus is a sacred plant? And for whom is it sacred? For those strange creatures in the shadows above the screen?

      “Do not do this!”

      Who suddenly whispered in his ear? Mikhail turned around, expecting to see the stranger in the red hood, but he did not sit in the back rows as usual. There were only smartly dressed people around. While they are careless, but soon they will all become ill.

      Athenais walked forward, oblivious to the admiring glances. So fragile, so tender. Who would have thought bad of her? Who saw the darkness in her eyes?

      Mikhail looked at her almost with a shudder. I really don’t want to hurt her. She is an ordinary girl with an angelic face and the grace of a model. Is this Atenais who, instead of ink, signs autographs with the blood of those who adore her? Or is it all the illusion of cinema?

      He doubted, and yet he kept his hand on the gun in his pocket. He managed to carry the pistol past the security systems. He knew how to turn and not that. Nobody suspected him of anything. Besides the statues! They seemed to be watching him from afar with their marble eyes. Wiggle marble wings. They smile ominously.

      There were exactly seven of them. Statues! Why does he think about them instead of the main goal? All attention should be focused on Athenais. She has already taken her place in the front row, straightened her silk dress and is waiting for the start of the session. Before the premiere it shouldn’t be.

      But the screen lit up. The credits have already gone. Probably, it only seemed to him that one of the marble statues suddenly moved. Athenais turned her head to find him unmistakably among the row of filled rows. The look in her eyes, as always, startled him. He kept expecting her to repeat what she had said before, nodding lightly at the angelic statues:

      “Save me from them!”

      But she said something else, clearly and clearly, so that everyone could hear:

      “Save them all from me…”

      Who did she mean? All the people in the cinema? All people around the world? It didn’t matter anymore. He had the determination to finally pull the weapon out of his pocket. He was ready to carry out his plans. It’s a shame the movie has already started. When the show starts, everything in this place gets out of hand. People change, thoughts change… And nothing can be reversed.

      A celebrity in the slums

      Our days

      “Look, this is he! Has he been to the devil’s theater before? How can you come to us and know nothing about the local attraction?”

      The teenagers who had just taken his autograph were giggling behind their backs. It was so unusual that Daniel shuddered. The feeling that he signed their notebooks with his own blood only intensified. Daniel’s head rang with their laughter. What strange children are here! And what an unusual town itself! He would like to run away from here, as soon as he arrived here.

      Only he will not be allowed to leave this town until the end of filming. The signed contract can no longer be terminated, but you can get out of the situation differently. When the situation has reached an impasse, there is only one way out. Daniel’s path lay in unsociable places, where almost every passer-by he met on the street pointed to him. Since there is so much talk about an abandoned cinema, it means that we must go there. It is there that you can implement your plan.

      He had a razor blade in his pocket. This is quite enough to commit suicide. Daniel brushed strands of dyed blonde hair from his face. The cold wind ruffled them with incredible force. His face still looked as pretty as it did in the artfully retouched magazine covers. A rare case when the appearance of an actor is almost indistinguishable from his images replicated to the public. It is a pity that beauty has ceased to give him an advantage. Recently, the career has been going downhill.

      Coming to a quiet town to shoot a horror movie was an act of desperation. Naturally, no one, except those close to him, knew about this yet. Articles in the press continued to carry a laudatory tone – all this is advertising paid for by the studio. In fact, he was pursued by an evil fate. Several recent films with him have flopped at the box office. The new film is his last chance.

      And this chance is too flimsy. The location for the shooting was too unfortunate, the script leaves much to be desired, the director thinks more about how to make a star out of his own daughter than about how to make a good film. No one offered Daniel another job. From depression left to wash down even before filming began. But talking about a building that’s cursed distracted him from both the bottle and the preparation for filming.

      Going for a walk before filming started was the only sober thought. Alone, no bodyguards. Why bodyguards for a star that no longer gives profit. If they kill him, then no one will give a damn. And once it was different.

      Someone wisely said that all stars experience a moment of glory and a moment of fall. Daniel didn’t think he would ever fall under these statistics. When you are young, successful and even rich, then dark thoughts do not enter your head. They start to come later when you lose everything. Anyone who is on the verge of complete collapse thinks only of such a quiet place as an abandoned cinema in order to commit suicide there.

      In such a place, no one will find him, no one will save him, no stranger will call an ambulance. Until his corpse is found, not a single day will pass. If they find it at all. In the district, the cinema is so notorious that even police patrols allegedly try to bypass it. More like a fiction! It’s good if such a cinema exists at all, and is not a fiction of local residents.

      Daniel has heard similar stories from people who want to attract as many tourists as possible to certain areas. There were fairy tales about haunted houses, about damned ruins, and about cemeteries where evil spirits live. But he hadn’t heard about the damn cinema yet. This is really a really unconventional and purely modern invention. It does not breathe ashes of the Middle Ages and village fables about witchcraft.

      “The cinema is a bad place. There, cinema technology was used as a means of causing harm to the audience,” the guide hired by the producers gave scant explanations. “There are a lot of things left in the building, including equipment