Fiona, a second-year university student, woke up in her rented apartment. She sat down and stretched, spreading out her arms like wings. A broad smile appeared on her face upon recalling yesterday’s resolution: I’ll never go to a shopping mall again. To prove the seriousness of her oath, the girl donated a huge part of her belongings to a local charity organization.

Yesterday it took her 3 hours to transport all clothes doomed for donation to her Mercedes. Those neighbours who occasionally peered out of the windows could see a girl in a blue hoodie, black leggings and colorful snickers carrying huge plastic bags – 5 per arm. When Fiona was driving back, she felt as though she obtained wings. It seemed to her that she was not sitting behind the wheel, but rather floating in a cloudless sunny sky. Never again! Never again! a happy thought was buzzing in her head.

Everything in Fiona’s life up to this moment screamed of addiction to shopping. Her poor grades screamed addiction. She was constantly thinking about shopping malls, which screamed addiction. The tumor of emptiness that was growing larger and larger inside her screamed addiction.

This addiction that lasted for two years was finally overcome.

Today while brushing her teeth, Fiona was humming to herself: My grades will skyrocket!

Then she started flying around the kitchen. All her movements were unusually confident and powerful. She was wearing Calvin Klein underwear and a silk gown.  

Firstly, to one shelf to get a pan.

After that to another shelf to grab Quaker oats.

Almost immediately back to the cooker.

When the burner was on, she soared to the kettle and turned it on.

Throughout this activity, there was never a moment when the thought: I’m free! left Fiona’s mind.

Eventually breakfast was set up. The girl landed on the chair in front of her bowl with steaming porridge and a cup of coffee. Fiona switched on her iPhone to check social media. Hmm… an email… Fiona thought and tapped the screen. From Amazon… recent orders… suggestions… Hmm… I’m not interested in this anymore…

The girl put the spoon full of oats into her mouth. Several touches transported Fiona into Instagram.

Wow! So amazing! she gasped when she saw a new photo of her favourite model. The slim young woman was standing in front of an endless sea. She was wearing a light blouse from Nordstrom collection that was flapping in the wind.

Fiona felt a wave of unconditional love. She wanted to become a source of happiness for her magnificent role model. She wished to express gratefulness for daily inspiration. There was not a large choice of options of how to convey the breathtaking feelings. Fiona coloured a heart underneath the photo in red. Then she carried on chewing oats.

While driving to university in her Mercedes, Fiona felt that her wings weakened due to the email from Amazon and the sight of the model. The girl decided not to pay attention. For around a quarter of the first lecture Fiona was focusing on the professor’s speech.

Then flashes of memories started distracting her, like pheromones of a sweet taste distort the trajectory of a fly. The girl was recalling how she would sit at lectures and enjoy online-shopping. The surrounding world would cease to exist. Billions of splendid dresses would diffuse through her skin and substitute her blood cells and neurons. They would be endlessly circulating in her body and constantly firing in her brain. After each session Fiona would wake up to reality with a bitterly blithe smile.

Soon these memories became so lucid, that there was nothing left to do except to bring them to reality with several strikes of keys on her MacBook’s keyboard.

The lecture ended. The graphics of clothes got stuck in Fiona like threads of dreams. They intertwined with a blissful memory of ordering magnificent high-heeled shoes on Amazon. The agitated imagination set her hands to constant shaking. Only touching the smooth fabric of the blouse identical to the one that was on the model from Instagram could stop the trembling.

I shouldn’t fall into temptation, Fiona was still trying to resist.

After the second lecture she got her essay back. D+! That’s inevitable! I’ll never get even C! she wailed in her mind with an inextinguishable sadness. The inner struggle was over. Fiona dropped her MacBook into her backpack, put on her coat and left the classroom. The tread of her high-heeled shoes could be heard all around the university building. It resonated through the walls and caused a magnetic eraser to disconnect from a whiteboard in one of the classrooms and fall. The eraser hit the floor with a hollow and dull sound.

Here I come, Nordstrom! Fiona thought, turning on ignition in her Mercedes. The engine roared and the car moved ahead. Fiona’s hands were tightly squeezing the wheel and shaking uncontrollably. Her palms were sweating, leaving drops of moisture on the leathern surface. Apple watch on her wrist was detecting a pulse as fast as 120 beats per minute.

Then the colossal building appeared. It seemed as though infrastructure respectfully moved aside. The pheromones of sweet dreams and memories were all leading Fiona here. The highway kneeled in front of the department store, and Fiona’s car rushed down. The girl felt the painfully familiar knot of jubilation in her throat. Nordstrom was as majestic for Fiona as a Venus trap for a fly. She rushed into the store with her head freed from thoughts. There she found comfort.

Her fingers were caressing the soft fabric of clothes. She was blissfully burying her face in the soft folds of attires. She was inhaling the head-spinning aroma of luxury. Fiona did not suspect that her movements stimulated the trigger hairs of the Venus trap. The mouth of the carnivorous plant was shutting down above her head.

A green parasol with inscription “STARBUCKS COFFEE” provides sunshade for a couple of young immigrants. Susan and Michael sit opposite each other and wait for their French Vanilla Mochas to arrive. The woman is wearing a light blue dress with a big brooch which depicts a lily of the valley. The dress exposes the woman’s thin arms and slender legs for it covers only halves of her thighs. Susan has her latest version of MacBook in front of her and is focused on typing. Her eyes as brown as truffles are moving from left to right, while manicured fingers hit the keys with both English and Russian letters.

One time the woman gives the camera to her husband and leaves the table to pose for a photo. She is standing with her knees bent, with head cant and thick flying hair, while the camera is clicking. Then she sits back at the table and continues typing until barista serves coffee. “Thank you,” she says with a big smile, closes her laptop and puts it aside.

“How is the article going?” Michael asks his wife.

“Very well! I’ll submit it by the end of the week,” Susan replies and takes a sip of her sweet drink, “Oh my God! It’s so tasty! I love it! Sometimes I think that we’re in Paradise. Can’t believe it. A job that I absolutely love. Affording such amazing coffee on my birthday! In such country as U.S.! I’m in a philosophical mood today, you know? I believe that with hard work you can achieve anything. We achieved our Paradise together,” she tenderly puts her fingers on her husband’s hand that is resting on the surface of the table.

“I have a present for you, Susie,” Michael takes a small box out of his bag and gives it to his wife, “Happy birthday, my dear!”

“Oh, wow! Thank you!” Susan opens the box and her rounded eyebrows rise, she closes her mouth with her hands.

“It’s so pretty!” she starts walking around the table to give her husband a hug. He also stands up and they lovingly embrace each other. Then Susan puts the ring with a brilliant on her left middle finger.

Suddenly a person wearing rugs appears. He is strolling down the street with an absent gaze and a large plastic bag full of trash. He decides to rest under a parasol next to Susan and Michael. Susan’s lips pull up and her nose crinkles. She anxiously looks around and notices that other customers of Starbucks start frowning. Susan quickly puts the ring back into the box and hides it securely into her handbag. She also packs her laptop into her bag which she places on her lap.

Michael says, “There’s no need to be so worried. He won’t rob us.”

“How do you know?” Susan asks in a trembling voice, “I hate when these tramps come so close. Why the government doesn’t do anything about them? I actually hate these tramps who enjoy living like animals.”

Michael objects: “Susie, don’t call them animals. They don’t enjoy such life. Our society determines inequality. You and I are just lucky to have both suitable qualities and circumstances…”

Michael waves his hand at the barista.

“May I have a bagel, please?” he asks.

“Are you going to give it to this tramp?” Susan’s eyes become tense and narrow.

“Yes. I feel sorry for him.”

They continue drinking coffee in silence for around 10 minutes. Susan often glances at the man who is sitting on his plastic bag and staring at the blue sky with his red and emotionless eyes. Each time she shudders and hugs herself.

“Susie, let’s not spoil your birthday. We have different views but that’s okay,” Michael suggests peacefully.

“I want this tramp to disappear. I can’t bear him,” Susan says not caring whether anyone else hears her or not.

The barista approaches with the bagel.

Susan with her brows frowned observes how her husband approaches the man and gives him food. They exchange some words that Susan does not hear due to the traffic noise. When Michael comes back, Susan exclaims:

“I’ll call the police, so that they remove him from here. He is not supposed to be in the café because he is not paying. Why is the staff ignoring him?”

Susan takes out her phone.

“Oh my God!” Susan exclaims and shows the screen of her phone to Michael, “Look at this!”

Michael feels how his heart skips the beat when he notices unexpected fear in the raised eyebrows and opened mouth of his wife. He glances at the screen and reads: “Solar Superstorm Warning. Danger of solar superstorm hitting the Earth. Power grid in North America will be destroyed in 60 minutes. Do not panic. Check local authorities.”

Michael frowns his brows and his lips become tight. Susan starts googling “sun superstorm” on her phone.

“Let’s go! We have to get to the closest bank and withdraw money. Otherwise we will lose it,” Michael exclaims and looks around. People are yet unaware of the approaching catastrophe.

Susan does not hear him – she is too focused on skimming an article about solar superstorm. She sees with the corner of her eyes how Michael approaches people at the other table. They all jump to their feet. Gradually noise around Susan intensifies, people are engaged into nervous discussions.

“Let’s go! To the bank! To get the money!” Michael repeats loudly, as he approaches Susan.

“What’s the point?” Susan exclaims, raising her tear-soaked eyes that are black as night, “Money is useless now! Think about how many people will lose it in just one hour! Do you want to be murdered with so much cash on your hands?”

She stands up and looks at the sky. She is left breathless: Aurora is shining across the sky. Bright blue, green, magenta colors are reflecting in her eyes. Susan’s fingers find her wallet in her hand bag. She quickly walks into the café, leaving the bag with her laptop on the chair.

“I’d like a cake, please,” she gives the last cash she has to the young woman who looks shocked. The woman accepts cash and gives a plate with the cake. She is still not realizing that soon cash machines will stop working.

Susan approaches the poor man and gives him the cake. He is completely distant from the panic surrounding him. The pauper is enjoying the bagel; he gives Susan a toothless smile.

Susan smiles back and buries her face into her palms to hide the tears that rash out of her eyes that are dark as endless universe. Her shoulders are shudder due to laments.

 

Genes determined that by the age of 19 Karina was very slim, with a fragile skeleton, narrow skull and lantern jaws. The bones of her arms were visible reflecting the little volume of her muscle mass. Karina’s legs were slender with knees touching each other when she was standing straight. She had a friend Rachel whom she thought she knew perfectly well because together they did their homework, went to lectures, and were friends on Facebook and Instagram.  

On one day Karina woke up in the night and sensed not a bedsheet underneath herself but a rigid fur. Her nostrils took in a damp air of a cave. She sat down and her heart sank when she did not see the ceiling and walls of her dorm illuminated by reflections from streetlights. The impervious darkness that was surrounding Karina made her hands shake, her heart beat speed, and her head spin. She collapsed back on the fur and pressed her eyelids together as tightly as she could.

Karina woke up again when it was already the morning. What she saw first made her gasp. The cave not only remained the part of surrounding reality, but also obtained definitive shapes due to beams of sun that were getting inside. Through the entrance an endless sea was visible.

Suddenly Karina realized she was not wearing any clothes. Her cheeks turned bright crimson. This color intensified when the girl noticed that she was surrounded by naked people. One man with large muscular arms was sitting nearby and striking two rocks together. Repetitive clashes were routinely intensified by echoes. He had large brows and hair all over his tanned body.

Karina covered herself in the fur trying to relax the muscles on her face that immediately contracted in a grimace since the fur was covered in drops of dry blood. The girl remained motionless. Meanwhile, there was a constant whirl of activity around. Some women were producing diverse sounds that did not make any sense for Karina. The females organized themselves in a band and left the cave presumably to search for food. Children were restlessly running around and shouting so loudly that Karina’s head started aching. She was shifting her eyesight from the kids to a man in the middle of the cave chamber who was patiently grinding two wooden sticks together.

Eventually Karina felt that she could not bear it any longer. She stood up and headed towards the entrance of the cave. As she passed among men and women who remained in the cave, they all resumed their activities and did not stare at their uninvited “guest”. Outside of the cave in a distance Karina saw people walking along the marine and perhaps collecting seafood like turtles, seashells. However, the girl did not join them, but wondered away along the sea.

She was strolling bare foot in green grass under burning sun and gazing at the wild landscape. Her hands were still clutching the fur skin wrapped around her body despite of heavy drops of sweat that appeared on her forehead and back of the neck.

Suddenly Karina froze. In a short distance she noticed several large and extremely thin hyenas each reaching her chest. Her hands were strongly trembling as she crumpled the fur in a measly semblance of a shield. Ugly muzzles were approaching; robust canines were glittering in the sun. The closest hyena attacked. Karina screamed in a high-pitched voice she never thought she possessed; felt how the jaws closed around the fur skin. It seemed that the canines have pierced her hand. Simultaneously she experienced pain and suffocation as if her spine crashed as it hit the soil…

Loud calls and shouts resembling those that Karina heard in the cave arouse. The girl felt that the hyena let go of her arm. She opened her eyes and saw how several strong and muscular men and women with large stones and wooden spears were fighting against the hyenas. Karina collapsed.

She regained her consciousness in the cave. A woman who could hardly be described as gracile with a scar across her cheek sat nearby consuming mollusks whom she extracted from shells that were burned. Behind her back a fire was flaring, and other members of the band were holding mollusks in their hands waiting for them to open up. The woman noticed that Karina was looking around and made a strange sound, simultaneously stretching her arm and dropping a mollusk on the fur beside Karina.

Karina sat up, deeply sighed and started to slowly move her eyes towards her right hand that was still hurting. “Phew,” she breathed out, noticing that her arm still consisted of three parts and only deep scratches covered by the blood that dried out were visible. Her spine was aching, but this was a tolerable pain.

Karina realized how thirsty she was. She caught the woman’s look and imitated drinking from a bottle, then made a pleading sign. The woman frowned, took the mollusk and threw it on Karina’s lap. The girl shook her head and scratched the back of her head. Then in an inspiration she performed a gesture she would make when drinking from a brook.

The woman repeated the gesture, then stood up and headed in the darkness of the cave. Karina followed, wrapping herself in the fur – the farther they went from the hearth, the colder the air was getting. The large round shoulders of the “guide”, her strong arms still visible for the girl due to the glow of the fire did not mind the frigid condition of the cave’s intestine.

Finally, Karina shaking from head to toes heard the sound of streaming water. At the same time, the silhouette of the “guide” vanished in the darkness and the girl’s heart started skipping beats.

Suddenly someone’s hand grasped Karina’s wrist making her gasp. It took her several seconds of desperate panic to convince herself that she was grabbed by the woman and not a cave bear.

She was being pulled down, so she kneeled and felt how her hand was plunged into… “Ahhh!” Karina screamed withdrawing her hand as quickly as possible from the water cold as hell. The echo was still repeating “Ahhh”, while Karina heart was pounding in her queering chest. She heard the woman beside her drinking. It took the girl a while to regain control over herself and manage to satisfy thirst by lapping the water like an antelope.

On the next day Karina woke up both thirsty and hungry. After she has rubbed her eyes, she began searching for the woman who took care of her yesterday. However, all the women around were unfamiliar. So, Karina ventured to go and find the brook on her own. As she was kneeling near the stream, she kept glancing into the depth of the cave and imaging how a bear would attack her and tear to pieces.

When she came back to the camp, she took several stones and approached a man who was in the process of making a tool. She sat opposite to him and waved. The man ignored her gesture, however, all people nearby started staring at Karina. When she exclaimed: “Hey!” others made themselves scarce. The man still did not rise his head. However, his lips became curved downwards and a frown appeared on his wrinkled forehead. “Could you, please…” Karina began when suddenly a man roared, grabbed a bone lying next to him, stood up and hit the girl’s head with it.  

A stream of tears rushed out from her eyes as she ran away and hid behind a stalagmite. A half of the day passed before she gained enough courage to approach a group of women who were busy striking stones together and possibly making tools. She anxiously observed their reactions: nobody frowned, nobody roared. On the contrary, one of the women – in whom Karina recognized her “guide” – immediately turned towards Karina and started showing where to strike the stones. Her fingers were dirty and with long broken nails.

Karina spent four days manufacturing her weapon. During this period, she fed on mollusks whom other women brought to the cave. The polish on her nails was wiped off and a nail on index finger got broken. Still, she felt warm gratitude towards the woman with the scar while she was giving the final touches to the spear.

On the fifth day Karina departed from the cave with a group of female gatherers. Her friend was among the band. They wondered away so far from the cave that Karina became terrified as to how they would find their way back. While she was anxiously looking around, her companions were calmly collecting seashells and turtles and dropping them into fur skins. She made an incredible mental effort to memorize the route as they walked back loaded with seafood. This habit of memorization saved her life when one day she went to the savannah with her scarred friend and several other women to hunt hedgehogs and collect ostrich eggs.

Hunting and gathering required a lot of patience and endurance as the band roamed the landscape under the heating sun. Suddenly, Karina felt herself sick. A loud buzzing noise invaded her head which started spinning uncontrollably. Everything became blur. Then darkness…

Karina awakened still in the savannah in the high grass. She must have been lying there for a long time since the sun was closer to the horizon and the unbearable heat receded. The girl’s head was bursting with pain and she needed water. Nobody was around. Holding back tears, feeling hatred to the woman with the scar whom she considered her friend, the girl staggered back to the cave. She was recollecting the way with enormous efforts. By the time she reached the entrance of the cave she was not sure if her head was aching due to the heat stroke or mental work. Surprisingly she managed to get to the brook and drink despite of her exhaustion. Then she curled up in her corner of the cave and fell asleep immediately.

Karina woke up in her dorm and heard knocking on the door. “Phew,” she breathed out and wiped away the sweat from her forehead. She sat up. Her blanket was lying on the floor and her bedsheet was craped. Knock, knock, knock!

“I’m coming!” Karina exclaimed and walked to the door feeling herself as light as if she got into zero gravity.

“Hi, Rachel,” she said smiling and immediately felt shivers down her spine – Rachel was frowning.

“I’ve been waiting so long for you! Did you forget that we arranged to have breakfast together?” Rachel grumbled.

“Oh, I’m so terribly sorry, Rachel,” Karina folded her hands in the pleading sign, “Let’s go to drink,” she folded her hands as if drinking from the brook, “and have something to eat.” She imitated sucking out a mollusk from a seashell. Rachel’s eyebrows raised, her eyes widened, and her mouth opened.

“Aren’t you going to get changed? How about brushing your teeth?” she nearly screamed in a high pitch, staring at Karina’s nightshirt.

“Where are they!?” Karina exclaimed looking around for hyenas and immediately felt that her cheeks turned crimson color.

“In your room. What’s the matter with you?”

“Oh, that dream…” Karina mumbled wondering whether to describe it as a nightmare or not. A hundred of questions were whirling around in Karina’s head: Rachel, what are your hobbies? What makes you most annoyed? What makes you most happy? What are you most scared of? Would you ever abandon a friend? If you would, why? What do you value in people the most? and so on. She was trembling with jubilant excitement as she looked forward to getting the answers.