Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

A Light in the Night

in it… a death certificate, or whatever is appropriate for a newly-deceased? The murse turned out to hold money, or at least something closely resembling such. One compartment held heavy-set coins, similar in size to the twenty kopeks of Soviet times, while another had smaller change resembling post-default Russian pennies. There were no words on the coins, just an abstract image, somewhat reminiscent of ancient pictograms. Ilya Ilych shrugged and pulled the string tight. He didn’t bother counting the coins, there are more interesting things to do in the first moments of one’s afterlife, even if there isn’t much around aside from these coins. Besides, it’s unclear what such a coin amounts to – is it a lot or a little, and what it could be spent on. But if this really was money, one could begin to draw some far-reaching and non-too-flattering conclusions about the afterlife. Ilya Ilych himself hadn’t transformed at all: the same gaunt body with a long, not fully healed scar across his stomach – evidence of an operation that did too little too late. The gnawing pain in his side was gone, however. Not subsided, ready to pounce again with new fury, but gone altogether. Which was unsurprising; it would have been strange to continue to suffer after death from the cancer that put you in the ground in the first place. “I wonder,” thought Ilya Ilych, “how much time has passed back in the reality? Have I been buried already? When do people arrive here exactly: on the ninth day or

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