Lala's lust for Life

Google doesn't understand how to help me. I don't understand either. I have three days left to live.  

In the dim room, I stare at the remnants of an extravagant dinner. The wine glasses, clinging like tired lovers, are empty. I, too, feel emptied. Tears streak my foundation, blending with the scent of sweat and vanilla. I’ve bitten my lips bloody; a third cigarette smolders in the ashtray.

Yesterday, I met His Highness. No, I’m not crazy. But at that moment, I seriously considered calling my psychiatrist friend. Yet, He — my driver, as it turned out — refused to leave me alone. Here’s how it happened.

After work, a silver Toyota Camry picked me up. Oddly, no VIN. I slumped into the seat. The old taxi driver, thin, with sallow cheeks, in a worn blue Adidas jacket, turned to me. 

His small, yellowed teeth glinted as he asked, “Have you thought about what you’d do in your last days?”

I froze. Did I hear him right?

“Where do you want to go…for the last time?” he continued.

“Home,” I whispered, a mix of fear and bewilderment.

He scoffed. “When you were alive, you seemed more interesting to me.”

“But...I’m still alive,” I stammered, catching his black, unfeeling eyes in the mirror.

“Not for long,” he replied.

I thought to call the police. But before I could, he smirked, “Don’t bother.” My phone screen blinked. A photo of me as a toddler appeared—a memory I hadn’t even known I’d had. No one had taken a picture, yet there it was.

“You have,” he said, “Three days to ponder your life.”

“That’s not enough,” I protested.

“That’s all you asked for when we made the deal,” he replied.

I don’t want to die like this. I want to fade peacefully at 80, recalling life’s highlights. The things I’ve done right—gifting Dad a Benz, graduating from college, setting up a successful shop on Maidan.

And what have you done for yourself, Lala?

You haven’t written the masterpiece that would pay your way. And now you’re heading to a dingy apartment, sharing life with Alex, whose only concern is Saturday Night Live.

“No more,” I mutter, storming into our cluttered flat. There he is, lounging in his Simpsons shirt, lost in his lazy contentment. Dust gathers on the shelves, the cabinets creak, and his favorite comedian grins on TV.

I scream. The furniture’s outdated, I’m overworked, and there’s no way I’d raise a child in this dump flat in the next five years. His lame quip about “Five-Year Plans in the Soviet Union” stings like salt in a wound.

I pack my clothes, sling my ragged bag over my shoulder, and walk into the cold January night.

“Lala, what are you going to do?” — the woman in the red dress asks me.

 “I’m leaving my work. I'm the worst copywriter in the office. I'm tired of writing about doors and windows. Not only that, but I want high art.” 

I can’t find the words to explain to her: in two days, I will be gone. Furthermore, I will cool down, become numb, immobilized. Nadya, save me, Nadya, don’t let this bony taxi driver God take me away. 

My friend looks on with compassion and incomprehension the entire time I think and exist. She takes a sip from her wine glass and smiles at one corner of her mouth. 

“Honey, you know that all hopes are dead. It won't be any better.” 

Nadya and I went through fire, water, and lectures on philosophy from Andrei Evgenievich, who resembled a drunken plumber. Laughter, tears, boredom. In our lives, we even shared a bed. Nadya knows as well as I do that we made grandiose plans. Go to Italy with the money raised from her wedding. Sing a duet at the Grammy ceremony. Lead the crowd by shouting cheap political slogans. But in the end, we sit in her two-room apartment, drink Prosecco from the stock of her modest bar, and eat juicy pieces of pear.

 “It will be better, Nadya, it will be better. I feel it. I have a special path. We’ve always considered ourselves the chosen ones.” 

We put the dishes in the sink, and my friend soaps the sponge and wipes the remaining cheese off the plate. 

I turn on the TV. An elderly woman with pulled-back brown hair and red nails stares at me through the screen. “Lala…Really? Again?” she asks. I lie back and watch the dusty lamp overhead, its pill shape threatening to fall.

I wake to the figures of Larisa Ivanovna, my doctor, and her assistant hovering over me. “She’ll sleep till ten and blame the meds,” the assistant mutters, pushing me to sit up. I apologize and quickly tidy my hair, my eyes meeting Larisa’s faux-concerned smile.

“What did you dream about?” she asks.

“A husband on the other side of reality. Not bad,” I reply, half-smiling.

She moves on, leaving me with the taste of bitterness and a toothbrush clutched in my fist. Spending these last days here is unbearable. The green hallway reeks of pills, schizophrenic Anya’s unwashed hair, and diluted oatmeal. Anya, trapped here forever, eyes me with desperation and hope.

Sergei, my trusted companion in the ward, walks me to the door. “What if the taxi driver wasn’t real?” I ask him, watching his gray, drawn face. He hesitates. “It could be just a trick of your mind, you know,” he suggests, as if trying to soothe me.

The clock is ticking. Only thirty hours left. I enter a movie theater, planning to lose myself in a film. But the silence is broken by an unknown message on my phone: “Are you really going to waste two hours watching a Hollywood blockbuster?” Turning, I see a figure in black sitting in the last row. 

He spreads his arms in the empty auditorium— a strange Caucasian man with an odd smirk. He snaps, and the walls begin to melt. With a wave, the roof vanishes, revealing an open bluest sky; waterfalls cascade from the chairs, thunderclouds form overhead, tree roots twist from the floor, and exotic birds fly upward.

“This is how your undeveloped mind imagines heaven,” he says, snapping his fingers again.

The scene shifts back to the cinema. White noise freezes on the screen, replaced by images from child porn, horror films, and documentaries with photographs of famous serial killers. Knives, blood, fires, dead bodies, canned human meat. 

A dark figure appears on the screen, sneering, “Is there anything more disgusting than a human?” A baby, wrapped in a blanket, lies in a crib on the screen. Little Lala rips up her brother's book, not just a book—his dream. Teen Lala sneaks cosmetics from a store. Next, her first love affair: empty promises and tears, like cheap wallpaper peeling in the first flood. In her games, there are no winners.

As the lights flicker back on, I sit paralyzed, the lingering images sinking into my mind like poison. My life laid bare, every cruel moment strung together in a relentless parade of small betrayals and hollow victories. The clock ticks louder, echoing in the empty theater—my life’s countdown. I glance over, but the figure in black is gone, leaving only the scent of decay. It’s as if the walls themselves are breathing, exhaling a silent accusation: this is the heaven I’ve made, a paradise of regrets and squandered chances.

 After thirty hours, nothing’s left but the hollow realization that my only executioner was always a single person: me.

A black hole comes to life in my chest. It burns my stomach, intestines, and uterus, expanding in flames to cover my entire height. My corpus spreads like a black, viscous substance down the velvet, maroon chair.

“Hallowed be thy name,” I whisper for the last time.