Mannequin Alive
by Annin Brothers
Free ebook download: Mannequin Alive by Annin Brothers, legally licensed and available in PDF, and ePub formats.
Synopsis:
Two loves nourish an artist: love for himself embodied and passion for the woman.
Excerpt:
I've never before felt the urge to play a game that is about enticing someone's mind, someone's feelings into a net woven from words. I am a photographer, and my space is light. Every light finds an echo in my soul. But once I saw a light that aroused a special feeling in me. I guess this awe could be called 'falling in love.' It was a ghostly light. It was like an absolute void. There was nothing in it: no objects, no shadows, and no gleam. There was no source of light. There was only light. And I was filled with longing to disappear into it. I saw it in my dream. The vision lasted for a few moments and has never returned since. In reality, I exist in another light—densely or sparsely occupied by faces and playing with them. My business is to hunt out faces, catch the mood of the light, and click without hurrying the moment up or missing it. Faces... Admittedly, that's a thing of the past. Today, like yesterday, like tomorrow, there is only one face in front of my eyes.
Where to begin? Let it be an episode that has flashed through my mind right now, without any logic whatsoever.
Five months ago, I woke up in a room. It was not unusual for me to wake up in an unfamiliar place at the time: on a park bench, under a tree in a quiet street, or among people not attached to a cozy nest. As a rule, after two or three minutes of looking around, I recollected the place I had settled in at will, or rather, obeying the will of my own legs worn out by the earth's crust's vibrations beneath them.
There was nothing in the room but a leather sofa that sheltered me, a table with a laptop on it, a chair by the table, a shelf on the wall with a very meager set of dishes, and a gas stove that encouraged the kettle, evidently not left on the fire by me, to whistle. Its insolent whistling was the very thing that pulled me out of oblivion. The windowpane was painted with the colours of the sunny morning.
The door opened, and a man walked in. He seemed to be the owner of that humble abode. Turning off the stove, he silently as if I were not there took two mugs from the shelf (so I was there after all), a jar of instant coffee, put two spoons in each, and asked without turning his head in my direction, 'Sugar?'
'Whatever.'
