The fifth element

 

I approached the house hesitantly, as if I knew a corpse was waiting for me inside. I parked the car in the driveway and turned off the engine. A silence fell, completely unbroken. The unbroken silence of the night. I sat in the car for a moment, staring at the large porch windows, thought I might light a cigarette, then, steeling myself, got out.

First, a knock on the door. It was perfectly normal, like a guest announcing their arrival. I could have rung the bell, but I never rang one, so I hoped I would be recognized quickly. But inside the house, as well as outside, there was a deafening silence. I pressed my ear to the cold wood and tried to make out voices. I managed only to locate the refrigerator. Everything else was sound asleep. And that worried me.

I sat down on the wall, took out my cigarettes, and lit one. I had to think about it. No sound, no sign of life, nothing. Silence, yet I was in the middle of the forest. I should have heard animals, at least wild boars, or an owl. I should have been afraid too, trembling in my undershirt from the night chill, and I should have shouted for my owners, though I knew perfectly well it was futile.

I should have been, but unfortunately, there was nothing to be afraid of. For some unknown reason, I was warm enough—or rather, just right—and I didn't feel like screaming at all, so smoking a cigarette, I stood up, dusted off my pants, and went back to the door.

Staś always said that when something like this happens, it's best to start at the end. I didn't know if it had happened or not. Yes, I had a feeling he was lying there in a pool of cooling blood, that there had to be traces somewhere, and that all this was leading to a solution, but many people have gone on a limb, as they say in our village, so first, or last, I had to check if my hunches were confirmed.

Following Staś's instructions, I smashed the window and entered. Well, I only took one step, because Staś lay further away in a pool of blood, cooling off. I thought, damn him, not everyone can predict their own death so precisely, and I smiled at the thought of my own death, which I had deliberately planned so it wouldn't overtake me quickly.

Staś, I checked carefully, had been dead for quite some time. The decomposition process hadn't started yet, as Staś had informed me earlier, but since I was already here, I should stop wasting time on trivial matters and get to work immediately. So the first step was to thoroughly inspect the apartment, comb through the bookshelves, look into nooks and crannies I'd never, out of respect for Staś's privacy, looked into, and find what Staś called...

I forgot! I forgot, but Staś must have anticipated it, because when I examined the cool body, it dawned on me – Staś's right hand was pointing to the chest of drawers, his friend's favorite chest of drawers, where, besides underwear, he kept a multitude of odds and ends, and other junk. Tripping over a protruding finger, I lunged for the chest of drawers and slammed open the top drawer. There it was! I screamed with surprise.

With shaking hands, I tore open the snow-white envelope. Inside was a sheet of paper folded in four. I unfolded it, and a diagram appeared showing the outline of Staś's death, drawn by Staś's hand just before his death. I whistled with delight. Phew, he had ideas! You can only envy him!

But if you've found the first element, then, as Staś recommended, you should immediately go straight to the second element. Here, Staś had already initiated me into the second element, so that I wouldn't have to do everything myself, as he had so precisely said. So I briskly walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and, pushing aside the bowl of herring salad, nibbling on a delicious wild boar sausage, and smelling something unidentifiable with disgust, I found the second element – ​​a hot dog.

Yes, I remember it like it was yesterday that Staś smiled at the mere thought of a hot dog in my hand at a time like this. He said everyone would be confused, but that was the way it was. I simply had to eat it, so I did. As I swallowed the last bite, I heard Staś's laughter in my mind, and at the same moment the sound of a creaking floorboard reached my ears.

My hair stood on end. Staś had warned me about the third element. He said someone would be home, that the floor would most likely creak, and that I had to be careful because he was a dangerous man.

Holding back a belch, choking on my own helplessness, I crouched behind the fridge door and decided to do absolutely nothing. Because if he was here, what could I do? I could only wait for him to leave. Politely, I'm not here, wait. I looked down the corridor and spotted a dark figure. I thought things weren't looking good, and at that moment the burp took over, giving itself an overpowering tone, amplified by the echoes coming from outside.

In fact, the moment I burped, I knew it was the fourth element; they seemed paradoxically tangled and resounded forcefully. The figure paused, as if hesitating whether to continue moving towards a scoundrel like me. The knife in its hand gleamed alarmingly, and my brain wondered in panic what this fifth element could be.

I didn't have to wait long for an answer. She came to me. She was naked. Her breasts were so beautiful that I cried at the sight of them. Her pubic hair was trimmed just the way I like it. A wide and disarming smile, so without hesitation I threw away the grill fork, the closest thing I could get my hands on, and plunged her into a deep kiss, which, at first passionate, soon turned rather unpleasant when, burping again with stale sausage, I vomited on the half of the naked woman who held the knife in her hand and which she furiously plunged into my heart up to the hilt, which could be nothing other than the fifth element, a miraculous death I had invented, whose traumatic swirls were to peacefully lull my body to sleep forever in the embrace of the vomited naked, warm, juicy, in love, wonderful, unspeakably unbelievably

(because that's what friends are for, who will always help and in the worst case will find a ray of hope, as they say in our country)