Yeti

 

Yeti, being a yeti, wandered around, trying not to leave any marks. Meanwhile, Inglot was ironing his only white shirt, which after thirty years of use had turned beige, and I'd even say cocoa on the collar and cuffs. The iron Inglot used was a Philips iron made in China. It costs PLN 2; Inglot had bought it at a bargain price in a hypermarket. It was truly excellent for the price – light, handy, and didn't take up much space. Its only drawback was that it only warmed up to room temperature, and that only took two days after plugging it in. Inglot, however, wasn't a grumbler and was happy with his purchase.

Meanwhile, the yeti left a mark, but didn't notice.

Inglot finished ironing his shirt, hung it on a hanger, and went to shave. He didn't turn off the iron; he planned to iron his socks in three days. Shaving his facial hair wasn't Inglot's favorite activity. Perhaps it would have been different if he'd been using a slightly newer razor. Meanwhile, Inglot's razor was well over ten years old, and from what the manufacturer wrote on the packaging, it was a disposable razor. Nonsense, Inglot had easily shaved with it over three thousand times, and it still seemed perfectly usable.

After two hours of struggling in front of the mirror, Inglot finally emerged from the bathroom. His cheeks and chin were bleeding, but experience had taught him to be perfectly prepared for such an eventuality. He went to the cabinet where he kept his first aid kit, pulled out a piece of gauze, brown with dried blood, and wrapped it around his face. He was almost ready to leave; all that remained was to glue new cardboard to his shoes—the soles had worn out about fifteen years ago.

Yeti was just pawing at his fur, completely pointless, when Inglot, having returned the gauze, damp with fresh blood, to the first aid kit, was pulling on his butt a pair of relatively stiff, never-washed corduroys, reminiscent of the bare hooks in butcher shops. Inglot had heard that corduroys shouldn't be washed from a good friend of his late mother, whom he trusted more than his own father, as he had no reason not to. Putting on his pants, shirt, and shoes, Inglot padlocked his apartment and left. He had fourteen floors to go down, but he never used the elevator—he was slightly claustrophobic. This was one of the reasons he rarely locked himself in a barrel.

Yeti leaned back, stopped, and yawned. Suddenly, he felt like sleeping. Inglot, on the other hand, was already downstairs and bowed to his neighbor, who, as usual, fled in terror at the sight of his face; she couldn't seem to get used to it. In fact, quite a few people have reacted in a similar way since the Inglot razor blade started to go dull.

Yeti fell asleep standing up, but Inglot didn't. He walked briskly toward the tram stop. He didn't board the tram, however, instead hopping unnoticed onto the shaft protruding from the rear, he covered the distance of eighteen stops. As the reader has probably realized, Inglot was an extremely frugal man.

At exactly eight o'clock, Inglot started work. While he wasn't employed, he had been running around the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary for years—perhaps not so much for the money, as he didn't earn anything from it, but simply to have some work, not to be a freeloader.

Yeti dreamed of being photographed and almost woke up. Inglot, meanwhile, was beginning his first lap. Along the way, he bowed to the parish priest, who smiled warmly at him. He liked Inglot because, ever since he started running around the church, the parish had become famous.

Having completed the sixteenth lap, Inglot sat down on the steps in front of the church and began to rest. Meanwhile, Yeti was still asleep, but thankfully, his dreams had stopped.

After resting a bit, Inglot got up and was about to start another lap when, quite by accident, he glanced toward a nearby department store and saw an angel. The angel's name was Hellena, and she was a woman. To be honest, she wasn't a real angel, but an ordinary woman—not bad-looking, still quite young, but nothing special. Inglot, however, thought he had fallen in love, and instead of running around the church as he had planned, he approached the woman and, without thinking, said,

"I love you."

Hellena looked at the strange, injured man in astonishment and walked away without a word, at a very brisk pace. She had an appointment with a high school friend, a certain Krzysztoff, whom she met from time to time to help him.

Inglot wasn't offended, nor particularly hurt—in fact, he didn't love Hellena at all, and he didn't know why he'd lied to her face. He cursed himself for his sin and returned to running around the church with renewed enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, Hellena had reached Krzysztoff's house, where a bottle of wine and olive oil, which she absolutely adored, were already waiting for her. After allowing him to kiss her on the cheek in greeting, Hellena nimbly bypassed Krzysztoff, passed through the long hallway, which was in an old building, and locked herself in the bathroom. She looked in the mirror and saw an ordinary woman—not bad-looking, still quite young, but ultimately nothing special. She ran her fingers through her dyed red hair, which reached her shoulders because the longer hair refused to grow and was crumbling. She touched her eyelids, which were begging to be massaged, but Hellena was afraid of smearing her mascara, so she left them alone. She pursed her slightly under-full lips and ran her tongue over her teeth, which, as usual, had a trace of lipstick on them. Then she sat on the edge of the bathtub and burst into tears.

Meanwhile, Krzysztoff had stripped naked and climbed into bed, where he had changed the sheets an hour earlier.

Meanwhile, the yeti had woken up and, being very thirsty, had gone to look for something to drink.

Meanwhile, Inglot was still running around the church.

Hellena stopped sobbing and went back to the mirror to examine her face. Her mascara hadn't smudged—she'd learned to cry dryly many years ago, back when crying was strictly forbidden in her home. She pulled herself together, which wasn't particularly difficult considering her weight, as she was very slim, and slowly began to remove her clothes. She carefully folded her knit blouse and hung her woolen skirt on the radiator. She instinctively sniffed the tights, then put them in her mid-heeled shoes and placed them next to the bathtub. In just her underwear, she emerged from the bathroom and lay down next to Krzysztoff, who had already fallen asleep.

Krzysztoff was very obese, with pink skin covered in tiny pimples and sparse, almost white hair that he had combed from his temples to the side since he began to lose significant hair. Despite having bathed three times that day, the last time only ten minutes before Hellena arrived, his body gave off an unpleasant, unusually strong odor. His plump feet, peeking out from under the blankets, showed signs of swelling, calluses, and eczema. Hellena eyed the man with distaste, but after a moment reached for the bowl of olives on the table beside him and ate a few with relish.

Meanwhile, Inglot paused for a moment near the main entrance to the church, panting and resting.

Meanwhile, the yeti searched for something to drink, but he was already old, his eyesight was failing, and he couldn't spot anything wet.

Hellena ate the olives, drank a bottle of wine, and, resting her head on the pillow, began to stare at the ceiling. However, she didn't notice anything interesting on it, so after a short while she dozed off.

Inglot fell asleep too, standing up, because he was so tired that he fell asleep standing up.

But the yeti wasn't sleeping. Even though he couldn't see shit and his sense of smell was terrible, he was constantly looking for something to drink, even a bit of a puddle. But why a puddle in the desert?

Hellena woke up and shook Krzysztoff's shoulder. He opened his sleepy, slightly festering eyes and looked around absently. Seeing Hellena, he smiled gratefully, revealing a row of uneven, scurvy-sparing teeth. The woman smiled back.

"Delicious olives," she said.

"That's good," Krzysztoff replied. "And the wine?

" "Also delicious.

" "That's good."

Hellena got out of bed and went to the bathroom to get dressed. Krzysztoff, on the other hand, fell back asleep, very happy that he'd be able to tell his colleagues at work the next day that he'd slept with a woman.

Inglot was woken by a blow to the skull. He hit the pavement as he tried to roll from side to side while standing in his sleep. A trickle of blood began to seep from his temple. He was dying.

The Yeti wasn't feeling well either. Neither hunger, nor the heat and hot sand, were things that would have made the Snowman feel good.

Hellena left Krzysztoff's without waking him. She felt good because she had done a good deed. Light as a feather, she passed the church where Inglot was dying, but she didn't notice because she was looking the other way – a very interesting suit was hanging in the window of a nearby department store.

Inglot had died and gone to heaven. Imagine his surprise, however, when he encountered neither St. Peter, nor Jesus, nor even the Blessed Virgin Mary. Right on the threshold, he encountered Tina Turner, who gave him a warm hug and then thrust a concert ticket into his hands.

Krzysztoff, meanwhile, was sound asleep – he slept all his free time, except for the times when Hellena used to visit him and sleep with him.

Hellena, on the other hand, went into a department store and splurged—she bought that suit from the window, even though it wasn't cheap or particularly pretty.

Yeti, on the other hand, got really pissed:

"What the hell am I doing in this fucking desert?!" he screamed at himself, and returned to the Himalayas