Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
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succeeded. The electric revolver fired twice, lighting up everything around
with a greenish flash, and the crocodile shuddered and stretched out rigid,
letting go of Polaitis. Blood gushed out of his sleeve and mouth. He
collapsed onto his sound right arm, dragging his broken left leg. He was
sinking fast.
"Get out... Shukin," he sobbed.
Shukin fired a few more shots in the direction of the conservatory,
smashing several panes of glass. But behind him a huge olive-coloured coil
sprang out of a cellar window, slithered over the yard, covering it entirely
with its ten-yard-long body and wound itself round Shukin's legs in a flash.
It dashed him to the ground, and the shiny revolver bounced away. Shukin
screamed with all his might, then choked, as the coils enfolded all of him
except his head. Another coil swung round his head, ripping off the scalp,
and the skull cracked. No more shots were heard in the farm. Everything was
drowned by the all-pervading hissing. In reply to the hissing the wind
wafted distant howls from Kontsovka, only now it was hard to say who was
howling, dogs or people.
In the editorial office of Izvestia the lights were shining brightly,
and the fat duty editor was laying out the second " column with telegrams
"Around the Union Republics". One galley caught his eye. He looked at it
through his pince-nez;
and laughed, then called the proof-readers and the maker-up and showed
them it. On the narrow strip of damp paper they read:
"Grachevka, Smolensk Province. A hen that is as big as a horse and
kicks like a horse has appeared in the district. It has bourgeois lady's
feathers instead of a tail."
The compositors laughed themselves silly.
"In my day," said the duty editor, chuckling richly, "when I was