Atlanta

The kid should have been numb, but he wanted to use the toilet so much that he decided to act. If you're a black guy from Atlanta, getting into bed even during a nightmare is a high risk of laughing stock to your silver temples. Black brothers, who survived slavery, plantation hell, and segregation, don't give up so easily. When Freddy Krueger comes to see them, they shoot him.

With these thoughts, the trembling Earn walked out into the hallway. Despite the darkness and the unfamiliar rustle, he seemed familiar compared to the room that had come to life. It smelled of grandma's fried chicken, family photos were hanging on the walls, and in the back corner sat a huge baboon and soothing nozzles. All that's left is to go down the stairs, pull the handle, and you can relieve the needs of the whole neighborhood.

And yet Earnest disappointed his loved ones. When he went to Princeton University, they had high hopes for him and hoped that this kid would jump over the fence of racial prejudice and restrictions. But in the end, Earnest was expelled out out out of sheer stupidity: in line for lunch, he had an argument with a certain Gambino, either because of the pronunciation of the word “zealot” or because of the last portion of pancakes.

One way or another, he came back to Atlanta with no education and empty pockets. To a place where a charming girl is raising his daughter alone. Now, with all his appearance, the once promising kid represents defeat before an indifferent eternity, as if in his nightmare he wasn't visited by a monster, but by his cousin Alfred, who hit the back of the head with a laugh: “Buddy, you're too rosy for Princeton”.

“But he's right”, thought seven-year-old Earn and started walking down the steps. Suddenly, the floorboards came in like a walker, rap cockroaches appeared through the cracks, and they were accompanied by a clockwork monkey flanking inside the wall and hitting plates. When the boy got to the foot of the stairs, it was not the cool floor that was waiting for him, but an open door leading somewhere down — into the depths of a seemingly familiar house.

Darius fell apart in his worn leather chair and stared intently at the ceiling door. It wasn't there until the third joint, but now it is adjacent to a Victorian chandelier and strives to open at any moment. The main thing is to blink less often, and then there is a chance not to miss the sacrament. True, the door never opened, but its gold-plated hinges rattled: “One day an absurd thing will be born in Atlanta, but it will die suddenly there”.

This idea did not meet Darius's expectations. He was waiting for his happy Nigerian childhood or, at worst, limited edition Nike sneakers to be hidden somewhere. Nevertheless, Darius nodded sympathetically, got up from the garden chair and went to the kitchen to cook the pancakes promised to Alfred, whose house he occupied due to the lack of his own roof over his head.

At the same time, Alfred was composing rap music, which was the only way for him to gain wealth and position. The only one after selling the weed, but he's almost done with it. So this overweight minstrel is like the exact opposite of Ernest, as he went from petty criminal to rapper, now struggling with depression due to his imminent popularity.

For a while, Earn looked under his feet, into the calling door. The cockroaches had already stopped talking and waited for the boy to decide, but the monkey rattled his plates persistently. Earn closed his eyes and covered his nose with two fingers, as if he were standing in front of a city pool, which smelled of bleach and a little bit of urine, and then dived into the tar hole.

He landed in a room full of shelves and had neither end nor edge, and telescopic stairs ran to the upper shelves everywhere. On his right hand, Earn noticed a sign with an unfamiliar name on it — Franz Kafka. And a few lines danced below: “The king of bureaucratic absurdity — a world in which the individual is worth nothing and the will is like a shaky fog”.

A few steps later, another sign appeared. “Kobo Abe. The king of orphan absurdity — a world in which individuals have no one and their loved ones are like a shaky fog”. Even a five-year-old boy would notice that the creators of such epitaphs had long run out of imagination, and Earn, an almost adult, split these jerks into two counts. But he still remembered the ensemble of letters that had formed an unfamiliar “absurdity”.

The young researcher walked for a long time between the shelves, which were filled with books without authors and titles. It seemed that at least a couple of hours had passed, but during that time he saw only one last name, which for some reason was deprived of a sad explanation. On the other hand, there was a burnt rubber trumpet on the floor a little further away from Vernon Sullivan.

As a result, Earn ran into a smooth wall with a perfectly square hole. More letters could be seen in the depths, but now they were made out of peach-sized bulbs: “The series “Atlanta”. The author of the idea is Donald Glover”. “Some strange crap again”, Darius thought, switching the radio, and turned another pancake over.

Earn thought he was wandering alone among the dusty shelves and under the lights, which for some reason looked like flower tubs. But a lady in a wheelchair drove out from behind the bookcase with jazzman stuff in her hands, holding a corkscrew in her hands, and her eyes glowing belligerently. Already frightened, Earn didn't wait for the stranger to arrive and dived into the cavity. The lights went out, and darkness hung around again, but this time it was not disturbing, but lulling.