The Ring of Our Time

When I read that this lunatic allegedly hated the film on which he based his "fanfreak", I couldn't help but laugh. He himself admitted that the film was the basis for all his nonsense, and now, after all this time, he claims that he hated it? That's a complete contradiction! It meant that if he hated the film, he also hated my wife, because she was part of that film.

But then why all this? Why did he dedicate his songs to her, why did he create this idiotic website, if he hated her? The answer was obvious - it was just a way to demonstrate his disappointment. He could not accept the fact that his idealized, "pure" Asia, which he saw in his fantasies, turned out to be not what he wanted her to be. All these songs, paintings, the website - all this was just a painful way of self-expression.

I realized that this jerk wasn't Russian, but a Canadian who was trying so hard to present himself as someone else, someone mysterious and mystical. He was creating this world around himself, surrounding his hatred of the film and my wife with a false aura of tragedy, as if it were all important and complicated. But in reality, he was just a weak man who hid behind myths and fictions, even about his identity.

I saw it all clearly now. He wasn't just a fan, but a disgruntled fan who was creating his own version of reality, where he could be a hero. And all this "Russianness" was his way of justifying his thoughts and feelings, creating an aura of inaccessibility and genius around himself. In reality, everything was much simpler and, as it turned out, unremarkable.

I wanted to go to him and talk. Right now. I wanted to see him, this Canadian who had so strangely rewritten reality and created this whole madhouse. I was ready to look him in the eye, hear his explanations, ask why he had twisted all the facts so pervertedly, why he had staged this farce with the Russian origin. How dare he play with human destinies, with memories, even if it was only an illusion, a figment of his imagination.

But at some point I realized - what should I even tell him? This man, who distorted my wife, her image, and put all his pathetic hatred into his texts, did not deserve my time or attention. I could not prove anything to him, because he himself did not believe in his reality.

But deep down I wanted to meet him. I wanted to at least understand what he was really like - the one who didn't dare to be himself and tried so hard to be someone great.

And then I remembered. In the book written by an anonymous author, it was said that Vitaly Ivolginsky hanged himself. Died. It was the end, for him, for his torment, for his meaningless existence. He could not be alive, because in this very story his death had already been recorded.

So all this searching, my attempts to find out who he really was, were in vain. He didn't exist. Just some phantom traces, a mosaic of his writings, of his hatred, of his obsession. He was dead. None of it mattered. I couldn't find him because he was gone.

And so, sitting in my room, I felt a strange uneasiness. Vitaly Ivolginsky was dead. It was a fact, recorded in the book I was reading. His heart no longer beat, and the stuffy atmosphere filled with his endless songs and letters was gone. He was just a character, a figment of someone else's imagination. But then a terrible realization struck me: his world, his work - they are still alive. And they live on this site.

The site this psycho had created was the last thing that remained of his twisted passion. All his songs, his pictures, his delirious "fanfreak" - they were alive. They existed outside of him, they remained on the Internet, in these files that could be found and viewed, as if they had become part of reality. He was dead, but his creations did not disappear. And what was worse, they continued to exist without his presence, as if they had become independent, living beings existing in this creepy virtual space.

I couldn't forget scrolling through that site. All those songs, full of painful love and hate, paintings that captured images from his terrible world, and, of course, that "fanfreak" - his multi-layered fiction, created based on the film with my wife. Every page was soaked in his obsession, every sentence echoed his anger and passion. He might be dead, but all those parts of him, all those projections of his mind, continued to exist and affect me.

It was a nightmare for me. How could I ignore it? The site existed, and its content was alive, filled with the emotions he put into those lines and pictures. I didn't know how to cope with it. This whole world, his world, continued to torment me even after his death. All those questions, doubts, his fanaticism - they were all alive, and now, instead of disappearing with him, they continued to be part of this dark reality.

I opened the site again and started scrolling through its pages. The words he had left behind flickered on the screen: songs filled with pain, his fan works, pictures that became illustrations of his inner world. But the most terrible thing was that his work seemed immortal, it was forever recorded on this network, forever remaining as his memory. And I, it seemed, was his last witness.

What do I do now? What do I do with this legacy? This site that continued to exist as if it were not connected to the dead man, but part of a new world in which his madness continued to affect everyone who visited it?

When I first saw this site, I was thinking only about myself. I was stunned by how deeply this psycho had infiltrated my life, how his obsession with Asia Vieira had turned into this vile phantasmagoria that now had its own life on the Internet. I was excited, scared, and didn't know what to do with this horror. But then it dawned on me - the site wasn't just available to me, it was available to absolutely everyone. Not just me, but anyone who might stumble upon these pages. And who could see it?