I was lucky. Adventure, fantasy

Blurb:

A profound psychological thriller with philosophical undertones exploring themes of parenting and determinism, centered on the duality of perception. The title «I Was Lucky» serves as a powerful anchor, functioning as either sharp sarcasm or profound tragedy. The plot’s «Golden Cage» concept revolves around a protagonist who grew up in an «ideal» family. On the surface, it is the embodiment of success, love, and care. However, the philosophical riddle lies in the price of this luck. Gradually, the reader realizes that this «luck» was the result of total control, manipulation, or even the elimination of any external factors that could «spoil» the child. This raises the ultimate question: is happiness authentic if it is artificially constructed?

Autor:

Maxim Sofin – a writer and practicing psychologist since 2001 (specialising in family, sports, and clinical psychology).

A psychology expert on TV and radio. A speaker at educational forums and congresses for psychologists and game practitioners.

Holder of a Master’s degree in Education, NLP Master.

Author of the following courses: «Game Practitioner»; «Quantum-Matrix Constellations».

Creator of transformative psychological games: «Quantum Matrix of Fate»; «Matrix of Actions».

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Contents:

Part I. The Golden Cage

Chapter 1. Sterile Comfort

Chapter 2. Other People’s Things

Chapter 3. Laboratory Journal

Chapter 4. A Photograph with a Flaw

Chapter 5. Voice from the Past

Part II. The Architecture of Lies

Chapter 6. Correction Protocol

Chapter 7. The Senator and the Shadow

Chapter 8. Escape to Nowhere

Chapter 9. Meeting at the Columns

Part III. The Price of Freedom

Chapter 10. True Rhythm

Chapter 11. The Demiurge’s Choice

Chapter 12. I Was Lucky

Epilogue: Silence After the Storm

Part I. The Golden Cage

Chapter 1. Sterile Comfort

The living room of the country house breathed sterile comfort. There was no dust here, no random objects, no life in the chaotic sense Mark was used to in the city. The air was saturated with the scent of bergamot and something barely perceptible, reminiscent of medicinal bitterness.

Mark sat in a deep armchair, feeling how the starched whiteness of his shirt slightly tightened around his throat. On the low table in front of him stood a cup of tea, from which thin steam rose. He looked at the dark surface of the drink like a fortune teller looks into a cloudy mirror.

Ellen, whose movements always seemed rehearsed down to the millimeter, was carefully smoothing a lace doily on the edge of the commode. She didn’t turn around, but Mark felt her attention with his skin. It was heavy, physical, as if an invisible palm lay on the back of his head.

«You are quiet today, darling,» her voice sounded soft, enveloping him like a warm blanket under which it was hard to breathe. «The dinner at the Senator’s went wonderfully. You looked so happy when you discussed the project for the new cultural center.»

Mark frowned. He remembered the light of the chandeliers, the clinking of glasses, and the Senator’s face – smooth, poreless, as if waxen. But the feeling of happiness itself… it slipped away like water through fingers. Only the image of his own palms surfaced in his head, gripping his knee under the table to suppress a treacherous tremor.

«Mom, I… it seemed to me that in the middle of the evening I felt unwell,» Mark said, and his voice sounded quieter than usual. «I went out to the balcony because I couldn’t breathe. It was cold there. I was afraid I would fall.»

Ellen finally turned. A smile was frozen on her face – a perfect combination of sympathy and mild reproach. She approached her son and placed a cool palm on his forehead. The touch was long, too long.

«It just seemed like it to you, Mark,» she said, and there was no doubt in her tone. It was a statement of fact, not subject to discussion. «It was excessive joy. You have always been too sensitive to success. Father and I were standing nearby, you were laughing and drinking champagne. You even joked about the columns in the Neoclassical style, remember?»

Mark squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to summon that laughter, that joke, in his memory. But instead, standing before his eyes was the cold granite of the balcony railing and a panic fear of the void.

«No, I…» he began, but he was interrupted by the dry scratch of an opening notebook.

Thomas sat in the shadow by the window. His massive figure seemed part of the furniture, an extension of the dark wood of the bookshelves. He was writing something quickly, without looking up. The light of the desk lamp highlighted only his gray temples and thin-rimmed glasses.

«22:15,» Thomas said, as if stating a weather fact. His voice was low, vibrating, making his son’s chest vibrate. «Minor episode of disorientation. Let’s attribute it to fatigue after submitting the blueprints.»

Thomas closed the notebook and finally looked at his son over his glasses. There was no anger in this look, only the icy confidence of a surgeon observing a patient before a complex operation.

«Mark, I have already arranged with your leadership: you will spend the next week here, at the estate. You need to return to your true rhythm.»

«Rhythm?» Mark raised his eyes to his father. His throat went dry. «But I have a meeting with a client tomorrow. I can’t just…»

«The meeting is canceled,» Thomas cut him off. «We have already settled everything. In this house, you are safe. Here, nothing disturbs your memory with false images.»

Ellen gently stroked Mark’s hair, her fingers lingering for a moment on his temple, as if checking his pulse.

«Drink your tea, dear. It will help you remember everything as it actually was. We want you to be happy. You were lucky, Mark. You have us.»

«I was lucky.» The phrase sounded like a verdict.

Mark looked into the dark depth of the drink. He suddenly became afraid that if he took a sip, the balcony, the fear, and the lack of air would disappear forever. They would be erased like a pencil sketch by an eraser, leaving in their place only a convenient, parent-approved picture of his flawless life.

He slowly lowered the cup onto the saucer. The porcelain clinked against the glass too loudly in the silence that had fallen.

«I don’t want tea,» Mark said.

A heavy silence reigns in the living room, broken only by the measured ticking of the grandfather clock. Thomas opened the notebook again. The pencil scratched against the paper, recording the disobedience.

«Refusal of therapy,» the father murmured. «Anxiety level elevated. Regimen correction required.»

Mark stood up. His legs were like cotton.

«I’m tired. I’m going to my room.»

«Of course, sleep,» Ellen said, and her smile didn’t falter by a millimeter. «We’ll take care to ensure you dream nothing.»

Mark left the living room, feeling their gazes on his back. They weren’t watching him leave. They were watching «how» he left, like an experimenter watches a rat running through a maze. The corridor was long, lit by dim sconces. The shadows lay as if someone invisible was walking beside him, lagging slightly behind.

He went up to his room. The door clicked shut, but it brought no relief. In this house, there were no locks that parents couldn’t open. In this house, there were no secrets except those they allowed him to have.

Mark approached the window. Outside the glass was a black night and a manicured garden, where even the bushes were trimmed into ideal geometric shapes. He tried to remember when he last felt free. Memory obligingly supplied an image of the university, but the faces of friends were blurred, as if someone had wiped over the photograph with a wet sponge.

«I was lucky,» he whispered into the darkness.

And for the first time in his life, these words sounded like a question.

Chapter 2. Other People’s Things

The night in his parents’ house had never been so dark. Duty lighting in the corridors, backlighting along the baseboards, soft night lights in the sockets. This created an aquarium effect: Mark felt like a fish being watched even while it slept.

He lay on the bed, covered with linen that smelled of lavender and freshness, too intense to be natural. The room was his childhood room, yet at the same time it wasn’t. The furniture was the same: a massive oak desk, a bookshelf, the bed. But the things…

The things were someone else’s.

On the shelves stood books he supposedly loved. Classics, architectural albums, philosophical treatises. He reached for a volume of Camus. Opened it to a random page. There were no notes of his in the margins. Not a single underline, not a single question mark that he used to leave while reading. The paper was pristine.

Mark threw the book aside. His heart was pounding somewhere in his throat. He began to inspect the room feverishly, like a man looking for an exit from a burning building.

Desk drawers. Locked.

Wardrobe. Clothes hung by color. All sizes exact, although he had gained a little weight over the last year.

The floor. Under the carpet? No, too risky to make noise.

His gaze fell on the bottom shelf of the wardrobe, where a box of toys used to be kept in childhood. He remembered how his mother had put it away when he turned fifteen. «You are a grown man, Mark,» she had said then. But now the box was standing in its place. Neat, plastic, with a transparent lid.

Mark sank to his knees. His hands were shaking. He removed the lid.

Inside lay a teddy bear. Worn, with one eye that shone slightly duller than the other. Mark recognized him instantly. Mr. Brown. The only creature he could complain to about his fears at the age of seven.

But something was wrong.

Mark took the toy in his hands. The fabric was stiff, as if soaked in some solution. He turned the bear over. On the back, where there used to be just a patch, now hung a neat white tag. Not a store one. Typewritten.

Mark squinted, bringing the tag closer to the light of the night lamp.

«Object: M. (7 years). Date: 14.05. Status: Confiscated.

Reason: Object showed excessive attachment. Source of emotional instability. Replacement with neutral stimulus required.»

At the bottom in small print was added: «Return possible upon achieving stability.»

Mark dropped the bear. It fell on the carpet silently, as if it was stuffed with cotton too tightly.

«Source of emotional instability.» They took the toy from him not because he grew up. They took it because he loved it too much. Because this love was outside their control.

He began to feverishly sort through the other things in the box. Toy soldiers. Building set. All with tags.

«Building set: Spatial thinking developed. Useful. Kept.»

«Toy soldiers: Aggressive context. Replaced with chess.»

His life had been inventoried. Every desire weighed, measured, and approved or destroyed.

Mark sat on the floor, clutching his head with his hands. Memories began to surface, but they were distorted, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. He remembered the tears when they took the bear from him. He remembered how his mother said: «Don’t cry, we’ll buy you a better one.» But they didn’t buy. They simply made him understand that tears were an error in the program.

There was a knock on the door.

Mark flinched and quickly slammed the box lid shut, pushing it back into the darkness of the wardrobe.

«Mark?» Ellen’s voice was soft, but through the wood of the door it sounded like an alarm signal. «Are you not sleeping? I heard movement.»

«I was just looking for water,» Mark lied. His voice didn’t tremble. He was surprised at his own ability to lie to their faces.

«Water is on the nightstand, dear. Don’t wander around the house at night. Shadows can play a nasty trick on you. You know how sensitive you are to images.»

«I know, Mom. Good night.»

«Good night, son. Remember: we are nearby. We always guard your sleep.»

The steps receded. But Mark knew: she hadn’t gone far. She was standing behind the door. Listening to his breathing.

He approached the nightstand. There was indeed a pitcher of water there. And next to it – two white tablets in a blister pack. Without a label.

Mark looked at the tablets. They were small, round, harmless. «For calmness,» mother would surely say. «For background stabilization,» father would write in his journal.

He took the blister pack, squeezed it in his palm until the plastic cracked, and hid it in the pocket of his pajama pants.

Tomorrow he would go to his father’s office. He had to see those journals. He had to understand what else they had «confiscated» from his life.

Mark lay in bed and closed his eyes. But he wasn’t going to sleep. In the darkness of his own room, he felt like a spy in enemy camp. And the scariest part was not that enemies were around. The scariest part was that a part of himself wanted to drink that tea, take those pills, and forget about the balcony fear. A part of him wanted to stay in the golden cage.

And with this part, he would have to fight first.

Chapter 3. Laboratory Journal

Morning came too quickly, as if the night had been shortened by order of the house administration. The sun beat through the windows with bright, unnatural light, highlighting every speck of dust in the air.

Mark came down for breakfast first. The table was set impeccably: porcelain, silver, napkins folded into the shape of swans. Ellen was busy at the stove, Thomas was reading the newspaper. Nothing had changed. And it was precisely this unchangeability that was the most frightening.

«Good morning,» said Mark, sitting down in his chair. The very one he had sat in for the last fifteen years.

«Good,» replied Thomas, without lifting his eyes from the news section. «You slept well? Your complexion is significantly better.»

«Yes. I need to stop by your office. I left last year’s blueprints there. I want to check them.»

Thomas slowly lowered the newspaper. His gaze was heavy, studying.

«The office is locked, Mark. You know the rules. Company documents are in there.»

«Those are my blueprints, Father.»

«They are archived. I will find them for you later. Eat breakfast now. The omelet is cooling.»

Mark looked at the omelet. The yolk was perfectly round, as if cut with a compass.

«I’ll find them myself. It will take a minute.»

He stood up without waiting for permission. He felt his father’s gaze burning his back like an X-ray. Ellen froze with a spoon in her hand. Tension hung in the air, thick as jelly.

Mark went out into the corridor. He knew where the office was. The door at the end of the hall, upholstered in leather. Usually, it was locked with a key that Thomas wore on a chain inside his shirt. But today, perhaps due to morning haste or confidence in complete control over his son, the door was merely ajar.

Mark looked back. No sound came from the kitchen. He pushed the handle. The door opened silently.

The office smelled of old leather, tobacco, and the same medicinal scent as the tea last night. There were no windows here, only artificial lighting. Walls from floor to ceiling were occupied by cabinets with folders. A computer stood on the desk, turned off, and stacks of paper.

Mark approached the desk. His hands were shaking, but he clenched them into fists, forcing himself to calm down. He began to sort through the papers. Bills, contracts, letters. All boring, official.

And then he noticed them. In the bottom drawer, under a layer of blueprints, lay ordinary school notebooks in grid paper. Dozens of notebooks. Dates were on the spines.

«1995. Object M. Stage 1.»

«2000. Object M. Stage 2.»

«2010. Object M. Growing Up Crisis.»

Mark pulled out one of the fresh ones. The last one. Opened it in the middle.

Father’s handwriting was clear, choppy.

«September 14. Object showed interest in a girl at the exhibition. Name: Anna. Profession: artist. Potential risk: unstable income, bohemian lifestyle, influence on Object’s emotional background.»

«Decision: Organize Anna’s move to another city. Offer grant for study in Paris. Inform Object of her sudden cooling off.»

«Result: Object endured depression lasting 14 days. After correction via the chemical composition of the tea – stabilization. Conclusion: Attachment to external agents blocks productivity.»

Mark felt the floor slip from under his feet. Anna. He remembered her. Remembered her laugh, the smell of paint on her fingers. Remembered how she disappeared. They told him she left, that she didn’t love him truly. He suffered for half a year. Took the pills mother gave him.

This wasn’t love. It was disinfection.

He feverishly flipped through the pages further.

«Project «Heir’. Goal: Creation of ideal executor for transfer of corporation assets management. Exclusion of free will factor.»