Imago

By Plamen Chetelyazov

The working title of the book was Fragments. The final title Imago comes from Latin and means image. In psychology, it refers to the subconscious prototype of our relationships with others, which is formed in childhood. In entomology, the word is the name of the final stage of development of some insects, when they are formed as adults and can reproduce. The meaning that the title of my prose carries is stuck between these two definitions. I wrote Imago in 2001 when I was 19 years old. Fate had torn apart the magical cocoon of my childhood, and I left behind the streets of Plovdiv to live in Student City in Sofia. It was there that I first became aware of the true dimensions of the emotional impotence that permeates our post-communist society. I had to fight against the clichés of upbringing that simply didn't work for me. And I wasn't alone. We were all struggling to discover ourselves without an adequate starting point. The prose Imago was inspired by this period and provoked by the reality in which we existed, but refused to accept. The completion of this work is a snapshot of emotions that have already faded, a desire to break free from a rough style and evolve into something else, probably no less flawed. In my opinion, it is the revelation that is the real challenge. That is why I must mention that the text is naive and heavy, inspired by the primary vanity, clichés, depressions, and some realized complexes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Plamen Chetelyazov
• Release date: Apr 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215770818

Plamen Chetelyazov

Plamen Chetelyazov was born on November 29, 1982 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. He studied at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia and at the University of Plovdiv. In 2005 he participated in the programs for cultural exchange between Bulgaria and the United States of America and spent the summer in Seaside Heights, NJ. Plamen works as an expert and publicist for the Regional Museum of History, Plovdiv. Before joining the Museum, he was a probationer at Darik Radio, lifestyle journalist at Mylife magazine and an editor at Anonce newspaper. His literary pieces have appeared in the magazines Egoist, Kanape and the Bulgarian edition of Glamour. Plamen is the author of two novels, Imago and Paranoia, the latter being published in Bulgarian by LiterNet in 2007. In 2015 the American publishing house Neverland Publishing released Flaws of Oblivion - an anthology of poetry, prose and photography that showcases the talents of five emerging writers from around the world including Plamen Chetelyazov.

Book preview

IMAGO

Plamen Chetelyazov

Copyright 2023 by Plamen Chetelyazov

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Introduction

The working title of the book was Fragments. The final title Imago comes from Latin and means image. In psychology, it refers to the subconscious prototype of our relationships with others, which is formed in childhood. In entomology, the word is the name of the final stage of development of some insects, when they are formed as adults and can reproduce. The meaning that the title of my prose carries is stuck between these two definitions.

I wrote Imago in 2001 when I was 19 years old. Fate had torn apart the magical cocoon of my childhood, and I left behind the hills of Plovdiv to live in Student City in Sofia. It was there that I first became aware of the true dimensions of the emotional impotence that permeates our post-communist society. I had to fight against the clichés of upbringing that simply didn't work for me. And I wasn't alone. We were all struggling to discover ourselves without an adequate starting point. The prose Imago was inspired by this period and provoked by the reality in which we existed, but refused to accept.

The completion of this work is a snapshot of emotions that have already faded, a desire to break free from a rough style and evolve into something else, probably no less flawed. In my opinion, it is the revelation that is the real challenge. That is why I must mention that the text is naive and heavy, inspired by the primary vanity, clichés, depressions, and some realized complexes.

Chapter 1

It is cold. The boring day slowly passes by. The toxic smog from the chimneys and burned car fumes seeps into the thick clouds, giving the sky a ghostly gray-purple, leaden hue. The miserable remnants of daylight are melting away into the encroaching darkness. The damp evening mercilessly kills them. The cutting wind from Vitosha Mountain penetrates unceremoniously through clothes and skin to chill the blood. Its gusts tear apart the heavy, sticky fog that corrodes the December snow. The streets suffocate in the muddy, viscous slush. The night embraces Student City with its freezing arms.

They call it the city that never sleeps, but the place has nothing in common with the Broadway charm of Manhattan and the cosmopolitan spirit of New York. In fact, the campus looks like an anemic and battered sleepwalker, fallen into a depressive stupor on the outskirts of Sofia - the dirty, ugly, and gray Bulgarian capital that has long evolved into a state-city of Balkan underworld. Imagine about sixty panel apartment buildings, built during communism - ugly and sad monuments of an unsuccessful socio-economic experiment, defecting in the mud without any aesthetic. The neighborhood is equipped with a polyclinic, a police station, a postal system, two sports halls, a chapel, and its own network for placing cigarettes without excise stamps, counterfeit alcohol, and drugs. The initial idea was to provide 50,000 beds for students from the Sofia universities, but today, the actual number of people living there cannot be estimated due to the thousands of illegal residents. The chaos that followed the changes transformed the rooms intended for reading rooms and libraries into 24-hour bars and nightclubs that generate vandalism, beatings, thefts, various forms of addiction, and huge profits. The children of Student City often develop the syndrome of the unleashed dog. Tired of playing the role of conscientious students, tired of being exemplary sons and daughters somewhere in the province, they discover the beauty of the nightlife. Like newborn vampires, having consumed the fragrant gulp of their first victim's blood. They are born for freedom or at least for what everyone wants to take from it at the age of twenty. They break the padlocks and open wide the door to unleash their gathered primal aggression. Thus, they themselves become somnambulists - they don't sleep, they fight, they drink, they dilute their childish emotions with synthetic substances and consume it until they drop.

The student campus is like a good friend - real and honest. It doesn't try to hide the degradation, pain, and disfigurement of society. That's what parents do. The campus drags you straight to the bottom, where, among the secrets of life, primary beauty sparkles. Not everyone has eyes for it. A certain type of intelligence and emotions are required to cultivate a proper perspective. The student campus shatters the illusions of dreamers. It turns some into romantic realists - the lucky ones. It roughs up others, then throws their dead spirits into the gutters of life.

The atmosphere in the panel buildings is, to put it mildly, colorful. Teenspotting, grungespotting... The torn wallpapers in the rooms smell of mold, the worn-out mattresses on the rusty Ruse beds reek of sweat, the bathrooms reek of mold and urine. The dirty paint on the corridors flakes off, the yellowed plaster on the ceilings drips, the broken parapets on the staircases are crumbling, the graffiti-covered elevators are ruined by the amortization of time, and their shafts overflow with garbage... In fact, garbage is everywhere. The students throw it directly out of the windows. Papers, plastic bags, even old clothes are impaled on the branches of trees and flutter in the wind like Christmas garlands. Bottles, jars, cans, empty cigarette boxes, food packaging, and used condoms are scattered in the mud of neglected, and often excavated, interblock spaces that will soon be built with restaurants and shops.

A wonderful set design to discover your purpose in all animalistic nonsense or to be alone with a bottle of vodka and blow your brains out...

Chapter 2

A monstrous thud crushes the body, lost in the electronic chaos. The numb creature has long lost touch with music, drowned in the digital lake and synthetic substances. Asparuh does not dance, he moves in uncontrollable spasms - muscular contractions that instinctively inject adrenaline into his bloodstream to keep him conscious. The mad beat of his heart is torn apart by the alcohol bubbling in his veins. His soul wails in his chest feeling the masochistic pleasure of the pain that separates it from the physical to touch the universe. Darkness presses against him, torn by fluorescent cracks and laser explosions, capturing frames of wild children of the night in his gaze. Around Asparuh, there are only zombies - writhing in their passion, starving for childish dreams.

Suddenly, the music quiets down. A muffled thud, a distant echo, an indistinct whisper... His closed eyes sting from the cigarette smoke and sweat. He feels alone, somewhere high up. He hears the eagle's screech and the distant rumble of falling water. He slowly opens his eyes. The club is gone, the bar has disappeared. All those people have been erased from reality. Together with them, the alcoholic oblivion has left him. Asparuh's consciousness is crystal clear, bright as a diamond. His shoes are on the rocky edge, beyond which lies a terrifying abyss. Small pieces of fallen rocks float down, dropping into the hundreds of meters deep chasm. Everything around him - the foot of the cliff and far away, where the sky and the earth merge - is covered in thick pine forest. The air smells of resin and life, so pure, so cool and intoxicating. Asparuh is the first to step foot in this place -