Sixties. One of the main characters - Fedor Sonnov, having reached the station near Moscow by electric train, staggers along the streets of the town. Having met an unfamiliar young man, Fedor kills him with a knife. After a crime - absolutely meaningless - the killer "talks" with his victim, talks about his "guardians", about his childhood, and other murders. After spending the night in the forest, Fedor leaves "for the nest", the Moscow region of Swan. His sister Klavusha Sonnova lives there, a voluptuous woman who excites herself by stuffing the head of a live goose into the uterus; The Fomichevs family lives in the same house - grandfather Kolya, his daughter Lidochka, her husband Pasha Krasnorukov (both are extremely lustful creatures, mating all the time; in cases of pregnancy, Pasha kills the fetus with the shocks of the penis), the younger sister is fourteen-year-old Mila and her seventeen-year-old brother Petya, eating its own scabs. Once Fedor, already fed up with the presence of the inhabitants of the house, eats Petenkin soup cooked from acne. To protect his brother from the revenge of the Fomichev-Krasnorukovs, Klavusha hides him in the underground. Here Fedor, tired of idleness, from the impossibility of killing, chopped stools, imagining that they were human figures. In his head there is only one idea - death. Upstairs, meanwhile, Lidinka, who became pregnant again, refuses to copulate with her husband, wanting to save the baby. He rapes her, the fetus comes out, but Lida tells Pasha that the child is alive. Krasnorukov brutally beats his wife. She, sick, lies in her room.

Fedor, meanwhile, is digging on the Fomichev side, coming upstairs to implement the strange idea: "to possess a woman at the time of her death." Lidinka surrenders to him and dies at the moment of orgasm. Fedor, pleased with his experience, reports everything to his sister; he leaves the confinement.

Pavel is sent to prison for the murder of his wife.

To "Klavusha" comes "vein" - Anna Barskaya. A woman of a completely different circle, a Moscow intellectual, she looks with interest at Fedor; they talk about death and the beyond. "Wild" Fedor is very interested in Anna; she decides to introduce him to the "great people" - for this they go somewhere to the forest, where there is a gathering of people obsessed with death - "metaphysical", as Fedor calls them. Among those present - three "jesters", savage sadists Pyr, Johann and Igorek, and a serious young man Anatoly Padov.

"Jesters" along with Fedor and Anna come to Swan. Here they spend a lot of time: they kill animals, the Wheatgrass tries to strangle Clavush, but everything ends peacefully - she even promises to sleep with him.

Rumors reach Klava that Fedor is in danger. He leaves - "wander around Rasei."

Klava appears another tenant - the old man Andrei Nikitich Khristoforov, a true Christian, with his son Alexei. The old man feels a quick death, rolls tantrums, interspersed with moments of Christian emotion; reflects on the afterlife. After some time, he goes crazy: "having jumped out of bed in one of his underwear, Andrei Nikitich stated / that he died and turned into a chicken."

Alexei, suppressed by the insanity of his father, is trying to console himself with conversations with Anna, whom he is in love with. She scoffs at his religiosity, preaches the philosophy of evil, the "great fall", metaphysical freedom. Displeased, Alex leaves.

At Anna’s request, Anatoly Padov, constantly tormented by the issue of death and the Absolute, arrives in Swan, to the “Russian, condo, people’s dense obscurantism”.

Very warmly received by Anna (she is his mistress), Padov watches what is happening in Swan. Young people spend time in conversations with the impudent voluptuous Klavush, with the “kurotrup” Andrei Nikitich, with each other. One day, Klavusha digs three pits into human growth; the favorite pastime of the inhabitants of the house is lying in these “grass graves”. Alyosha returns to Swan to visit his father. Padov teases Alexei, mocks his Christian ideas. He is leaving.

Anatoly himself, however, also cannot sit in one place for a long time: he is also leaving.

Anna, exhausted by communication with Padov, in a nightmare sees another of her "metaphysical" friends - Izvitsky. She ceases to feel herself, it seems to her that she has turned into a writhing void.

Fyodor, meanwhile, travels deep into Russia, to Arkhangelsk. Sonnov watches what is happening around him; the world annoys him with its mystery and illusory nature. Instinct pulls him to kill. Fyodor comes to the "small nest" - the town of Firino, to a relative of the old woman Ipatievna, who feeds on the blood of living cats. She blesses Fedor for the killings - “you bring great joy to people, Fedya!” Fyodor, wandering in search of a new victim, encounters Mikhei, who has castrated himself. Struck by his "empty place", Fedor refuses to kill; they become buddies. Micah leads Fyodor to the eunuchs, for joy. Friends watch strange rites; Fyodor, surprised, remains, however, dissatisfied with what he saw, he is not satisfied with the idea of ​​the new Christ Kondraty Selivanov - “own, own must have”.

The half-mad Padov comes to Firino to meet Fedor. He is interested in Anatolia with his popular, unconscious perception of the irregularity of the world. In the conversation, Padov is trying to find out if the Sonnov is killing people "metaphysically" or in reality, in reality.

From Fyodor, Anatoly returns to Moscow, where he meets with his friend Gennady Remin, an underground poet, the author of "cadaveric lyrics", a follower of the ideas of a certain Gludev, who proclaimed the religion of "higher self." The meeting of friends takes place in a dirty pub. Remin spends time here with four roving philosophers; for vodka they talk about the Absolute. Fascinated by the stories of Anatoly about the company that settled in Swan, Gennady and his friend go there.

In Swan “the devil knows what happened” - everyone converges here: sadistic jesters, Anna, Padov, Remin, Klava, the remnants of the Fomichev family. Anna sleeps with Padov; it seems to him that he is copulating "with the Higher Hierarchies", to her - that she has already died. Padov begin to pursue visions, he tries to escape from them.

Izvitsky appears in Swan - a man about whom there are rumors that he is going to God by the devil. He is a great friend of Padov and Remin. Drinking, the comrades are conducting a philosophical conversation about God, the Absolute and the Higher Hierarchies - “Russian esotericism for vodka,” as one of them jokes.

Fedor and Micah come to the house. Alyosha Khristoforov, visiting his father, watches with horror the "non-humans" gathered here.

Boy Petya, eating his own skin, brings himself to complete exhaustion and dies. At the funeral, it turns out that the coffin is empty. It turns out that Klavusha took out the corpse and at night, sitting across it, devoured a chocolate cake. The cackling kuro-corpse Andrei Nikitich rushes about in the yard; Grandfather Kolya is about to leave. Girl Mila falls in love with Micah - she licks his "empty space". All three leave home.

The rest spend time in absurdly crazy conversations, wild dances, angry laughter. Padova is very attracted to Klavush. The tension is growing, something is happening in Klavusha - “they’ve gone mad, they stood on their hind legs and her clavish-sonnish forces spun with terrible force.” She kicks the whole company out of the house, locks it and leaves. Only a kurotrup remains in the house, becoming like a cube.

"Metaphysical" return to Moscow, spend time in dirty pubs talking. Anna sleeps with Izvitsky, but, watching him, feels something is amiss. She realizes that he is jealous of herself for her. Izvitsky voluptuously adores his own body, feels himself, his reflection in the mirror as a source of sexual satisfaction. Anna discusses “ego sex” with Izvitsky. After parting with his mistress, Izvitsky beats in the ecstasy of self-love, experiencing an orgasm from a sense of unity with the "native" I.

At this time, Fedor was approaching Moscow; his idea is to kill the "metaphysical", in order to thus break into the other world. Sonnov goes to Izvitsky, there he watches his "delirium of self-delight." Struck by what he saw, Fedor is unable to interrupt "this monstrous act"; he is furious that he has encountered another “otherworldliness” that is not inferior to his own and goes to Padov.

Alyosha Khristoforov, meanwhile, convinced of the insanity of his father, also goes to Padov, where he accuses him and his friends of having led Andrei Nikitich to insanity. The "metaphysical" reproach him with excessive rationalism; they themselves unanimously came to the religion of the "higher self." This is the topic of their angry, hysterical conversations.

Fedor with an ax in his hand eavesdrops on the conversations of Padov and his friends, waiting for a convenient moment for the murder. At this time, Fedor is arrested.

In the epilogue, two young fans of Padov and his ideas, Sashenka and Vadimushka, discussing endless metaphysical problems, recall Padov himself, talk about his state, which is close to madness, about his “travels to the beyond.” It turns out that Fedor was sentenced to death.

Friends go to visit Izvitsky, but, frightened by his expression, run away. Anatoly Padov wallowing in a ditch, shouting hysterically into the void from the insolubility of the "main issues". Suddenly feeling that "everything will collapse soon," he rises and goes - "towards the hidden world, about which you can not even ask questions ...".