“Do you really think this is the right moment for that?” Yulia asked quietly. There was still some softness left in her voice, one last attempt to smooth over the sharp edges they had been stumbling against for months.
“Then when is the right time? When?” Timur stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking her path with his heavy frame. “The guys are waiting. We had plans. I haven’t seen them in three weeks, Yulya. Give me the card.”
“Timur, please…” She sighed and adjusted the strap of her bag, which had dug painfully into her shoulder. “We still haven’t paid the rent. Tomorrow is the deadline, and after that they’ll start adding penalties. You know I was saving that money for exactly this. And my heels need repairing too… Look at these shoes. I’m walking like a cripple.”
“There you go again…” He rolled his eyes, and the naked contempt in that gesture sent a chill through her, even in the thick, stifling evening heat. “‘Heel repairs,’ ‘rent.’ You sound like an old woman. You’ve become boring, Yulka. You weren’t like this before.”
“I just want us to live without debt,” she said, and now there was a fragile plea for understanding in her voice. She looked into his eyes, searching for the man she had married three years earlier. “Timur, there are only five thousand left. If you blow half of it at the bar tonight, we won’t make it to payday.”
“Oh, enough already! WE WON’T MAKE IT, WE WON’T MAKE IT!” he shouted. “I said I’ll get money, so I’ll get it. Hand me the card.”
“No,” she said firmly.
“What did you say?” Timur leaned toward her, his face flushing an ugly red.
“I said no. Timur, that’s money I earned. Your own paycheck disappeared on… I don’t even know what. Betting? Spare parts for that car that doesn’t even run?”
The city roared around them. A dusty wind pushed dry leaves and scraps of paper across the pavement. People walked past, carefully pretending not to see the couple fighting. It was that familiar, sticky humiliation of a public argument, the kind that makes you want the ground to swallow you whole.
“So now you’re stingy, huh?” Timur muttered through clenched teeth, spitting onto the asphalt right beside her new shoes, which already needed fixing. “Too cheap to spare a few coins for your husband.”
Yulia said nothing. The softness was gone. Her patience had run out. Hope had collapsed into dust. All she wanted was to get home, kick off those shoes, and drink some tea.
They walked toward their apartment building in oppressive silence. Timur was seething. Rage churned inside him. A warehouse supervisor, a man whom, in his own mind, the “real guys” respected—and now his wife was taking away his right to spend money however he pleased. It felt like an insult to his pride, one that demanded release. He needed to take it out on someone. Right now.
A cat was sitting by the metal entrance door. An ordinary stray, calico-colored—people said cats like that brought good luck. She was skinny, one ear torn, and she stretched trustingly toward the approaching people, hoping for a scrap of sausage or at least a little warmth. The cat gave a soft meow, and that sound became the trigger.
“Get lost, you filthy thing!” Timur barked.
He swung his leg. The blow landed directly beneath the animal’s ribs. It was not a nudge. It was a deliberate, powerful kick from a heavy man’s boot.
The cat had no time to run. Her body flew sideways like a rag doll and slammed into the concrete foundation of the building with a dull, sickening thud.
“Ah!” Yulia screamed as though the kick had landed on her. She covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes wide with horror.
The cat lay on the asphalt, gasping in convulsions. A thin stream of blood slipped from her mouth. She tried to get up, but her back legs would not obey her. All she could do was scrape helplessly at the pavement with her front claws, making terrible rasping sounds.
“What have you done?!” Yulia cried, throwing herself toward the animal. “You killed her! Are you insane?”
Timur stood there, breathing hard. For one second he felt a flicker of discomfort, but he crushed it immediately beneath the aggression he knew so well.
“Oh, she’ll be fine. Shouldn’t have been underfoot. This whole place is like a zoo, can’t even walk around. Come on, let’s go home, idiot.”
“Go away,” Yulia whispered without looking up. Her hand trembled as she stroked the cat, not knowing how to pick her up without hurting her more. “Get away from here. I can’t stand the sight of you.”
“Well then, stay here with your flea bag,” he snorted, unlocking the door with his key fob and disappearing into the darkness of the building.
Something inside Yulia broke sharply. The disappointment that had been building for months transformed in an instant into icy horror, and then into a fierce need to act. She forgot about the money, her exhaustion, her aching feet.
She took off her light jacket and carefully wrapped the wheezing animal inside it. The cat was unbelievably light, almost weightless, except for the frantic beat of her heart, which felt as though it might burst through her chest.
“Hold on, little one, hold on,” Yulia whispered as she flagged down a taxi.
The veterinary clinic greeted her with the smell of bleach and medicine. A young veterinarian took one look at the patient and shook his head.
“She needs an X-ray, an ultrasound, and she has to stay here. The impact was very severe. It looks like internal injuries and broken ribs. You understand this won’t be cheap?”
Yulia pulled out the very card she had refused to give her husband.
“Do whatever needs to be done. Save her.”
While the cat, registered under the name Nayda, was taken into surgery, Yulia sat in the corridor staring at a single point on the wall. Her phone beeped. A bank notification. The payment for the examination had gone through. There was almost nothing left on the card. Rent would have to wait. Her shoes would have to wait too.
She needed more money.
Yulia called her friend Oksana. Oksana was a set designer, a blunt, straightforward woman who had no patience for lies.
“Oks, hi. I’m sorry it’s so late. I really need money. Urgently.”
“What happened? Did Timur mess something up again?” her friend asked, instantly alert.
“No… yes…” Yulia broke into tears. They ran down her cheeks and dripped onto her knees. She told her everything: the fight, the card, the horrible sound of that small body hitting concrete.
Silence fell on the other end of the line.
“Yulya, do you understand what he is?” Oksana’s voice became rough as sandpaper. “He’s not just an asshole. He’s a sadist. An animal torturer. Someone who can hurt a defenseless creature will hurt you too sooner or later.”
“He just snapped… We had a fight…”
“Don’t make excuses for him! There is no excuse for cruelty. What did that animal ever do to him? He took his rage out on the weakest one there. That tells you everything, Yulia. Run from him. I’ll send you the money, but promise me you’ll think about this.”
Yulia ended the call and wiped her face. I don’t want to believe it, she thought. Three years together. Plans for a mortgage. Trips to the country. Could all of that really be erased by one kick?
She came home after midnight. The apartment smelled of fried potatoes. Timur was standing in the kitchen, awkwardly stirring something in a frying pan. When he saw her, he tried to smile.
“So, you’re back? I made dinner… kind of a peace offering.”
Yulia walked past him without even looking at him.
“Hey, who am I talking to?” Timur snapped, feeling irritation rise again inside him as he threw the spatula onto the table. “All right, I lost my temper! Sorry! Why are you making such a tragedy out of it? It was just a cat! A basement mutt! There are millions of them running around!”
Yulia stopped in the bedroom doorway. She turned around slowly. There were no tears in her eyes, no anger. Only coldness. The coldness of a decision that begins to take shape somewhere deep inside before it fully surfaces.
“You nearly killed a living creature,” she said quietly. “Just because I wouldn’t give you money for beer. Do you realize how low that is?”
“Oh, spare me the moral lectures! This is your fault too—you drove me to it! If you’d acted normally, none of this would have happened!”
He honestly saw nothing shameful in what he had done. In his version of the world, he was right: his wife had disobeyed him, he got angry, and the cat just happened to be there at the wrong moment. Everyone else was to blame—his wife, the cat, the government, circumstances. Everyone except him.
That night they slept in different rooms. Yulia lay awake, listening to the snores of the man who only yesterday had seemed dear to her. Now the sound filled her with physical disgust.
The morning began in silence. Timur left for work, slamming the door behind him.
The warehouse was damp and noisy. Forklifts darted between the shelves. Timur had worked there as a stock clerk for five years. It was stressful, demanding work—sorting errors, shortages, endless inspections.
At lunch he sat down beside Kostya, the electric cart driver, an older man, calm and reasonable. Timur needed to vent. He needed an ally, someone to confirm he was in the right.
“Can you believe what my wife pulled yesterday?” Timur began, biting into his sandwich. “Wouldn’t give me the card, so we got into it on the street. I kicked some cat out of anger, not even on purpose, just to let off steam. Now she won’t speak to me. Blew a pile of money at the vet. Idiot, right?”
Kostya chewed slowly, staring at the wall. His old oil-stained backpack lay beside him on the bench.
“How hard did you kick it?” Kostya asked without looking at him.
“Hard enough. It flew into the wall. But it’s alive, I think. What’s the big deal? Cats have nine lives.”
Kostya stopped chewing. He set his food aside and turned a heavy gaze toward Timur.
“I have a dog,” he said slowly. “Polkan. I brought him from the village when he was a puppy. We’ve been together fifteen years. He’s almost deaf now, barely walks. But when I come home, he still thumps his tail. That animal is the dearest being in my life. Closer than most people.”
“Well, that’s your dog. This was just some flea-ridden stray,” Timur waved him off.
“And what difference does that make?” Kostya asked quietly. “Pain feels the same to all of them. I remember when I was a kid, I had a bird feeder. Titmice used to come there. Then the neighbor’s cat ate two of them, the parents. The chicks were left in the nest. I climbed up there, tried to feed them, dug worms for them. But they didn’t survive. They died. I cried for a week.”
“Wow, listen to you,” Timur sneered. “You’re just like my wife. A bunch of whiners.”
“No, Timur.” Kostya stood up and brushed the crumbs from his work overalls. “I’m not like your wife. I’m just still human. She’ll never forgive you. And she shouldn’t. You’re rotten.”
Kostya walked away to his forklift, leaving Timur alone. His colleague’s words hit him, but not in his conscience—in his pride. Rotten? Me? To hell with all of you, he thought. Still, a small worm of doubt began to stir. Not that he had done something wrong, but that it might have consequences for his comfort.
He did not want scandals. He did not want to divide belongings or go hunting for a rented room. He wanted everything the way it had been before: dinner waiting, shirts ironed, his wife’s warm body beside him at night.
So he decided to act in his own way. If words were useless, then forgiveness could be bought. That had always worked before.
He opened his banking app and took out a quick microloan—easy money, terrible interest, but who cared? The funds appeared on his card. He bought an enormous bouquet of scarlet roses, an expensive cake, and a bottle of French wine. A gesture. The broad gesture of a “real man.”
At home he set the table and lit candles he found somewhere in a cupboard. Time passed. Seven. Eight. Nine in the evening. Yulia was still not home.
Anger started rising again. Where the hell is she? At her mother’s again? Or…
Then a thought jabbed him unexpectedly. Long before meeting him, Yulia had once dated a man. A great love, everyone knew. They had broken up because he left the country for a contract job. What if he had come back? What if she was with him right now, complaining about her “terrible husband” while he comforted her?
His jealous imagination painted one ugly scene after another. Timur opened the wine and took several deep swallows straight from the bottle. The alcohol rushed into his head, warming his anger.
The lock clicked at ten.
Yulia came in quietly, looking exhausted and worn. Right after work she had gone straight to the clinic. Nayda was doing a little better; she had eaten, but another operation was still ahead. Yulia had spent every bit of her strength talking to the doctors.
“And where have we been?” Timur’s voice was threatening. He sat at the table; the bouquet had already started to wilt without water, and the cake had softened.
“At the vet,” she answered shortly, taking off her shoes.
“Oh, the vet… Or maybe somewhere else? With your old boyfriend, perhaps?”
Yulia looked at him as though he were insane.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, I know women like you. Give you any excuse and you start wagging your tail! I’m here trying, setting up a surprise, buying these lousy flowers, and she’s out wandering around at night!”
He grabbed the bouquet and threw it at her feet. The most expensive thing he could think of lay scattered now on the dirty mat by the door.
“There! That’s for you! Eat it!” he shouted, swaying slightly, then snatched up the unfinished bottle and went into the bedroom.
Yulia remained standing in the hallway. She looked at the roses on the floor, at the cake on the table, at the empty chair. She was not afraid. She felt only endless disgust.
She went into the kitchen, sat down on a stool, and cried. She understood that the point of no return had been crossed. Oksana’s words—he’s a sadist—and Timur’s own word—vermin—merged into one dull roar in her mind.
His stinginess—refusing to think about the family’s needs. His fear—terrified of seeming weak in front of imaginary “bros.” His arrogance—trying to buy forgiveness with gifts purchased on borrowed money. His betrayal—striking the one he should have protected. All of it lined up into a perfectly clear picture.
The next day Yulia left work early. She needed advice. Not from a friend this time, but from someone older, supposedly wiser. She went to see her mother-in-law.
Timur’s mother, Larisa Ivanovna, lived with her second husband, Viktor Petrovich. Their apartment was solid and respectable, but stifling, crowded with cabinets full of crystal. Her mother-in-law opened the door, arching her penciled brows in surprise.
“Yulia? Where’s Timur?”
“He’s at work. Larisa Ivanovna, I need to talk to you.”
Viktor Petrovich was already in the kitchen, wearing a stretched-out undershirt and noisily slurping tea from a saucer. He did not even greet her, only muttered something incomprehensible and buried his face back in the newspaper.
Yulia told them everything. Without emotion, only the facts. The money, the argument, the cat.
Larisa Ivanovna listened with her lips pressed together. She had always considered her son perfect and every woman in his life somehow lacking.
“So what?” her mother-in-law finally said when Yulia finished. “You came here to complain because of a cat?”
“Larisa Ivanovna, he crippled her. On purpose.”
“My dear Yulia,” the older woman said with a smile, adjusting her hair. “Men are like that—hot-tempered. He has a hard job, bad nerves. And you, as a wise woman, should smooth things over. So he kicked it—these things happen. He didn’t kill it. Meanwhile, you’re dragging family money away to treat some yard vermin. That, my dear, is wasteful.”
Viktor Petrovich gave a dismissive snort behind his newspaper.
“Women these days… always making mountains out of molehills. I remember my first wife once…”
He did not finish the sentence, but the meaning was obvious. Yulia looked at these people and saw a mirror image of her husband. The same indifference. The same certainty that they were right. The same total absence of empathy. The apple had not fallen far from the tree.
“I thought you would understand,” Yulia said quietly as she stood up.
“I understand one thing,” her mother-in-law said sharply. “Breaking up a family over nonsense is stupidity. Go home, ask your husband’s forgiveness for tormenting his nerves, and live in peace. And don’t you dare spread this story around and shame my son.”
Yulia stepped outside. After the stale atmosphere of that apartment, the air felt astonishingly fresh. She understood then that she would get no support. And oddly enough, that helped. It freed her hands.
That evening she waited for Timur. He came home sober but sullen, expecting another round of fighting.
“We need to live separately for a while,” Yulia said as soon as he walked in. Calmly, without drama.
The words hit Timur like a red rag in front of a bull. His darkest suspicions instantly seemed confirmed.
“I knew it!” he shouted, his face twisting with fury. “You’ve got someone else! Admit it, bitch! Who are you running to? Your ex? Or did you find someone richer at work?”
“What do other men have to do with any of this, Timur? This is about you. About what kind of person you are.”
“Don’t lie to me!” He raised his hand, though he did not strike her; Yulia did not even blink. “You want to live apart? Then get out! Get out wherever you want! But listen carefully—if you leave, there’s no coming back! Crawl back later and I won’t let you in!”
“I won’t come back,” she said.
“Then get out!” he roared. “Right now! I don’t want your smell in this place! Slut!”
He hurled filthy, coarse insults at her, the same gutter language he used with the men at the warehouse. In that stream of abuse, Yulia became even more certain she was doing the right thing. She went to pack.
There was not much to take. The apartment was rented, the furniture belonged to the landlord. Clothes, her laptop, books, a few boxes of documents. While she packed, Timur sat in the kitchen watching television with the volume turned up all the way, loudly and deliberately.
When the door closed behind her, Timur felt a strange mixture of triumph and fear. She’ll come back, he told himself. She’ll stay with a friend for a couple of days and then return. Who else would want her with that kind of attitude?
One day passed. Then another. Then a third. Yulia did not call. Her things disappeared from the closets. Her toothbrush, her shampoo, even her scent were gone. The apartment became hollow and echoing.
On the third day Timur came home angry and exhausted from work. He had forgotten to buy food. The refrigerator was empty. He was used to Yulia taking care of that.
“All right, enough of this,” he muttered and dialed her number.
The subscriber is temporarily unavailable.
He called again. And again. Silence. Rage flooded him. How dared she ignore him? He was the ideal man—he worked, he hardly drank, he brought money home.
Not knowing what else to do, he went to Oksana, his wife’s friend. He knew where she lived.
She opened the door and stood there looking at him with undisguised contempt.
“Where’s my wife?” Timur demanded roughly. “Tell her to come home and stop this circus.”
“You don’t have a wife anymore, Timur,” Oksana replied coldly.
“What kind of nonsense are you talking? We’re not divorced. Tell me where she is or I’ll—”
“Or you’ll do what? Hit me? Like the cat?” Oksana gave a short laugh. “You don’t give orders here. Yulia filed for divorce. She rented a room. She isn’t coming back to you.”
“So it was you!” he shouted. “You poisoned her mind! You snake! She’s probably rolling around with some man now, and you’re covering for her!”
Oksana said nothing. She stepped into the hallway, took a small mirror from a shelf, and held it right in front of his face.
“Look at yourself,” she said. “Really look. At your eyes. At your mouth. Do you see what you’ve turned into? You have the face of an animal. A disgusting, hateful face. You think you’re tough? You’re pathetic. You’re nothing.”
Timur recoiled as if he had been struck. In the mirror he really did see a face twisted by rage, flushed red, neck veins swollen. It was hideous.
“Get out,” Oksana said, and slammed the door in his face.
He stood alone on the landing. The echo of her words—You’re disgusting, you’re nothing—rang in his ears.
The walk home felt like moving through fog. He wandered without noticing the road beneath him. His head was full of excuses, accusations, self-justifications, yet through all of it a thin cold needle of fear kept piercing through. He truly was alone.
When he got home, the phone rang. His mother.
“Timurchik, my son,” she said anxiously. “A neighbor told me they saw Yulia with bags… did she leave you? Did she really walk out?”
“She left, Mom,” he answered dully.
“What a snake! I knew it! Why though? Did she find someone else?”
Timur was silent. Suddenly he could not bear the shame of telling his mother the real reason, even though she already knew about the cat. To admit that his wife had left because he was an animal abuser—that was more than he could bear.
“Mom, why did you tell her it was nothing? About the cat?”
“And what else was I supposed to say?” his mother answered in surprise. “Wasn’t it nothing? You’re a man. You know better. She’s a complete fool if she leaves her husband over an animal. She was just looking for an excuse.”
“I heard everything Larisa Ivanovna said,” Viktor Petrovich’s voice suddenly cut in from the background. “You’re a weakling, boy. Only weaklings raise a hand against the weak. Your wife did the right thing. A woman needs a man, not a hysterical coward.”
Timur froze. Even his stepfather—that indifferent old stump of a man—despised him.
“Go to hell…” Timur whispered and hung up.
Evening sank over the city. No streetlight glow reached the windows. It was dark. Saturday was tomorrow, a day off, and he had nothing to do. Just emptiness.
Timur went outside and bought a can of strong beer from a kiosk. He opened it and took a swallow. Bitter. It would not go down. He returned home and set the can on the kitchen table.
In the silence of the apartment he could hear the refrigerator humming and the tap dripping. The washer should have been changed a month ago—Yulia had asked him to fix it.
He sat there staring at the dirty tablecloth.
Then suddenly a ginger cockroach ran out from behind the breadbox. It stopped and twitched its antennae, as if inspecting the room. A small, disgusting, insignificant insect.
Timur stared at it. And then understanding pierced him.
His life was exactly the same. He had scurried around, busy and restless, searching for crumbs, imagining himself the master of this kitchen, when in reality he was nothing but a parasite. He had fed off Yulia’s energy, her patience, her care. He had sucked the life out of her, and the moment she denied him his “food,” he bit.
He was a cockroach. Just as reddish with anger, just as unwanted. His tough-guy friends, his mother with her advice, his warehouse job—everything was just cockroach scurrying.
His vision dimmed. Hopelessness tightened around his throat.
Slowly he raised his hand and clenched it into a fist. The rage was gone now. All that remained was a cold, lifeless understanding of the end. Of how pitiful and worthless everything had become.
“Die,” he whispered—not really to the cockroach, but to his own reflection in the dark window.
Then he brought his fist down with all his force on the table, directly onto the insect.
Crunch.
Timur lifted his hand. A wet smear remained on the table. The cockroach was gone. And nothing had changed. The world had not collapsed. There was simply one less life in it.
He sat in complete silence, staring at his hand. He had defeated the cockroach. But he had lost his life. He had lost the only person who had ever loved him with her whole soul, and now there was nothing around him except emptiness—vast, pointless emptiness, as huge and meaningless as that dirty, vacant table.
