Day: July 22, 2025

Marina stood in the middle of the empty room, inhaling the smell of old wallpaper and dust. Her mother’s apartment felt both familiar and strange — the same worn parquet floors, the same high ceilings with moldings, but without her mother’s things, without her voice coming from the kitchen; the space seemed to have lost […]

Larisa Petrovna stood by the kitchen window, holding a cooled cup of tea in her hands. Outside the glass, familiar courtyards flashed by, gray nine-story buildings covered with the first October snow. For twenty-seven years, she had looked out this window. For twenty-seven years, she had cooked borscht in this kitchen, baked pies, and greeted […]

The door slammed with such a crash that my mother’s favorite porcelain elephant figurine fell off the hall’s mirror shelf. I didn’t even turn around — just gritted my teeth and grabbed the bag my mother clung to as if it were the last thread tying me to this house. “You’re not going anywhere!” Her […]

The phone burst into a ringtone at five in the morning. Ira jerked awake, nearly falling off the bed, and automatically reached for the bedside table. Through the pre-dawn haze in her head, one thought broke through: “Don’t wake Misha.” Her husband was asleep, turned toward the wall, his steady breathing undisturbed—neither war nor flood […]

Denis woke up just as the first rays of the sun began to filter through the gaps between the curtains, and quiet but distinct footsteps were heard on the stairs. In their huge three-story house, every sound seemed to echo off the walls, reminding everyone that even the smallest rustle here would not go unnoticed. […]