Рњрѕр»с‡р°с‚ Р”рѕрјр° (molchat Doma) - Рўсѓрґрѕрѕ (sudno) Access

He looked at the rotary phone on the floor. It hadn’t rung in three weeks. He didn't expect it to.

The radiator hissed, a pathetic attempt to fight the creeping frost. Egor stood up and walked to the mirror. His reflection was a ghost—pale skin, dark circles, eyes that had seen too many identical sunsets over the same concrete horizon. He looked at the rotary phone on the floor

He leaned his forehead against the cold glass of the window. Down below, a man in a heavy coat was trying to start an old Lada. The engine coughed, sputtered, and died. The man didn't curse or kick the tire. He just sat there, staring through the windshield at nothing. Egor understood. The radiator hissed, a pathetic attempt to fight

He picked up a small cassette player and pressed play. The drum machine kicked in first—stiff, mechanical, relentless. Then came the bass, a deep, driving throb that felt like walking through thick mud. When the vocals drifted in, low and detached, they sounded like a man singing from the bottom of a well. He leaned his forehead against the cold glass of the window

He turned away from the world and laid back down on the bed. The song looped, the jagged guitar riff cutting through the static of his thoughts. The "Sudno"—the bedpan, the vessel, the end. He closed his eyes, letting the cold waves of the synthesizer wash over him until the room, the city, and the gray sky finally dissolved into the beat.

Outside the window, the Belarusian winter was a wall of gray. The brutalist apartment blocks stood like giant tombstones in the fog, indifferent and cold. Somewhere in the distance, a tram screeched against rusted metal tracks—a sound that matched the synth-line humming in Egor’s head.

He reached for a glass of lukewarm tea, but his hand stopped. On the table lay a small, white pill and a copy of a poem by Boris Ryzhy. He knew the lines by heart now. Living is difficult and expensive, but dying is easy and free. The irony was the only thing that made him smile lately, a sharp, jagged twitch of the lips.