[Fiction] - Letter One - TW: Wars & Violence

Dear Mom,

Yesterday, Oleg and I were ordered to dislodge some Protivnik who were dug in on the Siversk side. I didn't understand why they paired me with him, not since Timosha was buried by a Samoletik. I'm stuck with this Pogranichnik from the West; his eye trembles and he speaks too loud.

As usual, he wanted to lead the dance; I let him. The area was crawling with drones, and it took us two hours just to get into the building at the extreme southwest edge of town. Oleg told me he'd seen movement on the fourth floor. "Ukrop bastards" he kept muttering. I wonder how he has managed to survive this long.

"Mishka… Mishka…" he kept whispering. Oleg always found ways to mess with me. I didn't answer, didn't even look his way. We climbed the stairs, and he made a racket with his rifle butt, letting it bang against the handrail bars, announcing death in his own way. He kicked in the door on the fourth floor, and we heard something making noise in an apartment to the left. Oleg got excited; he’d found a bone worth gnawing.

We came face-to-face with a Ukrainets, half-undressed, sliding to the ground as he tried to flee toward the kitchen. Oleg seized the chance, throwing himself on the man like a dog, kick after kick, shouting insults. He finally broke him. The victim took two shots to the head and a fatal one to the throat that choked him out. I stood in the doorway and watched him work. Straightening up, Oleg fired a final burst at point-blank range; he'd done his job.

Then he started looting: a pocketknife, a crushed pack of cigarettes, a lighter, a phone, a wallet. On the kitchen table sat some ammunition and a service weapon, right beside the window where Oleg had spotted him earlier.

Oleg took the last cigarette from the pack, lit it, sat on the table, and tossed the empty pack toward me. "I won't offer you one. You don't smoke, plus I decide anyway, no?" I nodded without saying anything, glancing at the poor guy lying on the floor, unrecognizable.

Oleg finally searched the phone. He snapped a photo of the dead body sprawled out, laughed, and sent it to all of the man's contacts: "This is how you treat Ukrops." His eye trembled more and more with frantic oscillations as he let out a coarse laughter, scrolling until he found photos of a couple kissing. Then two, then three, eventually an entire album.

The wind whistled through a broken window. Blood dripped onto the floor with a metallic tap and smell. The cigarette smoke filled the room like sulfur. The sunlight off the floor was too bright, blinding. And then, his laughter. The coarse, relentless laughter. It was too loud. Everything was too loud. It came with obscene comments about the dead man's wife. Everything was moving too fast, vibrating, pressing against my eyes and ears.

I raised my rifle. A sharp crack shattered the room.

A sudden rustling of wings in the wind, a dull thud on the floor, and the phone hit the ground. On the screen, the photo of a happy couple, kissing on a bench, was slowly covered in dark blood.

My hands were, too.

Mikhaïl