I was sitting in my apartment on a cold chair I'd cursed a thousand times already, staring at the monitor that reflected my tired mug. Twenty-five years old. Twenty-fucking-five, and here I am, rotting in this hole I pay forty thousand a month for — forty, Karl — when my salary at the local Pyaterochka is sixty, and after utilities, internet, and the credit card there's so little left it doesn't even cover decent food.
But I didn't give a shit. I hadn't for a long time.
When you wake up every day with the thought "I'm going to die anyway," all those numbers in your banking app turn into empty symbols, some abstract bullshit that means nothing.
My apartment is a one-room shoebox on the sixth floor of a panel building built back when my father was young — maybe even earlier. The walls are covered in wallpaper that used to be white, but now look like an old bedsheet soaked in sweat and cigarette smoke. The floor is linoleum, swollen at the corners, stained with beer I spilled while trying to drink myself unconscious.
Didn't work, by the way. My body's too used to alcohol.
The monitor is my only friend and my only enemy. LG, twenty-seven inches, bought on credit I'd already forgotten about. Interest — fucking interest — growing like a cancerous tumor, while I sit here playing this goddamn CS:GO. Or CS2, whatever they call it now. Doesn't matter. A game that once saved me has turned into a prison.
Another match. Some brats from Ukraine or Kazakhstan screaming into their mics in their own languages, while I silently fuck them over with profanity in chat. But even that pissed me off today. I quit before the round ended and just sat down on the bed pushed against a wall covered in horror movie posters. The Exorcist. The Shining. Nosferatu.
All those faces stared at me. I stared back. And we all understood we were stuck in the same huge, endless, fucking abyss.
I opened YouTube. The algorithm knew me better than I knew myself. First recommendation — Kot Begemot. Scary stories. I set the speed to 1.5 because that guy stretches every sentence like he's paid by the minute. But the stories were all repeats. One, two, three — same knocks on doors, shadows outside windows, lunatics in stairwells. Boring. Not scary. Not the kind of thing that makes my heart beat faster. Not the kind of thing that makes me feel anything other than this gray, monotonous, stinking boredom.
I closed the video and went to search.
"Analog horror FNAF."
A line I'd typed a hundred times already, hoping to find something new. And then — light at the end of the tunnel. A video uploaded a week ago.
"FNAF: Analog Nightmare."
Three hours. Three fucking hours of raw, unfiltered analog horror. Pixels. Static. Sounds that cut your ears like a rusty knife. I clicked play.
The first five minutes — a black screen, the sound of a vinyl record skipping. Then a face appeared. Not mechanical. Not alive. Something in between. Eyes staring straight at me — through the monitor, through my filthy room, through my entire pathetic life.
The back of my neck started to tremble.
This was it.
This was what I'd been looking for.
This was what made my blood run faster, my brain wake up, what made me forget about debts, about work, about having to go back to that store tomorrow where everyone despised me — from the manager to the homeless guys at the entrance.
But I was out of energy drinks.
I looked at the empty Monster can on the desk beside the monitor. The aluminum was crushed, like I'd been squeezing it in my fist while watching the last video.
Fuck it. I had to go.
I stood up. The chair creaked like an old cemetery gate. I walked to the wardrobe by the entrance. The door squealed when I opened it. A black winter jacket, stained with road salt that eats through snow with chemicals. I put it on. The zipper jammed — I yanked harder, it gave in. Hat. Gloves. All tossed on the shelf where I threw them when I came home.
Sixth floor. The elevator wasn't working. Hadn't been for three weeks. The building manager's fat ass kept promising to fix it, but I knew how that usually ended.
I opened the stairwell door.
The stench hit me immediately. Dampness, piss, and something sweet and rotten — like someone had decomposed right here between floors. I started going down. Concrete steps covered in a layer of dirt that never gets washed. Railings cold and rusty; I could feel the rust rubbing off onto my gloves.
First floor. Second floor.
On the third — a homeless man sleeping in the corner, wrapped in newspapers. I walked past him. He didn't move. Maybe he was already dead.
Didn't matter.
On the fifth — an old woman standing with a shopping bag, staring at me. Her eyes were like cloudy glass, with nothing behind them. She said something, but I didn't listen. I walked past, feeling her gaze cling to me like a weak branch that tried to grab on — and snapped.
Outside. Evening. Winter.
The air was sharp, like a blade slicing into my lungs. I took a deep breath, feeling the cold sink inside me. Snow crunched under my boots as I walked toward the Magnit store. Five minutes away, but in this cold every minute felt like an eternity.
I looked at the buildings around me. Windows — black holes. Either people were watching from them, or shadows, or nothing at all. It felt like the world had died a long time ago, and we just hadn't noticed. We were all ghosts, walking dead streets, doing dead things, saying dead words.
There was the store. Light. Warmth.
I opened the door, and warm air slapped me in the face.
Inside — emptiness. A few customers wandering between shelves like zombies looking for brains. I went to the drinks fridge.
Energy drinks. Monster. Red Bull. Mad Energy.
I grabbed two cans of Monster. Not because I liked it. Just habit. The taste was chemical sweetness that burned your stomach. But I needed to stay awake. Stay awake and watch that horror. Because it was the only thing that made me feel.
I went to the register. The cashier was a girl about twenty, hair in a ponytail, a face that had lost all hope a long time ago. She scanned the cans without looking up. I handed her the money.
And that's when he walked in.
A drunk. You could tell without words. The smell — a wave of booze fumes rolling off him. Red face, burst capillaries under the skin. Clothes filthy, stained with who-knows-what.
He walked up to the register, and I already knew — there would be trouble.
"Hey, girl," he started, his voice like he was swallowing nails, "why is vodka six hundred rubles? I bought it yesterday for five ninety."
She didn't answer. Just stood there, staring at the register monitor like it held the meaning of life.
He repeated himself. Louder.
And I felt it — this is it.
I don't know why, but I knew this was my moment. My chance. My opportunity to do something that wouldn't just be another day in this dead world.
"Hey, grandpa," I said without turning my head. "Don't you think it's time to shut the fuck up and go home? You've gotta get up at six tomorrow to rot by the entrance again."
He froze. Turned toward me. His eyes — two red lanterns, with nothing inside but rage. Pure, simple, unfiltered rage.
"What the fuck did you say, punk?" he rasped.
I turned to face him fully. Smiled. I knew how to smile in a way that showed total contempt.
"I said you're a pathetic, rotten piece of shit wasting oxygen. And if you open your mouth again, I'll personally rip your tongue out and shove it back where you usually pull those five ninety rubles from."
He froze. Then his face twisted.
A smile.
There was nothing human in it. It was the smile of a demon who'd found his victim.
"Let's go," he said. "Let's step outside and talk."
I nodded.
We went behind the store. Out into the street, where snow fell slowly, like ash after a nuclear explosion. We stood facing each other. I was taller. Younger. Faster
But he was stronger.
Stronger in his hatred.
In his experience.
In his lack of fear.
I threw the first punch. Fist to the jaw. He staggered, swayed — but didn't fall. Then he smiled. Blood spilled from his mouth, running down his chin, forming a red beard.
He pulled out a knife.
Not big. Not small. A regular folding knife you could buy at any military store for three hundred rubles.
"You really thought I called you out for nothing, you fuck?" he said.
He attacked. Fast. Unexpected.
The knife slid into my stomach like the warm tongue of a lover who knows exactly where you're weakest. I felt cold. A cold that spread from the wound like poison. Second strike — to the chest. Third — to the neck. Each blow was neat, precise, like he'd been doing this his whole life.
I fell.
The snow beneath me was soft, like a pillow. I stared up at the sky — black, starless, moonless, hopeless.
He stood over me, steaming in the cold air like a demon who'd just completed a ritual. He looked at me, and there was nothing in his eyes. No joy. No regret. No satisfaction.
Just emptiness
And I understood.
At the very last moment of my pathetic life.
He wasn't just a drunk.
He was an instrument.
An instrument used to bring me to this moment.
To this death.
To this new beginning.
My final thought was strange.
Not about life.
Not about death.
Not about pain.
What a fucking idiot I am, I thought.
And the world sank into darkness.
But the darkness was not the end.