Part 1. Uninvited Guests and the Smell of Dust
The key resisted, turning with effort as if the lock itself were pushing back, unwilling to let the owner into her own fortress. Lidia frowned. The bolt had always moved smoothly, like it was greased. She pushed the heavy door faced with pale veneer—and stopped dead on the threshold.
Instead of the familiar freshness and the faint lavender scent she loved, a thick, stale stench hit her: old belongings, mothballs, and something sour, like cabbage soup gone off. In the spacious hallway—where perfect minimalism had ruled only that morning—cardboard boxes were piled up. Wrapped in orange packing tape, they looked like ugly tumors on the body of her elegant home.
“Boris, where are you putting that crate? The vanity will go there!” a domineering woman’s voice snapped from the living room.
Lidia stepped forward, gripping her handbag so hard the leather squeaked. She recognized that voice. Alla Sergeyevna—her fiancé Fyodor’s mother. But what was she doing here? And how did she get a key?
Lidia walked into the living room. What she saw could have illustrated the very meaning of barbarism. In the middle of the room, on her favorite handwoven rug, stood Alla Sergeyevna. She was briskly directing a bulky man—Boris Ignatyevich, Fyodor’s father—who, puffing, was stacking twine-tied volumes of the Soviet Encyclopedia onto Lidia’s glossy coffee table.
“What is happening here?” Lidia’s voice rang out loud, yet oddly flat, bouncing off walls that seemed to shrink in fright.
Alla Sergeyevna turned around. Not the slightest hint of embarrassment crossed her face—no awkwardness, no shame. Instead, she spread a patronizing smile, like a mistress greeting a careless servant.
“Oh, Lidochka! We thought you’d come later. But never mind—come in, don’t be shy. We’re nearly done sorting,” she said, waving at the open sliding wardrobe, where Lidia’s dresses had been dumped in a mound.
“Sorting?” Lidia repeated, feeling a cold needle of fear pierce somewhere under her ribs. “Why did you take my things out? How do you have keys?”
Boris Ignatyevich wiped his forehead with a checked handkerchief and rumbled in a friendly, overly familiar tone:
“Why are you making noise, kid? Fedya gave us the keys—told us to make a copy. We decided to surprise you. Help you move.”
“Move where?” Lidia stepped toward the wardrobe, staring at her belongings piled up like junk at a flea market.
“Where, where?” Alla Sergeyevna threw up her hands as though explaining the obvious to a child. “Your father-in-law and I talked it over and decided it’s not right for a young couple to start life with such… extravagance. Three rooms! Think how much cleaning, how many utility bills. And we’re older—we need peace, we need space. So we decided: we’re moving in here, and you and Fyodor will move into our two-room place. It’s cozy, lived-in. You’ll be better off there.”
Lidia blinked. Once. Twice. The meaning reached her slowly, as if pushing through wool. They decided. They were already packing up her things. In her apartment—the one her parents had given her after years of working in the Far North so their only daughter would have a secure future.
“Are you… are you joking?” she forced out.
“Joking? Dear girl, what jokes?” Alla Sergeyevna stepped closer and, shamelessly nudging Lidia aside with her shoulder, picked up a crystal vase from the table. “This doesn’t suit us—too modern. Boris, put it in the box marked ‘For the dacha.’ And we’ll pack Lidochka that goose-patterned tea set—it’ll fit perfectly in the two-room.”
It wasn’t a dream. It was a bold, suffocating invasion that stole her breath.
Part 2. A Kingdom of Absurdity and Greed
Lidia watched her future mother-in-law wrap the vase Lidia adored—brought from Italy—in rough gray paper. Alla Sergeyevna’s movements were confident, possessive. In her mind she had already placed her own furniture here, hung her own curtains, scrubbed Lidia’s presence from these walls.
“Stop!” Lidia lunged to the table and laid her hand over the woman’s wrist. “Put everything back. Now.”
Alla Sergeyevna raised her eyebrows in surprise, but did not let go of the vase.
“What’s gotten into you, sweetheart? Pre-wedding nerves? I understand. Don’t worry—we’ll do it all. You and Fedya will just come for your suitcases. I left the keys to our apartment on the hall table. The bathroom tap drips, sure, but Fyodor has golden hands—he’ll fix it.”
“I’m not moving into your apartment,” Lidia said clearly, cutting each word like a blade. “This is my property. You have no right to be here without my permission. Leave.”
Boris Ignatyevich, who had been fussing with a box, straightened up. His once good-natured face tightened into the expression of an offended master.
“Is that how you speak to your mother?” he grunted. “We’re doing this for you. We’ve lived longer—we know better. Young people should start small, learn to value what they have. We’ve worked our whole lives—now we deserve comfort. Three rooms, two bathrooms—that’s perfect for us. My legs hurt—I need space to walk. In that Khrushchyovka, the hallway’s narrow.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to take my home!” Lidia felt a tense spring begin to wind inside her.
“‘Take’—what a nasty word!” Alla Sergeyevna sneered. “We’re exchanging. A family swap. Besides, you’re joining our family. In our family, everything is shared. Fyodor agreed it would be fair.”
“Fyodor… agreed?” Lidia went still.
The world rocked. Fyodor—her gentle, educated Fyodor, who hated offending even a waiter—had agreed to this insanity?
“Of course!” Alla Sergeyevna announced triumphantly. “He’s a son—he understands duty to his parents. We raised him, fed him, paid for his education. Now it’s his turn to care for us. And you, Lida, must understand: a wife should fear her husband and honor his parents. So stop your tantrum and help me pack the china.”
She reached for the vase again, but Lidia yanked it toward herself. The glass clinked sharply.
“I said no. You will gather your boxes and leave. Or I’ll call—” She stopped, remembering she didn’t want to involve the police. “I’ll throw you out myself.”
“Throw us out? You?” Boris Ignatyevich laughed—an ugly, bubbling laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous, girl. We’ve already moved some things. A portion. A realtor already came to see our apartment—we’re going to rent it out so we have extra money in retirement. Oh—meaning… well, you get it. You’ll live there, but you’ll pay the utilities yourselves, of course.”
Lidia looked at them and didn’t see her future family anymore—she saw alien occupiers. Greed burned in their eyes brighter than the chandelier overhead. They didn’t just want the apartment. They wanted to humiliate her, to put her in her place, to turn her into an obedient servant of their demands.
“You’re selling that apartment?” Lidia realized.
“So what?” Alla Sergeyevna snapped back aggressively. “We need money. Treatment is expensive these days. And you young people—if we’re being honest—could manage in a rental. But we’re kind, we’re letting you live in our family nest. For now. And you, ungrateful girl, still dare to talk back.”
Part 3. The Fire of Rebellion
The front door slammed in the entryway. Lidia recognized the footsteps—quick, light. Fyodor.
He walked in with a bouquet of white lilies and a smile. When he saw the boxes and his parents, he stopped as if glued to the floor. The smile slid off his face, replaced by utter confusion.
“Mom? Dad? What are you doing here?” he asked.
“He’s here, my son!” Alla Sergeyevna rushed to him, ignoring Lidia. “We’re helping Lidochka pack her things. She’s a bit worked up—she’s not herself, she’s shouting at us. Calm her down. Tell her we came up with the right plan.”
Fyodor looked at Lidia. She stood by the table, pale, eyes blazing, gripping the vase so tightly it seemed the glass might crack.
“What plan?” Fyodor asked quietly.
“The move, Fedya!” Boris Ignatyevich cut in. “We move in here, you move to our place. Just like we discussed.”
“We did not discuss this,” Fyodor’s voice strengthened. “I told you it was nonsense. I told you ‘no.’”
“Oh, please—what you said doesn’t matter,” Alla Sergeyevna waved it away. “You’re young, you’re foolish, you don’t know life. A mother knows best. We already started moving our things.”
She turned to Lidia and said with heavy emphasis:
“Lida, put the vase down. Don’t embarrass yourself in front of your husband. Be a wise woman.”
And something inside Lidia snapped. A dark, hot wave—held back by manners and upbringing—burst free. This was not the obedience the “elders” expected. It was pure, unfiltered rage.
Lidia looked down at the vase in her hands. Italian glass. A gift from her parents. A symbol of her old, quiet life.
“Wise?” she repeated. Her voice trembled with strain. “You want me to be wise?”
She raised the vase high over her head.
“Lida?” Fyodor squeaked, frightened.
“YOU WANT MY APARTMENT?” she screamed so loudly the glasses in the cabinet rattled.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” her father-in-law roared.
But Lidia didn’t stop. She sprang to the box Alla Sergeyevna had been packing and flipped it over. Plates, cups, saucers flew across the floor. The crash was unreal.
“GET OUT!” she shouted, grabbing a stack of books from the table and hurling them toward the intruders. “GET OUT OF HERE—RIGHT NOW! I WILL NOT PUT UP WITH THIS FILTH!”
“You’re insane!” Alla Sergeyevna shrieked, backing toward the door. “Fedya, call the paramedics! She’s rabid!”
“I’ll smash everything in this place if you aren’t gone in a minute!” Lidia’s face twisted with fury, her hair coming loose—she looked like a goddess of vengeance. “OUT!”
Alla Sergeyevna, used to daughters-in-law who were silent shadows, went rigid with shock. She had expected tears, pleading, quiet whining. Not this. Not objects flying at her head. Not a wild, primal refusal.
“Fedya, do something!” his father begged, shielding himself with a box lid.
Part 4. Clarity and Expulsion
Fyodor stood in the middle of the wreckage. He looked at his fiancée, throwing thunder and lightning, and at his parents, cowering in the corner. For the first time he saw them clearly: not mighty patriarchs, but petty, terrified thieves caught red-handed.
He looked at Lidia. There was such strength in her anger—such undeniable rightness—that his own indecision burned up in that flame. She was defending their home. She was defending him from his own weakness.
He walked up to his mother, who was trying to hide behind his father.
“Mom,” he said. His voice didn’t shake. It sounded dull and hard, like a hammer strike. “Put the keys on the table.”
“Fedya? You’re letting her—” Alla Sergeyevna began.
“THE KEYS!” Fyodor shouted, and his mother jumped.
He tore the keyring to Lidia’s apartment from her hand. Then he turned to his father, snatched the box filled with Lidia’s things, and dumped its contents straight onto the sofa. He threw the empty box at his parents’ feet.
“Pack,” he ordered.
“Pack what?” Boris Ignatyevich didn’t understand.
“Your crap. Your rags, your jars, your insane ideas. You have five minutes. If you’re still here in five, I’ll drag you down the stairs. And I don’t care that you’re my parents. You betrayed me. You humiliated my woman.”
“How dare you!” his mother wailed. “We did it all for you—”
“For me?” Fyodor gave a bitter laugh. “You did it for yourselves. You always have. You thought I’d stay silent? You thought Lidia would bend? You were wrong. OUT.”
Lidia, breathing hard, sank into an armchair. She was still clutching a bronze horse in her hand, ready to throw it if she had to—but she didn’t.
Seeing their son’s resolve—so close to hatred—his parents understood: the game was over. Muttering curses, calling Lidia a “witch” and their son a “henpecked man,” they grabbed their bags.
“We curse you!” Alla Sergeyevna shouted from the hallway. “My foot will never step in here again!”
“Wonderful idea!” Fyodor shouted back, and slammed the door behind them with all his strength.
Part 5. The Echo of Shattered Hopes
Three months passed.
In Lidia and Fyodor’s apartment, perfect order reigned. They registered their marriage quietly, without spectacle, and spent the money they’d saved for the wedding on a trip—and on replacing the locks.
Lidia sat at her drafting table, working on a restoration project for an old mansion. Fyodor cooked dinner. The smell of baked fish filled the kitchen.
A phone call tore through the cozy quiet. Fyodor glanced at the screen; his face darkened, and he rejected the call.
“Again?” Lidia asked without looking up from her drawings.
“Yes,” her husband answered shortly.
The “exchange” had taken an unexpected—and tragic, for his parents—turn. In their greed and certainty that they would win, Alla Sergeyevna and Boris Ignatyevich really had begun the process of getting rid of their old apartment. But it wasn’t a sale.
Convinced they were moving into their “wealthy” daughter-in-law’s place for good, they signed an exchange agreement—with an extra payment—with some slick realtor. They planned to get a large wad of cash and “live beautifully” in Lidia’s apartment. They traded their own apartment for a tiny studio in an unfinished building and a thick stack of banknotes.
The plan was simple: they would live with Lidia, and later—once the studio was completed—rent it out or sell it. The money would go toward spa resorts and taxis.
But when Fyodor threw them out and they went back to their “cozy two-room,” they discovered it no longer belonged to them legally. Their move-out deadline was approaching. The new owners—serious people with no taste for sentiment—politely but firmly demanded they vacate.
The cash they’d gotten from the deal, those “efficient family managers,” had already sunk into some pyramid scheme promising 300% a year—they wanted to multiply their capital before their “new life” began. The scheme collapsed a week after they invested.
Now Fyodor’s parents were living in a rented summer cottage with no heating, owned by a distant relative who kept them only out of pity—and even that was temporary.
“What did they want?” Lidia asked, setting her pencil aside.
“Money. And they’re asking to move in,” Fyodor said, stirring a salad. “They say the roof leaks in the cottage.”
“And what do you think?”
Fyodor turned to his wife. In his eyes there was no pity—only the steady resolve of a man who once cut away gangrene to survive.
“I think everyone gets what they earn. They wanted to take our home. Now they don’t have one.”
Lidia stepped up behind him and hugged him around the waist. She remembered that day—her fury. It was exactly then, in the middle of hysteria and chaos, that they became a real family. Not obedience saved them, but the teeth they showed.
“You’re right,” she said. “Let them learn to live on their pension. After all, they wanted to ‘start small so they’d value what they have.’ Their dream came true.”
Somewhere far away, in a cold dacha settlement, Alla Sergeyevna tried to light damp firewood in a stove, cursing her daughter-in-law, her son, and the whole world—still unable to understand that she herself had struck the match that started the fire of her misery.