“Who gave you permission to wear that dress?! You look like some cheap roadside tramp! Go wash that plaster off your face right now, or I’ll scrub it off with a rag myself! You’re not going anywhere dressed like that. You’re staying home!” Vadim raged, spit flying from his mouth.
His voice cracked into a shrill pitch, bouncing off the narrow hallway walls and filling the entire apartment. Svetlana stood frozen with her clutch in her hands, feeling something inside her turn to ice. She had spent two hours getting ready. Perfect hair. Professional makeup done at a salon. And that dress — deep emerald, flowing, expensive. She had felt like a queen in it. But now, under her husband’s heavy, bloodshot stare, she felt dirty.
“Vadim, move away from the door,” she said quietly, forcing herself to sound calm, though her heart was pounding somewhere in her throat. “My taxi is waiting. It’s a company party. Everyone will be there, including management. I can’t just not go.”
“Management?” Vadim let out a laugh that sounded like metal scraping against stone. “Oh, we know all about your management. And we know exactly who you got dressed up for. Look at yourself! Neckline down to your stomach, back completely bare. Who are you planning to seduce there? Your department head? Or are you aiming straight for the CEO?”
He took a step forward, looming over her like a heavy, threatening rock. The smell of alcohol hit her clearly. Apparently, while she had been at the salon, he had already “prepared” for the evening in his own way. Svetlana instinctively pressed her small purse to her chest, as if that tiny shield could protect her from the wave of aggression coming at her.
“It’s an evening dress, Vadim. It fits the dress code. Stop this circus and let me pass.”
She tried to step aside toward the lock, hoping to slip past him. It was a mistake. Vadim reacted instantly, like a chained dog. He threw his entire body against the front door, blocking the way to the saving stairwell, and spread his arms wide, pressing his palms against the doorframe.
“I said no!” he barked in her face. “Are you deaf? You are not leaving this apartment until you look like a decent woman, not some cheap piece of trash!”
Svetlana realized that politeness would get her nowhere. In the pocket of her coat hanging on the rack, her phone began to vibrate. The taxi had arrived. That sound became the trigger. She lunged forward, trying to push his arm away from the doorframe.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” she shouted, finally losing control. “You have no right!”
Vadim grabbed her arm. His fingers, hard and damp, dug into her forearm. He yanked her toward him with such force that Svetlana lost her balance and almost fell. Then came a dry, sickening rip.
Svetlana looked at her shoulder in horror. The delicate silk sleeve had not survived his rough pull. The seam had split open, and the sleeve hung like a pathetic rag, exposing pale skin marked with red fingerprints from her husband’s grip.
“You tore my dress…” she breathed, staring at the ruined fabric. There were no tears in her voice, only shock. “Do you even understand how much it cost?”
“I don’t give a damn!” Vadim smiled triumphantly, admiring his own handiwork. “At least now you definitely won’t go out there shaking your tail. In that torn rag, they’d only let you into a dumpster.”
But even that wasn’t enough for him. His eyes fell on the small cabinet in the hallway, where a pack of wet household wipes for shoes and furniture lay.
“And now, your face,” he hissed.
He grabbed a wipe soaked in harsh chemical cleaner and lunged at his wife again. Svetlana tried to shield herself with her hands, but he was stronger. With one hand, he seized the back of her head, digging his fingers into her perfectly styled hair, and jerked her head backward.
“Time to wash up!” he commanded with sadistic pleasure.
The cold, rough cloth, smelling of lemon and alcohol, slammed against her face. Vadim was not simply wiping it — he was grinding it into her skin. He rubbed with furious force, smearing expensive mascara, foundation, and bright lipstick into one gray-brown mess.
“Let go! It hurts! My eyes!” Svetlana cried out as the burning chemical liquid reached her eyelids.
“Endure it! Beauty requires sacrifice!” Vadim shouted, still dragging the dirty wipe across her lips and cheeks. “That’s it! Wash off that filth! I want to see my wife, not some painted clown!”
Svetlana twisted like a snake and stomped down on his foot with her stiletto heel as hard as she could. Vadim howled and loosened his grip. She broke free, shoved him away, and jumped back against the hallway wall.
She was breathing hard. Her chest rose and fell violently. In the mirror across from her, something frightening stared back: a disheveled woman with black streaks under her eyes, a red, swollen face rubbed raw, and a torn dress that now looked more like a beggar’s rags than an elegant evening gown.
Vadim stood opposite her, rubbing his injured foot, looking at her with a sense of accomplishment. There was not a drop of remorse in his eyes — only dull, animal satisfaction at his own power.
“There,” he said, catching his breath. “Much better. Now you look like a normal woman. Stay home and cook borscht. The company party is canceled.”
Svetlana ran her palm over her cheek, wiping away the sticky residue. Her eyes burned, but she did not cry. There were no tears. Instead, somewhere deep inside her, in the center of her chest, a cold white fire of rage began to burn. She looked at her husband and no longer saw the man she had loved. She saw an enemy. A disgusting, sweaty enemy drunk on his own impunity.
She did not run to the bathroom. She did not cover her face with her hands. Slowly, she straightened, pulled her shoulders back despite the dangling sleeve, and looked at Vadim with a stare that should have made him uneasy. But he was too stupid and too self-satisfied to notice the change.
“So we’re not going anywhere?” she asked quietly. Her voice sounded strange — flat and hollow, like dirt falling onto a coffin lid.
“We’re not going,” Vadim confirmed, smirking. “Go change into a robe.”
Svetlana nodded. Silently, she turned and walked down the hallway. But she did not go to the dressing room. She went straight into the bedroom. To the place where, on a special stand under the television, a small blue indicator light glowed. His pride and joy. His favorite toy.
Vadim watched her go with a smug smile, arms crossed over his chest. He felt like a general who had just won an important battle. The rebellion had been crushed, his wife had been put in her place, and his authority, as he imagined it, had risen to the heavens.
“And put on the thick robe!” he shouted after her, enjoying the sound of his own voice. “No need to flash your bare legs around here. And put the kettle on while you’re changing. My throat is dry from all these nerves.”
Svetlana did not answer. She entered the bedroom, where half-darkness ruled. The only light came from the large television Vadim had forgotten to turn off, as usual, and the pulsing blue glow on the cabinet beneath it. There, like a futuristic altar to some cyber god, stood his gaming console. The latest model, which he had bought three months earlier, spending all the money they had saved for a vacation.
She remembered that day. He had brought home the big white box, glowing like a child who had found a bicycle under the Christmas tree.
“Svetlana, this is an investment in emotional health!” he had declared while connecting the console.
Since then, that white tower had become the third member of their family. Vadim dusted it with a special microfiber cloth, forbade Svetlana from even breathing in its direction while cleaning, and spent every evening and weekend with a controller in his hands while she cooked, washed clothes, and cleaned the apartment.
Svetlana walked up to the cabinet. Her hands no longer trembled. Inside her, there was a ringing emptiness demanding to be filled. And only the crash of destruction could fill it.
She reached behind the cabinet, feeling for the cables. Her fingers touched warm plastic. The HDMI cable was firmly plugged in. She yanked it out without caring about the port. There was a soft click, and the connector came loose. Then she pulled out the power cable. The console went dark, losing its blue “heartbeat.”
The thing was heavy. Much heavier than it looked. The smooth, cool plastic slipped slightly in her hands. Svetlana adjusted her grip and pressed the console against her chest, right against the torn dress, staining its snow-white casing with the leftover foundation Vadim had not managed to scrub from her chin.
Then she turned and walked back into the hallway.
Vadim was still standing in the same place, examining the mark on his foot. Hearing footsteps, he raised his head, ready to make another comment about her appearance — but the words stuck in his throat.
He saw his wife. She was walking slowly, each step deliberate, her face completely empty and mask-like, streaked with dirty makeup. But it was not her face that frightened him. It was what she was carrying in her hands.
“You…” Vadim frowned, his brain refusing to process what he was seeing. “Why did you take that? Svetlana, put it back. You’ll drop it.”
He took an uncertain step toward her, still unable to believe what was happening. In his version of reality, his wife should now have been crying into a pillow or clattering pots in the kitchen, atoning for her sins. She could not touch his sacred object.
“I said put it down!” Vadim’s voice cracked into a shriek. “That’s expensive! Do you even know how much it costs?”
Svetlana stopped in the center of the hallway, where the tiled floor met the laminate. The hardest spot in the apartment.
“I know,” she replied.
It was the first word she had spoken in five minutes.
She slowly raised the console above her head. The white plastic flashed in the lamplight. Vadim froze, mouth open. His eyes widened so much they looked ready to pop from their sockets. For him, time slowed down. He saw every chip in her manicure, every loose thread hanging from the torn sleeve, and his precious console suspended at a dangerous height.
“Svetlana, no!” he screamed, rushing toward her.
But it was already too late.
Svetlana did not simply open her fingers. She threw the console down with all her strength, pouring into that single motion every insult, every humiliation of the evening, every spark of rage over the ruined dress and the raw, smeared face.
The impact was terrible.
The sound of expensive plastic breaking was deafening, like a dry gunshot. The console hit the tile on one corner. Its casing split instantly, spraying white shards in every direction. Something inside clanged, crunched, and tore loose. Heavy internal parts spilled out, dragging pieces of circuits and wires with them. The cooling fan broke free and rolled toward Vadim’s feet, spinning like a little top with a pitiful whisper.
Vadim stopped short, almost slipping on a piece of the top panel. He stared at the pile of electronic garbage that, only a second earlier, had been his sixty thousand rubles and hundreds of hours of saved game progress.
Silence settled in the hallway, broken only by his heavy, rasping breathing.
Slowly, he lifted his eyes to his wife. Svetlana stood with her arms lowered. There was no triumph on her face, only the cold indifference of a surgeon who had amputated a gangrenous limb.
“You… you killed it…” Vadim whispered. His lips trembled. “You broke it… Are you insane? Are you sick?”
He dropped to his knees before the remains of the console, trying with shaking hands to fit pieces of the casing back together, like a puzzle that could still somehow be repaired. But there was nothing left to repair. The motherboard had cracked in half.
Svetlana looked down at him as if he were an insect.
“Since I’m not going anywhere, Vadim,” she said clearly, striking each word like a nail, “then neither are you. Especially not into your virtual world. You’ll entertain yourself here. Start collecting the pieces.”
She nudged a fragment of black plastic with the toe of her shoe, sending it sliding toward his knee.
“You tore my dress,” she continued, and steel rang in her voice. “You humiliated me. Did you think I would cry? Did you think I would wipe my face and go make borscht? No, darling. Now we’re going to play your games. Only I set the rules.”
Vadim raised his head. His face twisted with such rage that anyone else in Svetlana’s place would have run. His skin turned crimson; sweat appeared on his forehead. Slowly, he rose from his knees, clutching a broken piece of casing with the brand logo on it. The sharp plastic edges dug into his palm, but he did not feel the pain.
“You’ll pay for this,” he hissed. His voice was low and terrifying, like a snake before it strikes. “You filthy bitch, you’ll pay for every penny. You think this is over? You think you won?”
“I don’t think, Vadim. I know,” Svetlana cut him off. “And don’t you dare come near me.”
But Vadim no longer heard her. He stepped over the pile of broken parts. His eyes darted around the hallway, searching for something to take his anger out on. He was afraid to hit his wife — somewhere deep inside him, the fear of criminal charges still existed — but he was determined to destroy something dear to her. An eye for an eye.
His gaze landed on the half-open bedroom door. In there, on her vanity table under the lamp, stood her treasures. The bottles, jars, and palettes she cared for the way he cared for his console.
“Oh, really…” he drawled, a mad smile spreading across his face. “So the rules have changed? Excellent. Just excellent.”
He hurled the broken piece of console into the wall, leaving a deep dent in the wallpaper, and rushed toward the bedroom.
Vadim stormed into the room like a hurricane. His feverish eyes swept over everything, searching for the target that would hurt Svetlana the most. He was not going to hit her — somewhere on the edge of his mind, the red warning light of self-preservation still flashed, reminding him of legal consequences. But destroying what made up her feminine world felt, in that moment, like perfect justice.
His gaze locked onto the vanity by the window. It was her sanctuary. Perfectly arranged perfume bottles, jars of creams, brushes in crystal cups, eyeshadow palettes lined up by size. Svetlana had built that collection for years, hunting down limited editions, ordering things from Europe through personal shoppers, spending a small fortune.
“So you want to play?” Vadim growled, flying toward the table. “Let’s play!”
Svetlana ran into the room after him. When she saw where his destructive path was headed, she felt true fear for the first time that evening. The console had been a soulless piece of plastic. But her cosmetics were personal, almost intimate. They were her armor, her confidence, her art.
“Don’t you dare!” she shouted, rushing at him. “Vadim, don’t touch it! That costs more than your life!”
“I don’t care!” he roared back.
With one sweeping motion, like a man cutting down grass, he knocked everything off the tabletop.
The sound of shattering glass was horrible. Heavy bottles of niche perfume flew to the floor, striking each other and the laminate. Tom Ford, Kilian, vintage Guerlain — all of it turned into a pile of shards and puddles. The room instantly filled with a suffocating, concentrated smell: oud, vanilla, tobacco, and rose. This Molotov cocktail of fragrance was so sharp it stole the breath from her lungs.
But Vadim was not finished. He had entered a frenzy. He saw the horror widen her eyes, and it only pushed him further.
“What, does it hurt?” He grabbed one surviving bottle from the floor — her favorite perfume, the one she saved for special occasions. “Are you sad about your little stink bottles? You weren’t sad about my console, were you?”
He lifted the bottle above his head and hurled it at the wall. The glass burst into dust, leaving a wet, oily stain on the pale wallpaper that would never wash out.
“You’re sick…” Svetlana whispered, covering her mouth with her hand. She stepped back, afraid to step on the shards in her heels.
“I’m sick?! You started this!” Vadim stomped directly onto the scattered eyeshadows.
Plastic cases crunched beneath his shoe. Expensive Natasha Denona and Pat McGrath palettes, each worth half his monthly salary, turned into colorful sludge. He stomped on them with savage pleasure, grinding powder into the fibers of the fluffy bedside rug. Before her eyes, the beige carpet turned dirty violet, glittering with mirror fragments and shimmer.
“Look!” he shouted, jumping onto a box of loose powder.
A cloud of fine dust burst upward, settling over his trousers and shoes.
“Look at what your beauty has become! Trash! It’s just colored trash, Svetlana!”
Svetlana watched as he crushed a tube of foundation under his heel. Beige cream sprayed onto the floor, staining the leg of the bed. Vadim looked like a crazed elephant in a china shop. His face was red, sweaty, twisted with hatred.
“You’re destroying everything,” she said.
Her voice was quiet, barely audible through the chaos, but it carried an icy finality.
“Do you understand what you’re doing? You’re not breaking makeup. You’re breaking us.”
“There is no us anymore!” Vadim barked.
He grabbed the cup holding her makeup brushes and turned it over, dumping everything straight into the puddle of spilled perfume.
The expensive natural-bristle brushes instantly soaked up the fragrant liquid, mixing with dirt and shards of glass. Vadim kicked the pile, smearing it across the room.
“There’s your company party!” he panted, his chest heaving. “There’s your beauty! You wanted to paint yourself? Go on, paint yourself from the floor! Scoop it up in your hands and put it on!”
The smell in the room became unbearable. The mixture of a dozen perfumes caused nausea and dizziness. Svetlana leaned against the doorframe, feeling something inside her snap for good. The final thread that had still somehow connected her to this man — pity, habit, their shared mortgage — broke with the same sound as the bottles under his feet.
She looked at the ruined vanity, at the destroyed rug that would now have to be thrown away, at the stains on the walls. Vadim stood in the middle of the chaos, looking at her victoriously. He was waiting for hysteria. Waiting for her to rush around collecting shards, crying, begging him to stop. He needed her weakness so he could feel his strength.
But Svetlana did not cry. Slowly, she shifted her gaze from the pile of garbage to her husband. Her eyes were colder than absolute zero.
“Are you finished?” she asked.
Vadim was thrown off by her tone. He had expected anything except that calm question.
“What?” he asked, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
“I asked whether you’re finished destroying my room. Or maybe you also want to tear up my underwear? Burn the photographs? Go ahead, don’t be shy. You’re very good at being a vandal.”
“It’s our room!” he snapped, but the fire in his voice was already weakening. The adrenaline was beginning to fade, and with it came the awareness of just how much damage had been done. The smell was so strong that his own eyes began to water.
“No, Vadim,” Svetlana said, shaking her head. “Now it’s just a dump. And you are the king of this dump.”
She turned and walked out of the bedroom. Her steps were strangely light, almost springy.
“Hey! Where are you going?” he shouted after her, feeling an unpleasant chill in his stomach. “We’re not done talking! Clean this up right now!”
But Svetlana was not listening. She did not go to the kitchen for a broom. She did not go to the living room to cry. Her path led to the bathroom. There, in the cabinet under the sink, stood a large white bottle with a red cap. Bleach. Concentrated chlorine bleach, which she rarely used because it was too aggressive for ordinary laundry.
But for what she had in mind, it was perfect.
Vadim stood in the bedroom, trying to scrape powder from the sole of his shoe, and did not see his wife take the heavy bottle. He did not see her face, where not a single muscle moved. He thought he had won this competition of cruelty.
How wrong he was. The real war was only beginning, and now chemical weapons were entering the battlefield.
Svetlana stood in the bathroom, clutching the one-liter bottle of bleach in her hand. The white plastic was cool and slippery. She unscrewed the red cap, and the sharp, medical smell of chlorine instantly struck her nose, overpowering even the floral stench drifting from the bedroom. The smell cleared her mind. It did not smell like cleanliness. It smelled like hospitals and death.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Mascara streaks had turned her face into a harlequin mask, and the torn dress hung miserably from her shoulder. But there was no fear left in her eyes. Only the emptiness of a burned field. Vadim wanted war? He had it. He had destroyed her face and her belongings. Now it was time for his pride.
Svetlana stepped back into the hallway. Vadim was still stomping around in the bedroom, trying to push broken glass into a pile with his foot while swearing loudly. He was sure she had gone to wash her face and surrender. He did not hear her quiet steps.
The built-in wardrobe stretched across the entire hallway wall. Inside, on hangers, hung his “skin,” his status. Expensive suits he wore to meetings, designer jeans bought in Italy the year before, Egyptian cotton shirts that Svetlana had ironed for hours, terrified of leaving even one crease.
She approached the wardrobe and slid the mirrored door open with a sharp motion. Inside, it smelled of lavender sachets and expensive tobacco.
“What are you doing over there?” Vadim’s voice came from the bedroom. He had heard the wardrobe rollers. “Packing your things? Go on, get out! Run to your mother!”
“No, Vadim,” Svetlana answered quietly, raising the bottle. “I’m just cleaning. Disinfecting.”
She tilted the neck of the bottle. Thick, yellowish liquid splashed onto the sleeve of his favorite navy-blue jacket. It immediately soaked into the expensive wool, leaving a dark wet mark that, in a few minutes, would turn into a pale, burned-out stain.
Svetlana moved methodically, like a machine on a production line. She poured bleach over his jeans. Then she generously soaked the row of perfectly ironed blue shirts. The chlorine hissed into the fabric, eating the fibers, devouring the dye.
Vadim stepped into the hallway, wiping his hands with a wet wipe. When he saw the open wardrobe and his wife with the bottle, he froze for a second. His brain refused to believe it.
“You…” He choked on air. “What the hell are you doing, you bitch?”
The smell of bleach reached him before he could run to the wardrobe. That stench mixed with the scent of broken perfume, turning the apartment into something like a chemical plant after an accident.
“That’s Hugo Boss!” he screamed, rushing toward her. “That’s wool! Have you lost your mind?”
He grabbed her hand, trying to tear the bottle away. Svetlana did not fight, but she did not let go of the plastic either. During the struggle, the remaining liquid splashed out in a wide arc, hitting not only the clothes, but also the leather shoes standing below — and even Vadim’s trouser leg.
“And that was Chanel!” she shouted in his face, nodding toward the bedroom. “And that is my nervous system! And that was my dress! Do you like it?! Do you like it, I’m asking you?!”
Vadim ripped the empty container from her hand and hurled it into the corner. The bottle hit the wall with a hollow thud and fell near the broken console. With trembling hands, he grabbed his jacket and lifted it to his face, as if hoping it was only water. But the biting smell and the spreading stain left no hope. The fabric was already changing color, turning rusty. The garment was dead.
He threw the jacket onto the floor and turned to his wife. His fists clenched. The veins at his temples pulsed so violently they looked ready to burst.
“You will pay for this…” he hissed. “Do you have any idea how much money was hanging here? You’ll owe me for the rest of your life!”
“We’re even,” Svetlana said, standing before him with her chin proudly raised. “You can calculate the cost of my makeup. And the console. And the dress. And my nerves. I think it comes out to zero-zero.”
“You filthy creature…” Vadim breathed.
He looked around.
The apartment looked like a battlefield. In the hallway, chunks of plastic and microchips lay scattered among the remains of the console. In the bedroom, the floor was covered with oily perfume liquid, broken glass, and colored powder. The wardrobe reeked of toxic chlorine, and ruined clothes lay in a heap on the floor. The walls were stained. The rug was destroyed.
Everything they had acquired, everything that had created the illusion of a respectable family life, had been destroyed in half an hour. The things they had taken loans for, worked overtime for, saved for, and denied themselves for had become garbage.
“I hate you,” Vadim said.
There was no rage left in his voice now, only black, heavy hatred.
“I don’t want to see your face.”
“Likewise,” Svetlana replied. “Only I have nowhere to go. And neither do you. So we’ll sit here. In this filth. We’ll breathe in chlorine and your broken dreams.”
She walked past him, deliberately brushing his shoulder. Vadim twitched, but he did not hit her. The moment of blind rage had passed, leaving ruins behind. He sank down to the floor beside the ruined suits and covered his face with his hands.
Svetlana went into the kitchen. It was dark and quiet there. The only place the war had not touched. She sat down on a stool and felt the trembling she had held back all this time begin to shake her body. But these were not tears. This was the aftermath. The crash after the storm.
She looked at her hands. They smelled of bleach. The smell had sunk into her skin permanently, just like the hatred for the man now sitting in the hallway.
They remained in the same apartment, locked inside a concrete box filled with broken things and broken lives. No one slammed the door. No one disappeared into the night. They simply sat in different rooms, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the dripping faucet that no one bothered to turn off.
The company party really had been canceled.
So had their old life.
Now they would have to live among the ruins, looking each other in the eyes every day and knowing exactly what the person sleeping on the next pillow was capable of.
And that was more frightening than any loneliness.