“Why did you turn your laptop on again? I told you it pisses me off when you stare at a screen! I don’t care about your job—you’re supposed to pay attention to me! Turn it off right now, or I’ll smash it!”
Stas’s voice was drawn-out and lazy, but inside that laziness lived a heavy, leaden menace that made Ekaterina’s back go icy between her shoulder blades. She didn’t even lift her head. She kept feverishly entering numbers into the final spreadsheet. Her fingers skittered over the keyboard, producing a dry, rhythmic clack that sounded painfully loud in the room’s hollow quiet, even with the TV on.
“Stas, please,” she said without taking her eyes off the monitor, where her quarterly bonus was being decided inside those Excel cells. “I only need twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of silence, and I’m all yours. It’s a report for the director—if I don’t send it before midnight, they’ll strip my bonuses.”
“Bonuses?” Stas snorted with laughter. He was stretched across the big corner sofa, arms flung wide like a starfish washed up by the tide. In one hand he gripped a sweating beer can; the other rested on his belly, rising and falling under his home T-shirt. “Katya, don’t make me laugh. Your bonuses are a joke. You spend more on gas just getting to your office.”
He took a swig, swallowed loudly, then belched without even covering his mouth. On the enormous plasma screen mounted opposite, a chase scene raged—cars exploding, brakes screaming, characters shouting nonsense. The TV was Stas’s pride: sixty-five inches, 4K, perfect blacks he’d overpaid for by thirty thousand. That television was the center of their universe, a black altar that demanded nightly sacrifices of time and attention.
“I’m not asking you to understand my work,” Ekaterina said, working to keep her voice even, tamping down irritation that bubbled in her chest like boiling water. “I’m asking you to let me finish. I don’t bother you when you play your Tanks.”
“You’re comparing a butt to a finger,” Stas propped himself up on one elbow; the couch squealed. “I’m resting after my shift. I worked my ass off all day, hauling boxes, bending my back. And you sat in a chair sipping coffee. Now I’m home, and I want my wife next to me—hugging me, watching a movie—not pounding on keys in my ear. That sound… tap-tap-tap… it drills into my brain.”
Ekaterina clenched her teeth so hard her jaw hurt. She recognized that tone. It was the opening act. Stas was hunting for a pretext. He wasn’t satisfied with an action film alone—he needed emotional background noise, a spectator who would gasp at the right moments and validate his choice. He needed a little entourage. A court.
She shifted the laptop to the far edge of the small coffee table pressed against the wall, trying to make herself as unobtrusive as possible. The problem was, the old battery had died half a year ago. It held no charge at all. The machine only worked plugged in, tethered by a short black cord to the outlet at the baseboard. Any sharp movement, any jerk of the cable, could shut it down instantly.
“I put on headphones, Stas,” she said, nodding at the headset hanging around her neck. “I can’t even hear notifications. Just hold on a little.”
“I don’t want to hold on!” he suddenly roared, the abrupt jump from lazy complaining to raw aggression making Ekaterina flinch. “What am I, invisible? I came home! Me! I’m here!”
Stas sat up, dropping his feet to the floor. His face reddened; sweat shone on his forehead. He hated being ignored—it felt like a personal insult, spit straight in the soul. He grabbed the remote and hit pause. The frame froze on the giant TV: the hero’s warped face stuck in a ridiculous grimace, like the screen itself was underlining how absurd this was.
Silence fell, broken only by the fan’s low hum inside Ekaterina’s aging laptop.
“You’re turning that off,” Stas said quietly, staring at her with a heavy, unblinking look. “Or I’ll help you.”
“Don’t you dare.” Something inside her tightened with a bad feeling. She jerked her hand toward the touchpad to hit Save. The cursor, as if cursed, crawled slowly and stalled just short of the little disk icon. “Stas, I didn’t save. That’s three hours of work. If it shuts off—”
“I don’t care,” he snapped.
Stas stood. He was a big man, and in the cramped room his body immediately swallowed the space, pushing the air out. He took two steps toward her. Ekaterina instinctively covered the screen with her palm, as though that could protect it from the storm coming.
“Don’t come closer,” she warned, and for the first time steel cut through her voice. “If you touch the computer, I won’t be responsible for what I do.”
“Wow, threats?” Stas sneered, his smile twisted and mean. “You’re threatening me? In my house? A wife telling her husband what to do? You’ve lost the plot, Katya. Got bold with your little reports.”
He moved in until he was right over her. He smelled of stale clothes, cheap deodorant, and alcohol. A smell that used to feel familiar now made her nauseous. He leaned above her, bracing one hand against the wall and blocking any path away.
“Last time I’m saying it: close the lid and get on the couch,” he hissed. “I want to watch the movie. With you. Now.”
Ekaterina looked at the cursor. It was a hair’s breadth from “Save.” Her finger hovered.
“No,” she said, firm.
Stas’s face twitched. He hadn’t expected refusal. He was used to her grumbling—and obeying. Used to his comfort being law. Her “no” pulled the trigger.
He didn’t hit her. He didn’t grab her hands. He did something far more effective and far nastier.
Stas stomped hard on the power cord lying on the floor, then—without even looking at his wife—kicked the power brick away.
The plug popped out of the laptop with a dry snap.
The screen blinked and died. A black glossy void swallowed the tables, the graphs, the numbers, three hours of painstaking work. In the reflection of the dead monitor Ekaterina saw her own face—white, eyes widened with horror and sudden clarity. The fan inside gave a wounded whine and went quiet.
“Oops,” Stas drawled, mocking, staring at the cable on the floor. “Looks like the electricity ran out. What a shame. See? Fate is telling us it’s time to relax.”
He stood there smiling, pleased with his petty victory, not grasping what he’d actually switched off. He thought he’d merely darkened a screen. In reality, he’d extinguished the last of her patience.
Ekaterina stared into the black rectangle where the ceiling light blurred in the glass. Her hands still lay on the keyboard, frozen in the position the shutdown had caught them. Her mind felt empty—sterile empty—like that click had cut power not only to the laptop, but to some vital section of her nervous system that handled fear and smoothing things over. Three days of work. Three sleepless nights. Summary tables checked down to the last kopeck. All of it vanished, dissolved into the instant the current stopped.
“So what are you standing there for?” Stas’s voice smashed into her vacuum, rough and smug. “Swallow your tongue? Or are you mourning your precious Excel sheets?”
He stepped to the table and shoved her shoulder aside like she was furniture in his way. His broad palm, shiny with grease from chips, covered the laptop lid. Ekaterina watched oily smears spread over the matte dark-gray plastic—his fingerprints left behind like a brand.
“Don’t touch it,” she said softly. It wasn’t a plea. It was a warning. But Stas, intoxicated with his power, didn’t hear it.
“Like I give a damn about your junk,” he snorted, but he didn’t remove his hand. On the contrary—he tightened his fingers, yanked the laptop up, and snapped it shut with an ugly crunch. “Get this out of my sight. You turned the living room into an office corner. Home is for resting, Katya. Home is for greeting your husband—not glaring at screens.”
He weighed it in his hand as if testing it, then, with a careless sweeping motion, tossed the laptop toward the couch. Ekaterina lunged, but she was too late. The device flew a couple of meters and landed with a dull thud on the cushions. It didn’t shatter—but the gesture was so degrading, so contemptuous, it was like he’d thrown a dirty rag.
“Are you out of your mind?” she breathed, turning to him slowly. “There’s a hard drive in there. My projects. Do you even understand what you’re doing?”
“Oh, don’t start,” Stas rolled his eyes, radiating how tired he was of her “drama.” “Projects, hard drive… picked up some fancy words. Katya, let’s be honest: all your little reports are pin money. Pennies. Who pays the mortgage in this house, huh? Who drags groceries home by the bag? Me. I’m the one in charge here. I decide when we work and when we watch movies.”
He stepped into her space again, looming, pressing down with that authority he believed he had by default—just because he was a man and earned more at the plant.
“Your salary, sweetheart, is for tights and lipstick,” he went on, stabbing a finger at her chest. “Real money comes from me. I bought that couch. I bought that TV. So I’ve got every right to demand that in the evening my wife sits next to me, right here, and makes the place cozy—instead of clicking away like a court stenographer.”
Ekaterina didn’t answer. Somewhere in her solar plexus, a tight, burning knot began to loosen. The fear drained away. The resentment that had been piling up for years—layer after layer like dust behind a cabinet—suddenly compressed into something solid and heavy, like a stone. She looked at her husband and saw not a partner, but a greasy-lipped stranger with a swollen ego. She saw an enemy.
“Sit down,” Stas ordered, pointing to the spot beside him on the couch—the spot where her tossed laptop lay. “Come on, don’t sulk. We’ll keep watching. Have a sip of beer, relax. I’m doing this for us, idiot—so we spend time like a normal family.”
He turned and flopped back into his place, his thigh pressing down on the edge of her laptop. He didn’t care. To him it had no value because it didn’t entertain him.
“Look at that picture,” Stas grabbed the remote again and resumed the film. The screen flared, flooding the room with neon-blue light. “Blacks are deep, real. Not like on your calculator. I broke my back for half a year for this panel, maxed out my credit card. But now we’ve got a home theater. Sound, color—top class.”
He took a long gulp of beer, closed his eyes in bliss, and patted the couch beside him.
“Come here, kitty. Enough with the attitude. You know I don’t like that. Be a good girl.”
Ekaterina stood in the middle of the room, trembling. But it wasn’t the shake of a crying victim. It was the vibration of an over-tightened string, seconds from snapping and slicing skin. She watched him sprawled there, certain he was right, certain she would swallow the humiliation, pick up her “calculator,” sit beside him, and rest her head on his shoulder—performing obedience.
He’d stolen her work. He’d erased her contribution. He’d physically humiliated her, tossing the thing that was her tool, her link to a world where she was a professional—not “kitty.”
Her gaze slid around the room and stopped at the TV stand. There, among glossy magazines and the air conditioner remote, stood a heavy trophy—solid brass on a marble base. Stas had won it five years earlier at corporate strongman games and was almost as proud of it as he was of the TV. The engraving read: “For Will to Win.”
Heavy. Cold. Sharp-edged.
“You’re right, Stas,” Ekaterina said. Her voice sounded oddly muffled, as if coming through water. “You’re absolutely right. You’re the boss here. And these are your things. And that TV is yours.”
“Now you’re talking,” Stas grunted with satisfaction, eyes still glued to the screen as a shootout started again. “See? You can use your brain when you want to.”
He didn’t see her eyes. He didn’t see her step toward the stand, slowly, like in a dream. He was too busy enjoying the 4K and his victory. He thought he’d won. He didn’t know the war had just stopped being cold.
Stas smacked his lips, set the beer on the floor, and sank deeper into the cushions—absolutely, stupidly sure the conflict was over. In his world, everything had gone exactly as it should: the male growled, marked his territory; the female hissed for show and accepted his dominance. He even decided to ignore her silence by the stand—let her cool off, let her remember who provided her “comfortable life.”
On the screen, the action movie rushed toward its climax. The hero, drenched in fake blood, crawled toward a helicopter beneath dramatic music. Stas turned up the volume with the remote. He wanted the bass in his chest, wanted the explosions loud enough to drown out the sour feeling the laptop incident had left in the apartment.
“Katya, you going to stand there all night?” he shouted without turning. “Go to the kitchen—bring more chips. These are finished. And grab me a beer too, there was one left in the fridge.”
Ekaterina ran her fingers along the cold metal of the trophy. The brass was smooth, slick; the marble base chilled her sweaty palm in a satisfying way. The thing was heavy—at least a kilo and a half. A “real man’s” achievement. “For Will to Win.” Stas had been so proud of this hunk of metal that for six months he made every guest hold it and comment on the weight.
She lifted it.
The weight gave her a strange steadiness. This wasn’t just an award—it was an argument. A solid, undeniable argument in a fight where words had become worthless.
Ekaterina turned toward the screen. Sixty-five inches of glowing, high-tech self-importance. Bright pixels formed an actor’s face twisted in a shout. For Stas, this TV wasn’t a device; it was an idol. An escape hatch into a world where he was tough and important, where problems were solved with gunfire instead of office chairs. A third of their budget bled into it every month.
“Are you deaf?” his irritation sharpened. He began to turn his head, sensing something wrong. Out of the corner of his eye he caught movement—too sharp, too wide for someone just going to fetch chips.
Ekaterina didn’t answer. Words had ended the moment the power plug flew out of her laptop. She stepped forward, gripping the marble base like a grenade. There was no hysteria in her motion, no shrieking panic. Only cold calculation—and the desire to hurt him the way he’d hurt her. Not in the soul, but in the thing that replaced his soul: his ego and his toys.
She swung. Her arm drew a short, hard arc.
“Hey—what the…” Stas started, but he didn’t finish.
The heavy brass trophy tore through the air and slammed straight into the center of the screen.
The impact sounded monstrous. Not the clean ring of breaking dishes—this was a wet, sickening crunch mixed with snapping plastic and the rasp of dying electronics. The trophy punched through the protective glass, drove into the expensive panel, then ricocheted and crashed to the floor, gouging a chunk out of the parquet.
The image on the screen instantly went insane. A thick spiderweb of cracks split the hero’s face, and from the center, dead pixels spread like black blood. Vertical bands—green, pink, white—stabbed through the picture, twitching in a final electronic seizure. A second later the screen flickered, gave a tiny electrical hiss, and died completely. All that remained was a black, mutilated surface with a hole in the middle and fracture-lines radiating outward.
The sound cut off mid-syllable, replaced by a faint transformer hum.
Silence filled the room—absolute, padded silence where you can hear your own blood rushing in your ears.
Stas froze in a ridiculous half-rise: one foot on the floor, the other still on the couch cushion, mouth open, eyes bulging as if they might pop out. His brain refused to process what it was seeing. His pride, his beauty, his “Sony” he’d paid a fortune for—dead. Murdered. Destroyed by the very trophy he loved to show off.
“You…” he breathed. The word stuck, turning into a hoarse rasp. “You… what did you do?”
Ekaterina lowered her arm. Her shoulder ached from the sudden motion, but inside her spread a ringing lightness—as if, along with that screen, she’d shattered the glass dome she’d been suffocating under for years. She looked at the black rectangle, now resembling a tombstone for their marriage, and felt no remorse. Only a dark, calm satisfaction.
“Now we’re even, Stas,” she said in a flat, everyday voice, staring into his glassy eyes. “You switched off my work. I switched off your relaxation.”
She tucked a loose strand of hair back, brushed her hands as if dusting off dirt, and stepped away from the stand, stepping over the trophy on the floor after it had served its final purpose.
“Bitch…” Stas whispered, and his face began to flood red with rage. Shock drained out, replaced by animal fury. “You smashed my TV… You smashed my TV!”
He sprang up, knocking over the beer can. Foam spread over the pale carpet, but he didn’t even notice. He stared at the hole in the screen like it was an open wound in his own body.
“The credit—” he moaned, clutching his head. “I’ve got two years left to pay… You piece of—do you understand how much that cost?!”
Ekaterina paused in the doorway. She wasn’t running. She was simply leaving the room, because there was nothing left for her to do in there. The conversation was over. The period had been placed—fat, black, irreversible—right in the center of his 4K.
“I don’t care, Stas,” she threw over her shoulder without looking back. “I don’t care about anything anymore. Enjoy the silence. Isn’t that what you wanted? For me to stop clicking keys? Well—now it’s quiet.”
She stepped into the hall, feeling his stare burning into her back—full of hatred and helplessness. Behind her, in the living room, a storm was gathering, but she didn’t care. She knew the worst had already happened, and there was nothing left to fear.
The first thing that broke the padded quiet of the apartment wasn’t a human scream, but furniture tipping over. Stas, shaking off the paralysis, lunged for the ruined TV so sharply he knocked the coffee table aside. He dropped to his knees before the black, mangled screen, dragging trembling hands over the crack-web as if he could heal dead electronics by touch.
“No… no, no, no!” he muttered, his voice snapping into a shriek. “What have you done? Do you even know what this costs? It was a—this was a Sony! Japanese build!”
He whirled toward the doorway where his wife had vanished, and his face twisted into an expression Ekaterina had never seen before—a mask of pure, undiluted hatred. There wasn’t a single drop of regret for what he’d done, no hint of understanding. Only the rage of an owner whose favorite toy had been taken.
“Stop!” he screamed, leaping up. “Get back here, you—! You think you can just walk away?”
He charged into the bedroom, stepping over the laptop’s power brick he’d kicked ten minutes earlier. He burst in ready to smash, break, pound “guilt” into her with his fists if he had to—but what he saw made him brake on the threshold.
Ekaterina wasn’t hiding. She wasn’t curled in a corner sobbing into a pillow, wasn’t barricading the door with a dresser. She was sitting in a deep chair by the window, legs crossed, calmly scrolling news on her phone. Her face was eerily serene. In the blue light of her screen, it looked carved from marble.
“You… you’re sitting?” Stas choked, outraged, panting hard. “You smashed something worth a hundred and fifty thousand and you’re sitting on your phone? What are you—sick? A psycho?”
“I’m resting, Stas,” she replied without lifting her eyes. “That’s what you wanted, right? For me to rest. So here—quiet, calm. No tables, no reports.”
“What kind of ‘resting’ are you talking about?!” He lunged toward her, looming, spraying spit. “You owe me! Hear me? You’re going to work a year for free to pay me back! I’ll put you on a tab, got it? You won’t see a penny of your pathetic salary until you buy me the exact same new one!”
Ekaterina finally looked up. Slowly. She met his gaze—and there was no fear in it. Only such cold emptiness that Stas involuntarily took a step back. It was the look you give an empty space, a stain on wallpaper, a pesky fly.
“I don’t owe you anything,” she said clearly, separating each word. “You destroyed my work. I destroyed your leisure. We’re square. And the loan… the loan is your problem, sweetheart. The contract is in your name. Pay it yourself.”
“I’ll—” Stas raised a trembling fist. He wanted to hit her, smear that calm across the wall, drag fear back into her, make her convenient again.
“Go on,” Ekaterina didn’t even blink. “Hit me. Just remember: if you touch me, I’ll stand up, go to the kitchen, take the meat mallet and smash your console. Then your fishing rod. Then I’ll slash your tires. You know me, Stas. I’m very methodical. I’ll finish what I start.”
Stas’s hand hung in the air. He stared at her and, for the first time in seven years of marriage, realized he didn’t know this woman. This wasn’t the Katya who apologized when dinner burned. Not the Katya who endured his drunk Friday nights. This was a stranger—an enemy—sitting in his chair, in his apartment, laying down rules.
He lowered his hand slowly. Hitting her now would be pointless. She had broken—but not the way he wanted. She had broken in a way that couldn’t be fixed.
“You’re not living here anymore,” he hissed, backing away. “Pack your crap and get out. I don’t want to see you here by morning.”
“No,” she answered simply, returning to her phone.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Stas blinked.
“I’m not going anywhere. This apartment is mine just as much as yours. We’re married—property is shared. Like it or not, we’ll live here together. Just… we’ll live differently now.”
She flicked her thumb, scrolling past another meme, the corner of her mouth lifting in a barely-there smirk.
“You won’t get a meal from me,” Stas spat, groping for some sore spot. “I won’t give you a cent for food. Eat your instant noodles.”
“Perfect,” she nodded. “And I won’t wash your socks or listen to your nonsense about ‘hard work.’ Everyone for themselves, Stas. Like roommates.”
Stas stood in the middle of the room, fists clenching and unclenching. He felt spat on. He had no levers left. Shouting didn’t work. Threats didn’t work. His physical strength was useless against her total indifference. He lost the moment he decided he could humiliate someone who depended on him and get away with it.
“Idiot,” he threw the last insult, full of powerless rage. “A complete idiot.”
He spun around and stormed out. Ekaterina heard him trample back to the living room, heard him fussing over the dead TV again, muttering curses. Then came the fridge opening, the hiss of another beer can.
Stas sat on the couch facing the black hole where the screen had been. He took a long gulp, staring at his warped reflection in the cracked panel. The apartment that an hour earlier had felt like his fortress was now a cold mausoleum. In the next room sat an enemy—an enemy he would have to share a kitchen, a bathroom, and a toilet with. An enemy who would no longer bring him tea or ask how his day went.
In the bedroom, Ekaterina set her phone down. Her hands were still trembling, but now it was the aftershock of adrenaline and tension. She looked at the closed door. She didn’t feel sorry about the TV, the laptop, or the relationship. For the first time in a long time, she felt a strange, twisted relief.
The fight was over. But the war—a quiet, domestic, grinding war meant to destroy nerves one day at a time—was only beginning. And in that war, nobody planned on taking prisoners.
Ekaterina reached for the book on her nightstand—a book she hadn’t been able to finish for half a year because of his constant demands—and began to read, savoring the perfect, dead silence of an apartment where the television had finally been switched off.