“Why Did You Destroy the Apartment? How Is Your Sister Supposed to Live There Now?” My Mother Screamed at Me…
The door slammed so hard that Mom’s favorite porcelain elephant figurine fell from the little shelf beneath the hallway mirror.
I didn’t even turn around. I simply clenched my teeth and yanked my bag toward me while my mother held onto it as though it were the last thread connecting me to this house.
“You’re not going anywhere!” Her voice, piercing like a siren, dug into my back. “You have nowhere to live! What are you going to do, sleep at the train station? And with what? Your precious pride?”
I jerked the handle sharply. The fabric made a tearing sound, but the bag remained in my hands.
Inside was everything I had managed to grab during ten minutes accompanied by her screaming: my documents, laptop, a couple of T-shirts, and my phone with its cracked screen—thank you, Kristina, for yesterday’s “accidental” shove.
“I’m not staying here and watching all of you celebrate my betrayal.”
Mom froze.
Her face twisted—not with remorse.
No.
With fury that I had dared to say aloud what everyone else had been silently pretending not to see.
A Memory: The Wedding That Would Never Happen
Three months earlier, Artyom and I had been standing in a home improvement store choosing wallpaper for our future apartment.
“Maybe these?” he asked, pointing at a sample I absolutely hated.
“Are you serious? It looks like dried blood.”
He laughed and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“All right, all right. We’ll get whatever you want.”
At the time, I thought, He’s so easygoing.
I was wrong.
He wasn’t easygoing.
He simply didn’t care.
Because the apartment, the renovation, the wedding—all of it mattered to me.
And to him?
All that time, there had been Kristina.
My younger sister.
The same sister who was now sobbing loudly behind the wall, performing the role of an innocent victim.
“You have any idea what you’ve done?” Mom hissed, blocking the doorway. “She’s three months pregnant! If something happens to the baby because of this stress…”
“And what if something happens to me?” I asked, clenching my fists.
“To you?” Mom snorted. “You’re made of iron.”
Yes.
Iron.
Because if I had been an ordinary person, I probably would have broken the moment I discovered that:
Artyom had been sleeping with Kristina for six months.
She was pregnant.
Everyone knew.
And everyone kept quiet.
Apparently because they “didn’t want to upset me.”
“How much of my money did you take?” I suddenly asked, staring directly into Mom’s eyes.
She blinked.
“What money?”
“The money that was in my drawer. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Her eyes shifted to the side.
“You probably spent it yourself and forgot.”
Of course.
How convenient.
I turned and walked into the hallway.
An entire family council had already assembled there.
My father stood silently, looking like a partisan on a secret mission.
Aunt Lida had her hands planted on her hips and an expression suggesting I had personally stolen her last pension payment.
And then there was…
Yes.
Of course.
Kristina.
She was sniffling dramatically with both hands pressed against her stomach.
“Are you happy now?” Aunt Lida hissed. “Look what you’ve done to your sister! And what if something happens to the baby?”
I slowly turned toward Kristina.
“And what if something happens to mine?”
Silence.
Aunt Lida went pale.
“Your… what?”
“My baby.”
I smiled.
Coldly.
“Artyom, by the way, has been sleeping with me this whole time too. Without protection. So who knows? Maybe you’ll end up with two grandchildren. You could save money on the christening.”
Mom practically jumped and clutched her chest.
“You… you’re lying!”
“Check.”
I turned around and walked out.
Behind me came screams, arguments, and finally my father’s voice.
“Leave her alone… Let her calm down.”
He was the only one who didn’t lecture me.
Because he knew.
I wasn’t coming back.
The elevator descended painfully slowly.
I squeezed my bag in both hands.
Where was I going?
For now, anywhere far away from them.
The elevator felt as though it were crawling downward.
I pressed my forehead against the cold metal wall and tried not to start sobbing where the neighbors could see me.
They had probably heard our entire “family performance” anyway.
Outside, rain poured down mercilessly.
I walked without paying attention to where I was going, clutching my phone in one hand.
Only one question circled endlessly through my mind.
Where?
The train station?
I didn’t even have a ticket.
Friends?
After discovering that apparently half of them had known about Artyom and Kristina?
Absolutely not.
Eventually, Google found me a cheap hotel in an industrial district.
An hour on the subway and two transfers through pouring rain later, I found myself in a room that smelled of damp walls and cheap air freshener.
I collapsed onto the hard bed without even removing my soaked sweater.
My phone exploded with notifications.
Mom — 12 missed calls:
“Come back. We need to talk! You misunderstood everything!”
Kristina — 3 voice messages:
Sobbing and something about how “we never wanted to hurt you.”
Artyom — 1 message:
“Where are the apartment keys?”
I muted the phone.
And then something hit me.
I didn’t have a home anymore.
The apartment we had been preparing “together” for our wedding was now their love nest.
My room in my parents’ home was now simply the place where everyone had betrayed me.
Even the emergency money I had saved was gone.
Thanks, Mom.
I closed my eyes.
Fragments of their words floated through my head.
“She’s your sister!”
“You have to understand…”
“Artyom is just confused!”
Nonsense.
My phone rang in the middle of the night.
I flinched when I saw the name on the screen.
Grandma Vera.
“Lera, are you alive?” her raspy voice demanded without so much as a greeting.
I didn’t answer.
I only gripped the phone tighter and burst into tears.
“All right, don’t talk. I understand everything,” Grandma muttered. “I only heard about this whole Kama Sutra situation yesterday from your Aunt Lida. If I’d known earlier, I would’ve broken all their legs.”
A laugh escaped me through the tears.
“Where are you?”
“At a hotel.”
“Do you have money?”
“A little.”
I heard noises through the phone as though she were searching for something.
“Listen carefully. I own a small plot of land outside the city. There’s a little house on it. Calling it a house is generous—it’s practically a shack. But it has a roof. Water comes from a well, electricity from a generator. I never told anyone about it. Not even your mother.”
I sat upright on the bed.
“Why do you have it?”
“Your grandfather built it for fishing. Then he died, and the land just sat there. I’m giving it to you. Sell it if you want. Live there if you want. But listen…”
Her voice dropped.
“Your mother and Kristina are already dividing up your share of the ‘family’ apartment. And that bastard Artyom is trying to change the mortgage paperwork. If you don’t hold onto something now, they’ll devour you alive.”
I tightened my grip on the phone.
“Come see me tomorrow. We’ll sign the gift deed.”
I lay back and stared at the ceiling.
Somewhere in “our” apartment, Artyom was probably already holding Kristina in his arms while the two of them discussed what furniture they should buy to replace everything I had damaged.
And me?
I stared at a crack in the hotel ceiling.
And for the first time in twenty-four hours, I smiled.
Now I had a plan.
The key still fit the lock.
I froze in the doorway of “our” apartment and listened.
Silence.
Nobody was home.
Apparently Artyom had spent the night with Kristina, confident that I was somewhere hiding in shame.
He was wrong.
The hallway smelled of fresh paint.
They had already started covering up my little “artwork” on the walls.
Unopened packages of new laminate flooring were stacked on the floor.
They were clearly in a hurry to finish decorating their little love nest.
I placed my bag on the floor and took out:
A hammer—I had borrowed it from Dad’s garage.
A can of black matte spray paint—perfect for graffiti.
A pair of large, sharp scissors.
The first victim was the hallway mirror.
The same mirror in which Artyom and I had once laughed together while trying on wedding accessories.
Bang.
The glass cracked into a spiderweb of glittering fragments.
Another blow.
Now only tiny shards remained.
“Much better,” I whispered.
I continued.
The kitchen.
I used the scissors to cut the brand-new tablecloth into strips.
I had chosen that tablecloth myself.
And now she would have been sitting at it.
The living room.
I poured paint over the sofa.
Beige.
Generic.
I had hated it from the day we bought it.
The bedroom.
I shredded the bedsheets.
Silk.
A gift from Mom “for our wedding night.”
But the most important part was the bathroom.
Hanging on the wall was a heart-shaped towel holder.
A gift from Kristina.
“So there will always be love in your home!”
I ripped it from the wall and hammered it into the floor.
“For good luck.”
Then came the finishing touch.
Using black paint, I wrote across the wall:
“Enjoy your bath.”
I looked around.
The apartment was no longer “perfect.”
Now it was real.
Covered with cracks, chips, and traces of rage.
Just like me.
I walked out without looking back.
My phone vibrated.
Grandma.
“The gift deed is ready. The keys to the shack are waiting. Have you decided what you’re going to do with it?”
I smiled and typed my answer.
“I’m staying.”
Morning in the Shack
The first thing I felt was cold.
Grandma hadn’t exaggerated.
There was no heating in the house.
I wrapped myself in a blanket I had taken from “that” apartment and walked over to the tiny window.
Outside were woods.
Fog.
Silence.
No mothers.
No sisters.
No Artyoms.
My phone exploded again.
Mom — 25 missed calls:
“Have you completely lost your mind?! Who raised you to behave like this?!”
Kristina — voice messages filled with crying:
“How could you destroy our home?!”
Artyom — 1 message:
“You’re a psychopath. I’m suing you for property damage.”
I switched off the phone.
On the creaking wooden table lay three things.
The gift deed for the land.
Officially mine.
An envelope containing money.
Grandma had written on it:
“For your first chainsaw.”
And a note:
“Lera, if you decide to stay, the well is in the yard and there’s firewood under the shed. You won’t die. If you change your mind, sell the place and get as far away from everyone as possible. Your choice.”
I picked up an axe and went outside.
The firewood needed splitting.
I had never done it before.
On the first swing, the axe got stuck in the log.
On the second, it bounced back and almost hit my leg.
By the third swing, my hands were shaking and sweat covered my back.
But I did it.
I laughed.
For the first time in a month, genuinely.
That evening, they arrived.
Mom stepped out of the car wearing a fur coat.
It was five degrees above zero in the forest, but apparently appearances mattered.
Kristina climbed out after her, pale, with suspiciously dramatic dark circles that looked as though they had been carefully drawn beneath her eyes.
Artyom remained in the car.
Apparently he was afraid I might finish him off too.
“You have to pay us back for the renovation!” Mom shouted. “We filed a police report!”
“What money?” I asked, leaning casually against the axe. “You said I spent all my money myself, remember?”
Kristina burst into tears.
“How can you live here?! This is the end of the world!”
I looked back at the little shack.
At the forest.
At the thin column of smoke rising from the chimney.
“At least it’s honest.”
Mom suddenly went quiet.
Then she slowly exhaled.
“You… you’re really going to stay here?”
I turned around and walked toward the house.
“Try throwing me out.”
That night, I managed to light the fireplace.
It took effort, but eventually I succeeded.
I wrapped myself in the blanket and opened my laptop.
On the screen was a listing I had just written:
“Forest shack for rent. Tourists, bloggers, runaway brides welcome. Price negotiable.”
I smiled and added:
“P.S. Includes an axe, a well, silence—and absolutely no relatives.”
I was sitting on the porch, drinking scalding tea from a metal mug, when something cracked loudly among the tree branches.
“Well, bear?” I shouted into the darkness, gripping the axe. “Come to finish me off?”
Something emerged from the bushes.
A delivery courier.
“Lera Sokolova?”
I lowered the axe.
“You have a package.”
Inside the box were:
A new phone.
I had dropped the old one into the well a week earlier.
An envelope containing money.
Three times more than I had asked for a week’s rent.
And a note.
“Your blog about ‘life after everyone’ is brilliant. Would you be interested in signing a contract with a media agency? P.S. The axe looks great on camera. Excellent branding.”
I burst out laughing and glanced at the phone screen.
157 unread messages.
The first was from Mom.
“You posted our family drama all over the internet?!”
The second was from Kristina.
“You can have your Artyom back. He…”
I deleted everything without finishing the message.
Then I dialed only one number.
“Grandma,” I said when she answered. “I changed my mind about selling the land.”
“Good,” she replied hoarsely. “I was already stocking up on popcorn. I’m waiting for your mother to show up screaming about ‘family honor.’”
“Let her try.”
I nudged the axe with my foot.
“I have followers now.”
I smiled.
“And lawyers from the agency.”
The wind carried the smell of woodsmoke from the chimney.
Somewhere deep in the forest, an owl hooted.
For the first time in a very long time…
I was finally home.