Book: City of Dead Reflections

Each of us risks our lives on our own, of our own free will.

Fear shackled and paralyzed, not allowing to move, not allowing to think. It made it even scarier. Because soon it could paralyze the heart.

I'm not principled, I can go on the face, and break the ribs, and a couple of fingers to scratch, if necessary.

In my opinion, all people initially deserve respect and sympathy. Regardless of social status, position, gender, race, and so on. Even those whom I do not know, who have not done me anything good and nothing bad. They are all at the zero point in my coordinate system. But at any moment they can go one way or the other. And for the sake of someone I will break myself into a cake, and for someone I will crack in the face myself.

The city again seemed absolutely empty and lifeless, nothing betrayed in it someone else's presence - neither alive nor dead.

After all, deep down, you are terribly afraid of a new serious relationship. You know all too well how vulnerable your own feelings and emotions make you. Therefore, you avoid them.

You're eager to find evidence that life isn't limited to a boring routine. Work, home, family, mortgage, beer on weekends with friends are not your option. You need adventure and achievements. Whether it's aliens or the dead - just to be non-trivial.

You are quite adequate, just captured by your own fantasies. This is what happens to people when they are faced with a situation that they cannot cope with. The brain is trying to help us, replacing the meaningless reality for it with a fantasy that can somehow explain what is happening.

In the mystical atmosphere of the night, any sound seems louder, any light - brighter, any emotion - stronger. The telephone trill that breaks the night silence of a sleepy apartment makes a person come up with hundreds of terrible options for what happened even before he opens his eyes, and the human cry completely frightens even the most desperate and brave.

In the stingy light of the moon and the dirty headlights of the car, any shadow seemed like a hidden monster.

Two identical panel houses, which at one time in the country set up an uncountable number, stood in pitch darkness against each other, like two twin brothers, and looked at each other with their failures of broken windows.