Forced Coexistence*

***

My husband is in the military, and recently he was assigned to serve in a closed town. As an officer’s wife, I followed him.

The town we arrived in is primitive. All the buildings are the same—blocky nine‑story apartment buildings and old Khrushchev-era housing. Basically, one big barracks. There’s no trace of architectural refinement there, nor of capitalism. One market, one department store, one “good” restaurant, and a bunch of various bars—everything a military man needs for life. The atmosphere in the town feels like the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the living conditions are just as bad: electricity is constantly cut off, cold water every other day, heating once every three days. All the delights of perestroika…

One such “perestroika-style” evening, I was cooking dinner. My husband was out at the training grounds, and the clock showed ten in the evening. And then the lights started flickering again. I looked out the window—the same thing was happening all over the town. I swore in frustration, fed up with all of it, turned my head—and went numb. In the hallway, opposite the front door, under the ceiling, a man was hanging from a rope. He appeared exactly at the moment when the lights went out, convulsing as if he had just hanged himself, his whole body arching… The sight looked like something straight out of an American horror movie.

This went on for about two minutes. My brain produced a strange reaction—throughout all this time, I felt no fear. I just stood there and looked at the hanged man. Then the light went out completely. I looked out the window—there was light in all the houses, but not in mine. And that’s when a wave of terror began to overwhelm me. The fear that hadn’t been there at first started spreading through my body; my teeth were chattering.

There was no light—the man was hanging there. His slippers had fallen off, and a stool was lying nearby, one I didn’t even have in my apartment. I stared at him wide‑eyed and didn’t know what to do. I started looking for some explanation for what I was seeing. Only one thing came to mind—a neighbor had come in and hanged himself in my apartment. I didn’t really focus on the mystical aspect of what was happening, because it all looked SO real that I was ready to believe in a suicidal neighbor who had come to my place to hang himself with his own stool.

About five minutes passed, and the light came back on. The man DID NOT DISAPPEAR! Or rather, he did—but only a couple of minutes later. He began to dissipate like fog, and I just stood there, afraid to move, until my husband came home. In tears and sobbing, I told him everything. Seeing my state, he believed me, of course. The next day we called a priest and had the apartment blessed. It didn’t help. That same evening, the situation repeated itself—only this time my husband also witnessed it. And the next day, and the next… And it’s been going on like this for two weeks.

You don’t need a fortune teller to understand that someone took their own life in this apartment. But why did he appear only now? For three months there was nothing, and then since December, every day, he’s been hanging under the ceiling. What are we supposed to do about him? He appears for about five minutes and disappears, as if he’d never been there.

The scariest part is that they don’t want to change our apartment. They say: live where you were assigned; there’s no better option. In the end, my husband and I found an alternative solution—we just leave the apartment in the evenings at that time and go for a walk. Or we simply stand in the stairwell and smoke. But that doesn’t make it any easier. We know he’s still there, hanging…