Irina's story
'My Goals in Life' was our next writing assignment, and nothing ambitious was implied. Next day we had to read the texts out loud, one by one. We didn't have all day for that...
The crunch of dry gravel underfoot. As if you were walking over the dead beetles, their empty shells cracking under your soles. The gravel was scattered the other day on the icy road but there is no ice no more. The street is now bleached by sunlight. You’d want to take off your hat. And in front of the kindergarten — a woman with a broom sweeping away the stones’s corpses from the path.
A pack of white old-timers are sitting at a worn-down table in front of a kebab shop. Thin hair. Unshaved saggy cheeks. T-shirts and sleeveless denim jackets. Smoking, drinking bagged tea from small scuffed glasses, watching the street. A bluetooth speaker is placed on the table, a small orange cylinder nevertheless capable of producing deep bass, similar to those weapons of audio assault that any group of teenagers would carry with them nowadays. The men at the table aren’t teenagers no more. But the beat is thumping.