Whose Eyes Are These?
by Maksym Popovych
I jump over a piece of wreckage. It was our sofa, recognizable by its scroll arms. Now they are burnt. The fumes sting my eyes. The smell assails my nostrils, squeezing out the ability to think.
I know I need to do something. Something useful. Something logical. But I’m just a... The thought thrums at the back of my mind. I refuse to let it take shape. The more I suppress it, though, the clearer it becomes: my family is buried under the rubble.
The odds are slim that they’ve survived the missile hit and are presently wriggling like worms under the collapsed building. It’s unclear how I ended up on top of the debris. Our flat isn’t — wasn’t — even on a high floor. This is the first time in my life that I’m facing a problem of this magnitude: look for my family myself (how?) or try to get help (from whom?).
The truth is, I’m just so frightened. ‘A scared little boy,’ Mum used to say whenever I quivered, even slightly. Trembling, I want to run away. The neighbours talked and talked about the invasion. How it was inevitable. How it was better to flee before it started. My family paid it no heed. Dad said it was all a bluff. I remember wondering what ‘bluff’ meant.
Something crackles underneath. The heap I’m standing on isn’t too high — I can safely jump down. The scale of the destruction catches up with me. The building has been reduced to a paste-like substance, a mince of bricks and someone’s recently purchased furniture. Here and there, the wreckage is still licked by flames. Even through the still-burning fumes, an intense smell betrays the secret ingredient that glues the debris together: human flesh.
In a daze, I trundle down my street, familiar buildings still there, but their facades blackened by the clouds of smoke billowing from the rubble that used to be our apartment block. Fresh fire mixes with old fire. The burning smell is too much, physically painful. I want to escape it more than anything. The sky is overcast. The clouds seem too thick for March. But are these clouds or smoke? There’s no way to tell.
I realise now that the unusual quiet was, in fact, the result of my temporary deafness. Now it is loud. There’s an incessant thumping sound. It reverberates off the ground under my feet. The thuds are pierced by another, higher-pitched sound, almost a whistle. The cacophony disorients me.
People scream somewhere close. I start running, an idiotic impulse. Here’s the hospital on my right, still intact. A knot of men by the entrance. Should I run to them? I remember that I hate my doctor. Then I realise that I’m not even up-do-date as to what stage of the invasion we’re on. Perhaps the invaders are already in the city. Come to think of it, the men at the entrance seem unusually calm.
Before the hit, my family talked about everything coming to an end soon. ‘We’re entering a negotiation phase,’ Dad said yesterday.
‘They can’t go on for very long anymore,’ Mum agreed.
Sophia only babbled something, like she always does, little spit bubbles forming at the corners of her mouth.
Wait, do I see it right? It’s my friend Boris! He looks lost. Why is he staring at that metal box across the road? I call out to him, but his eyes are still glued to that blackened clump of metal. Wait, is it...? I am now standing next to Boris. I call him again. Realising he’s deafened, as I was earlier, I touch him lightly. He jumps away from me with a scowl.
The metal box across the road is Boris’s family’s car. Only now it looks like one of those strange kitchen utensils that Mum uses for draining pasta: peppered with holes, all of the same size and shape. I look inside the car. Yes, three silhouettes inside: Boris’s mum and dad in the front, his sister in the back. They’ve been burned. Now they’re cold flesh. I hope they died from the bullets before the car caught fire. There’s nothing I can do for Boris at the moment, so I continue wobbling down the street.
At the next bend in the road, the sea opens to my gaze. It is grey, cold, uninviting: I shiver. But the air is clearer. The smell of burning loses its grip a tiny bit. The scent of the cold sea still rules these parts. Its boisterous rumble is familiar, pleasant to my ears.
Someone calls me. I wheel around. I don’t recognise them from a distance. It’s the bloody burnt smell. I need to come closer and sniff them. The man says, ‘Come on, boy.’ Then: ‘Good doggo.’ He raises a gun. I will see my family again.
Copyright © 2026 by Maksym Popovych
