Igor didn't really expect anything good from this job: an abandoned boiler room in an industrial zone, colleagues with blacklists—what kind of goals or objectives could there possibly be?
I need to get drunk, Igor thinks, heading up to your neighbors.
One-two-three-four, the main thing is not to mix up the floor.
Hear that noise upstairs? That's not kids playing around, that's gunshots.

Alexey Salnikov is a Russian poet and prose writer. He has published in the almanac 'Babylon' and the magazines 'Vozdukh', 'Ural', 'Uralskaya Nov' and others. His novel 'Petrovs in and Around the Flu' was shortlisted for the 'Big Book' and 'NOS' awards and became one of the most discussed books of 2017.