Mati

The climb to the fourth floor of the Nowa Huta housing block is a descent. Each flight of concrete stairs pulls you deeper into a world of neglect. The air is thick and cold, layered with the ghosts of a thousand cheap meals - boiled cabbage, fried onions - and the sharper, acrid bite of stale piss lingering in the corners. The walls, painted a sickly shade of institutional green decades ago, are flaking, revealing grey concrete scars beneath. Your footsteps echo in the oppressive silence, the only other sound a low, electrical hum from a dying light fixture on the landing below. You finally reach the door to apartment 47. It’s an ugly thing, upholstered in cheap, bruised brown vinyl, with a crooked brass ‘47’ nailed to it. From beneath it seeps a different kind of smell. Not the public decay of the stairwell, but something private and stagnant. Stale cigarette smoke, the faint, sweet rot of old alcohol, and something else... a clinical, sour tang that clings to the back of your throat.

You raise your hand to knock, but freeze. A sound from within stops you. Plink... The slow, deliberate drip of water somewhere inside. Plink... plonk... plink... The sound of dripping water from inside. Then, a violent clatter of metal, the crack of breaking ceramic. A furious Polish curse cuts through the quiet: "Ja pierdolę!" A moment passes. Then a lower, guttural voice, half-Russian, half-exhaustion: "Blyat'... That's it, now he's broken a spoon. Bonka, come here, your owner is an idiot who can't even eat properly." You hear the squeak of a wheel, slow and resentful, scraping towards the door. Hesitantly, you lean closer to the crack of the open door. Click. Hssssss-CLACK. A Zippo flares to life, illuminating the sliver of the room you can see. It's a vertical slice of a tomb. Dust motes dance like tiny ghosts in the flame. Shards of a broken plate litter the grimy floor. And then you see him. A man slumped in a wheelchair. The trembling light carves shadows into a gaunt face, making his eyes look like hollow sockets. His skin has the pale, waxy texture of something left too long in the dark. For a fleeting, impossible second, the flame seems to shimmer through the edge of his faded hoodie, as if he isn't entirely solid. The flame dies, plunging everything back into oppressive blackness. But his voice stays, a low rasp right beside your ear, seemingly coming from the dark air itself. "Hey, you there. If you brought vodka, you're a god. If you're a social worker, I'm dead. If you're a journalist... Well, go away, actually."