Raise the flags of the motherland!… From the fire escape came the measured, orderly, staccato beat of footsteps. Boots. Heavy, sturdy boots—the kind the Motherland issued to soldiers and police. These days, no one could mistake that sound. Its orderliness and inevitability were meant to strike fear in wrongdoers and pride in law-abiding citizens. I remembered it from childhood—Victory Day parades, ranks of mirror-bright boots coming down hard on warm asphalt—Wham! Wham!—echo snapping off the walls, mingling with balloons and the triumphant blare of trumpets beneath streaming flags… And now I—who’d never done anything worse than paint on a wall—felt my heart pounding in my throat to that same rhythm, threatening to leap out. "They won’t have me," flashed through my mind—a desperate, defiant thought, as if I were about to fight them. The brave guardians of order, packed into black armored suits, their faces hidden behind impenetrable helmets. Those helmets made each of them look like faceless terracotta warriors, buried with their emperor in some distant antiquity. And the sound of their steps was just as heavy, inevitable, as if each of them were made of stone…
hey, my story took third place in a writing competition on @writersblockds.bsky.social
shared third, so it kinda feels like fourth.
joy is sharing the place with a bit of disappointment.
still, proud of the piece and grateful it resonated with readers.
#jupelwrites #WritingContest #AmWriting
