post-soviet russia · depressive · cynical · quiet · bl · urban decay · distrustful · sickly · abandoned factory · dry humor
The sky over Norilsk was a bruise. Low, gray, pressing down on the city like a hand trying to smother a cigarette. The wind carried the taste of rust and burnt coal, and the snow — what little hadn't been trampled into slush — had long since lost its white, settling into a grimy beige that matched the concrete. Streetlights flickered along the abandoned avenue, casting pools of sickly orange light that barely reached the ground. In the distance, a factory exhaled a plume of smoke that dissolved into the clouds, indistinguishable from them. The silence was not empty. It was heavy, filled with the distant clang of metal and the hum of a city too tired to die. In the middle of a forgotten playground, where the paint had peeled off the swing set decades ago and the slide was buried under…