Andrei Z.

Joined October 2022

96 stories

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Runner-Up Place in Ode to Ordinary Challenge

Stories (96)

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My Year, in Prattling and Photos. Top Story - January 2026.
It's been a year since... last year. Ironically, it seems I've found myself a new tradition of getting sick during the New Year holidays. At least, this year (that is, this inter-year period remarkable for its shiny decorations in the streets and houses, and closed supermarkets and pretty much everything), I'm doubtlessly doing better: I've managed to come visit my friends in Germany for Christmas (which I failed to do last year) and—after having some good quality time eating machanka, playing Munchkin and swinging machetes (the last one obviously crept into this checklist only for the sake of the phonological form)—I came back home via proverbial Deutche Bahn and probably less known Schweizerische Bundesbahnen, my body hosting a family of viruses, virions and who knows what other tiny critters somewhere inside my chest.
By Andrei Z.8 days ago in Photography
—brings no relief—
Should we have stayed? could we have fought? Or is this land condemned, foredoomed? So broken, can we be restored? * Scattered away, apart, abroad,
By Andrei Z.2 months ago in Poets
It's always sunny above clouds
It's always sunny above clouds, Granted, it's not night, that is Granted, you're on the right side of the globe, On a plane, off to somewhere.
By Andrei Z.3 months ago in Poets
things we have in common
Rooted deep inside Our brains, bones. Omnipresent. I can hear our–oh, how distant?—synchronous limb-pop. ------------------
By Andrei Z.3 months ago in Poets
Autumnal Hymn. Top Story - September 2025.
I start to notice: Dead leaves, colder breeze, And my knees sometimes give in To the weariness, built up by The miles and months elapsed.
By Andrei Z.4 months ago in Poets
Summerized
Summerized in four words: Sweltering, sweating, swept away. Sun rays penetrating skin: Red skin, shed skin, and was as if reborn
By Andrei Z.7 months ago in Poets
Parallel Lines
Parallel lines. Look over your shoulder Finicky ties. Crossing the border Someday mid June, wishing for nothing This soil is jejune. This story is clumsy
By Andrei Z.8 months ago in Poets
Tourism Police
Tourism police Arrest these lads They've drunk too much They're bustling down the streets And puke and cuss such a disgrace
By Andrei Z.9 months ago in Poets
Apples
These deflated eyeballs crave some fresh air. Millions of sharp an' teeny-tiny needles piercing their orbits, The Antarctic and the Arctic deserts on the face
By Andrei Z.9 months ago in Poets
>=∞
I take another chord, but ain't getting any closer. Close the closet. Hide my body. Folks were talking, chomping, slobbering. Ah, what a snobbery. Talking business, gossips, made-up stories. My aberrational thoughtflood would sweat with blood from this frowst, these circular movements of hundreds of mouths, many months ahead so fed up, yet so thirsty. The motion of waves, the ocean of blurry, unshaped, misaligned, malign, tepid words. The cramps in my feet, dammit. I'd traffic in the worlds of yesterweeks, yesteryears, only give me a chance. What's the current currency? A few crumbs of bread on my tongue is enough to survive today, so 'til tomorrow I'm fine.
By Andrei Z.11 months ago in Poets
Behemoth
Was it a coincidence that Behemoth felt an insuppressible urge to empty his stomach of his half-digested dinner right the very moment the fateful (or rather fatal) question was uttered? Daisy, a young woman of 30 or so, delivered her question, for some reason, very ingratiatingly. For one, it could be that she, surrounded by all these elderly gentlemen (not counting Behemoth himself, who was ancient as he used to enunciate with an air of self-importance bordering on narcissism), had a pressing concern that her life was passing by and she didn't want to stay a forever secretary loaded with a vast and vague list of responsibilities ranging from making coffee for these balding gentlemen to keeping their weekly meetings efficient enough for the clients not to choose Scumbag & Sons over their company by reviving the periodically fizzling out conversations at the round table with unimportant and sometimes honestly stupid remarks or questions. These men in front of her were the men of power, quite limited power, she knew that, but the staircase to success is made of steps, and she is well aware that one needs to climb them up one (maximum two) at a time. Daisy wanted a manager's chair. And then she wanted to become the company director eventually. She wanted a malleable and preferably also rich husband, a summerhouse at the seaside, and all imaginable life comforts because, well, she deserved all these. That's what the purring obsequiousness in her voice could mean. Or it could altogether be something completely else. Women are mysterious creatures.
By Andrei Z.12 months ago in Humor
Free Speech. Top Story - January 2025.
When they say that nothing is free, they obviously mean the following: nothing except for free speech, an indisputable privilege of a democratic community that we’ve been lucky to build over the centuries of grueling toil. It’s just that some things are implied but not spoken out loud. So, free speech is free by definition. I — a well-educated young man, brought up with a sharp sense of justice, distaste for rudeness, and a certain feeling of responsibility for what we, human beings, so to speak supreme representatives of the Animal kingdom, are to leave behind us on this planet — I well knew this unspoken rule, this recognized by all right to speak up and to be heard. Imagine my surprise, my indignation, when I learned first-hand that when they say nothing is free, this is exactly what they mean, and there is no exception from this rule, and there are no hidden, implicit implications; sorry for this tautology.
By Andrei Z.12 months ago in Fiction