On Friday, as soon as they finished listening to Andropov’s first speech as a General Secretary, his wife asked, “Everything’s alright, honey?”
“As alright as it can be, love. Go to bed.”
On the balcony, he tried to understand why he felt restless all of a sudden. The speech? Checked the time: almost midnight. A black “Volga” appeared suddenly and stopped under a streetlight. Three men in shiny leather raincoats got out and walked briskly to the entrance of his apartment building.
A few minutes later he heard the ringing of the doorbell, then loud knocks.
They came for him.
Lazarus Trubman is a college professor from the former USSR, who immigrated to the United States in 1990, after surviving four years as a political prisoner in a Strict-Regime Colony in Northern Russia. He was assigned to Arizona, where he taught the Theory of Literature and Roman languages for twenty-three years. His prose has appeared in literary publications across the USA, Canada, Australia, Russia, and the UK, among them, Forge, Griffith Review, The Threepenny Review, Vestal Review, Here Comes Everyone, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere.
The Centifictionist 
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