Why Mothers Kill

Today Arina turns three. Her mother, Anastasia, is too tired to remember. In the evening she wishes the day didn’t count. In the morning it is Arina’s birthday again.

“I love her—and still, sometimes I just want to stay lying there and not get up again.” Kyiv at war, no power, more than a hundred thousand hryvnia in debt—a sum she cannot pay back in this life. A call from the collection agency: Someone is coming by today. And her husband—the man whose key in the lock makes the child freeze.

The day becomes a time loop, and only Anastasia remembers. She gives Arina birthdays that vanish overnight, but the tiredness stays. What is a person allowed to do when the next morning erases every trace? Maybe it’s permission. Maybe a trap.

Years later, a journalist asks why Anastasia was never in prison. “No body. No file. Not even the days it happened on.” Then the confession begins.

“Maybe I first need one person who hears the truth and stays in the chair anyway.”

The day before, she buys slippers for her daughter on Andriyivskyy Descent in Kyiv. A basement shop, no sign above the door. On the shelves beside them: a copper-red wig, a coiled whip, a box of cards and an old compass whose needle never comes to rest. “At home a child should not be cold,” the voice says. Sixty hryvnia – exactly what she has in her coat pocket. She is given no receipt. The next morning the loop begins. And when she finds the street again, the narrow stairway is missing.

It is the same shop: Namenlos.