It is winter. A moonless night.
A boy, on a reckless bet, lies motionless between the frozen rails as the eleven o’clock train barrels toward him—testing fate, testing God, testing the silence.
Another has not left his bed in days. The weight of a secret crime—too grave, he believes, to be forgiven—pins him to the sheets like a stone on his chest.
Each, in his way, is facing the devil. Or perhaps not a devil at all, but a trial: a stray, starving dog named Zhuchka, who arrives not with fire and pitchfork, but with the unbearable gaze of innocence.
Zhuchka may be an omen—or a mirror. A test, or a blessing. The real question is not whether God is watching, but whether these boys—and through them, we—are still capable of answering the call:
To choose love over fear. To take responsibility. To find, in the wreckage of our thoughts, a way to live—with humility, courage, and grace.