Burning shadow

The acrid stench of smoke clung to the morning air as Myrto Zervou shuffled past the charred remains of the New Dawn Party’s local office. The fire had gutted the building overnight, leaving behind blackened walls and the sour tang of gasoline. A small crowd murmured nearby, while two weary policemen strung up yellow tape.

Myrto adjusted her black headscarf and clucked her tongue. "Fire is a bad servant and a worse master," she muttered to no one in particular.

Her son, Aris, lumbered up beside her, his carpenter’s hands stuffed in his pockets. "Mama, don’t start. The police will handle it."

"Bah!" Myrto waved a dismissive hand. "Those boys couldn’t find a goat in a church. Someone did this on purpose."

Aris sighed. "And what are you going to do? Interrogate the ashes?"

"Ashes don’t whisper lies," she shot back, eyes narrowing at a glint near the rubble. She bent down slowly, joints protesting and plucked a half-melted cigarette lighter from the debris. Engraved initials: A.K.

*    *    * *    *    *

That afternoon, Myrto marched into Ouzeri Stelios, the dingy local taverna where the New Dawn boys drank. The room fell silent as she planted herself in front of Andreas Karamanlis, the party’s hotheaded youth leader.

"Andreas," she said sweetly, slapping the lighter on the table. "You left this at your little bonfire."

Andreas paled. "That’s not mine!"

"Liar!" barked Stelios, the taverna owner. "I’ve seen you use it a hundred times!"

Andreas bolted. Myrto didn’t chase him, she didn’t have to. Ten minutes later, Aris dragged him back by the collar.

"Alright, alright!" Andreas spat. "I was there, but I didn’t set the fire! I saw someone—covered in black, like a shadow. They threw the petrol and ran."

Myrto’s eyes gleamed. "A shadow with a name?"

Andreas hesitated. "...Maybe. But if I talk, I’m dead."

"You’ll be deader if you don’t," Aris growled.

*    *    * *    *    *

That night, Myrto and Aris staked out the abandoned textile factory where Andreas claimed the arsonist lurked. The wind howled through broken windows as a figure slipped inside.

"Now," Myrto whispered.

They burst in, Aris wielding a plank like a club. The figure spun, hood falling back to reveal Eleni, Mary’s best friend, her face streaked with soot.

"Eleni?!" Myrto gasped.

"They were going to take our homes!" Eleni cried. "The New Dawn bought the land, they were going to evict everyone!"

Myrto’s heart ached. "Foolish girl! Fire only burns the hand that lights it."

*    *    * *    *    *

The next morning, Myrto marched into the police station, dragging Eleni by the ear.

"Here’s your arsonist," she announced. "But if you ask me, the real criminals are the ones forcing people to choose between their homes and desperation."

The chief sighed. "Myrto, you can’t just..."

"I can, and I did. Now, who’s paying for the damages?"

By noon, the New Dawn’s shady land deals were front-page news. Eleni got community service. Andreas got a broken nose (courtesy of Stelios). And Myrto?

She sat on her balcony, sipping bitter coffee, watching the neighborhood breathe easy again.

"Mama," Aris said, shaking his head. "You’re a menace."

She grinned. "And you’re welcome."

THE END

Foreign lover

The summer heat clung to Kaisariani like a sweaty shirt. Myrto Zervou, dressed head-to-toe in black despite the weather, fanned herself with a folded newspaper as she watched the neighborhood from her balcony. Below, her son Aris sanded a wooden chair in his workshop, the rhythmic scrape-scrape-scrape mixing with the distant hum of motorbikes.

Then the shouting started.

"Ela re, malaka! You think you can steal our women?" A thick voice, angry.

Myrto’s sharp eyes flicked to the street. Two men, Stavros, the butcher’s son, and a tall, blond foreigner, were squared off outside the kafeneio. The foreigner, lean and sunburnt, held up his hands. "I didn’t steal anyone," he said in accented Greek. "Elena is free to choose."

"Choose? Pou sta kala! She’s my cousin!" Stavros lunged, but the foreigner sidestepped, quick like a cat.

Myrto sighed. "Panagia mou, not again." She grabbed her cane and shuffled downstairs.

By the time she reached the street, a small crowd had gathered. Elena, a pretty girl in her twenties with defiant eyes, stood between the men. "Stop it, Stavros! Jens is my boyfriend!"

"Boyfriend?" Stavros spat. "Oloi tha mas lene poutanes!" Everyone will call us whores.

Aris appeared beside Myrto, wiping sawdust from his hands. "Want me to break it up?"

"Not yet," Myrto murmured. She stepped forward, cane tapping. "Re paidia, enough. The whole neighborhood hears you acting like goats."

Stavros scowled. "Kyria Myrto, this xenos thinks he can..."

"Think?" Myrto cut him off. "From what I see, you’re the one not thinking." She turned to Jens. "You. Swedish?"

"Danish," he corrected.

"Same difference," Myrto said. "You love her?"

Jens blinked. "Yes."

"And you, Elena?"

Elena lifted her chin. "Yes."

Myrto nodded. "Good. Then Stavros, pou na pas na gamithis." Go get lost. She smacked his shoulder with her cane. "Elena’s heart isn’t your business."

Stavros flushed. "But the family..."

"Bah! Family means happiness, not prison." She pointed at Jens. "This one works?"

"He’s an architect," Elena said.

"Bravo. Better than a butcher who smells like lamb guts." The crowd chuckled. Stavros fumed but backed off.

That evening, over bitter coffee, Aris smirked. "You’re getting soft. Last year you’d have chased the foreigner off yourself."

Myrto sipped her coffee. "O xronos allazei ton anthropo." Time changes a man. "But if he hurts her…" She cracked her knuckles. "Tha ton kano kima." I’ll make him a wave.

Aris laughed. Some things never changed.

The End

Black widow, red secrets

Myrto Zervou adjusted her black shawl and peered through the lace curtains of her Kaisariani apartment. Across the street, two men in ill-fitting suits lingered near the kiosk. They weren’t locals.

“Ari,” she called to her son, who was sanding a wooden chair leg in the kitchen. “Those men, they’ve been there since morning. Who waits that long for a newspaper?”

Aris wiped sawdust from his hands and joined her. “Maybe tourists?”

“Tourists don’t wear shoes that cheap,” Myrto muttered. “And they keep looking at old Manolis’ building.”

Manolis, the retired bookseller, had been acting jumpy lately. Just yesterday, he had pressed a foreign magazine into Myrto’s hands at the market, whispering, “Hide this.” She had tucked it between her groceries, but now she wondered, was this why those men were here?

*    *    * *    *    *

That evening, Myrto knocked on Manolis’ door. No answer. She tried the handle, unlocked. Inside, the apartment was ransacked. Books torn from shelves, drawers upended. And in the corner, Manolis sat slumped in his armchair, a bruise darkening his temple.

“Manoli!” Myrto rushed to him.

He groaned. “They took them… the magazines…”

“Who?”

“Security police. They think I’m spreading… lies.” He coughed. “But I just wanted people to know the truth.”

Myrto clenched her fists. “Don’t worry, old fool. I’ll fix this.”

*    *    * *    *    *

The next morning, Myrto marched into the local police station, where her nephew, Lieutenant Dimitris, sipped bitter coffee.

“Thea Myrto,” he sighed. “What trouble now?”

“Manolis was beaten. His things stolen.”

Dimitris shifted. “It’s… complicated.”

“Complicated?” She slapped a wrinkled hand on his desk. “Since when do police let thugs attack old men?”

He leaned in. “Orders from above. Those magazines, anti-regime material. Dangerous.”

Myrto scoffed. “Dangerous? A few articles?”

“People get ideas.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Who took them?”

Dimitris hesitated, then scribbled a name: Kapetan Stavros.

*    *    * *    *    *

That night, Myrto and Aris crept through the back alleys of Exarchia, following whispers of a secret police stash house. Aris, nervous, whispered, “Mama, this is crazy.”

“Quiet,” she hissed. “A fox doesn’t announce its hunt.”

They found the building, a crumbling neoclassical with a broken lamp. Inside, voices argued. Myrto peeked through a window. There, on a table, lay stacks of foreign magazines.

Aris swallowed. “Now what?”

Myrto smirked. “Now we remind them that grandmothers know best.”

She threw a rock through the back window. As the men inside shouted and scrambled, she and Aris slipped in, grabbed an armful of magazines, and vanished into the night.

*    *    * *    *    *

The next day, Myrto distributed the magazines to trusted neighbors, whispering, “Read fast, then burn.” By afternoon, the whole neighborhood knew but no one talked.

When the suits returned, they found nothing. No evidence, no witnesses. Just an old widow sweeping her doorstep, humming.

Kapetan Stavros glared at her. “You’re hiding something.”

Myrto smiled sweetly. “Me? I’m just a grandmother. What do I know of politics?”

As the men left in frustration, Aris exhaled. “We did it.”

Myrto patted his cheek. “Of course. As the ancients said: ‘The mouse laughs when the cat’s away.’”

And with that, she went inside to make coffee, the last of the magazines already turning to ash in her stove.

THE END

The broken icons

The morning sun bled through the thin curtains of Myrto Zervou’s small Kaisariani apartment as she sipped her thick Greek coffee, the grounds swirling like dark omens at the bottom of the cup. Across from her, her son Aris, a broad-shouldered carpenter with sawdust perpetually clinging to his clothes, tore into a piece of toast.

“Another church vandalized last night,” he muttered, shaking the newspaper. “Saint Demetrios this time. Icons smashed, walls spray-painted. Politika, they say.”

Myrto’s lips pursed. “Politika, my foot. When men have no respect, they blame politics.” She set her cup down with a clink. “Who would do such a thing? A church is a home, too.”

Aris shrugged. “Some anarchist kids, maybe. Or worse, people trying to stir trouble before the elections.”

Myrto’s eyes narrowed. Trouble had a smell, and this stank worse than week-old fish.

*    *    * *    *    *

By noon, Myrto was marching down the narrow streets of Kaisariani, her black dress flapping like a crow’s wings. The neighborhood buzzed, old men in cafés muttered, women at the market crossed themselves. The vandalism had shaken them.

She found Father Nikolas sweeping broken glass from the church steps, his face ashen. “Kalimera, Patera,” she said. “Who would do this to God’s house?”

The priest sighed. “If I knew, I’d drag them here by the ear.” He pointed to the spray-painted words: “LIES IN GOLD.”

Myrto frowned. “Strange words for anarchists.”

“Not anarchists,” whispered Maria, the baker’s wife, sidling up. “I saw him, a man in a nice coat, slipping away before dawn. Not some punk.”

“A rich vandal?” Myrto’s eyebrow arched. “Now that’s interesting.”

*    *    * *    *    *

That evening, Myrto cornered Aris at the kitchen table. “I need your help.”

He groaned. “Mama, no. Last time, I ended up in a fistfight with a goat thief.”

“This time, just drive.”

They parked near Kolonaki, Athens’ wealthy district, where the streets gleamed too clean for Myrto’s taste. A name had surfaced, Leonidas Vouvalis, an art collector with a sharp tongue and sharper lawyers.

“Why would a rich man smash churches?” Aris muttered.

“Maybe he’s not smashing them,” Myrto said. “Maybe he’s stealing.”

*    *    * *    *    *

Breaking into Vouvalis’ gallery was easier than expected, Aris’ crowbar made quick work of a back window. Inside, Myrto’s flashlight danced over canvases, statues… and then, tucked in a hidden drawer, a small, ancient icon.

“Saint Demetrios,” she breathed. “The one ‘vandalized’ last night.”

A voice cut through the dark. “You’re smarter than you look, old woman.”

Vouvalis stepped into the light, a pistol glinting in his hand.

Myrto didn’t flinch. “You fake vandalisms, steal the treasures in the chaos. Clever. But greed is a bad thief.”

Aris lunged, Vouvalis fired. The shot went wide, shattering a vase. Myrto swung her handbag like a club, knocking the gun loose. By the time police arrived, Vouvalis was groaning on the floor, Aris sitting on his back.

*    *    * *    *    *

Back in Kaisariani, Myrto shared coffee with Father Nikolas. The icon had been returned, the neighborhood at peace.

“How did you know?” the priest asked.

She smirked. “A snake in a suit still sheds his skin.”

Outside, the church bells rang, and Myrto Zervou, the black-clad widow of Kaisariani, smiled. Another mystery solved.

The End

Blood on the rally stones

The summer heat clung to Athens like a wet rag, and the air in Kaisariani was thick with the smell of souvlaki and exhaust. Myrto Zervou adjusted her black dress, fanning herself with a folded newspaper as she watched her son, Aris; hammer away at a broken chair in their cramped apartment.

"Poutana, the heat," she muttered, wiping her brow. "Like Hades opened his doors early."

Aris smirked. "Maybe you should sit down, Mama. You’ll melt before the rally even starts."

"Rally?" Myrto’s sharp eyes flicked to him. "What rally?"

"The pro-junta one," Aris said, shrugging. "Down in Plateia. Some big-shot colonel’s giving a speech. Police everywhere."

Myrto’s lips twisted. "Fascists." She spat the word like rotten olive.

Then BOOM.

The explosion rattled the windows. Myrto’s coffee cup trembled.

"What in God’s name...?"

Aris was already at the door. "Stay here!"

"Like hell!" Myrto grabbed her shawl and followed.

*    *    * *    *    *

The square was chaos. Smoke curled from a shattered podium. Police shoved through screaming crowds. A man in a bloodied shirt lay on the ground, groaning.

"They threw a bomb!" a woman shrieked.

"No, it was a gun!" a man argued.

Myrto’s eyes narrowed. She spotted something, a single leather glove, dropped near the wounded man.

"Ari," she hissed, "that’s not a bomb wound. That’s a knife."

Her son frowned. "So?"

"So someone wanted it to look like an attack on the rally… but this was personal."

*    *    * *    *    *

Back home, Mary called, panicked. "Mama, the police are arresting people! They think it’s anarchists!"

"Idiots," Myrto muttered. She dialed her old friend, Sergeant Kostas.

"Kosta, the glove, check who lost it."

"Myrto, stay out of this!"

"Or what? You’ll arrest a widow?" She hung up.

A knock came. A nervous young man, Dimitris, a waiter from the café near the rally.

"Kyria Myrto… I saw something. A man in a suit stabbed the speaker, then dropped the glove. But he ran when the explosion happened."

"Whose explosion?"

"I don’t know. But the stabber… he had a tattoo. A snake."

*    *    * *    *    *

Myrto and Aris tracked the tattoo to a retired army doctor, Lambros Vlachos, who’d been kicked out of the junta years ago for stealing morphine.

They found him in a dingy Piraeus bar.

"You stabbed the colonel," Myrto said flatly.

Lambros laughed. "Prove it."

"The glove. The tattoo. And the fact you hated him for ruining your career."

Lambros’s smile died. "He deserved worse."

Aris stepped forward but then gunfire erupted.

A masked shooter, junta loyalists, cleaning house. Lambros took a bullet to the chest.

Myrto and Aris barely escaped.

*    *    * *    *    *

Back home, Myrto pieced it together.

"Lambros stabbed the colonel. But the bomb? That was the junta’s own men—to blame anarchists and justify a crackdown."

Kostas arrived, grim. "You’re right. We found wires, staged."

"And now Lambros is dead," Myrto said bitterly. "Convenient."

Kostas sighed. "Some battles aren’t ours to win, Myrto."

She poured him coffee. "Maybe. But I’ll still say what happened."

*    *    * *    *    *

Days later, whispers spread. The junta’s lies unraveled. The colonel survived but his reputation didn’t.

Mary brought the grandkids over, fussing. "Mama, you could’ve been killed!"

Myrto shrugged. "Better than staying quiet."

Aris grinned. "Next time, maybe warn me before we run from gunmen?"

She smacked his arm. "Next time, be faster."

Outside, Athens burned with protests. But in Kaisariani, Myrto Zervou sipped her coffee, quiet, watchful, and far from done.

The End

Journalist's dread

The summer heat clung to the streets of Kaisariani like a sweaty shirt. Myrto Zervou sat on her balcony, fanning herself with an old newspaper, her sharp eyes scanning the neighbourhood below. Her son, Aris, was hammering away in his small carpentry workshop downstairs, the rhythmic tap-tap-tap blending with the cicadas' drone.

Then, the shouting started.

"You think you can write whatever you want? You’re playing with fire!"

Myrto leaned forward, squinting. Down the street, a broad-shouldered man in a tight suit loomed over Nikos Karas, the young journalist who wrote for The Athenian Voice. Nikos, slight and bespectacled, took a step back, but the man grabbed his collar.

"One more article, and you’ll regret it."

Before Myrto could shout, Nikos twisted free and bolted into his apartment building. The thug, because that’s what he was, no doubt, glanced around, then slipped into a black sedan.

Myrto huffed. "Like a cockroach in the flour," she muttered, recalling the old proverb. "Where there’s one, there’s a whole nest."

*    *    * *    *    *

"Mama, what’s wrong?" Aris wiped sawdust from his hands as he climbed the stairs.

"That journalist boy, Nikos. Some malákas just threatened him."

Aris frowned. "Probably over his articles on the junta’s old cronies. You think we should call the police?"

"Police?" Myrto scoffed. "They’ll come when the bread is already burnt." She stood, adjusting her black dress. "I’ll talk to him."

*    *    * *    *    *

Nikos’ hands trembled as he poured Myrto a coffee. "Mrs. Zervou, I appreciate the concern, but this isn’t your problem."

"When a wolf enters the village, it’s everyone’s problem," she countered. "Who was that man?"

Nikos hesitated. "Grigoris Voulgaris. Ex-military, now ‘security consultant’ for old regime loyalists. My last piece linked him to embezzlement funds from the ’70s."

"Ah," Myrto nodded. "A snake sheds its skin but stays a snake."

"He’s not alone," Nikos admitted. "There’s a meeting tonight, warehouse near Piraeus. I have a source who says they’re moving money. But if I go..."

"You’ll end up floating in the Saronic," Myrto finished. She sipped her coffee. "So we go instead."

*    *    * *    *    *

Aris drove his battered pickup, grumbling. "Mama, this is crazy."

"Life is crazy," she said, clutching her handbag like a weapon. "Park there."

The warehouse loomed under flickering streetlights. Two men guarded the entrance. Myrto marched forward, chin up.

"Hey! No entry!" one barked.

"I’m here to clean," she snapped. "Unless you want to explain to Mr. Voulgaris why his office is full of mouse droppings?"

The men exchanged glances, then waved her in.

Inside, crates were stacked high. Voulgaris stood near a table, counting cash with another man.

"What the...?"

"Good evening, kyrie," Myrto said sweetly. "You forgot to pay your electric bill. The power’s about to go out."

Aris, hidden in the shadows, yanked the main switch. Darkness swallowed the room.

Chaos erupted, shouting, stumbling. Myrto snatched a ledger from the table and slipped out.

*    *    * *    *    *

By morning, Nikos’ new article with photographic evidence, was front-page news. Voulgaris and his men were arrested mid-transfer.

"How did you do it?" Nikos asked in awe.

Myrto shrugged. "A thief fears the moon, a liar fears the truth." She patted his cheek. "Now go write. And next time, lock your door."

As she walked home, the sun warming the Athenian streets, Aris sighed. "You’re impossible, Mama."

"Good," she said, smiling. "Impossible means they’ll never see me coming."

THE END

Kaisariani knife

The summer heat clung to Athens like a wet rag. Myrto Zervou fanned herself with yesterday’s newspaper, perched on her balcony, watching the neighborhood simmer. Below, her son Aris hauled planks of wood into his workshop, shirt soaked through.

A sudden scream cut the air.

Myrto’s head snapped toward the sound old Mrs. Kalliope’s grocery. A man in a black hood bolted out, clutching a bloody knife and a cash box. Kalliope staggered after him, clutching her arm, wailing.

"Thé mou!" Myrto crossed herself, then hollered, "Ariiiis!"

Her son looked up just as the robber shoved past him. Aris lunged, but the man twisted free, vanishing into the alley maze.

By the time Myrto thundered downstairs, a crowd had gathered. Kalliope sat on the curb, her sleeve dark with blood.

"Bandits! Animals!" the old woman spat. "He cut me for fifty euros!"

Myrto clucked her tongue, pressing a handkerchief to the wound. "A knife for chicken feed. ‘Poverty makes thieves, but stupidity makes corpses.’"

Policemen arrived, young, tired, uninterested. Myrto eyed them. Amateurs.

That night, over fasolada, Aris groaned. "Mama, stay out of it. Let the police handle it."

She snorted. "The police couldn’t find their koloi with both hands."

Her daughter Mary called, panicked. "Mama, be careful!"

"Po po po, worry makes you old," Myrto chided before hanging up.

The next morning, she marched to Kalliope’s shop. The old woman hissed, "It was Nikos, the butcher’s nephew. A vlakas, always drunk, always trouble."

Myrto nodded. She knew Nikos, a lanky, twitchy boy with bad teeth. But something gnawed at her.

She visited the butcher. The man sweated like a sinner in church. "Nikos? No, no, he’s in Thessaloniki!"

"Liar," Myrto muttered.

At the kafeneio, old Manolis coughed into his ouzo. "Nikos? Saw him last night. With Spiros that mangas from Exarchia."

Spiros. A known thug.

Myrto’s bones hummed. She called Aris. "Bring your hammer."

They found Nikos in a derelict building, shaking, bruised. "Spiros made me do it! He said he’d kill me!"

Before Aris could react, Spiros lunged from the shadows, knife flashing. Myrto swung her handbag, loaded with a brick ...crack! The thug crumpled.

Aris gaped. "Mama!"

She shrugged. "‘An old woman’s anger is colder, but sharper.’"

The police hauled Spiros away. Nikos wept, confessing everything.

Back home, Mary scolded her. "You could’ve been killed!"

Myrto sipped her tea. "‘Better a brave widow than a fearful bride.’"

Aris shook his head, grinning. "You’re insane."

She winked. "And you’re welcome."

Outside, Athens buzzed on, none the wiser.

But in Kaisariani, the Black Widow had spun her web.

THE END