20 years ago
The rain was drizzling lightly, filling the hollows in the pavement. The water droplets pouring from the sky had enveloped the surface of his slippery Converse soles. It was some hour of the night. Not only did the darkness strike, but the neighborhood was condemned to the silence it was caught in, under the dull lights of the streetlamps. Along with the silence that took on the color of moonlight hitting some windows, the child entered the park, consuming all the distance on the sidewalk.
The swings were empty. They had drunk from the cold of the night.
After spotting an empty bench, he made himself shiver intentionally.
The punch his father landed right in the middle of his mother's face—the blood flowing from the poor woman's nose hurt him. He wished he were bigger. If he were bigger, he could protect his mother, right? Or would he still be unable to protect her? "It will pass," he said to himself. Cars were whizzing by. "At this hour of the night," the child thought and sat on the bench, leaning his back.
His inside was frozen.
While his soul was gnawed by doubt, he tried to erase the scenes where his mother was harmed from his mind. "What if I can't find my mother when I return home? What if it's her corpse that greets me?"
A black car pulled up behind the park fences.
The sound of the engine being cut was heard.
He turned his head and looked in that direction. A vague blackness appeared behind the pine trees.
The child gave his full attention to that direction.
As the emerging dark figure began to approach the park entrance like a shadow, he waited, biting his lips.
His childish curiosity, combined with a giant sense of fear, had closed over him like an umbrella.
The man's black coat and pointed leather shoes came before his eyes.
The child continued to look at the man without averting his eyes for even a moment.
In that moment, a silent gaze was shared between them.
He didn't know what to do in the face of this body coming towards the bench.
If his mother were there, she would say "don't talk to strangers." But he was a child, after all.
Shortly after, he heard that thick voice that sent a shock to the back of his neck: "What are you doing here at this hour, kid?"
The child surrendered to the voice that made him shudder and wrapped his arms around himself.
The words had wrapped around his throat like a rope.
"My mother and f—" He turned his head and observed the man's sharp facial features. He was hesitant about whether to tell or not. "They had a fight. My father... He was beating my mother. I-I ran away from home."
The man's sharp and eerie countenance instantly flashed before his eyes.
"Instead of protecting her, you came to the park?" There was a mocking and angry expression in his voice.
"Uncle..." he said with a voice that was gradually fading. "Of him... I... I am afraid."
The man stopped standing and sat down next to the child, who looked cold and frightened.
The vague anxiety appearing inside the child was now reinforced by a vast sense of trust.
"Parents are sometimes scary," he murmured, maintaining the image of a giant man in front of the child. "They fight often. The world... It's as if it was created because they need to leave a massive mark on us."
The man stroked his sharp beard line, looked at the child, and said, more like he was muttering to himself, "You're just a child." "Children fear, parents frighten. Children hide, parents seek."
"U-uncle... You. You are just like the ones in the movies. Like those... adult people. These things you give must be advice." He clenched his frozen fingers together.
"Well, why are you here?"
The man smiled with the inside of his eyes upon being asked this question.
"Perhaps that is a question that should not be answered."
The child turned his head and separated his fingers. "But I told you, uncle."
"Fine, kiddo," the man murmured and reached into his coat pocket. "This is a slum neighborhood. You will need this."
The child looked at the white envelope coming out of the man's pocket.
"What is this, uncle?"
The man took a cigarette out of his pocket, lit it, and smoked it next to the child.
As the smoke went into the child's lungs, the child coughed.
"I'm sorry," the man said in a selfish manner and shrugged. "There is some money inside. Take your mother and get out of here. By the way..." His eyes appeared in the shape of a crescent. "What was your name?"
The child answered by shrugging in the same way: "Sis (Fog)."
The man spoke in a surprised and amazed way, "A rare name." "What a lovely name. You are as uncertain as your name, as gray as your name, Sis. Is that how your name is read?"
The child nodded.
He held the envelope in his hand tightly between his cold fingers.
"Well," the man said; "Are you an only child?"
Sis was unaware that there was something inside the envelope powerful enough to change his life.
"I have a sibling..." he murmured. He looked as if he were in pain, as if this were a sack of flour loaded onto him. "Well, uncle, you... what is your name?"
The man turned back to the child, waiting for the spark likely to shine within that gaze.
"Just call me J."
"Okay, Uncle J, I will... I will pay you back this money when I grow up. Where will you be then? Where will I find you?"
There was a short but intense silence.
"Have you ever heard of the Mechanism?" J asked.
"The Mechanism, Uncle J? What is that?"
"When you learn about it in school, you will want to find me again. The only way is to be a guest in the Mechanism. I will be waiting for you... until then." J took a seal out of his pocket. "Could you hold out your hand?"
Sis looked with eyes full of fear for a moment.
J murmured with concern, "It won't hurt much," and looked at the small finger extended to him. Then, in a reassuring way, he pressed the seal, which contained small needles, onto the child's finger. "Can you grit your teeth a bit?"
The child felt his eyes tearing up with the pain.
The sense of trust felt as if it had been demolished, but still, he did not pull his finger away; he felt a deep respect for the man standing before him, the one who gave him that envelope. "Are you going to leave, Uncle J?"
The engine of the car behind the trees groaned again. A man in a black suit was waiting there.
J said, "I must go." "I must go. When you are old enough to come to the Mechanism..." He took a deep breath and crushed his finished cigarette in the trash. "We will talk through letters."
Sis
As I looked at the envelope in my hand, everything was darkening further instead of coming to light. I held my breath, shivering under the illegitimate uncertainty of the words. When I came eye-to-eye with the four faces on my finger, it came before my eyes how I was fed by the Mechanism to take the life of the woman breathing beside me. At that moment, something surprising had happened. The money Uncle J gave had not been enough to save either my mother or my half-sibling.
Even though I wanted to hide the twitching of my fingers and the trembling of my breath, I was subjected to a rain of questions under Aysal's sharp gaze. Why was I telling her all this? Why did I trust her? What was I demanding from her? My only demand... I laughed. Was it these letters?
I remembered my mother's signature showing a huge letter Ö. It was filled with a longing as great as her name.
When my father returned home one night heavily drunk, standing ready to topple everything in front of him, he fixed his cowardly eyes on me.
"Tell me, Özlem! Tell me, damn it! Who was that man? Who was the man who sent flowers to the cleaning floor, huh?" He had taken one of the glass cups and hurled it to the floor. The ringing of the glass in my ears had remained. That moment of falling into pieces was still making my ears bleed.
"Leave it," my mother had said; "Leave it! Leave me alone already!"
When her arm was caught firmly by my father, she was pushed toward the sofa.
I had tried to catch his arm by running towards my father. At that time, he was suffocating me by folding over himself. The definition of weakness in his eyes and the destruction within me were not the same. "Leave my mother," I had said; "Leave her..." My voice was as timid as a frightened kitten. I think I can understand now why I hate weak things.
"You didn't answer," Aysal spoke.
I thought I had answered the last question she asked. But now I couldn't even be so sure of that. As her eyelashes opened and closed heavily, the words written on the paper felt very foreign to me. "Your father?" I murmured. I laughed with my nose out of anger. My father was nothing but a drug-addicted alcoholic.
"Mansion?" I murmured; the presence of the woman beside me was no longer frightening me.
The snake had bitten the skin once; its tongue had remained inside.
"Being hosted in my father's mansion?"
Aysal looked at me with a fear trickling from between her eyelashes.
"Is this letter for you?"
I froze at the question she asked.
Could I proudly claim this letter?
It had been so long since my mother disappeared... They had just left with my sibling without leaving a note behind. Now I thought about seeing them. I wouldn't recognize them. Time was not merciful to anyone. But my mother... I would want there to be a universe where she was happy.
"There is your photo here," she said, pointing to my picture which had caught my attention from the beginning. "This letter must be for you."
Despite my attempt to kill her, why was she interested in this?
I looked a bit more at the pale color of the photograph and gave up: "I don't know..."
Now I was confused about what I knew and what I didn't.
The main question circling in my head was one of those sentences.
It said that I used to be a human and now I was a murderer.
A murderer under my father's roof.
I had always wanted to change my father.
I had prayed to God to create a father who went to work, came home, did not withhold his love, and could stroke my head in any kind of difficulty.
Was I sure that the terrifying father figure presented to me was truly my father?
I read the word "Mansion" with my mother's voice.
At that exact moment, as if reading my mind, Aysal murmured, "Özlem."
My blood froze when a wind came trickling between the walls.
Her gaze had hardened, shifting to her tightly clenched fingers.
Ö-Özlem... She was my mother.
How did she know this name?
I thought I would faint because of the first terrifying possibility that came to my mind.
W-were we... acquainted?