The Cull - The Last Stop

Photo by Anna Berdnik on Unsplash

The bus was vacant when I made my way downstairs. Each step heavier than the one before, chary and on alert. The windows were marked with dark streaks of blood.

All around me, I found traces of mutilation and decay. Pieces of flesh riddled every nook and cranny, the smell of iron stuck to my dry throat.

But these things, these horrendous these, didn’t disturb me. I felt nothing in particular, neither sadness nor despair, angst or anger, disgust or shock, just emptiness for lack of a better word.

Like a shell without a soul, like the undead in their bottomless tombs – nothing. Was I even human?

I approached the chauffeur’s seat with careful steps, making sure no one else was inside the bus with me.

I must’ve spent a good five minutes studying the poor thing, then dropped my eyes in an attempt to show my respects to the unfortunate man.

His severed head hung loosely from his neck, a clear cut, deftly amputated. He was slashed from behind when he least expected it.

I wondered, at that moment, if he had any family and how devastated and heartbroken they would be to see him right now, lifeless and cold, and far away from everything familiar and perhaps never found again.

Repositioning the chauffeur, I placed his loose head against the window. If his relatives were to find him against all odds, I wanted them to find him whole.

That was the only way I could turn around then and there and abandon him. That was when I noticed something I had missed the first time around.

The impeccable chop revealed two things to me: it was either done by a skilled surgeon, who was mad enough to showcase his talents or someone with exceptional swordsmanship – perhaps a butcher.

I opted for the latter since the former required, not only madness, but a certain amount of daredevil no professional would engage in for the sake of some messed-up kicks.

Of course, as was inevitable, I could be wrong. There was an exception to every rule and someone like me, someone so wicked in my own right, knew this better than anyone.

I wouldn’t know for sure until I laid my eyes on the murder weapon and the one who wielded it.

As I was having these reflections, engrossed in my calculating mind seeking the indisputable truth, I heard a hush.

It was the kind of noise one would hear in a cramped space, like in a library, to quieten down another person – often a noisy kid living in his own world, where dragons were real and every story ended with a happy-ever-after.

It came from the back rows.

I was positive that none of the black-capped guys were inside the bus – not when I decided to go downstairs at the very least. I knew this for sure because I saw them leave from the second floor.

Whoever this was, it could be none other than another passenger. I was right. Only I did not expect to find someone so vulnerable and so helpless, and in so much pain.

I came face to face with a Muslim woman with wide open, gazelle eyes. Her beauty was mesmerising, like a real-life Shahrazad from One Thousand and One Nights. Most people would’ve described her as a natural beauty with her long and dense eyelashes, scarlet plump lips, and flushed, high cheekbones.

She wore a black hijab; a symbol of her faith and the people she belonged to. And, although, it didn’t catch my eye at first, most likely due to her loose flowery dress, she was hiding a baby bump.

The woman, as I was about to find out, couldn’t speak English. She kept asking me if I knew Turkish, which I did.

My family immigrated from Türkiye in the late 1970s. My paternal grandfather was promised a ticket to the West – an exorbitant life in an urban city – but was forced to work at a chemical factory instead for a low salary.

He brought over my grandmother and two of their younger children, my aunt and my dad after a few years. But he wasn’t able to bring my oldest uncle, who was already an adult at the time and thus had to stay behind with our relatives.

My grandfather died from gastric cancer after years of inhaling chemical fumes. He bit the dust a year after I was born. I had never known him, but my parents told me he loved me dearly and would let me jump on his stomach despite the excruciating pain he was in.

I was told that we were similar, my grandfather and I, that we were reserved by nature and unbothered by this material world most others would kill another human being for.

My dad was fourteen years old when he immigrated from Türkiye.

No matter how many years he lived abroad, he never quite thought of this place as his home – he longed to return to his home country his entire life, and told us, me and my older sister, to bring him to where he belonged should he die in these foreign soils.

A decade later, my dad also passed away. He caught what seemed like a harmless cold and passed away overnight due to sepsis. He refused to go to the hospital because it would cost an arm and a leg. He was the only breadwinner back then.

I was in my early twenties when it happened and my big sister was married and had her own family to care for.

Our mum became crippled soon after his death. They amputated both of her legs because of an uncontrolled blood sugar level.

I became the sole breadwinner after all this.

My mum and I had no one but ourselves to rely on. I became her arms and legs, her everything, and she became mine. Yet, I was never comfortable in my own skin and ethnicity. I never thought of myself as either Turkish or English – or both for that matter.

Among my relatives, I was this compliant young woman everyone thought was celibate and overly religious, while I listened to death metal in secret and found religion to be nothing less of a cruel and sadistic joke.

At the same time, and I couldn’t deny this, I was once very religious indeed. I was brought up in a religious household, after all.

I was a kid back then, and I just wanted to please my parents. But I drifted away from my roots, eventually.

Truth be told, when I used to blindly believe and thought I was protected by something beyond and above meek humanity, I was the happiest.

To have faith gave me a reason to live, even if life was rough and the path ahead difficult. But when I lost my faith, as I so bitterly did as a conflicted teenager, I got lost.

Just breathing became hard – for there was no reason to breathe, no sin to be forgiven or good deeds to be praised for.

I was going to rot in my tomb, either way. And if I could return to that time, I’d choose to have faith again.

I think it all began when I realised how different I was from other people. Following a faith I couldn’t fully grasp was harder for me than for those around me.

I didn’t know if this had anything to do with my interest in metal music, Shaitan’s music, as my mum used to say, but I’d like to think it wasn’t.

I was too logical for my own good, overthinking, and always seeking the truth to simply surrender to God – to become a Muslim in its true sense.

I was an imposter, someone who pretended for the sake of belonging somewhere – anywhere. And so I decided to commit suicide at the age of thirteen.

I prepared a rope, learned how to tie a hangman’s knot, and even contemplated subduing myself with pills to muster up the courage to let go of everything.

I almost succeeded.

But my mum had legs of her own back then and broke into my bedroom when I didn’t reply to her at al-fajr.

I failed to crack my throat in time. The knot was looser than I expected because of my lack of experience and, of course, young age.

Something came in between my mum and me after this failed attempt. I couldn’t really tell what it was or could be even if I wanted to.

My only recollection of that day was embarrassment, shame and remorse. I didn’t want her to see me like that, so weak and helpless, and it never crossed my mind that she would find me so soon, either.

I was so sure that I’d die by daybreak that I was bewildered by her antsy eyes and frail arms, swearing to keep me alive at all costs.

She wanted me to see a psychologist after this. But I refused to go. I went to CBT before my failed suicide attempt and I knew that no human being could bring this dead child within me back.

I should’ve heeded her words. If only I had sought help back then, maybe none of this would’ve happened…

The Muslim woman glanced to her right, which was obscured from my immediate view.

I couldn’t help but smirk, dumbfounded by what appeared out of the corner as covertly as possible. So this was why, I thought to myself, this was why she wanted my help.

A kid. A little boy. He was probably only five years old if I had to make a guess.

His tiny eyes were round and wide, curious, as oval as the moon hovering in the night sky and yet terrified beyond himself. Then again, who wouldn’t be in this kind of situation?

I knew what she wanted from me yet I desperately wished I was mistaken.

I was the last person in this wicked world to come to her rescue, and at the same time, she and I both knew that that was exactly what she wanted from me.

“Onu da al yanına, nolur.”

‘Take him with you too, please.’

Continue.