The Witch of the Mountain - Part 2 of 3

2

The lecture hall emptied far too slowly, the murmur of chatter the only thing filling the prolonged silence. Irmak sat at one of the desks in the farthest row, her chin resting against her palm, staring at the chalkboard where her professor had just outlined the following week’s assignments. Several of her notes were laid neatly in a pile in front of her, ready to be packed into her leather bag, and that was that. She waited for her classmates, or the majority of them at least, to exit already so that she too could leave. But it took forever.

So, she shifted her gaze with a sigh. Outside, the dying sunlight slanted through the wall-length windows, catching the dust that floated into the warmth. At that moment, she daydreamed away, imagining a different course of life – one much different from the one she currently led. After all, she had always been somewhat of a dreamer, or a romantic if one could say that. Had she been a Disney princess, she’d be Belle. But daydreams were just that, dreams, and nothing else. Ghosts of the mind, in other words. Maybe she wanted to become a ghost too, live an invisible life far from the plain reality she lived through each and every day. She wanted more; worked harder than anyone else. Still, all she ever amounted to was being this sorry of a person she was.

In the backdrop, conversations about plans for the weekend took over and drowned out all other subjects. It wasn’t like she wanted to eavesdrop or something, only she heard everything by default – even from miles away – as though she was some sort of Wonder Woman. But she didn’t want to. Heck! she even tried not to! It did not work one bit.

She put her hand to rest and let her fingers drum over the desk, faster and faster, until she could no longer take it. Standing upright, she nimbly folded her notebooks and tucked her pens into her bag in a certain order only she knew, all while her mind wandered from the words on the board. She thought of home, of the familiar streets she had left behind two years ago to live in the dormitory, and a small knot of unease curled in her stomach.

“You’re coming, right?” Dilara’s booming voice reluctantly pulled her out of her thoughts. But she paid no attention to the blonde girl and kept packing her stuff. “Hey, do you even see me?”

“I told you, I’m going nowhere. Just hang out with—”

“Come on! You can’t just leave me hanging, can you? Pleeeaasse?”

 Irmak rolled her eyes, drawing a deep breath to steady her nerves.

Who’s Dilara, again? Her friend, or rather, the only person willing to talk to someone like her, an outsider from the rural parts of the country. Though not in the mood to entertain her, Irmak finally broke off and met the other’s pleading gaze. She was literally leaning against the desk, her bare legs crossed in a certain way to accentuate her shape, and her eyes sparkled with mischief, as they always did. Now that she thought it over, Dilara reminded her of a puppy, one that always needed attention. Or she would get all sulky. But Dilara was more than just that, she was what people would call a “hot girl”, the kind that turned heads just by existing.

“Come on! It’s Friday!” she insisted. “We’re going out for drinks to celebrate my birthday! You can’t just stay cooped up in your room like you always do.”

Irmak tugged her bag strap over her shoulder, ignoring her friend’s question, and started towards the exit. “You know I don’t like drinking, and it’s not like my allowance is—”

“It’s just one drink,” Dilara called, hurrying to catch up. “I promise – promise – it’ll be worth it! Besides, it’s on me! You won’t have to pay a penny! I swear!”

There was something in Dilara’s tone that made it impossible to refuse. Reluctantly, she nodded, letting Dilara steer her through the crowd of students and down the packed streets near their university. That silly girl even started dancing in the middle of the road as they crossed it to celebrate her hard-earned victory. Seeing her beam so widely, Irmak couldn’t help but smile, too. Dilara might be a “hot girl”, but she was definitely no “typical girl.”

By the time they arrived, the bar was packed, and the overwhelming mix of alcohol and sweat, together with the strong scent of perfume, made her regret her choices at once and wish she could disappear into the shadows and catch her breath. She wasn’t used to these kinds of places and felt sick already.

Dilara ordered some drinks not long afterwards, and Irmak sipped cautiously from hers, tasting the bitterness of the liquid without letting herself indulge too much. She preferred control, even here, even in the swirl of loud music. It was then that Bilal and Mehmet appeared, weaving through the crowd.

Bilal was one of Dilara’s many flings and was studying history at their university, while Mehmet was Irmak’s crush. When they approached and sat at their table, Dilara winked at her as soon as she sought her eyes, as if she had planned all this beforehand. She rolled her eyes in response. It wasn’t like she could flirt with Mehmet; he had a long-time girlfriend and was a decent guy. And for some reason, Dilara thought that was more of a reason as to why she had to steal Mehmet.

Although she felt out of place at first, as she drank more and more and the night deepened and music grew louder, they were laughing, sharing stories and joking around as though they were more than just acquaintances. Soon, she found herself drawn into the rhythm, tapping her foot to the beat, letting her body move without surrendering her thoughts entirely. From somewhere near the back of the bar, then, just out of reach, a shadow moved against the radiant light. Her gaze flicked towards it from where she stilled on the dancefloor, though she quickly dismissed it as a trick of her intoxicated mind. Yet there was a chill that ran along her spine, nonetheless. She tried to shake it off, focusing instead on Mehmet, who leaned in and brushed up against her, and then, suddenly, he wasn’t that decent guy she thought he was.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, his eyes settling on her lips. “Did anyone tell you that?”

Before she could withdraw, repulsed at having mistaken him for a good guy, he leaned in, his lips inches from hers when—she turned her flushed face away before they could touch lips. She retreated to their table without saying anything and was soon joined by Dilara and Bilal, who had just exited the bathroom after making out in one of the stalls. They were too caught up in one another that neither noticed the distorted look on Irmak’s face as Mehmet too sat down and downed a drink.

At one point, however, things took a drastic turn, one she did not see coming. It was Bilal who broke the ice, after noticing the rising tension that had suddenly fallen over their table for reasons he did not know.

“You guys know Professor Necmiye?”

“Yeah,” said Dilara, sipping from her drink. “What about her?”

“The bitch’s crazy!” he said. “She just assigned us a paper on local haunted towns or some shit. Fucking hag.”

“Haunted towns?” Dilara repeated. “What the fuck?”

“She wants us to prove that so-called “hauntings” are more about poverty, historical tragedy, and neglect than anything supernatural. Man, she’s a total nutjob! Like, how am I supposed to prove that, even?”

“I think it sounds fun, though. Better than our boring assignments on classical literature,” Dilara said, then turned to face Irmak with a glint in her eyes as a moment of acknowledgement passed between them. “Right, Irmak?”

“…Yeah, I guess so.”

“So?” she said, shifting her focus back to Bilal. “Have you found something, then? Maybe we can help.”

“Kind of. Apparently, there’s a village called Karakaya nearby, it’s said to be haunted. A total ghost town.”

The words hit Irmak like a punch to the gut, and her hand tightened around the glass, the cool liquid trembling against her fingers. Karakaya. She had not expected to hear that name, not here, not now.

Dilara’s eyes widened too as she turned to her, all excited.

“Hey, isn’t that… the place you told me about?”

Irmak hesitated. She could feel her heartbeat in her throat, the memories of the abandoned streets and corpses found all over the village. Finally, her voice came out but was quieter than she intended.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea—”

“She’s from that place, actually,” interrupted Dilara.

Bilal’s eyes went wide. “Oh, wow. Really?” he asked, leaning over the table to get closer to her. “Heard a lot about that place from a friend of mine. Are the rumours about the village true? Like, that the whole village had been found dead overnight?”

She paused, swallowing hard. The music, the lights, the laughter around her – all seemed to fade away in that moment and suffocate her. She took another sip from her glass, her hands trembling out of control, gathering enough courage to say the words that lingered on the tip of her tongue.

“…Hmm. But I do not want to—”

Bilal, “Well, if we’re all free this weekend, then why don’t we go see for ourselves? Find out if it’s really haunted or not?”

Dilara exchanged a glance with Irmak before responding.

“Sure! Why not?”

Mehmet, “Fine by me, too.”

The three of them then turned to face her, expecting her to say something. But just the thought of returning to that place twisted something in her gut and made the bile rise in her throat. She wanted to refuse, to retreat to her dorm and the safety of her solitude, but Dilara’s hand pressed gently against her shoulder.

“Please,” she said. “Come with us! We need someone who can take us there, after all. You’re the only one who knows. Right?”

“I-I can’t... I…”

Bilal, “Come on! What’s the worst that can happen?”

Irmak bit her lips. A lot of thoughts weighed her down and meddled with her senses, but in the end, she nodded and agreed to take them to Karakaya. Bilal was right. The soldiers had found the witch’s corpse in the well already, and the entire village had been a ghost town ever since. She had nothing to fear.

So… why did it feel like she couldn’t breathe?

The Witch of the Mountain - Part 1 of 3

1

That fateful night not only brought with it the hush of the undead waiting for Judgment Day still, but also unforgivable sins of the past, of the bygone yet to be paid. It was also that night that the village lay heavy under the guise of that pretentious silence, trapped beneath a force only a few truly understood with their senses. Hah! Even those abysmal stray dogs stopped barking for a change!

The derelict mosque had loomed high in the clear sky, casting the rural village located in the middle of nowhere into a deep and suffocating gloom, and out of that darkness a woman emerged though no one expected her. She walked down the centre of the road, her steps steady and gingerly – all alone yet not at the same time – her obscure face clouded with a sorrow so deep and gut-wrenching that it was nothing less of a sin to look into her misty, ancient eyes. It was as though she had fled something dreadful, as though she carried the weight of a vile curse upon her shoulders, one only a few had experienced – thank god.

Her hands, those wrinkly and fragile hands, were clenched together and trembling – mind, not from the biting cold but from fear in its purest form, somehow, anyhow. No one knew why, no one could say the reason without sounding mad, but one thing was certain: whatever horrors pursued her had driven her here, into the night, to this very town, just as an unknowing girl stirred from her slumber with a gasp, drenched in beads of cold sweat running along her brows and tiny neck.

This was the first time Irmak had ever seen the mysterious visitor, though she had heard rumours of her existence. You couldn’t exactly stop children from running their mouths, could you? But she didn’t know the strange lady would be there too, in that deep darkness, as sleep eluded her without as much as a warning and she found herself in front of the frosted, laced window. She loved to watch the world at night, watch life pass her by and reminisce of another time, one different from hers. Also, strangely enough, whenever darkness fell over their village, it was like it was breathing differently for some reason, pulling at her, drawing her into the depths of the secrets she had yet to uncover.

Sometimes she imagined the shadows carried the shadows of the past, the unforgivable sins of those still alive and kicking, and that if she listened closely enough, she might see the vicious shadows look back at her and whisper something wild back – heck, she wanted that to be the case! But they never quite did, as if they pretended she wasn’t there, lurking in the murk, watching their every move. Nevertheless, she would find herself there, at the window, whenever the call to evening prayer rang and brought with it the darkness that soothed her soul so. But that night, the suffocating silence she otherwise despised so, gave way to something else – something else entirely.

The woman’s feet were bare and her whole body was soaked wet. Her hair clung to her face, caked with dirt, and foul droplets traced her arms as though she had been dragged straight from a river. There was a smell about her too, of damp soil and something faintly metallic. It was clear at first sight that something terrible had happened to her.

Irmak’s first thought was to wake up her parents, tell them that an elderly woman might be needing their help, but then she remembered that they would only scold her for being awake at this late hour. Thus, she dismissed the thought just as quickly as it crossed her mind. Still, she could not leave the woman in such a pitiful and poor state, could she?

She opened the front door just enough to peer out. The woman was there, motionless, as though she knew Irmak was watching her all along. With her heart in her mouth, Irmak then stepped into the garden and onto the narrow, bumpy road, where the woman lingered still until she raised her head ever so slightly. Irmak’s eyes narrowed as she took a good look at the woman, but her wet hair veiled her face and obscured all hints of what the strange visitor might look like.

“Hi,” she gingerly said, waving her hand awkwardly, “I’m Irmak. Do you… need help?”

The woman did not answer. She only stared at the girl, then slowly lifted her arm and pointed into the distance – towards the mountains.

“Is that where you want to go?”

The woman gave a nod.

“Do you want me to help you go there?”

The woman, once again, nodded and confirmed her.

Though hesitant, Irmak stepped forwards and supported the woman, helping her down the bumpy road with her small build. Together they walked into the night, farther and farther away from the heart of the village and closer to the mountains where no sane soul dared to linger in the wee hours.

The woman’s arm felt icy under the touch, and though the night was still, the woman’s hair seemed to stir with a breeze that wasn’t really there. Irmak tried to hum a tune under her breath, to calm her nerves and convince herself that everything was under control – the way she did whenever she was frightened – but the sound was meant to die in her throat eventually.

From time to time, she tried to speak and break the silence with her childish questions, but the woman never replied, and so they walked on in silence until they reached the fork where the mountain path began. Well there, Irmak hesitated for good. Her mother warned her never to take the mountain road, though she never explained why. She knew only what she overheard from the kids in the village, that once, long ago, a witch lived in the mountains and practised black magic, cursing the women so they could no longer conceive and bear children. No one knew why she bore such a grudge against the villagers as far as she knew, but Ahmet, the village fool, said he knew why.

When she was only a child, Ahmet had said, the imam of that time raped her and demanded later that she get rid of the foetus since he planned not to take her as his second wife. The unfortunate thing, however, loved her unborn child so much that she wanted to keep it despite the imam’s threats. And when the imam’s wife and family got wind of what had happened at last, they presumed that poor child had seduced her abuser and forcibly took the infant from her, ripped it straight from her tomb prematurely and buried her alive to save their face and honour.

From that day forth, the witch swore an oath of vengeance; she conspired with the djinn and vowed to bring ruin to the village. The men, terrified, dragged her into the mountains and savagely violated her, hoping to shatter her power and resolve. Even Ahmet, that fool, was forced to take part, though he did not want to at first, out of fear of what the men would do to him should he refuse. Like that, they thought they had defeated her and forever silenced her. And not long after this happened, the women once again began to bear children. Six babies were born in total. Irmak was one of those six babies. But aside from her, no one else survived early childhood. The children who lived in the village as of writing these arcane words leading nowhere came from other, nearby villages in the hopes of keeping the population from shrinking any further.

 People came to believe it was the witch’s doing that too, and so they found her and killed her. No one knew where they had left her body, though, since she was never reported missing by her family, who fled the village overnight that same day. However, people claimed they could hear her cries in the witching hour still, mourning her child who had been buried alive and whispered curses, colliding with the djinn.

Irmak pulled her arm free as these thoughts resurfaced from the deepest corners of her subconsciousness telling her to be careful and not to take a step further than she already had.

“I-I should go home now, it’s getting late.”

The woman spoke at last. Her voice was heavy with sorrow, just like how Irmak imagined it would be, and a chill shot down her spine.

“I am your mother, child. Don’t you recognise me?”

Her eyes narrowed, deep wrinkles forming. She didn’t know this woman, yet the words pierced her heart like a wound torn open for reasons she couldn’t understand. The way she said them… as though she truly believed those words…

“No.”

“Oh, my child… My sweet, sweet child…”

The woman cupped her face, and in her eyes, Irmak saw tears, saw a sorrow so deep it seemed endless. She knew, then. This was her. The witch. The woman who had been raped, who had lost her baby, and who had sworn vengeance against the villagers.

“You’re a witch,” she said, the words escaping her before she could hinder them. “Right?”

The woman lowered her head, shame shadowing her face. Painful memories seemed to weigh her down and take over her bleak mind. Then she looked up again and met Irmak’s quizzical gaze.

“Forgive me, my child,” she said, her voice breaking. “You are not her. Go back to your family now. Don’t look back and… promise me to never walk out at night again.”

The woman then turned towards the mountain path and walked away, leaving Irmak no chance to reply. Instead, she stood watching until the woman vanished into the dark, then returned home as she had been told.

By dawn, before the first light touched the sky, soldiers came with sudden, grim news: the entire village had been poisoned, and no one survived except Irmak and her family. Doors hung open, meals sat unfinished, and bodies lay where they had fallen, some in beds, some in the streets, faces twisted as though they had seen Shaitan himself. Irmak clung to her mother’s skirt as the soldiers told them what had happened, and her small heart hammered out of control as he thought back on her encounter with the witch.

Years later, long after she and her family fled that cursed place, Irmak heard the truth of what really happened that night. Apparently, the soldiers had found the source of the poisoning and wrote off the macabre case as an accident caused by a rotten corpse that had been found in the well the villagers used for drinking water. But there was no update on whose corpse it was or why it had been inside the well – or for how long…

The incident affected her in more than one way. Even as a grown woman, she would wake some nights with her face wet from tears she did not remember shedding. In her dreams, she walked again on that mountain path, always with the woman at her side, always hearing those same swords on repeat: “Oh, my child… My sweet, sweet child…” And when the wind howled and whistled in those harrowing moments, she could hear the djinn echoing those same words from the mountain path she had left behind in her past but never truly escaped. 

A Promise Kept

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash
”Please reopen the case! My daughters have been hurting for too long,” Chung Mi-Suk collapsed to her knees and clasped her hands together in a relentless, heart-wrenching plea that twisted the onlookers’ stomachs with guilt. “Please! My daughters are hurting! Please help me put them to rest!”

The milling police station was on pause, watching the tragic spectacle of a mother pleading on behalf of her deceased daughters to the police. But no one could quench the fire burning within the poor woman, for the sexual assault case had long since been written off by the attorney in charge, and two decades had gone by in a heartbeat. There was nothing they could do. Nothing but watch. And as Mi-Suk realised that her prayers would fall on deaf ears today as well, as they had done so for the past decade, she staggered back up on her feet and exited the station.

The rain poured down ruthlessly and drenched everything in ice-cold water. She lifted her shoulders and chafed her arms from the cold yet did not try to flee from the rain or seek shelter somewhere where it couldn’t reach her. Instead, she stood her ground at the steps of the police station and watched the world go by before her in a rapid sequence. In those fleeting moments, while watching the common people go about their routine, she broke down and wept from the helplessness.

The evidence she so carefully collected over the years and put on pen to paper, an entire dossier with files upon files, now lay on the wet ground, the paper crumbling and eventually melting away like the seething fire in her heart consuming her resolve.

She was dying. A whole lifetime had come and gone in the blink of an eye, and before she realised it, she had become a mother, a widow, and now just an old lady whose only purpose was to seek justice for the twin daughters she raised so tenderly, whom she shielded from this cruel world, only to see them melt away just like how these papers now faded to the cadence of the heavy rain.

“Hey, ahjumma, you okay?”

She didn’t answer; instead, she looked on without moving as two young men rummaged through her pockets and ran away with the few coins she had, leaving behind her purse and an old photograph of her family before the tragedy took place and everything fell apart. With shaking hands, she picked up the photograph and smiled, wiping away her tears.

“I won’t leave this world until they’ve all paid. Umma, promised you, remember? Even if I have to keep on living and cheat death, I won’t break my promise to you, so sleep tight, my angels. Umma will soon join you and your appa. I promise.”

Rising back up on her feet, she trudged through the crowd of people from all walks of life as they fled the pouring rain, their movements in the background a blur of motion and their presence almost negligible.

The only thing Mi-Suk could see, the only thing that arrested her, was the large LED display with an award-winning movie director and his up-and-coming press conference and subsequent movie premiere for his newest blockbuster. And when she finally was close enough to it, staring up with hollow and detached eyes, her tears blended in with the salty rain and something in her expression changed – one that gave away nothing yet told a chilling story all at the same time.

Then, like the undead, she dragged her feet through the bustling capital, towards the studio where the press conference would be taking place later that night. She saw or heard nothing but the angelic voices of her beloved daughters, the way they called her umma, and those blissful days back in time when this cruel world did not blacken their purity and fill them with hatred and shame.

One and a half hours; the press conference was only one and a half hours away now.

Her eldest said the director was always the last one to arrive on time, that he would let all the filming crew and staff wait for him on purpose to relish in his ego. Such people never changed, only became worse over time. Their ego was so high, their sense of reality so low, yet they actually dared to believe themselves as nothing more than the filth they were, for they had become so used to tramping on and deriding those unable to fight back that they thought they were invincible, that they could stave off justice by paying those willing to accept the money thrown at them like the barking bitches they were.

And perhaps, they were right to think so, now that she thought it through, from where she lay in wait at the underground parking lot of the studio with a metal pipe tightly in her bony, wrinkled hand. Perhaps they were indeed right to think so….

Half an hour passed. Then, gradually, forty and fifty minutes. No one showed up in the parking lot, not even other people. Eventually, she decided to wait the entire length of the conference, approximately two hours or slightly more than that. She spent those hours just waiting and doing nothing else, counting the seconds, getting lost in thoughts and old memories, then restarting from the beginning on a never-ending loop.

At around 10 pm., things started to shift, and the solitude and harrowing memories gave way to other kinds of thoughts, the kinds that only a grieving mother could tolerate without losing her sanity along the way. She followed each person, tracing their movements, while keeping an eye out for the one she was looking for. But even as the minutes ticked away, the director remained elusive. Had he not come to his own press conference? But then she recalled the LED display she saw earlier tonight and knew that couldn’t be the case. Perhaps this wasn’t the parking lot used by the people who attended the conference?

Feeling the pressure of time, Mi-Suk hid the pipe in her bag, her youngest gifted her with her first pay through sweat, blood, and tears – and as she learnt after her passing – with her body.

She started for the stairwell leading to the lobby.

The entire place was filled to the brim with newspeople, overly zealous fans with no regard for their own or other people’s safety, and the few celebrities who were now standing at the centre of the red carpet posing for the paparazzi. Overwhelmed by the blinding lights and recurrent shutter of the cameras in the background, she noticed a young woman screaming her head off a few feet away and quickly made her way through the crowd, showing each one of them aside, and then grabbed hold of her.

“Director. Where is he?”

The young woman cast her a side-long look, judging and eyeing her down, before replying with a hoarse voice. “Director Kim? He’s still backstage, I guess. Why, are you a fan or something—”

Mi-Suk grabbed both of her hands—“Thank you, thank you!”—and slipped past security unnoticed, perhaps due to her old frame and those seventy years of agony that had hunched her back, turned her hair grey, and made her lose her teeth prematurely. After all, what harm could a seventy-year-old pose to anybody?

Only if they knew… only if they knew the fire burning inside her, the one that flared now and then, and ate through the deepest chamber of her heart, body, and soul like she’d entered the inferno even before shutting her eyes shut to this wicked, corrupted world.

Navigating the backstage was harder than she thought it would be. She passed by an entire corridor lined with doors for the third time by the time she heard what she could only describe as the sound of a muffled scream. Before she knew it, she found herself in front of a door with no label on it and perked her ears. She’d gone deaf once due to a vascular issue in her right ear, way before she lost her daughters so untimely, but had managed to get it back after treatment. She still had issues with that ear, but despite her hearing loss, those screams were so loud that she, for a few seconds, was stunned into silence.

Yet, as she looked around the corridor and the passersby, she noticed that no one even cast her a glance or inquired about the screams coming through all the louder with each passing second. She thus grabbed a crew member talking loudly over the phone, trying to bring his attention to the strange sounds.

“Young man, listen. You must call security!”

The young man tried to shake her off. “Ahjumma, how did you get in here? Huh?”

“Someone asks for help, in there, listen,” she tried, pulling the crew member closer to the unlabelled door. “I’m not lying. Listen! You must hurry and call—”

“Shibal!” The young man pushed her away so hard she hurled towards the walls, hitting her head. Gliding a hand through his sleek hair, staring her down with an annoyed look, he crept closer with a look that gave away that he indeed heard something but pretended not to.

“Hey, ahjumma, I don’t hear a damn thing, so stop the crazy act and leave before I call security. Do you hear me? Hey, I’m asking if you heard me? Shibal! Bitch, I said—”

“Always the same thing. It never stops. It never does. Why? Why doesn’t it ever—”

“Huh? What’d you just say? Never—what? You cursed me or something? Fucking bitch—”

Mi-Suk reached for the metal pipe in her bag. She didn’t hesitate, not even as the young man lay in a pool of his own blood, begging for mercy. Instead, she repeated her words, just as he told her to do moments ago, and kept bludgeoning his face until he stopped begging for his wretched existence and lay motionless on the linoleum floor. She then left his body to bleed and turned her attention to the unlabelled door, the pipe dragging at her side, as she twisted the knob.

A young woman lay naked, drugged, on the lap of the director whose wasted life she’d come to take. The filthy perpetrator stood up as he noticed her at the door, pulling up his trousers. She locked the door before anybody could intervene and save the director’s life.

Then… she took one step at a time. Slow and steady. Seeing nothing but darkness before her, hearing nothing but her angels’ voices in her ears, feeling no other emotion but that of a grieving mother who had gone without getting justice for far too many years.

“You want money? I’ll pay you! I’ll give you my entire fortune! I’ll do anything!”

Mi-Suk couldn’t help the smirk playing on her lips. “Then tell me, Director Kim, can you return my daughters to me? Let me see them one final time so I can ask for forgiveness?”

“…What? Daughters? Hey, ahjumma, you,” he pointed at his head, mocking her sanity, “you’ve lost a screw or something?”

“When I kill you, the world will know, finally, the monster you are… the things you’ve done… those horrible, horrible things you’ve done to such pure souls, who wanted nothing but recognition for their hard work, to repay their parents with their first pay, to give back to the world…”

“Huh? What’s this about? I’ve done nothing! Yah, ahjumma, you think I’m the only one who does things like that?” He paused, his eyes darting from the pipe in her hand and the young woman now getting back her senses. “Besides, you think fame at a young age comes at no cost? We all pay the price, in our ways, and bitches like this with their bodies. What’s so bad about it, huh? Nothing’s for free in this world, shouldn’t someone of your age know that the best?”

“That pay!” she snapped, her eyes turning wild with the anger festering beneath the surface, “has cost two precious lives! Tell me, Director, what kind of price tag requires forty counts of rape, derision, and sexual abuse by several men, of whom the majority are married and have kids of their own!?”

“This is just the way of the world! You think killing me will stop the system?”

“Then I’ll break the system, too, until none of it remains, if doing so I must until the very second I cease to exist! For killing people like you… it is not justice. It’s an obligation.”

The door behind them flung open as security entered. By then, however, the director had already succumbed to his injuries. They found Mi-Suk cradling the young woman, wiping away her tears and lulling her into comfort; her face and clothes covered in crimson, and her eyes wet with tears she didn’t know she still had. When she saw the security guards with their weapons aimed at her, she released the young woman and picked up the metal pipe on the table before her, advancing.

“Stop! Stop moving! Stop moving and put the pipe on the floor. NOW!”

But she didn’t stop, nor did she let the pipe fall. Instead, she let it down to the side, letting it drag on the floor, and then brushed past the security and the crowd of onlookers as she continued down the hallway aimlessly. Several people followed her, capturing her movements with their cameras and livestreaming. But the crowd didn’t stop her, not even as the security tried to step in. Instead, they became her live shields and blocked anybody trying to intervene.

She came to a halt at the centre of the red carpet, now directly facing the shutters, those blinding shutters that kept capturing her every single move and livestreaming. For a while, she just stood there and said nothing, not even as the crowd grew larger and the number of cameras only increased. Then she released her grip on the metal pipe, collapsing on her knees, addressing the nation and the police that failed her.

“I, Chung Mi-Suk, hereby plead guilty to the murder of Director Kim, the perpetrator in my daughters’ sexual assault case that was written off before the investigation could even begin. My daughters… my poor angels, when they heard of this, blamed by the authorities for being raped on several occasions by several men, including Director Kim, killed themselves before justice could be served. My husband died not long after, unable to live with the grief, and I tried decades – decades! – trying to make my voice be heard! Yet no one heard my pleas, bought for and paid with dirty money! So, what else could a mother do but kill her daughters’ abusers herself? To make sure they rested in peace, wherever they were, to finally be able to let go of the past, and say: “I did my best, the only thing I could, and kept my promise to you.” I do not ask for leniency but for my daughters’ case to reopen, as well as other similar cases the prosecutors wrote off in return for bribes and lavish gifts, or perhaps, buried secrets. I, Chung Mi-Suk, thus plead guilty to all charges against me…”

A delayed applause erupted through the crowd of people, of whom some couldn’t keep their tears in, while others, infuriated by the prosecutors’ failure to follow proper protocol and capture people like Director Kim, demanded justice and for all cases related to sexual assaults to reopen despite the statute of limitations.

While Mi-Suk never wanted this to be the case, spilling blood was her last resort, and she did not regret it. Not one single second of it. Even the inmates at the prison she was sent to broke out with cheers as she was escorted to her cell by two female guards, praising her strength as a mother and her unwavering love for the children she lost too soon and in such a short time, one after the other.

She died of old age only a few months short of spending a year in the prison, where she became the light of beacon for the inmates and the nation as a whole, recounting her twin daughters’ merry childhood as well as those harrowing years before the light in their eyes shut forever, bringing the whole court to break down and the prosecution to admit to their negligence and failure to follow proper protocol in front of the public, convicting those who deliberately took bribes and wrote off cases to hide their own skeletons in the cupboard.

But this was far from over. As with everything in this world, behind the scenes, new cases of exploitation and abuse occurred. Director Kim was right. There was no stopping the systematic abuse going on in plain sight; this was indeed the truth. But one thing was certain: every unpaid deed resurfaced and justice served sooner or later. No man was safe, and sometimes, all that was needed for that to happen, was someone like Mi-Suk who stared death in the eye with conviction and forced the world to open its eyes and see the ugliness behind purple-tinted glasses, even on the account of her own livelihood and health, for heroes needed neither fame nor comfort, only the will to force the system to reboot now and then.

Whether this deed was the unjustified murder of children, leaving them to rot from hunger, or the atrocities of barbarians with no empathy towards people other than their own, or the numerous world leaders watching a whole population burn yet choose to turn a blind eye like the cowards they were and would forever be as long as yet another innocent life was taken before it has a change to bloom like the flower they were meant to be – neither a terrorist nor a human animal living in open sewages…

 

 

 

 

 

Dream Girl Evil

Photo by Siobhan Flannery on Unsplash
Sondra Kaufmann – a name so rare it was destined for immortality, one way or another, bound for stardom.

We first crossed paths in middle school, when she had yet to reach her full potential and become the person she was now remembered as. Her auburn curls used to drape over her shoulders, and her crimson lips used to be plump and temptingly kissable.

I liked her. She was an outcast, a miserable spirit just like me. And, being a hot-blooded teenager, I was naturally drawn to her pretty face and sharp mind. She was my dream girl, only darker, more dangerous. My dream girl, evil.

Nothing happened between us, though. I don’t think Sondra was, you know, interested in other people in the same way we normal humans were. She kept a low profile until graduation and remained a mystery – not just in my teenage mind, but in the minds of every other boy in our year.

Everyone was in love; Sondra wasn’t. I don’t think she was capable of feeling those kinds of emotions.

Funny to think about it now, but on the day of our graduation, I actually planned to confess to her. A stupid idea, I know, but it didn’t seem so bad at the time. As I said, she was pretty – petite and classy – and I was into her edginess. I mean, I was a six-foot-tall metalhead. I blame the hormones.

Anyway, the point is, I never confessed, and Sondra, being the eccentric girl she was, didn’t even show up to her own graduation. And like that, ladies and gentlemen, that love story ended right then and there – as it should.

I studied mechanical engineering later in life and sold my baby, my Gibson Les Paul, to focus on my studies. That hurt like hell, honestly. I mourned its loss for weeks.

My girlfriend at the time, Lily, thought I was being overly dramatic for no good reason. But I’m telling you that guitar had been with me forever. It was like a child to me.

I broke things off with Lily after two years of dating, for unrelated reasons, of course, but honestly, I don’t think I ever really forgave her for saying those things back then.

Don’t get me wrong. Lily was a good girl – too good for me – but she could be a little… How do I put it? Borderline obsessive? It wasn’t that she wanted to be in my life; she wanted to be my life. Well, you get the gist of it…

Fast forward to my first real job – a paid internship at one of the largest corporations in the country. I didn’t earn much, but I got by pretty well compared to a lot of my classmates, most of whom were still unemployed.

I ran into Sondra again, purely by chance, at the tube. I never thought I’d see her again, but there she was, standing right in front of me. She looked exactly the same as the last time I saw her.

To say I felt nothing would’ve been a lie. She was beautiful, disturbingly unreal, and I was attracted to her all over again!

Just like a scene from a romantic film, it felt as though we were the only two people in the world, completely lost in the moment. I was the first to speak. I said her name without even realising why. She smiled, and I knew she remembered me.

We spent the night at a nearby motel. The walls echoed with our passionate whispers, creating a memory that would linger in our minds for a very long time. But as dawn broke, we parted ways, and the morning air erased every trace of our intimate encounter.

Two days later, a notification appeared on my phone. It was a friend request from her on Facebook. Do people still use that platform these days? Well, I suppose that’s beside the point.

We started dating.

Sondra moved in with me after just three weeks, and everything seemed perfect. We even adopted a Golden Retriever from a shelter and named her Golden – pun intended.

I had never felt such overwhelming happiness before. I wanted to show her how special she was to me, shower her with passionate love, and make plans for our future together.

That was… until I discovered her secret. Or should I say, ‘secrets’?

Sondra, though an intelligent woman by nature, had dropped out of university shortly after enrolling in medical school. When her patriarchal, narrow-minded parents found out, they cut off her monthly allowance and, in her words, ‘disowned’ her.

I couldn’t understand how any parents could just cut ties with their child like that, but I believed her – I wanted to believe her. But this wasn’t even remotely close to what actually ended our relationship.

Things took a turn for the worse on the evening of my birthday. We had just had sex when she received a message on her phone and abruptly jumped out of bed. That was the first time she had ever done that.

Though I had no reason to suspect she was cheating on me, this incident kept me on edge for a long time. So, when I got the chance to check her phone, I took it and risked everything.

I knew her password – she didn’t bother hiding it from me – but what I found was beyond disturbing: grainy images, taken from what seemed to be some kind of photo album. The images showed people in disturbing positions, some naked, some intoxicated, and others seemingly stiff, like corpses.

All her messages, sent and received, were deleted, and she didn’t have a single phone number saved in her contacts – not even mine.

The nature of the images, especially those I believed depicted real human cadavers, made my blood run cold. Why did she have those images, and who the hell was sending them to her?

What disturbed me most, however, was that all the victims were people of colour.

I confronted her the same night. Although I wasn’t sure how to approach it, since I couldn’t predict her behaviour, not after seeing those pictures, I hesitated for a solid two hours.

Her response – I can still hear it clearly in my fading mind – chilled me to the bone. She said it with such calmness too, in such a nonchalant and detached manner, that I struggled to process whether she was aware of the morbidity of her own words. But, boy, she sure was!

“My slaves,” she said. “They are our slaves, don’t you get it?”

Dumbfounded, I stood there, and it took me a moment to recover before she repeated herself. I couldn’t believe it. She was dead serious.

“W-What?”

“You don’t understand! We’re superior, Elijah! We come from a noble and pure race! We have to preserve it!”

Disgusted by those words I’d never expected to hear from someone this special to me, I instinctively stepped away.

“Are you… are you okay?”

Her features softened as she noticed the confusion in my voice, inched closer and let her finger run down my cheek. Even now, as she said those disturbing things, even as I saw those messed-up images, I couldn’t help but feel attracted to her.

“That’s why I chose you, Elijah…” I let her kiss me, even for a brief second, relishing in her wet kiss before I pushed her away. “Together, we’ll retain our race and make it pure again—”

You’re not well.” I paused, glancing away to gather my thoughts, muttering more to myself than to Sondra. “This… this is madness. You weren’t like this before. Just—what happened to you?”

“I opened my eyes to the truth, Elijah! Don’t you see? Those people don’t work, don’t pay taxes, don’t do anything! They’re rats! Filthy rats living off people like us.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Rats? They’re people, Sondra, just like you and me. Humans! Humans who deserve to live an honourable life just like anybody else!”

“You call those people our equals? Muslims, Indians, Asians – they’re not like us. They never will be!”

“You’ve lost your goddamn mind, Sondra!”

“Open your eyes and see the truth for what it is! There are mosques everywhere! Mosques, for crying out loud! And those stinking kebab shops on every corner, and-and—"

“What's your problem with people praying, working hard, and trying to make a living in a world where people like us have an advantage? You can’t just label the entire population as bad and others as good. That’s not how this works. There are good and bad people, not good and bad groups or races of people.”

“You call stealing our jobs, taking over neighbourhoods, breeding violence, and polluting our race people working hard? Babe, our vets are homeless and barely scraping by after serving this country, while those-those rats are taking our hard-earned money!”

“Polluting?” I couldn't help but crack up. “You sound like a 60-year-old bigot—or some 20-year-old online incel. What the actual fuck, Sondra? Since when did you start hanging around with people whose only experience of people of colour comes from the news?”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“No, I fucking don’t! And I think you’re ill. This isn’t you, Sondra. We went to school in the ghetto together! In the bloody ghetto! You know those things you're saying aren't true! We both know.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that those people are threatening our existence!”

“Fine! Let’s pretend you’re right. Even if your twisted theory holds up, what do you actually lose if our ‘race’ becomes a minority? Think about it. Weren’t you going to be a doctor? Explain to me how this makes any sense to you.”

“I’m telling you, our race will disappear—”

“That bloody race talk again? Fuck! Okay. I'll let you believe in that bullshit this one time, but by the time you and I cease to exist, we'll both be long gone, don’t you think? Who knows? Maybe a better race will come out of mixing races? Isn't that what survival of the fittest is all about? The greater the complexity of our genetic makeup, the higher our intelligence and capacity to adapt will be. If we all get stuck trying to preserve an ancient noble race there’s no fucking evidence of, humanity itself will cease to exist!”

“I can't believe I actually considered marrying you! You’re a lost cause, Elijah! And you’re no better than those bloody rats living off of us!”

“And I can’t believe someone so intelligent turned out like this! It’s a pity. Really. I… I really liked you. I wanted this to work and… never mind. It doesn’t even matter now, does it?”

“No, it does, babe! I’ll give you one more chance to do the right thing.” She paused upon seeing the smirk on my face. “Don’t give me that face, babe, ‘cause I’m not fucking smiling right now.”

“One more chance? One more chance for what? You expect us to work out after coming out as a racist?”

“Is this your answer? Elijah, babe, look at me.”

She cradled my face in her hands, those deep-set eyes boring into mine. Her face card was strong – impossibly strong – and her kissable lips hovered just inches from mine.

“Is this really what you want?”

“It’s not about what I want,” I said, stepping back again, fighting to stay grounded, to resist the spell of her voice, her touch, her everything. “I can’t be with someone who sees people this way. I’m sorry. I really am.”

Her expression hardened. Cold. Unreadable. Something in her changed. Those seductive eyes of hers, warm and teasing, went dead. Hollow. Predatory. Then she said it. The line that twisted something inside me:

“I didn’t want to do this. Not to you, Elijah. But you leave me no other choice.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” My throat tightened. “Sondra? What the fuck is that supposed—”

Her eyes flicked past me. Quick. Too quick. Like she’d spotted something in the shadows. And then… she smiled. Not a grin. Not a smirk. A smile that made my skin crawl.

I whipped around.

Click.

A camera shutter. And just like that, with a single click, I was gone. Just another soul in that cursed roll of film.

My final memory? A saw. A clean cut. My head leaving my body.

Then – darkness.

Just... darkness. And nothing else.

No God.

No angels.

No demons.

Just the endless click of the shutter. Out of reach, just beyond the veil. There and not there. Real one second, smoke and mirrors the next.

The footage never stopped.

The saw never dulled.

My severed head never stopped rolling – thumping across the floorboards, trailing crimson like a signature.

And I watched her. I watched her keep going. Collecting more. Luring them in. Always the same setup. Same smile. Same bed. And those lips—

Still kissable.

Still killing.