Aysal
How far was it to give a wrong answer to a riddle? What would this going too far take away from you? As I caught the cover of the grating, I felt a sharp touch on my arm. While the anger boiling inside me rose to my eyes like bubbling water, I tried to pull my arm away by clenching my fists. But against the fingers that clung to my arm like glue, my anger simply died down and turned into grains of sand. "What do you want?" I asked. My ambition was evident in my voice. The shaky breaths I took were no different from the panting of an animal.
I saw that cold mask of the mechanism on Sis's face. "Four hundred is you," he murmured; I could tell he was weighing something in his mind as he said this.
After restraining me, he withdrew his hand completely. The damp smell of the tunnel disappeared back down the grating as I let go of the cover.
"You're so sure, then," I said mockingly. "They are stupid enough to ask me something they've already given the answer to!"
A cold expression appeared on Sis's face. "Maybe they are."
"I don't believe you," I said; "In fact, I don't believe anyone here! You..." The idea of asking a question came to my lips. Did he also believe I was seeing visions? Was that moment I believed he stabbed me a hallucination? Most likely it was, because I had never been wounded. Though! I laughed at myself. Even if we accepted that moment as a hallucination, it didn't prove that I would always see hallucinations afterwards!
"I," he said, with very little distance left between his lips. Taking a deep breath that strained his chest, he looked at the grating with distress. "You saw it, didn't you?"
"It? I was just a patient seeing visions, remember?"
"That's the others' opinion," he murmured; he swallowed. "As for my opinion..."
My heartbeat quickened involuntarily. "You are a killer, a patient," I said with all my ruthlessness.
Would this still change the fact that he had an opinion?
"Sometimes it's even necessary to be a killer," he said in a dull voice. "Systems collapse, only people remain."
"So you don't regret it at all?" I said; "For killing the group leader, for pointing a gun at me... For making people-" My voice broke. "-slaves on the first day of your reign."
I looked for anger in Sis's gaze, but it wasn't there. Stagnant, calm waters were flowing there.
"How much do you know about Özlem?" he asked. He seemed particularly interested in this subject. "Every piece of information I give you is related to the amount of information you give me!"
Was he making a deal with me?
"I don't want to remember," I said and added. "None of it. How can one rebel against a kindness like forgetting?"
Shaking his head, "I can't forget even for a moment," he murmured. "I suppose you find this strange now?"
"You told me with your own mouth that I was four hundred," I defended.
Even though I realized I made it very obvious that I really believed this, the words had already left my mouth. The white cloth that the pigeon painted red was in my mind like yesterday. I thought that such a ruthless woman had such a ruthless child as Sis. As thoughts danced in my mind, the doors of the past cracked open.
"Your brother," I spoke in a harsh voice.
He corrected me immediately in a sharp tone. "We are not from the same mother."
He was looking right into my eyes as if expecting me to explain something. Then, in his soulless dullness, I saw something more mysterious, more eerie. "Do you remember your father?" I felt my index finger twitch slightly.
The silence between us was as dominant as a church bell.
"Never..." he spoke, in a voice that was almost inaudible. Suddenly, he started acting as if this subject was completely unimportant. "I never saw him."
Sometimes, even a giant father figure could not fit into the vast imagination of a child.
"You know something," he said; "I know you know..." He swallowed, missing the one thing that shattered his self-confidence. His pacing back and forth. "Every time my stepfather beat my mother, I dreamed of saving her. I wanted to save her from her constantly repeating bad fate..."
I turned over in my mind what it meant for Özlem to be Sis's mother. If Özlem was the Özlem I knew, she couldn't be a good woman either. "She had eaten a pigeon," I said. "While the warm blood of life flowed on her white skin painted in blood..."
My lips contorted, I gritted my teeth. Sis, completely concentrated, said, "If we find one more letter..."
Interrupting him immediately, "I can't trust you," I said; at that moment, a "drrrrrrrrr" sound reached my ears. It was as if they were rubbing a string against a ridiculous part of a giant musical instrument.
"What is this?" I heard Hülya's voice say. Mert was standing like a ghost right to her left, his hair and beard unkempt. As he heard the sound, he looked around with all his eyes. His gaze paused on Sis. He was displeased. Rightly so.
The patients began to cover their ears with their hands. "What's happening?" I said anxiously. I didn't know what to do.
Simultaneously, a sharp pain stabbed the back of my neck. "Ah!" A "DANK!" sound came.
A giant holo-screen, which looked like a combination of three blue holo-screens side by side, was projected on the wall. The light was so bright that I had to squint my eyes. Some images passed through my mind one after another. These were film strips shot in succession. A face appearing one after another could be discerned on the film strips. At the moment I thought my heart would stop, the image in my head stopped moving and took hold. The woman at the entrance of the prison. The woman who warned me not to go inside when I first came here. The woman who said, "The mechanism ate my son like a carnivore..." Özlem. Özlem was that woman.
I looked at Sis's frozen face. He was looking at my face as if wanting to know, almost completely uninterested in the screen. Everything stopped. As I lost my perception of time, "Your mother," I said; he looked at me and nodded. He was completely concentrated.
"Your mother-"
A sound thundered. The cover of the grating in front of me opened with a "snap." A plate rose up from below the floor. A silver pair of scissors was shining on it.
A countdown began on the holo-screen. The sound of a siren echoed. "To your luck!" A smiley face emoji.