Shifted

“Anytime you need help, you call for me, and I solve the problem.” A Halloween short story of nine thousand words. Contains hallucinations, blood, and crude language.

I get my paper back and it reads an F.

Esen, somebody says, far away, and I stand in front of the teacher’s desk and there’s a second paper I receive, in front of everyone else watching, Esen, I’m sorry, but we have to make sure you get through this year. Your participation is so low too…

My apologies are practiced: I’m trying to apply to this university. It’s rough at home. I’m trying to get my thesis done.

Yes, Esen, but I can’t do anything about that.

I’m outside the class. In the hallway. In the girls’ toilet. In my hand is the paper, burning on my palm like a permanent mark of shame.

The first time you get an F on an exam and there’s not enough oral participation to make up for it, you get a warning that you’ll fail this class. Your parents have to sign it. Acknowledge the shame you brought home, the blight that’ll stain your class report forever. Like it wasn’t bad enough, Sezen abla has never brought one F at home and now she has a law firm. Okan abi, well, he’s the boy of the home; he was always disinterested in school anyway and three years after mandatory school he became a baking apprentice and now he’s got a store for himself. Me, I’m supposed to follow suit. Fashion makes no money, I got told. Who would ever get what Esen designs, I got asked. Get something stable. Get something sensible. So I applied to TU Wien for machine engineering.

F in German. If anybody knew of this— anyone ever got ahold of this paper before I turn it around—

I find a pen in my pocket. On the sink, my Mom’s signature on my hands turns scrawny, a single jitter that reveals my clumsy hand. I curse. My hands clam. The world tilts and everything’s too hot and cold at once. Something rings, shrill and loud. Is it real? My hands are too frozen to press my ears shut. How will I fix this? I have to do something. Now. Or else...

“I can help,” somebody says all of a sudden: bright, clear, male.

I look up.

He is where my reflection would be. He looks like Okan abi; dark, smart eyes, brown hair, strong nose, double chin. An open, unsuspecting smile. Unlike Okan abi, his hair is so long that the mirror can’t capture it. He wears my shirt. He wears my pants. I’m tall myself, but he’s so tall that his head is cut off from the upper edge of the mirror where mine wouldn’t.

I touch the mirror with a shivering hand. He does the same, at the same time as I do. We meet eyes; he smiles. I know I’m not.

“Who are you?” I manage to say.

“If you were born a boy, what would your name be?” he asks me back.

Nobody expected a girl. It was to the point where my Mom got presents from relatives with the name she had constantly declared she’d name her son. Too bad it’s so gendered you can’t name a girl that. So now at home we have a pair of baby socks with the names Sezen, Okan, and Hakan.

“That’s my name,” he says.

“Wh-what?” I stammer.

“I’m you. Let’s make a deal,” Hakan says. “Anytime you need help, you call for me, and I solve the problem.”

I look back down at the paper with the faked signature. Like that wasn’t enough, the bell rings. Somebody’s bound to see it. Bound to tell her. Nobody’s sorry for whatever might happen to me.

“Okay,” I breathe.

“Yeah? Do you need help right now?”

I nod. I nod some more so he gets it, how out of time I am.

He touches my face, and first I think maybe his touch is just cold, but then I look into the mirror and the hands are gone, it’s just arms, and it’s like somebody pours cold water into me, so strong that my knees buckle from the force and give in.

Everything is dark, and within, I finally relax.

---

I wait a few days, a week, another. My parents don’t bring it up. The German teacher doesn’t bring it up from what I remember. The classes blur into one another like I’m used to. When I struggle, I ask Hakan for help, just for one period. It’s nice to sleep and wake up, if you could call it that. It’s the most pleasant way of forgetting.

When there’s no talk of elections and politicians embroidered in a scandal, there’s at least one news report on the Verschoben or Shifted, people making deals with their reflections, leading to hollowed eyes, white hair, and horrible crashes and deaths where only in their final moments they wake up from whatever spell they were under. But Hakan… Hakan isn’t my reflection. He’s my secret. He’s me.

On every surface, Hakan grins at me and I grin back at him.

---

The door clicks late at night while I’m working on my thesis. I’m told to work on something basic, but I still stare at this page of Turkish music history trying to decipher what behoove means and trying not to copy paste everything I read off here. When I think I did an okay job, it’s already well into the night. Okan abi is up eating self made cake in the kitchen. He sees my face and snorts. 

“Skunk,” he says. 

I flinch, self-consciously checking my armpits, and his eyes soften. 

“White doesn’t suit you, Esen,” he says. “You won’t go to school that way, right?”

His hand runs over my hair and I guess that’s where it’s white now. But there’s no hair dye in our house, Sezen abla will notice if I touch her hair dye — on her cupboard, visible for everyone to see — and so I go like that either way.

I hear skunk the entire day: in whispers, in my face, as a joke. The teachers try to be nice about it: Esen, are you trying something different? Mayer, teaching Math class, asks me. Is white hair popular? Hintenegger, our French teacher, asks. No, just Stinktier here, Alex answers. The whole class laughs.

There’s no one in the restroom once again. I check my reflection to see if it’s that bad, but it’s Hakan where my face should be, and he tilts his head with a smile. He has a dangly earring now, his hair tied to a ponytail. 

“Do you need my help?” he asks.

I turn left, then right. No one.

“Can you turn my hair brown?” I ask him.

He leans forward and grins. His earring glints conspiratorially. “I can do a lot of things,” he says. “Anything you want, I can do for you. You just have to ask for my help.”

“What did you do yesterday—“

He shakes his head.

“And what do you want?” I ask.

He makes a face. “I’m you. I want the same thing that you do.”

Right now I want to flow under anyone’s radar.

Hakan smiles a little wider. “So you want my help,” he says.

I nod. He reaches out again. Again, cool, smooth darkness.

---

Everybody stares at my hair, at me. It startles me. People see me now? Is this a good thing?

“Esen!” Over there, front row, that’s Freya. She is brown haired, her eyes green and her clothes always match her makeup, which always matches her golden complexion. She calls me over to her group at the corner: she with her boyfriend, American football player Kevin, as well as Tolga, the only other Turk of this class, and his girlfriend, blond and freckled Julia. All four of them are people that live in actual houses with gardens, only ever talking about things they’ll do over the weekend and the places they’ll visit and the concerts they’ll attend and the weed they’ll smoke. On weekends, I study and buy groceries, vacuum the house, and do whatever Sezen abla doesn’t want to do. It’s a laundry list of chores.

“Is it Esen like Besen?” Freya asks.

“Esen,” Tolga answers, pronouncing the correct way. Everybody repeats it. He looks at me and winks: I smile. He’s got my back.

“Esen,” Freya tries. It’s an approximation, and it’s fine. “You look great. What gives?”

Hakan did his magic. I can’t say that.

But while she waits, her eyes are genuinely warm; she sees me for the first time. I am human now. Everything in me tingles pleasantly, as if I drank sparkly water.

“I just…” I giggle, once, then several more times; it sounds like I inhaled helium. “I felt like being pretty for a change.”

Tolga nods in approval. “You do.”

Everybody wriggles their eyebrows, Freya included. Tolga’s face immediately sours and he slaps her arm; they all laugh. Julia seems to find it funny too, even though they’re dating. I don’t get it but I laugh along. With his nose like a hawk’s, Tolga looks like a cousin from my mother’s side. What’s there to feel attracted to?

“What’d you say you do this afternoon?” Freya turns back to me, her eyes on me.

Something stirs in me I didn’t know I had. Whatever she’s up to, I want to say. Would that be weird?

“We’re going to eat cupcakes,” Freya says. “Want to come with?”

I nod eagerly. Thank you, Hakan, I say. I can hear him laugh in my mind somehow. It sounds a little deranged.

---

It’s at the city center. My stomach rumbles and I tell myself it’s because I stand and don’t sit in this constantly trembling tramway. Breaths don’t come easy. It must be because the city center is a five-lane street and there’s only ever exhaust coming off of it. It’s way past my classes; I tell Okan abi to tell my parents I’m with friends, or working on some group project if it gets way longer; have fun, don’t you worry he answers and I beam at the phone screen. Hakan winks from the reflection when I lock it. He’s beaming, and I feel the same smile on my face.

I trail behind them all. I try to smile at four backs ahead of me. All my practice chuckles, cute and girl-like, I try to pass off as coughing when any one of the four turns.

Once we’re inside, somebody has to pull a chair for me to sit on the only desk available. The room is as small as my room at home and it cramps up my ribs also. The cupcakes are so small I could finish them off with one bite and so expensive that touching the only 5 euro bill I got in my wallet sends a shock through my body. Nobody seems to really notice, though. Freya is so close to Kevin that their noses touch. Tolga asks me about my family, where I live, what I do when I’m not with them. He doesn’t say much about himself in turn and I don’t ask. Julia also asks me about my family, where I live, and what I do in my free time normally. I find out she’s got a brother, a horse that she sees every Saturday called Minky, and that her parents are divorced, both of them living in some house with a garden: her mother in Vienna, her father outside in Lower Austria. I nod along. It seems enough for her.

I have the first thing I get suggested. It’s apparently some yoghurt strawberry cupcake and when I bite in I recoil. The taste is far too milky and bland. Watery. I want to wash my tongue off.

“Did you like that?” Tolga asks. He’s got an Oreo cupcake that looks more like foam and less like a cake.

I smile at him and shake my head.

“Did you like that?” Julia asks. She’s got something with oranges, or at least I see something like it swimming in the frosting. “Can I have a bite?”

“Are you just going to ask her everything twice?” Freya asks, breaking her eye contact with Kevin.

“Who?” Tolga asks.

“Who asks things twice?” Julia asks.

Freya rolls her eyes and looks at me. Hand resting on her head, she shakes her head as if to tell me not to mind them, then glances at my cupcake and asks, “Do you like it?”

I take a bite. I try not to wince, and it must look really convincing because she doesn’t look displeased. I nod and her eyes widen and she smiles a little wider. Like this is fun. Like I’m fun. I smile so wide my cheeks hurt.

There’s brown speckles in her green eyes; I wonder if anyone noticed that besides me. She’s got a mole on her nose; I wonder if Kevin knows. A pimple she’s hiding with her concealer that I would like to rub off. Her red earrings that fit her green eyes perfectly: it’s like each part of her makes her more beautiful than she already is. In her eyes, there’s a small shape of something. I think that’s me. I would like it if it was.

“Can I have a bite?” Freya asks.

The store suddenly expands to include the entire street, the district, the city, the country, the world. Inside, it’s me and her, our ankles freezing from the AC blowing, soft music playing and fading into nothing. In that world I slide my cupcake to her. She looks at me, then at the cupcake, and takes a little bit of the top. She closes her eyes in bliss. There’s frosting on the top of her lips. Before I can move — my body already leaning forward — she licks it off. She giggles a little.

“Want to have mine instead?” Freya asks.

Hers is vanilla and has little silver stars on it.

I take a bite. It’s sweet. It’s wonderful. If I kissed her right now, slid my tongue between her teeth like they did in the films, would she taste like this?

Something pops in me, warm, and it makes me shiver. I feel like I’m a bottle full of sparkly water and somebody shaked it really hard. Pop pop pop. I see it in Freya’s eyes too, tiny little fireworks of joy. 

Somebody clears their throat. The store snaps back to its original size, and they had to bring the fifth chair in for me. Freya’s eyes are just green and brown again, no shine in them. Kevin’s face is red and there’s a scowl on his face. Is that how he always looks?

Did I just imagine kissing a girl?

Freya’s attention snaps back to him too. She winks at me and then her nose touches Kevin’s again.

“Is that one better?” Tolga asks.

I nod.

Julia looks up from her phone. “Do you like that one?” she asks.

I nod again.

Freya doesn’t look at us but chuckles. I chuckle too, only because she did.

---

Freya hates P.E. as much as I do. We trail at the very back, pretending to run, and anytime the teacher notices, we start to jog again. Freya just lifts her arms up and it makes me laugh. For softball, I throw myself in front of the first ball just to hang at the graveyard zone the entire time at the end. Everybody laughs, Freya the loudest.

Freya’s last name is Eisenhuber, while Kevin’s is Polasek. Mine is Firat. In English classes, everyone from Altenmeier to Ganglhofer is in one group while everyone from Gruber to Zojek is in another room. I see Tolga (Yilmaz) hang back before he goes with his eyes on me, but I’m not sure what he wants. Eisenhuber sits next to Firat. Firat’s heart thumps constantly. Firat is a new flavor of sparkly water, fresh and limited edition, but nobody can open that bottle. If it did...

And if we did...

Freya copies wherever she feels stuck. I smell her perfume and I wonder if I could smell the way she does if we hug each other for long enough. She looks at me and giggles. 

“I know that pimple is annoying,” she says, poking it. “But the doctor told me to stop scratching them all the time. You ever get these, Esen? I feel like your face is so clean...”

I have a whole history of pimples, all of which I pop myself. I tell her all about it, and she just winces while laughing. Again, her eyes never leave mine. She’s way nicer without Kevin around.

I can help, Hakan whispers, the reflection on the window next to me.

“Esen?” Freya asks. “You okay? Is something there?”

I nod. All the bubbles that were so happy to pop off sink to my stomach, become stones in my stomach, in my throat. I can’t do it. I can’t listen to him.

She’s got a boyfriend and I have my responsibilities. My parents expect grandchildren. Sezen abla doesn’t want to date anyone my parents approve of. Okan abi’s flings never last long. I can’t fail them.

---

At night, when I close my eyes, I see Freya’s nose touching Kevin’s, like they’re glued together. In my dreams, they are: Freya turns to me and so does Kevin with that scowl, the two of them sewn together at the cheeks.

Do you like me, Esen? Freya asks in my dream.

Esen like Besen, Kevin grunts. And again: Esen like Besen.

My lips are glued. I can’t say a word. Every morning I wake up with my mouth wet from drool, my eyes burning, like some word escaped me while I woke up.

Freya invites me to lunch. On free periods she invites me to sit to the left of her, Kevin to the right, while we pour over homework. I let her copy everything I’ve ever noted down. At class I look down at lined paper and I see stars like they belong on a cupcake. I look up and my eyes turn to where Freya sits, which means I have to turn my neck to the right, which means after five hours my neck hurts from all the straining.

I get called by teachers. I fumble over my words because my brain, my tongue want to start with Freya. My geography teacher, an older woman, looks straight at me. It’s so scary that I bite my tongue. Esen, she says, I asked you when Franz Ferdinand was murdered. Not what Freya has to say.

The whole class laughs.

I drink coffee hoping it’ll cure me and wince at its taste. I participate so hard in P.E to get it out of my body that I twist my ankle and have to limp the remainder of the day. At home I jump at every Esen Sezen abla spits out to the point where it makes her perfectly plucked eyebrows raise in worry. I scrub the dishes so hard I leave scratches on plates. Still, anytime I close my eyes I see Freya. I see us holding hands. I sit down with my parents and watch television with them. In this dizi they can’t be together because they’re enemy families. Still they manage to meet whenever the screenplay deems it so. Mostly the male and female lead look at each other for unnecessarily long periods of time. He’s ugly and it’s annoying me. But then I think, this could be me and Freya. We could stare at each other for really long. I wouldn’t mind my eyes burning. We could hold each other’s hands. We could orbit around each other. The entire world could revolve around us, like it did in the cupcake place.

“They’re staring too long,” Dad says.

I shake my head. That can’t happen. No. And besides, her and Kevin…

Dad changes the channel.

To my right is Mom. To her right is Dad. Where I am is a blurry Hakan, taller than both, sitting totally relaxed with his legs spread out. He wears a sequined shirt and it glitters. His pants are tight.

“You want her,” Hakan says. He leans his head back. “She could be your girlfriend.”

The next channel has a roundtable on the war on “Kaymış”. Someone says, round them up, put them on a line! Line them up and shoot them! At this point, for the safety of the Turkish Republic—

You will play dead. It’ll suffocate you. Esen, I can help, Hakan says. You have to let me.

“What’s going on?” Mom asks in Turkish. “Esen?”

No. No. We can’t. I’m just thinking nonsense. I can’t do whatever comes to my mind, have whoever occupies my every feeling. Where Sezen abla can’t think for her family I’m supposed to be reliable. Where Okan is flaky I’m supposed to be stable.

“Esen.” Mom’s scowl reminds me of a vicious predator bird. “Did you make a deal with your reflection?”

The correct answer is to shake my head.

“Don’t you ever,” Mom hisses. “Don’t you ever, Esen. I will not deal with another Kaymış.”

I think she means that I’ve scooted too close to her or that my posture is bad when Dad looks at Mom, then he says, and says, “Verschoben.”

Shifted.

Line them up and shoot them!

I can’t stop shivering.

Mom grabs my arm. Her nails dig into my pullover, my flesh. “Don’t you ever dare. Never talk to your reflection. Never say what it does. You will suffer. You will drag us down.”

I shake my head. I nod. I want to evaporate into nothing.

“Is that why you dyed your hair?”

I shake my head again.

She stares at me, scorching my arms, then lets me go. Everything throbs. My heart is a rabbit and it leaps off my chest.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Esen,” Dad says.

I nod. I shake my head. I think maybe I am nothing but the things people tell me I should do.

---

In my room, I turn to my mirror. Even at night, I look taller there, my “hair” falling down to the ground. Are you bad for me? I ask Hakan at night.

Hakan doesn’t answer for a moment. I watch him shift his body and mine follows suit.

I guess I’m as wrong as you are, he answers. One day, Esen, I will disappear. One day you will look at the mirror and you will be who you’re meant to be. That day will come when you have everything your heart desires.

What is it that my heart wants?

I think we both know.

I can’t chase everything I want.

Hakan doesn’t answer.

“Hakan, please,” I whisper into the night.

I can help, Hakan says, but it sounds less like an offer and more like an accusation.

I have trouble sleeping that night.

---

I try to avoid looking at Freya the next day. Something wrong? Freya asks. I shake my head, somehow meet Kevin’s scowling face.

Freya turns her head so fast I feel my own neck snap and ache.

“Kevin,” Freya says. “Buy a coffee for me.”

Kevin nods and gets up without a word.

Freya looks at me. We meet eyes. She smiles and I have to clench my entire body not to melt into a poodle.

“He doesn’t scare me,” I say.

“I know.” Freya shakes her head. “I just wanted to have a moment with you, Esen.”

Everybody else — even Tolga nowadays — says Esen like they’re trying to rhyme it with the German word for broom. She still says it the right way, or as close any Austrian can get.

“I think you’re really kind, Esen,” Freya says. She rests her head on her hand again, smiling gently at me. “Cute. You’re really funny too.”

I have to actually turn to make sure she’s not talking to anyone behind me.

“I do mean you!” We both laugh, though mine is shaky and she means every ha of hers. “But you’re so shy.” She cups her face with both her hands. She’s so round like this. Her lips become a target my eyes lock onto: pink and plush and pretty.

“I want to know what you’re thinking, Esen,” Freya says.

My hands itch to touch her face. My lips suddenly feel dry, in need of touching something wet and human, like her face, like her lips. My entire body is ablaze with a feeling I can’t name. I can’t call it a thought. I can barely call it anything.

I stammer something. Kevin comes back with a coffee. I still can’t bring out anything of substance. I watch something in Freya’s eyes deflate.

---

I’m in my room, alone. I shiver at a cold that doesn’t exist. So weak, Sezen abla would sneer. You need someone to cuddle, Esen! Okan abi would call. Get yourself a partner!

Hakan says: “She could be my girlfriend.”

I rip a piece of paper from my block. I open my textbook besides it.

“I want to date her, Esen,” Hakan says.

Today for math I have to solve the following equation: Train A travels from Vienna to Salzburg with 30 km/h speed at 8 am. Train B travels from Linz to Vienna at 50 km/h at 9am. The length of these tracks are listed. The task is to name the exact time the trains will meet.

“I can’t, Hakan,” I mutter.

The light above me flickers. Something cold seizes me, starting from my hips all the way up to my head. It’s like hands grab into my insides and stir in there. I retch, but there’s no bile.

“I will have her,” Hakan continues, “and I will hold her hand.”

I close my eyes shut. I see it, her and me facing each other, Hakan moving my hand as if it was his.

“She will see me as the better choice.” Hakan’s voice is as smooth as honey. “She will see that Kevin can’t rub two brain cells together. I can. I can talk to her.”

Behind my eyelids, Freya looks up at me and smiles. She opens her mouth. Does she say Hakan? I can’t catch it. She licks her lips. Looks up at mine. Licks hers again. She has to…

“She will kiss me,” Hakan says. I hear his voice reverberate in my chest. “She will be my girlfriend.”

I open my eyes, but my lips are wet and swollen like they kissed someone. A horrible shiver runs down my spine.

“You can’t,” I hiss.

“No?” Hakan asks.

Everything spins. I hear the wind whip my ears and howl directly inside even though I’m in a room. My face burns. I can’t breathe.

“But she is what you want,” Hakan says gently.

No. I don’t want her. I can’t want her.

A knife stabs my chest at my thought. No, I think. Another stabs into my stomach and I topple over. She has a boyfriend! I can’t! Another further down. My entire body turns to pain.

“We… we are…” My breath comes as a rattle. “We’re the same!” I shout. “You can’t… you can’t have… what I don’t want to!”

“I will,” Hakan growls.

“You are me!” I shout. My hands cramp up, from fingers to my shoulders. I shudder violently. Yet somehow, it thaws them.

“I will have sex with her, Esen,” Hakan hisses.

The wind howls. I put my hands on my ears. A singular piercing shriek runs through my ears.

“Leave me alone!” I shout. “I don’t need your help!”

“I am you,” Hakan says. “I will have everything you desire.”

“But I don’t want her!” I shout back. At least I try to, because all that comes out is just a violent, animal scream. Everywhere all I feel is pain. 

Someone opens the door.

“Esen?” Okan abi, panicked and worried. “Esen!”

The wind stops. I don’t feel like throwing up anymore. My forehead throbs violently and somehow I’m on the floor. I’m still shivering even though the silence is back in my ears, and I practically melt into the chair. Okan abi picks me up from the ground where I fell and picks me up in his arms.

“Esen?”

“Abi?” I manage. “Abi… I had a nightmare, I felt really bad…”

He presses a hand on my lips, comforting and warm. “Shhh.”

The tears sting my eyes and I can’t stop them. “Abi…”

He hugs me tight. I breathe in through my mouth. The air feels cold, fresh.

“Your abi’s here,” he mutters, kissing me on my hair. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

He gets me up. He washes my forehead and rubs ointment on it. He puts a big bandaid on it and tells a furious Sezen abla it was just some accident. She raises her eyebrows at us, at me, and shakes her head. As she turns, the light in the living room flickers. Something cold caresses my back. I can’t shake the feeling something sinister is watching me.

In my reflection there is no one.

---

People stare again. Nobody makes a joke, and I can’t tell what I look like. There’s some worried looks, but mostly it’s befuddlement, even worry. My teachers ask me to go to the school doctor. I go to a doctor’s office that is closed on Mondays.

“What happened, Esen?” I get asked.

I answer something.

Sezen abla has her eyes on me like a tiger waiting for its prey. I ask her if something’s wrong, and she snaps at me like I’m supposed to have figured it out by now. Okan abi apparently has some big-name customer to please; he’s never at home anymore. I sit next to Mom and I sit next to Dad and we watch television where people stare at each other. Nobody talks to me. There is nothing to say.

Tolga pulls me over to some spot alone in the hallway, behind the vending machine where no one is. “Esen,” he says, seriously, and then in Turkish, “You can tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on,” I answer in German.

“This face…” He shakes his head. His hand reaches out to my hair, gently runs a hand over my face which makes me shudder. 

I take a step back. The wall behind me is solid. Too solid. I want to melt into it.

“Are you kidding me!” someone shouts behind us; it’s Julia, and she wants to break up with him. Tolga’s entire face reddens and contorts to something disgusting.

“I don’t want to fuck her, Julia!” Tolga shouts. “And I really don’t want to fuck you either! Damn!”

I don’t want to fuck her, Julia becomes the running joke of our class for a week and everybody forgets about me. All but Tolga, who glares like I’m at fault. He never talks to me after that.

I’m your only friend, Hakan whispers. And look how you’re treating me in turn.

Sezen abla shouts at me in the evening, throwing an empty hair dye bottle at me. My collarbone throbs uncomfortably. “Did I not tell you!” she screams, “to not touch my fucking things!” She claws at her hair like the color will bleach out of it if she doesn’t dye it right now. “You are so sneaky! Fucking mouse!”

I don’t remember using it.

“But Okan’s not the redhead. You are!” She shoves me. She’s smaller than I am, but I still feel like I have to look up at her. “And you dyed your hair, didn’t you!”

She reaches out to my own head. My entire scalp feels aflame at her pull.

“Like I can’t fucking tell! What do you hide?” she shouts. “What are you hiding, huh!”

It’s Mom who pulls us away and talks to Sezen abla. Later, I find out Sezen abla failed some big case. She doesn’t speak to me all week like I am responsible for it.

German classes are Mondays, two hours, and then Thursday, one hour. The Monday classes are right after math and before Latin; the one on Thursday right after P.E and before biology. I know this because I memorized our period table. But Freya asks me what we covered in German and I couldn’t tell her.

She furrows her eyebrows. “But you always have your hand raised at class.”

I don’t remember attending German classes since we got the exam back.

I hand her my notes, but her mouth is a single line.

I could make her smile, Hakan whispers to my ear. It’s so close, so real that I shudder.

“Are you kidding me?” Freya asks me finally. She looks up with a crossed expression in her eyes. My heart drops into my stomach. No. Not her too. I’m not sure what I did but I’m at fault again. “You know, if you don’t want me to have these, you should just say so.”

She tosses the notebook on my desk and goes back to her own spot. I look at my notebook. I can’t make out what it says at first. Then, from the loopy, odd handwriting that looks like I’ve been writing left handed, I make out sentences like I will have her or I will kiss her or Freya’s boyfriend will die.

It reads I will kill him. With a knife. With scissors. With this pen. I will kill him and after I burn his body I will sew my nose onto Freya.

It reads I will have everything I desire.

What have I been doing?

“Freya!” I call.

She loops her arm around Kevin’s and kisses him. I know she heard me.

“Freya!” I shout. “I can explain everything!”

“I can have her,” Hakan whispers.

Kevin and Freya are kissing. Their mouths fuse together, two pieces of flesh becoming one. Behind them the blackboard clears on its own. A ghostly hand writes on it. One letter after the other, ESEN

I shake my head.

<3

No.

FREYA.

No.

Something cold passes over me. Every light in the room brightens up to something that blinds my eyes, brings violet and green spots in my vision. “Freya!” I try to shout but when the blinding light clears there is no one there anymore. It’s just a dark green. I’m at the front of the blackboard, I realize. I turn to my classmates — they’re not here anymore. Nobody is. It’s me, and the world is melting to something strange. I can’t breathe in anymore. A wave of heat, then cold washes over my body. The bell rings and the door outside the classroom shows an empty hallroom. I think the time has set. What time is it? Where am I?

This is already my body, Hakan says.

I’m so cold I feel like an icicle. My teeth chatter. I’m behind the blackboard and in front of me is another. It reads: KEVIN POLASEK WILL DIE TONIGHT.

“No!” I shout. I run to the blackboard. There is no sponge around. I wipe it with my hands. Nothing happens. It doesn’t even smudge. A loud, shrill sound pierces my ears again. “No!” I scream. Something hot touches me and I shove it away from me. Another touch, this one from my back, runs a shiver up my spine. I punch it away from me. I have to get everyone away from me. Everyone. Everything. Especially Hakan. I need to be reliable. I need to—

Someone pulls me away from the blackboard, so strong no amount of my legs trampling can stop. The blackboard reads something different. Loopy handwriting, and over and over, it reads I WILL HAVE HER.

There's chalk in my hands and it’s on my fingertips and it’s mixed in with blood on my nails, everything clipped and ruptured. What is happening to me? Did I write all that? Did I do all of it?

I’m pulled away to the horrified stares of all my classmates.

---

In the doctor’s office, an older Austrian man in a white coat stands up when me and the boy I’m pretty sure is Kevin approach him. “What happened to her?” he asks.

Kevin shoves me forward. I stumble but don’t fall. The doctor’s office, the way it’s set up, is slim and has a mirror to the right. There’s a whitehaired girl there, if you could call that hair color white; it shines like mother-of-pearl, with its tips red from a hairdye. She’s tall and so pale it borders on bloodless, while the bags under her eyes are a violent shade of purple. She’s thin. Hollowed out.

“What has happened to you?” the doctor asks.

I shake my head at the girl in the reflection. This isn’t me. I’m… I’m taller than this, and I look like Okan abi. I take after my mother, dark hair and dark eyes, a knowing smile on my face.

I’m…

I shake my head. I’m not him. But that person in the reflection is not me either.

“Girl!” the doctor asks, holding me where Kevin has just a moment ago. “Tell me what has happened to you!” he says, voice firm, almost shouting.

Do I need help? Would Okan abi help me with this? I don’t know. I need to get away from Hakan. I’m not sure how. I need help. I look at the doctor hoping he will get it. He stares at me like he’s dead himself. I can’t take a step back. I can’t move. I think somebody has to help me right now. I need someone to tell me what to do.

Take a deep breath in, someone says. I do. Then out. I do.

“I’m fine,” I hear myself say. “It… It was just a prank. With friends.”

Prank? No! That’s not what happened!

I grip the doctor on his shoulders. “I think Kevin Polasek will die tonight!”

He blinks. Then, like the words fully set in, he scowls. “What was that?”

“I think I’m going to kill him. I’m not sure. I don’t— please lock me up somewhere, please, I—“ I can’t breathe again. Nothing I take in with my mouth, none of the rattled breaths, seem to really go anywhere. I grip the doctor so hard he has a hard time shoving it away. Take a breath in! I’m trying! It won’t work! Take a breath, another says, honeyed and calm.

I do. It does. I take it out. Then in. I’m sitting, I realize. The doctor’s in front of me, and there’s a desk separating us. On the desk is a little plastic dog that has a shaky head, so anytime the doctor leans forward the dog trembles. Like this, I breathe in and out for a while. My body belongs to me again. I’m calm.

“I got worried,” I hear myself say. “I heard a rumor, and… I worried myself sick. Because…”

I would say that, right?

“Because I like him,” I continue. It’s almost true. “I don’t want him to…” My eyes burn. “I just…”

The doctor shakes his head. He tells me to wash my hands and my face, so I do; it all hurts, but I feel in control again. Later he bandages my fingers up so tight that I feel like it’s another layer of my skin and tells me not to do anything anymore. “First worry about yourself,” he says. “Take some rest. Eat meals. Don’t do anything stressful. Girls your age…”

“I’m not a girl.” But what else would I be? “I’m sorry,” I say. Nothing makes any sense anymore.

He blinks, then shrugs.

“I’ll call my parents, and then—“ I start.

A knock to the door.

“Come in,” the doctor says.

Sezen abla’s voice floats: “I was told my sister is here? Some teacher… Esen?”

My emergency contact.

---

We’re in Sezen abla’s car, a red thing as furious as Sezen abla’s face is. She almost rips the door open for me. Her glare is so vicious that in her car I make myself as small as possible.

“You’re going to explain to me everything that happened,” Sezen abla says.

She’s going to rip me apart when I do.

She looks at me. “Esen,” Sezen abla warns.

I shake my head. How can you explain I scrawled something on the blackboard and my hands are bloody because of it?

She starts the engine and drives out of the parking lot with a hand on my headrest. Her eyes are hard. I’ll be home looking like that, and something terrible is about to happen. She’s going to kill me. That’s what I think but then Sezen abla turns to the first right and pulls up at the first empty spot she can find.

I tremble with the engine under me.

She sighs. “Esen. Did you make a deal with your reflection?” My first instinct is to shake my head but Sezen abla hisses, “Don’t you dare lie, Esen. I can smell it.”

A smell on me?

A thump. “Ah, Esen,” Sezen abla says. Her head is on the steering wheel, a pained expression on her face. “You’re too young to remember. But Feride hala had this too. Mom and I helped her get it out. It was horrible. But it’s manageable. You’ll survive.”

I remember what Mom said to me. Again. I perk up.

“But for that,” Sezen abla says, sighing again, “I have to know everything that got you to this point.”

If she knows how to help… but who is to say that she won’t be mad?

“Esen,” Sezen abla says, “Okan can’t help you. Your friends can’t help you. I can’t hug it away, sorry. But Esen… you have to know this isn’t your fault.”

Tears fill my eyes.

Sezen abla reaches over and wipes them away for me, her touch warm against my hot tears. “You do your best. You want to make everyone happy. People shift because of that. I have cases like yours all the time. Trust me, we’ll find a way around this.” 

I look at the building ahead of us. With a shaky voice, I start to explain how it started with the F in German, Hakan trying to help, Hakan helping… to what extent, I’m still not sure. I can’t get a word out by the time I get to Freya, but Sezen abla’s frown stays the same. I find my words again for Kevin, the blackboard, the message.

She nods when she realizes I won’t say more. “You did the right call,” she says, straightening up. “I thought maybe you could talk and fuse, but—“

“Fuse?” I repeat.

She shakes her head. “Freya Eisenhuber?” 

I nod.

“And Kevin Polasek…” She whips out her phone and puts it on her ear. “Marina? Hey. Sezen Firat speaking. Introduction to copyright law? Yeah! Exactly.” She sounds nice and pleasant. The way she says her name, it would rhyme with Besen also. “You free? I need a place to crash.” A pause. “You mentioned someplace in the third—Yeah. That. Yeah. My sis is with me. No, we’re fine. Don’t worry. Yeah, sure. See you.” 

The moment the call is over her frown returns, a mask easily discarded.

“Let’s go,” she mutters.

We take a different route than usual, never steering off to a highway. It takes half an hour for us to get there and we take the stairs to the fifth floor. Marina reminds me of Kevin with the way she has a massive scowl reserved for me when I pant from all these stairs. Sezen abla calls my parents to let them know where we are. We watch a film together, though I don’t really pay attention to what it’s about or what’s really happening. Sezen abla leaves while muttering something to herself about Freya, the door softly clicking behind her. Sunset turns to evening turns to night. The draft going from living room to bathroom, both the windows open, keeps the room cool the entire time. Nothing happens except the fact that I feel tired.

“I don’t understand,” I say. Sezen abla just left me here for no reason. She’s probably home. I have to be home and get to homework. I stand up. “I think… I think I should…”

“You don’t have to,” Marina answers. The doorbell rings. She pushes me back onto the couch, her grip surprisingly sound. “There it is.”

She closes the door to the corridor. It’s just me with the film. Out of courtesy, I pause it. I run my hands on my arms; it’s gotten cold. Will I really stay the night here? All this just to avoid my parents seeing me like that? Will I just be erased from all their lives? They’ll just let me go, I’m sure. Act like no Esen has ever existed. I would do that. The alternative is… the alternative is I manage to convince Freya to… we get to talk. That would be nice.

“I would do that,” a voice says in the room.

Everything is silent. The television has gone dark. The light above me flickers.

“It’s not like I can’t talk, Esen,” Hakan says. I hear my voice in his, hear it reverberate in my chest. I sit down: he’s right in front of me as a blurry figure. In the blurry reflection everything that Hakan wears sparkles. “You forget that I can have everything I desire.”

“But I… you do all this when I say no,” I answer, pointing at the lights.

“It’s easier when you follow along.” He shrugs. “But I can do it without you.”

Did Sezen abla and Marina leave me here to kill myself? A violent shudder goes through me. Would my sister want that from me? Did I not do enough chores for her?

“I can talk to Freya in this voice. Or yours,” he says, and I say it at the same time he does. I put a hand on my throat. “We could talk. Or I find Kevin and I end his life. Either way, I can help. Nobody will know.”

“And Freya—“ I start. 

He laughs and tosses his hand back, dismissing me, her; like I’m his reflection, I follow suit. “Freya has always liked you back.”

The air leaves my chest. Hakan can only know if I knew before. But did I know that? But that can’t be right.

“Freya has a boyfriend,” I say.

“He will die,” Hakan says.

“She likes him. She’s not…” I want to know what you’re thinking. Killing Kevin won’t save me. Killing Kevin… won’t mean Freya will like me back.

Oh.

“She already likes me back,” Hakan says, raising his voice. “He will die!”

“No,” I say, firm. My heart burns. My vision goes blurry.

“And even if she won’t,” Hakan shouts, and I can hear myself shout, “I will have her regardless!”

As if on cue the door opens and somebody stumbles inside. I turn: Kevin, wide-eyed and confused.

“What’re you—“ Kevin starts.

The horrible piercing starts again. I see Hakan move first on the television screen before I follow suit. My body lurches towards Kevin, who avoids it. I swerve like I’m remote-controlled, see him watch me in utter confusion, and lurch towards him again. He takes another step back, knocking something over. The same horrible cold washes over my body, then heat. I stretch an arm out, my hands clenched to a fist. He waves my hand off like I’m a fly.

I will end him, Hakan hisses.

You won’t.

“What the hell?” Kevin asks. He turns to the right. That thing under me is a lamp. I could get him. Whack over his head.

“Marina?” Kevin asks, louder now.

I try to pick it up. Kevin shoves me back; I stumble. Everything turns too bright again. I retch even though I ate nothing. I want to fall to the ground but somehow I’m still standing, that much I notice. The world spins. I hold something cold in my hands that fuses with my body, long and slender. I need to lie down. I need to sleep this off, I need to get away from this place—

Kevin Polasek will die tonight.

It’s cold to my left. I understand what this means. If Kevin Polasek has to live, if Freya has to remain happy, my family… then I will die.

I stumble towards it. It’s still too bright. I feel too hot and too cold. My hands are cramped and everything hurts. There’s a horrible rush in my ears. I have to… I have to fall. I have to fall down. I’ve been meaning to anyway.

“Esen!”

An Austrian voice, trying to get the Turkish name right.

I turn around. There’s a long mirror in front of me. Hakan stares back at me, dressed in furs and sequins, makeup in his eyes, tall and lean like a fashion designer. He looks as haunted as I feel.

“Esen,” Freya says again. “We can talk.”

Someone mutters so she was the right call. I think it’s Sezen abla.

Hakan stares at me. My body is completely frozen. “What are you waiting for!” he yells.

I can’t have her. I want her. I need someone to tell me what to do.

“Esen! Take him down!” Sezen abla shouts.

I run. I run and run and then Hakan is under me. The fur is nothing under my touch; soon it disappears, and he wears the same pullover that I do. His hands run up to my neck, pressing hard. I can’t get a breath through. My vision darkens around the edges.

I’m him. He’s me.

Whatever he wants, I want.

“I want her,” I croak out.

He looks at me, eyes wide.

“I want her,” I say, slowly letting go of his throat, which means he lets go of mine, his expression slowly softening, “And I—“

Hakan’s eyes widen. I’m not sure why at first. Then: a long piercing sound, thrumming from the top of my head all the way down to my body. My entire body feels like somebody kneads it, squeezing and crushing and crunching me in its wake. I am bubble wrap. Pop pop pop: one new flare of pain for each bubble popped. Shards prick into my body, all of them sharp, making me burn in every place.

Amidst the noise Hakan winces. “We can talk,” he says.

I can’t bring a word out.

“Esen,” he shouts. “Keep me inside you!”

I can’t think.

“Esen!” he shrieks. 

All I feel is pain.

Then his body turns soft under my touch. Pop. It dissolves in a pool of blood, and I fall on top of it. I don’t really understand what just happened until I touch the ground under me and it smells coppery like real blood.

It smells coppery like Hakan was really there and really died. The world spins like it was really my own blood.

I shriek so loud for so long that all the air leaves my chest. Darkness, real darkness, takes over me.

---

There’s no cure for when you’re shifted. It’s only manageable, Sezen abla says again. Sezen abla says this — two parallel mirrors, trapping the person between until both break — is the closest you come to a cure.

“You’ll be haunted by bad luck,” Marina says in the hospital afterward. “Grandma told me that all the time.”

Sezen abla rolls her eyes. “Just avoid mirrors for the next three years,” she tells me. Whispers to me in Turkish: “Feride hala is doing fine too. Nothing will show.”

My parents don’t yell at me, though I always expect them to at any given moment. I get stitches everywhere, and for a while everything I do is in pain. Slowly, very slowly, they all heal, except the a scar under my face that doesn’t. With the help of Sezen abla, I dye my hair so that the top is always black, while the rest is in mother-of-pearl. I get compliments for it occasionally, at least whenever people bring themselves to talk to me, “the girl who killed someone,” as the rumors say. I don’t try to disprove them. Kevin and Freya never tell the truth. That’s fine. I rather like not being looked at, I’ve learned. Okan abi can’t look at me without guilt crossing his face, though I’m not sure why. He also stays home afterward a lot, baking me a lot of macarons and cupcakes and whatever else I want: mostly that’s just baklava. I graduate, though I’m not sure how. I enroll in TU Wien as a machine engineering major. I never hear anything again from anyone else from my high school.

I always feel Hakan near me, like a shard the doctors forgot to remove or a stitch that they left behind. Whenever I struggle somewhere — in class, talking to girls (just two others in this course, Bahar and Ilknur), socializing — I think he could help, and it makes me shudder. I only try to make sure I do it when nobody’s looking.

I try not to look at my reflection when I wash my hands. Usually that is pretty simple — a frame that saves me here, a good positioning there, a curved tap that distorts it just enough — but the tap here is flat and the mirrors of this campus go all the way down to the sink, so if I flicked my gaze up, I would see it. Me: sweatshirt and messy bun, rings dark under my eyes, trying not to look too anxious. I resemble my father, I know. No spitting image of Okan abi here. No one waiting with a smile.

I dry my hands, my fingertips feeling swollen from all the water. I don’t turn when the door opens. I recognize Bahar and Ilknur from their chatter: Bahar’s voice low and blunt, Ilknur more melodic. They watch themselves in the mirror, fixing their eyeliner, their lipstick, applying some concealer to some pimples. I think Bahar is the one that smells of flowers, though I can’t be bothered to confirm. It must be way past 9am anyway. Palkovich must already be in the lecture hall, throwing his books on the desk to wake everybody up.

“Hey Esen.” This is Bahar. “You keep notes, don’t you?”

I make some noise.

“You’ll lend them to us later, right?”

I make some noise again. They take it as a yes and say thank you breathlessly. Bahar mutters something about how I look like one of the boys, schirch, she says, and Ilknur says nothing and neither do I. The door closes behind them.

“First semester, machine engineering, programming fundamentals,” I say out loud. It doesn’t sound scary when I say it. It sounds manageable. It’s just sitting in front of a laptop. I’ll get around to it.

And if you don’t? The voice is male, light, smooth. That’s just how my anxiety sounds, I tell myself. If you don’t, you’ll fail at chemistry next. Physics. Quality management. Manufacturing Engineering, though, that sounds like you. One of three classes passed. How will you graduate now?

I hurry outside. The hallway has advertisements framed. The way the light hits the glass, I only see my reflection.

“You will never graduate out of this course,” he tells me.

In the reflection is a man, fashionably dressed, his hair shining silver and shorter now that mine is longer. A man that could be my brother. He could be me if I was born a boy.

“But I can help you,” Hakan continues. “You just have to let me.”

I run.

---

---

I hope you enjoyed this, and happy Halloween! You can find the author's notes here.