Split

I'm alone, but not for long. It’ll be the last time that I will ever feel pain.

The sequel to Shifted. Warning for blood and violence. Proceed with discretion.

Shifted

---

First there’s only the color of flesh. The warm color of blood trapped in muscle and fat held against unforgiving light. A buzz, a rush of water, the tap-tap-tap of shoes, the shuffling of backpacks and pockets, the low click of wallets. The sounds happen either all at once, or not at all. This must be eternal damnation.

I don’t think I can do this.

A wordless, soundless scream.

The intervals shorten. The sounds come crisp — as though I have ears that simply came to be right this moment. The flesh-colored wall gains dimensions: darkness above and below, right and left, the light pulling away in the middle. Thin, reedy sinews build under me. Something white juts out of me, grows long, and thickens on either end. It tweaks in some places, itches in others. Bones knock into place. Flesh hugs it, stretching to muscle. Finally, blood seeps through. Everything is warm. Everything pulsates.

They should work for their own things.

I shouldn’t be here.

I’m going to drop out at this rate.

This is not my life.

Indescribable agony.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

An explosion of light, a burst of color. A greenish yellow and a sickly gray dominate this place. The shadows are soft around here, and there’s a wide, white light to the left. Three girls walk out, but only one of them faces me. She is shorter than I am and has a mop of dark hair that hides shimmering mother-of-pearl. Her face as pale as the wall besides her.

I realize I’m her.

I am here when somebody needs help. I’ve helped her many times before.

She backs away and I feel myself physically yanked away in turn.

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

She runs away. Through some kind of miracle, I stay awake.

SEZEN FIRAT IN CONVERSATION WITH MARTINA MAIR-REDL, ATTORNEY AT LAW
I’m fine, thank you. Coffee’s doing me real good. Yeah. No— no, not at all. I really like it here. It’s a new challenge. I think I can thrive in this environment.
Ah… no, it’s just— it’s just my sister. We’ve had this argument the other day. Well, more like I tell her to do something, and she just sits, with her hands folded in her lap, eyes looking everywhere but at me. It’s so frustrating. I know she’s taking me the wrong way. I know she’s taking it emotionally. But that’s not it at all. I don’t want to hurt her, you know? I just want her to live a better life!
Sorry. No, I just… Yeah, yeah, that’s my youngest sister. I haven’t talked to my brother in years. No, he didn’t move out, but we have nothing to say to each other. Yeah, I suppose middle children are like that. But Esen— that’s her, you know— she just… she will always worry me. But I can’t improve her life. Only she can. I can just tell her what to do, and…
I just don’t want her to be in pain again, you know? 
But Esen never fucking listens. That’s her problem. I know he is still in her life. She’s being so shifty again, you know?
Oh. Um. Haha, yeah, right, her ex. Those ex-boyfriends, they can be so pesky, right? Exactly… you can’t help but worry…
Thanks for the chat, Martina.

The world is drenched in light. A warm glow envelops every living being in my vision. The shimmering surfaces look like the light that the sun casts onto ocean waves, although where I know this from I’m not certain. At times dirt covers the vision; sometimes as light as a smudge, things that refract light to dazzling rainbows, and other times it’s so black that it blots out the world at that very spot. People walk, usually in front of me. I recognize them. In the back of my head, I know them all. If I stopped and waited for the knowledge to come, I’d be able to call them out. I’ve always believed that something comes when you don’t wait for it, that life will throw it back at you once you’ve forgotten it. But the intent has to be there. It has to be the kind of intent that grabs you at the throat, cuts your air, stops all other thoughts, and only then.

I don’t know where I have this belief from, or why nobody looks at me, no one except that girl. When I reach out to someone in the world of light, my hand stops just short of touching them. The very end of the tip of my middle finger can’t reach a single person. I eventually stop the attempts.

On my side is a big, wide nothing. The light ends at a certain point, but it never quite grows dark, and it never quite ends.

There’s other people at times — shadows with no real lines, silhouettes that flicker in and out of existence, people without faces and names. I’m sure I have a name too. I can feel it, the word that rests on the tip of my tongue. It tickles a little bit already, but it is patient, waiting for my cue. My name is the magic word that will open the doors to everything, that will get me to touch others, help them. Help her in earnest. If I am someone, I can be of service to others.

Neither in my side nor on theirs is a reflection where I could see myself. All I can say is that my head feels light, like my hair has been cut; that the people on the other side seem smaller, that I have to look down on them, even crouch, to see their faces. When I poke my body, it takes a fraction of a moment for me to feel it. Turns out I’m naked too.

I’ll get everything I had. I have cast out the intent. Eventually, I will reap the rewards.

I wander out to a place where the other side won’t show me somebody I think I know. I end up finding somewhere with a funny view, partially obstructed, a place where strangers just sit and seem to wait for something to happen, with no discernible movement from their end. These views are the most yellow and the most smudged. The human beings don’t have clear lines; like the people on my side, they fizzle out, as though a thin, clear copy of their likeness has been pressed over each person, then shifted ever so slightly. Most look down. A few talk to themselves, and still others look at another person, chatting and laughing. Here and there, one person sits and looks through me.

Just then, a little ahead, there is a shape of someone else, in front of me.

She’s sitting too. She’s brownhaired, her hair pulled up to a ponytail, and about my age. She’s so pretty that I open my mouth to tell her something, only to realize that my throat is parched dry. My tongue itches so hard it makes my hands itch too, that I have to clench my fists to suppress the urge to claw my fingers over my tongue just to stop the sensation.

I think I know her. I’m sure it goes both ways.

I can’t reach out to her, this I know. So I reach out to the shape. My steps are slow, measured, so as not to scare it. I feel like if I make myself known, something bad will happen, something undeserved and wrong. Her name comes easier to me than my own. I must’ve spoken it all the time, must’ve muttered it to myself, like a prayer, or a spell. Intent, echoed and refracted an infinite number of times. And now my hands can reach her.

Finally, a part of me says.

But I have to know why. I have to know her. I have to have—

Freya— 

I brush her.

Suddenly I remember, see it right in front of me. Her in my dreams. Her in my thoughts. Her name on the paper, scrawled over and over by me with my favorite pen. Her and me, in that cupcake shop, where the world expanded as fast as the universe, eradicating everyone but us. Her and me, Freya and Hakan, it just sounds so right, and we couldn’t exist, couldn’t be, because… because I can’t chase everything I want.

The thought — that voice, timid and quiet and mine — knocks me off my feet, pummels me onto my back. It hurts and then I remember I don’t hurt, I literally cannot hurt, because I’m a reflection, and the pain suddenly disappears. Last time, I hurt because she did, fucking Esen. I remember that too, that unbearable, searing pain.

I lie there for quite some time, and eventually push myself up. I'm alone, but not for long. It’ll be the last time that I will ever feel pain. The very last time I am denied what I want.

I am Hakan.

BAHAR GÜNTEKIN MESSAGING ILKNUR KAHVECI
esen is a freak

LOLLLLLLLLLLLL

no but girl
she is literally shifted like

no im not just saying that

listen… that hair?? is not bleached lol
the BLACK hair is

you know it happened to this girl at school and she got thrown into the loony bin
a total psychopath lol

no thank god i avoided her
anyways 
i told esen to tell us to send her report and she was like no? UNGRATEFUL BITCH
so i told her i know she’s shifted and she was like O_O

like i caught her redhanded and i KNOW i did
I KNOW!!!! I KNOW RIGHT

NO!!!!!! SHE SAID NO!!!

idgi like nobody wants to talk to you besides us and then you don’t even want to help us back and then you’re literally crying in the closet about it? you deserve what is going to happen to you and more idgaf

yes i will tell the dean that
it’s just not allowed and she should be removed from society, she’s like two steps away from shooting up the whole place lmao
i don’t support all turks, some of them are just really very dumb like

LOLLLLLLLLL
anyways
we got no report

i’m fucked

:(

idk i just wanna drop out at this point

this course is so stupid
this university is so stupid
gökhan told me the tests are really hard and nothing we learned is on it like…

:((((

we’ll figure it out

i love you too ilknur

canim <3 <3 <3

I feel Esen in the same way that I’d sense someone behind me, watching me. But whenever I turn around — visit home, watch Okan abi shave his beard in the bathroom, Mom opposite the TV, Dad never really there — she’s not around. Sometimes I hear her — it grates me to know that it’s my voice, too. She’s yelling something at Sezen abla. Sometimes I feel anger seize me like a fist clenched around my heart, something that is not from me, is so hot that it cannot come out from my end. Sadness tastes quite the same, except salty around the edges; and grief, that is metallic. I can’t imagine anything Esen would grieve over.

Me?

No. She’s smarter than that, because I’m smarter than that.

I visit Freya again. Finding the library and the subway isn’t hard, and there is always that silhouette of hers on my side. A bubble protects them, pink and turquoise, purple and blue. Even on the other side, the real one, she moves like she’s made of velvet. She wears a thick coat with a scarf made of wool, a pristine white that makes her look royal somehow. The world is so small whenever I see Freya. Watching her look outside the window, her eyes downcast and her arms crossed, I wish I could stroke her scarf and her head, gliding lightly, softly, until all her worries are gone. I feel as though it wraps over me just from the thought alone. For a long moment, I stay like that, wrapped up in her presence. I wish she could be wrapped around mine too. I wish I was made of soap, so I could enter that world without hurting the bubble. I wish she’d see me, as I am, right now.

What is it that hurts her so?

I think you’re really kind, Esen. But so shy.

Shyness is weakness. Kindness is a mistake. I want to be neither. I have to be strong, strong enough to defend the world from the two of us.

By the time I open my mouth Freya is gone. The air is dry, void of fabric. The world is cold again.

Back to the changing room I go. Disembodied plastic torsos move away, making space for me, the sole human-in-waiting. I run my hands over my curves. I watch them get softer, fatter, wider. My hips and my chest balloon, and I have to suppress the urge to pop both. The world sinks down somewhat, so that I meet her height. My beautiful hair turns white first, then red. I hang my Prada shirt onto another torso, instead opting to wear a brown pullover and a mousy pair of trousers that scrape the soles of my feet.

Freya, I whisper.

I sound like Esen does just before she falls asleep.

I look just like Esen does.

A shiver grabs me from the neck all the way down to my toes; an unreal feeling for an unreal man. I can’t look at myself; my self is all there is inside of here. I push past the torsos, but they’re made of plastic, they have legs now, they are mannequins. I am faux-flesh and heat and blood that won’t quite circulate.

There’s so many things I dislike about Esen, but the most disgusting part about her has always been her silhouette. All form, no function.

The next time I visit Freya, I reach out my hand to the bubble, and nothing bursts.

She isn’t alone in the library this time around. There is someone sitting opposite her, a girl with big eyes and a blond streak in her hair, poring over a copy of Iliad. Freya never looks at her directly, only ever at the paperback. She glances back down at her notes before the other girl sees it, though. They both wear a knitted pullover. It’s in the same pattern, too: twin braids running down the middle. It suits the other girl better, but Freya is Freya — nothing she wears is wrong on her.

Yet Freya shifts in her seat like she’s wearing the ugliest dress, smells the worst out of everyone in this sunlit library, and has something to hide.

From the reflection of her phone, I smile at her. Freya looks straight at me — me, the likeness of Esen Firat — her eyes widened a little, and flips her phone the other way. Part of my world darkens in response, and I stand there, flabbergasted, watching her from another angle — wider away, on the window. From here, I can see a pinkish tint has colored her cheeks. She gets up without a word, and I follow her to the bathroom mirror. Once again, I’m pushed outside. Once again, all I do is watch — this time, the warm feeling of wool won’t do.

Who is she?

Has Freya moved on to someone else without ever giving me a chance?

What does this girl that that I can’t give her?

Nothing. She is no one. I am everything Freya desires.

I close my eyes and hope I break the mirror, unhinge the tap, break all tiles, smash the lamp. When I open my eyes again, the shape looks at me. It’s clearly defined, clearly Freya, but her eyes are cold.

“You’re not really Esen,” she says.

I raise my eyebrows. “And you’re not really Freya.”

Freya — the one on the other side — gasps. Her head raises up as if she heard me, but I’m outside the mirror. The reflection on my side imitates her moves precisely, but she steals a glance at me and I instinctively feel that she’s the same as me.

Shifted.

FÜSUN FIRAT’S DIARY ENTRY, EXCERPT
It’s another day of this quarrel. A back-and-forth of voices that I cannot discern, not from this distance.
Maybe if you did as I said! one yells.
I can’t! You never want to understand me! the other shouts back.
Turgay doesn’t quite care when I tell him afterward. His bones are beyond exhausted, his mind already asleep, preparing for the next early shift. Recently he asked me if they still fought. I pretended I was asleep. I didn’t want to bother him more.
Okan just watches me, an unasked question in his eyes. I already clean, I pick up the trash, I sew together the clothing that Esen grows out of. I prepare lessons for children that can’t tell the difference between past and present. So what can I do? Where am I in all of this? I watch the seams of this family rip apart, and I am at a loss as to how to stitch them back together again. I watch. They all do.

ANOTHER DIARY ENTRY, EXCERPT
A rerun of Mission Impossible is on television that evening. At some point Esen runs into me. She sits down, glances at me twice as if to ask me for permission, and releases a wet breath.
I wrap her around my arms. It takes her a long time for her breaths to even out. She never holds me tighter than what’s necessary.

Freya’s room is smaller than I had imagined: unlike the big, wide room that I assumed everyone but me possessed, Freya barely manages to fit a wardrobe, a bed, and a desk in hers. Boxes all around rob even more space from her. Night has fallen — even then, the other side is brighter than here — and she’s asleep, her chest rising and falling peacefully.

Her reflection meets me sitting on stairs. On our side, the world fills: the stairs lead up to a storage room that is permanently locked, and we face a glass wall that hasn’t been cleaned in years. Between the two of us is a lunch box and a laptop: hers, not mine. I remember this staircase from high school; the south side one that always let a draft in. But this scene has never happened in earnest, not from what I can remember. Seems like Freya has been here for years. Alone.

She looks at me, eyes warm but her mouth a thin line, waiting for me to say something.

“I’m sorry I never quite spoke up,” I say. “It’s not that I hate you or anything—“

“What is it that you even like about me?” Freya asks. She bites her lip; I’ve never heard her cut anyone short before, let alone me.

“Everything,” I answer.

She doesn’t look at me, only kneads her hands. “You… you like me, don’t you?”

I don’t see what’s so weird about that until I realize with a wave of nausea that she thinks of me as a girl.

But if I can have her this way, I’ll be happy to stay a girl, stay Esen.

“Everything,” I repeat. “I really do. If I could say everything I liked about you, we’d sit here all day… all day and all night. I couldn’t ever list it all. It’s like…”

She waits for my word to finish, but in her eyes, I see something darken. She has a reply in her head. A rejection. She’s rejecting me.

No…

“I think you know that feeling,” I finish. Her eyes widen; I’m right. “To like someone so much words don’t do it justice. Someone you can’t love.”

She looks away. Her left hand presses onto her right, clenched to a fist. I have to bite my lip until I taste metal. I knew it. I knew she was into me.

“I know you feel it with me,” I tell her.

A sizzle moves through the air, and then, the air pushes me away from Freya — both Freyas. I get up quicker this time. A wild, manic energy seizes me. The Freya of this reflection watches me, her eyes growing wider and wider as I climb stairs that never end. I take two at a time. Soon, I gain on her. I watch her curl in on herself, arms wrapped around her legs, breathing shallow.

The real Freya turns in her bed. Besides the window, from which we both look at Freya, there’s no mirror in her room. But the bathroom can’t be too far.

“No way,” the other Freya says. I was always bad at hiding intentions. That’s what Esen is for, anyway. “No— who are you?”

“If I like you, and you like me…” I stand still, watch as Freya adds stairs in this world until she’s at the top and I’m at its feet. “Then what does it matter who I really am?”

Poof. The reflection disappears, and the real Freya’s eyes open in shock. I lean as close to her as I can, but there is still a pathetic distance between us.

“You like girls, Freya,” I whisper in my own voice. “You like Esen.”

She stares at me for a long moment.

“I can help. You just have to ask.”

Freya turns to the window, right at me. It takes a moment for her body to react, to get up with a scream, tumble towards the bathroom. It takes even longer for her reflection to catch up and be there when she turns on the lights.

I’m faster, and there is only space for one person in the mirror.

Freya’s eyes are wide open, full of terror. But I know better. The darkest, quietest part of her wants it too.

“Esen likes you too. So what about it?” I whisper. “I give her to you. You just have to let me.”

Freya’s breaths are the loudest sound in the bathroom. She stares at me for a moment, and I see the quiet part of her take over, agree with the idea. Eventually, she nods.

I reach out and fill her as easily as I filled Esen, and fall to a bottomless pit of darkness.

When I come to, it’s the real world. I am made of flesh, and it hurts where I gripped the sink too hard. I turn the lights off, go back to her bed, and unlock her phone. Turns out she did look up Esen’s Facebook profile before. We have a couple friends in common, and one of them — Fabian Schmid, Freya’s cousin and Esen’s coursemate in university — hosts a party tomorrow. I’m invited too.

I hit accept.

u/Fabruar75’S DELETED POST ON r/love: ‘I like her so much!!!’

24 points (95% upvoted)

She (19F) is in the same year as me (19M). I didn’t think much of her at first. People say she’s weird, and besides, she likes to sit in front, taking notes, all serious. I’m more the type of guy that’ll drool during class.
Still, her grades are bad. Half the class is shitty at maths and she’s one of them. We ended up in this study group together, organized by some guy from our course. She’s so pretty… she’s quiet too, but you can tell she’s watching you. I know she’s as into me as much as I am.
I asked her out on a date after study group was over. With a text. She ghosted me for days! I woke up in sweat every day before she answered. Because I asked a girl out one time before I realized she is a lesbian, so I fear that every girl will reject me because she’s suddenly into other girls when she sees me. But she didn’t!!! She was on a date with *me* and we had bubble tea together and she watched me for a long time. It was so hot. She asked me what I’d do if something bad happened to me, and I said, holy shit I would kill a bear for you. She laughed at that. I’m so funny to her!!!
I didn’t know that the stupid songs that play on the radio were meant for people in love. I hugged a tree yesterday. I told my mom I love her (she looked at me weird) and when I lost a game at LOL last night I thought that’S fine because she likes me either way.
I invited her to my birthday party and on my birthday I’m going to kiss her. I can’t wait for it!!!
Just so happy right now :-)

The house is up north in Gänserndorf, flanked by a row of other houses, respectable white façades where my face, my looks, would elicit a raised eyebrow. All the doors are pointedly closed, the fences raised high. With this face, I’d get in, be invited to tea, some cookies. The elderly woman, who remembered back when she and her mother cheered for the day Austria joined Nazi Germany, would hold my hand and tell me stories from the time immigrants weren’t allowed here, the good old times, how my brown hair shimmers gold in the light and my body is so thin and my face so pretty. So Austrian. And what’s my name?

The name of a goddess. A Nordic, European name.

The title for king of kings, a ruler over the skies, the seas.

And whatever the hell Esen is supposed to mean.

Hip hop blasts through the walls from a mile away. I stand in front of the door, inspect my face in the window. People lean against counters, holding cups in their hands. The food has been eaten, but dark brown bottles stand around, beer cans are opened, and the white powder on the wood doesn’t seem to be sugar.

A step inside, and something pulls at me, hard. It’s a miracle I manage to stand straight. I take a breath, feel the hair on my arms rise up. I know she’s there. Something got her out of that house. I hope it was the fear of me.

“Hi, I’m Freya,” I say. Her voice glides, smooth and sugary. I’m asked why I’m here. “I study literature! My friend told me there’d be booze here.”

There’s plenty of booze here. Ahahaha. Everybody softens. Some sharpen, glance at my boobs. Nobody cares.

Vampires, says a voice in my head.

Yes. All vampires, only one human.

There are two rooms on the ground floor as far as I can tell, but there’s noise coming up from above and below. Nobody on the ground floor knows who Esen is. Black hair outside, white hair inside, I tell the girls. “A bitch with white hair,” I tell the boys. Some stare at me with a blank expression, others ask, “Can you point me to her when you find her?”

I start with the room that’s tucked behind the kitchen space. The place is painted dark blue, and a group of people pass around a blunt. One of them says, “Man, life hasn’t been the same since that Mercury retrograde, like, five years ago—“

Something moves. It’s not the odd pain in her body — a fire on her soles here, a twist on her boob there — but inside of me, like an ulcer that suddenly got sentient.

“Anyone seen Esen?” I ask.

Part of her wants to stay, sit, play the long game. A game that only soft ones play. Softness, here, is not rewarded.

“Mercury is green, right?” a girl asks. Some giggle.

“Nah man, it’s like—“ the boy begins.

“Iridescent,” I answer. Everybody turns. “Anybody seen Esen?”

People stare. “What’s Esen, dude?” one asks. Giggles here and there, but most of them are quiet now. I know they know. I know they want to keep me from her.

I can’t absorb all of them. It took me all my strength just to inhabit this body already. What can this body do? From the bookshelf near me, I pick up a book about Jesus’s life and suffering. “Must be some character in this book,” I say sweetly.

A boy opens his mouth to protest.

I take aim and hurl the at him. Everybody jumps up.

“Where the fuck is Esen?” I shout.

People stand up, look at one another, at me. Only one girl giggles now, and nobody laughs with her. This is not the girl they expected to meet, but the illusion still hasn’t completely shattered. Maybe I’m on something. Everybody is.

I weigh another book in my hands. This one’s about a stupid man chasing a government conspiracy. “So?” I ask.

Not here.

My heart races. It’s hot in here. The ulcer moves again. I hurl this book too. It lands in front of my feet with a hollow thump.

In the other room I wake up a girl from a nap. “Esen?” I ask. “You know where she is?”

The girl blinks at me. Slowly, she puts her hand into her pants. I have to yank Freya away from the sight.

There’re five rooms upstairs. I rip each door open. She’s not with the couple looking for a third. My hands itch with the desire to break the bed. She’s not with the nerds playing Yu-Gi-Oh. My legs itch with the desire to kick the cards away, throw the game in disarray. And one room is completely empty. I want to break Freya’s teeth clawing my way through every piece of furniture inside.

She’s not in the toilet, although I recognize that Turkish girl refreshing her makeup. She walked out with Esen before. Freya doesn’t know her, and I’ve been away for too long.

“Where is Esen?” I ask her.

She glances at me. “Who are you?”

For now, I keep myself carefully hidden from the mirror. “Does it matter?”

She blinks. “You’re not from our course.”

There’s a towel near me. A broom, but that’s a couple of steps away. The body doesn’t see a reason to attack her. But I wish I could rip her apart. Everyone, and then Esen for last.

“Look. I got business with her.” This much is true. “She owes me money. Told me she’d pay me back. It’s been months. I just— I just wanna talk.” That much is true too.

She has her eyebrows furrowed; Esen is not the type to owe anyone anything. But then, she’s also a weirdo who is Shifted who doesn’t dress up like she does, doesn’t talk like she does, and isn’t friendly. An awkward shift in this girl’s body — Esen has definitely had some kind of trouble with this girl. She’s always been so bad at socializing. Should’ve asked me for help.

“Last I checked, she was downstairs.” A shrug. “If she hasn’t left.”

In my world, I’ve crashed her head against the mirror, let it crack, let it bleed. No. That’s only what happened to me. “I hope for your sake that she hasn’t left,” I tell her.

She scowls. She’s only managed to apply eyeliner on her left eye; the eye makeup on the other one resembles a bruise. If only it was one.

She stares at me, waiting for me to say something. Nothing comes. But she says nothing else either. I turn around, open the door. Esen better be back on the ground floor.

“Whatever.”

I turn back around, close the door. Slowly, I walk towards the mirror. I come into view, and I visibly see her blanch.

She’s across me now, sweating hard. I realize her eye is not purple. It’s a deep shade of pink.

“What did you say?” I ask her, slowly. Her mouth is ajar, but all that comes out is labored breathing. “Do you… need help saying what you need to?”

Her reflection materializes next to her. She straightens up, faces me, a resolute expression lining her mouth. “No I don’t,” she says.

One choice made implies another not made. The reflection saying no means the body says yes.

I’m old hat at this.

FERIDE YILMAZ IN CONVERSATION WITH ESEN FIRAT

Valla, you resemble Turgay so much. You’re a girl from our family. I knew there was a reason you came here. It's about the Shifted, isn't it?

When I met my other side, I thought, Allah better take me now or else Shaytan will. She was everything I hated — in others, in myself. How I did it? I am not sure. I don’t remember. I remember facing her. I wonder what I told her? 

Astaighfirullah, Esen. I didn’t tell her to die. That’s not how it works. Is it a girl for you, or a man? 

Ah. Füsun did think you would be a boy. What a shame…

You’ve tried to banish him once, yes? You’ve looked up? He will remember that. You will, too. No — no, but I see it. Müge Anlı, she got dozens of those cases on TV.

It is what it is, Esen.

You must face him. He’s going to be scary — very scary. He’s going to hate what you’ve done to him. It hurt. It left him worse for wear. You’ve fragmented your soul, you know.

No — Esen, let me finish.

Think of it like breaking your arm, or your leg. That foot is crooked now. The whole time, you’ve been dragging it. That’s him now. You need to patch it up. You need to — you need to make peace with him.

Talk to him like you’d talk to yourself. The worst thoughts you have in your head late at night — that’s going to be him. You have to accept it. Rejecting it will make him stronger. You have to embrace him, for all his faults. But trust me, Esen, it’s going to be worth it. I turned out fine from all this. Been that way for ten years. Your hala made it. Your worst parts are your best parts. Of course it’s the other way around too. Can’t be good all the time. That’s where Shaytan hides, people thinking they have to be good. Allah knows we can’t be. Otherwise wouldn’t He have created perfect robots?

It'll be alright, girl. Send my love to Füsun. And tell your parents all of you have to come over sometime. We don’t even meet during bayram anymore.

Upstairs, perfume bottles are opened, its liquid spilling over the sink, leaving a trail outside the bathroom. A thick, pungent smell is in the air. Within the trail of liquid, a streak of black eyeliner takes root, though it ends just after the threshold. Pillows are destroyed in one room; in another, cards are thrown to a haphazard pile alongside clothes that look ripped apart. A boy lies face down on the ground, with no movement on his end. One shoe has made it to the windowsill somehow, blackened soles facing to anyone entering the room.

Downstairs, where the perfume mishmash liquid has spilled onto, the music has long stopped, and a metallic smell has joined the cloud of booze and sugar. Broken bottles and smashed dishes lie on the ground, like snow soiled by street dirt. There’s bodies everywhere. Limbs that stand out in unnatural angles. Nailbeds soaked through with blood. More than one purple eye.

The cellar is a canvas on which red, and yellow, and more brown has been splattered all over. More bodies. Distantly the showerhead runs, leaving a fog across the canvas. The only door here leads outside. Every step echoes here, every last of them heavy, dragging across the concrete ground. I’m tired — this body is tired, at least. It’s bloody, too, and smells of perfume, piss, and beer. My hands itch. I could destroy more. I want to destroy more.

The door opens. A blond boy at the back, and Esen to the front. Esen looks taller from this body, slimmer. But her stupefied face when something slightly shocking happens. Those brown eyes, an open book the way they’re so big. Those are the same. So are the curves, those disgusting, wide curves.

“Esen?” Freya asks, voice weak.

But Esen’s mouth is still open and she stares right through her, and at me.

A violent yank rips me away, slimy and tentacled. That ulcer — it has to be. It’s pulling me forward, towards Esen, coils of flesh and metal that grab me by the hair, the arms, the legs. I push my head back into Freya’s, almost knock her over from the force. Esen steps back, her hands glued to the door. When we meet eyes, she’s shivering.

Freya’s voice is gone. She’s served her purpose.

“You’d…” Esen whispers. She looks around. Her breathing is labored, jagged.

“Here she is,” I tell her. I laugh; through Freya, it sounds airy. “Here I am.”

Esen’s fists clench.

I have to laugh again. “You don’t want her? I could—“ I look for something sharp, and I find it in the jagged bottle of somebody’s hand. I pry it apart, point it to Freya’s neck. “You know.”

Esen pulls her fists close to her chest, her face turning red from the pressure. Did she learn boxing? It must be for me. She’s been hellbent on destroying me, she and that devil sister of hers.

Fine by me. I can deal with that. Finally, my anger is met in kind. Let me destroy you, I want to tell her. To destroy Esen, all I have to do is push the bottle, until it hurts and feels warm—

“Hakan!” she shouts.

Before I can make a move, the world tilts. Something warm and dry pushes me, the bottle flies out of my hand, and I crash down to the ground. No — Freya’s body crashes down to the ground. The ulcer grabs ahold of me completely. I thought metal and flesh wasn’t enough to contain me, but this is made of something harder, so tight that I can’t breathe.

I’ve been here before. I’ve felt this feeling before. Smooth silver. The cold surface of a mirror.

“I think what you think!” Esen shouts.

The ulcer winds itself around me. I can’t move. Can’t breathe. I don’t have to breathe, I tell myself. I’m only—

“I feel what you feel!” Esen shouts.

It cuts through me like a hot knife through butter. It burns. Everything is ice cold. If my body could shiver, it would. I’m so close to her face we could melt to one. Part of me wants to give up. I’m surprised I even have parts. I’ve been here before. She’s casting a spell on me.

“Take me, Hakan!” she screams.

The ulcer pulls me into her, into her real flesh and body and—

FREYA EISENHUBER IN AN INTERVIEW WITH GÜNTHER WOLF, POLICE PRECINCT GÄNSERNDORF, LOWER AUSTRIA. 

ONE MONTH LATER

My name… it’s Freya Eisenhuber. Yes. Yes, that’s right, May fifteen. I’m nineteen, officer. I study comparative literature. Um, alright. I don’t… I don’t really remember much, officer. Oh, okay. Um. There was this house. I think it was a party. I was looking for someone. No — I, no, officer, I know I was looking for someone. Esen Firat? Yeah. I know her from high school. Yeah, we went to the same class. She was always so quiet and shy. I would’ve never—

No. I didn’t know she was Shifted.

Um. Right. I was at this party. Then… there’s just this gap in my memory. All black. And, um…

Thank you. Okay, so, um, I was looking for Esen Firat. When I came to, my fingers were really bloody and my nails were broken, and my body was rank with sweat… it was so nasty I wanted to throw up. There was somebody on me. Um… can we… can I finish first? Somebody was on me, and I had to push them aside to get up. They were kinda heavy, you know. Everything around me, it was destroyed. It smelled horrible. It was wet under me, just water, though. I think somebody ran the shower. But the person beside me…
They had no blood on them. Out of everyone, they were the cleanest. But when they got up, it was like… I don’t know, like they had dirt inside? Or like they got the most blood on them. All wet, and… and the limbs moved odd. Like something controlled this body from the outside. The hair too. … It’s hard to explain. But I swear that’s how it came across. No, not at all. It was jet black, actually. Darker than her hair had been before.

When they introduced themselves to me, it… it wasn’t really Esen. It looked like her, but it was someone else. Someone new. I felt like something had emerged from the wreckage that was around the two of us, and it was bloody and raw and new, and unfamiliar to the cage that made up the skeleton.

It was just this… this lump of flesh, really. The soul, I guess.

No. I wouldn’t know who that is.