As Izmir set the sun, leaving it like a blood-red stain on the waters of the gulf, the Kordon promenade took on its usual spoiled, noisy, and arrogant joy. People were shaking off the day’s exhaustion with laughter in the cafes under the palm trees and on the blankets spread across the grass.
That was exactly why no one saw Yekta. With his mud-stained, thick-soled work boots, calloused fingers, and the heavy tool belt around his waist, he was just one of the faded shadows of this glittering city, an unnamed cog in the system.
As Yekta cut the dried lower fronds of one of Kordon’s century-old palm trees with his massive pruning shears, the dark and patient gardener inside him had already awakened. He looked at people as if they were plants. They would rot, grow old, and mix into the soil. They possessed a flawless symmetry, a mesmerizing beauty that needed to be frozen. And an orchid had to be plucked from its branch at its most beautiful moment, before its petals had ever wilted. Auburn-haired and graceful, with wavy hair cascading down the slender curve of her neck, she was like a flawless statue poured from porcelain. He was focused entirely on the smooth texture of her skin and the perfect symmetry of her collarbone. This knife was his brush.
As the end of the shift approached, it got quite dark. He was no longer a worker; he was a predator descending upon his hunting ground. Moving away from the crowded bar street of Alsancak, which vibrated with bass sounds, she began walking toward the quieter, narrow streets in the back where old Greek houses with bay windows stood
Twenty steps behind her, Yekta was as quiet as a stray dog and as dark as a shadow.
The woman turned into the dim, camera-free street where her house was located. Yekta quickened his pace. The cold, inwardly curved steel gleamed like a silver tooth in the feeble light of the streetlamp. However, the woman was much more alert than he expected.
While Yekta experienced a momentary shock from the impact, the woman blindly sprayed the small pepper spray she had pulled from her bag behind her. His vision instantly blurred, his lungs burned. The flawless ritual had been shattered in the very first minute. Those steely, heavy laborer muscles that had swung sledgehammers under the sun for years and felled thick tree trunks all alone, contracted with a primal rage that instantly suppressed the pain of the pepper spray.
The struggle was vicious. She dug her nails into Yekta’s neck, viciously tearing his skin. Yet against Yekta’s pure physical strength, this resistance was no different from the thrashing of a thin branch resisting a storm. When he grabbed her by the throat with one hand and lifted her off her feet, the woman’s thrashing began to slow down, and the terror in her eyes began to grow. But on his face was that freezing, morbid smile.
“Don’t be afraid,” Yekta whispered toward the woman’s face. “I won’t let you rot.”.
Yekta made that flawless, half-moon-shaped incision into the woman’s jugular. Just like pruning a diseased tree branch, with anatomical perfection. Yekta dropped to his knees. He scooped the honey-colored, transparent agricultural material inside—the pruning paste—onto his index finger. The resin froze over the wound in seconds, turning into a transparent amber layer.
His eye was caught by the elegant, pearl-embroidered brooch on the woman’s collar. This was the first trophy he had taken for his museum.
From the head of the street came the static of a police patrol’s radio.
Yekta did not panic. Anyone else would have tried to hide in the darkness of that street, drawing attention while running away.
He started walking toward the exit of the street. When the vehicle stopped right beside him, the window rolled down. “We received a report of a woman screaming from this street, did you hear anything?”. Shining his small flashlight toward the manhole cover, he spoke with the weary accent of a laborer: “I swear, Chief, I couldn’t tell if it was pots blowing over in the wind or drunks fighting. It’s sketchy around here at night anyway.”. What he saw was not a killer, but merely a tired worker of the system.
“Don’t ask, Chief,” Yekta sighed. It must have caused an allergy, and I scratched my neck while rubbing it
The police officer gave a slight nod. Good work.”. His inwardly seething, morbid arrogance turned into a mocking, subtle smile behind the police car.
An hour later, he was in his rundown house in Eşrefpaşa. On his neck were the four deep scratches torn by the woman’s nails.
The skin flakes the police would find under the woman’s nails contained Yekta’s DNA. As Yekta looked in the mirror, the control-freak monster inside him had already begun calculating how deep he would have to cut his own flesh to fix this mistake56Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9aH7KxQyGY
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