CHAPTER 2 - THE MAN IN BLACK( Part one)

My eyes widened as reality flew from my hands like a butterfly I was trying to catch. The breath I thought I had lost suddenly rushed into my lungs and I began to cough.

I coughed and coughed.

I turned my face, which had been resting on the pillow, to look at the ceiling. It was a nightmare and it was over. I was left with sweat dripping down my neck, drenching my body, and a pain that still burned in my throat.

After making sure my throat was intact, that I was still alive, that I was still present by running my hands over my head, face and body, I exhaled the breath that filled my lungs with a muffled whistle of relief. When I was fully conscious, I stared blankly at the wall in front of me. I had a hard time thinking because of the aftershocks of the terror I had experienced.

I took a seat in front of the mirror and tugged at my wet hair. The idea was to hurt myself and get out of that bad dream as soon as possible. I think I was walking... No, it was the parquet floor, running under my feet. With my heart in my hand, which I was trying to hold back, I watched the floor fold open under my feet, the sloping ceiling, the increasingly transparent walls. I froze in place as my intermittent screams caught in my choked breaths and came out of my throat in wheezes.

I asked myself: "What is happening to me?"

I had no voice. My knees hit the floor before my tears. Strands of my hair were caught between my clenched fists.

I cried: "Stop, I said! Stop! Damn it! Stop!"

When I woke up to the scream of my own voice, I was back in the wetlands of hell, in my goddamn bed, drenched in blood and sweat. I threw myself out of my room.

Somewhere between the hallway and the bathroom, I planted my feet firmly on the floor and remained motionless for about five minutes, my lower lip bleeding behind the skin ripped off by my teeth and my gnawed nails.

Nothing changed, except that I went crazy.

I opened the doors of the rooms one by one and started to check the house, questioningly checking the sofa sets, windows, under the coffee tables.

Yes, yes, I had completely gone insane.

I grabbed the bat from the foyer and headed to the bedroom with my back to the wall. I intended to hit the possible evil spirit on the head. I cursed and smiled at my brain, which became a kite and flew out of the window of my mind.

"You're nuts. Good for you, Asya!"

I kicked the already open door of my bedroom and entered the room with a bat in my hand. I was having a lot of fun on the ghost hunt. While I had the bat in my hand, I threw the comforter and pillow on the floor and beat the hell out of them.

After sneezing in the flying dust and feathers, I came to my senses and said, "You're crazy," to the crazy person I saw in the mirror.

Thus relieved, I headed for the bathroom as I always do.

In the last few days, I had been having a series of dreams in which I was at the center and dying in various ways, asking myself, 'Am I unhappy, am I stressed, is something wrong?' The answer was always 'No'. I had good energy and good health, when I was awake of course. Was I gaining strange telepathic powers or was I going crazy? What could be the cause of all this nonsense? Where was the subtlety lurking that I couldn't see?

When I finished my shower thinking, I stood in front of the mirror again with a thousand facial expressions.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror with dread, I had bitten my lip because of this situation. I ran my hands over my cheeks, my forehead, my chin. My coppery light auburn hair was thinning. My skin, normally a fair wheat color, had gone so pale that it was almost transparent.

Wait a minute!

I once had freckles. They were under my eyes, around my nose. My freckles, where had they gone now?

I slapped myself, because I was convinced I was imagining things. When I was a child, when I was sick and feverish, I thought my freckles had disappeared. But they hadn't...

My vividly colored green eyes and pink lips now looked like an upside down and withered rose. When I was done examining myself, I rubbed my face while thinking 'God, what is happening to me?' After blinking my eyes a few times, I exhaled in distress and leaned over the tap to wash my face.

After washing my face, I dragged my body into the kitchen to get something in my tummy. I poured milk from the fridge over a bowl of cereal, then plopped myself down in a chair.

I was avoiding food because of the pain in my throat.

"You stay there," I said to the bowl and stormed out of my seat and back to my room. I lit a cigarette, as it was not my habit to smoke in the morning. I sent the thick smoke into my lungs, hoping to get rid of the discomfort that wouldn't go away no matter what I did. When I was halfway through my cigarette, I felt pain radiating down my legs. I could hardly open my teeth because of my clenched jaw. While I was feeling so battered physically, my soul seemed to be falling rapidly from an endless void.

"I'm not well."

I must have been in a deep trance because I was startled by the sound of the doorbell ringing and I dropped my almost finished cigarette on my leg and burned myself. Cursing in a whisper when it hurt, I hopped towards the door. When I looked through the peephole, I saw that it was my best friend Cemre. The frown on her face bothered me.

Should I not have opened the door?

However, I had turned down her requests for a meet-up for a couple of days. You know, I loved Cemre very much. "Ugh, damn it!"

"Where the hell have you been recently?" Cemre snapped when the door opened.

I didn't have a good excuse, so I blurted out, "I'm here."

"Asya, you've been avoiding me for days, what's wrong with you? If you avoid me any longer, I'll think you have a problem with me!" As she finished her words, she raised one eyebrow as if to emphasize the seriousness of her anger, crossed her arms in front of her and started to beat her right leg on the ground in fast rhythms. She continued to wait with the other eyebrow raised while I thought of the most appropriate response.

When I gave up in the silence, she said, "What kind of a problem could I have with you, Cemre? I've been busy and I was just tired." I couldn't talk about my dreams to this chicken who looked like a cute cat even when she was angry in front of me. I didn't want her to worry about me, and more importantly, I didn't want her to be scared.

Cemre, with her expression obviously softening a little more, said, "Fine... But we're going out together today, I don't want any objections." I pouted. When she said, "No objections, Asya!" without giving me a chance to open my mouth, I said, "Oh, okay." I gave up. She giggled with a cheerful chirp, shook off her fake expression of resentment, clapped her hands and darted into the house.

"No excuse, I'll get you ready!" she said.

I rolled my eyes, laughed, closed the door and followed her. Although Cemre was eight years younger than me, I think she was the only friend, even the only friend I could get along with. While I was keeping up with her age with my childish side, she was keeping up with me with her maturity. It was hard to understand the age difference between us since I was already a pygmy next to her. Although she looked older than her peers, the only thing that made it obvious that she was younger than me was her baby face. With her long dark brown hair, dark beady eyes, small nose and shaped lips, she was both cute and beautiful.

She was also a bit chatty, like a cricket.

Cemre continued to insist, 'get dressed up, get dolled up, this hairstyle is suitable and you can't go without make-up' and went on like that. She had already made me feel better and the tension I had felt in the morning had left my soul.

After we were all ready, we stopped by Cemre's house, who lived across the apartment from the one below mine, to inform her mother, and then we went out. We got into my car, which I parked right in front of the house. Cemre flipped through the channels until she found an energetic song on the radio, and when she found the song she was looking for, she turned the volume all the way up. We arrived at one of the busiest shopping malls in Eskişehir, laughing and singing along to the song. Although it was the weekend, luckily we found a suitable place in the parking lot and parked the car.