Code of Disjointed Letters: ( Doomsday Will Arise From the Past (7 page)

* * *

The first phase of the competition came and went, and I managed to make it through. Waiting outside the elimination room, I knocked on the door and went in to say goodbye to Gizem.

“I’m sorry; you know I like you. If I had the chance to choose, it would not be you who got eliminated, believe me,” I said.

“I’m sorry, too. I did not expect to be eliminated so soon. I’m surprised. I thought I was doing pretty well, but they only focus on the results without understanding the method.”

I tried to reassure her with all the clichés:
life goes on, don’t be sad
, etc. She zipped her bags angrily and tried to pick them up. I stepped in to help, and, as I was trying to grab the handles of the bags to carry them for her, my hand suddenly touched the elderly woman’s skin. There was that indescribable electrical shock again! The woman took the bags from my hand, put them on the floor, and stared at me.

“Young man, you have something mysterious about you, but I’m unable to solve it, despite all my life experience and knowledge. When I looked into your fortune that night, I did see something, but I decided to not tell you. No one loves the one who gives them bad news, and doing so has never been to my advantage in my market.” She smiled at that and touched my shoulder.

“Young man, you need to change your perspective and look back at what you have seen. You can win this competition by eliminating everyone; I have no doubt about that, but if you do not win this competition, and if you lose the chance given to you in another competition…,” her voice briefly trailed off before she continued. “When I took your hand, I caught a vision that I haven’t had for a long time. It was so clear that it is still before my eyes. I can still smell the blood and taste the metal in the air. I saw a setting sun, its last rays obscured by the dense smoke of a battlefield. The field was full of corpses of your friends and a defeated army. You were in the middle of the battlefield with a broken sword, screaming at the sky, begging, and no one could hear you. Your enemies were busy sharing the spoils and digging graves. They didn’t care about you—even fighting and dying with honor was denied you.”

She let go of my hands and picked up her bag again. “Genghis Khan and his successors destroyed one third of the known population of the world and influenced the fate of all living things afterward; did you know that?” she asked.

The absurdity of what she’d said left a strange, knotted feeling in my throat. I wanted to say something. I wanted to remember. All I could do was turn and leave the room.

As I entered the hall, I heard a child’s voice behind me, “It’s just a snapshot, and, if you are still alive, then you will have another chance. Whether it’s an honorable death or a victory, who cares? Sometimes, taking that chance is, itself, the war that has to be won.” I turned and looked at Ender. He had heard everything.

* * *

All the excitement and glamour of the first week of competition was gone. Awards had been distributed and messages of support had been read. After Gizem left the studio, we gathered in the dimly lit room to watch the episode. No one had slept and no one cared to speak. We just stared at the television screen in the lounge, quietly watching the recording (Gizem’s seat remained empty).

The show began with some trailers and some touching music. Ender had been the first competitor, as drawn by lots. We watched as, on tape, he prepared to take his turn in the maze. In one corner of the screen, there was a stopwatch, and in the other corner there was a countdown from one thousand meters. In keeping with the rules of the competition, we were all dressed in special clothes. Ender had on a bright purple jumpsuit that glimmered in the light. He also wore an armband with a flashing sensor attached.

As he began his turn, he lingered at the entrance a little, touched the walls by bending and leaning against them, checked the connecting hallways, and then proceeded with cautious but quick steps. He stopped, looked back, and kept moving, all the while mumbling something. He was rapidly running out of time, but the light on his armband remained green. The action was easy to follow as the pilot camera showed the distance to the exit for the audience.

As the music increased in tempo and intensity, with only 124 meters left to the exit, Ender made a mistake. He suddenly walked in the opposite direction, and when he turned again to go the same way he had before, the light on his arm suddenly turned red. An alarm followed, and the score was registered: 124 meters, 8 minutes, 34 seconds to the exit.

Watching himself, Ender spoke with a weary voice, “I made assumptions in accordance with the paint layers on the walls, the brush strokes, and the wear on the most-used roads. I considered the fact that, during constructing, the entrance and exit of the labyrinth must have been built first with the other parts added later. However, that’s it.” He laughed slightly.

The second runner was Fatin. He was dressed in jet black except for thin bands of red on his arms and on his upturned collar. He approached the entrance with firm steps. After a little pause to adjust his eyes to the whiteness, he proceeded with steps that were hesitant, but quick. He did not even touch the walls. The meter counter declined rapidly as the time moved slowly. When he arrived at the exit, he paused for a moment, then crossed the finish line as a winner. The numbers on the screen were frozen at zero meters, three minutes, fourteen seconds. “Winner!” graphics now blinked on the screen.

“
Now I’ll tell you how I did it,” Fatin said. “My elves told me the strategy for the labyrinth well in advance. They simply held my hand and led me to the exit.”

At that, silence and tension pervaded the lounge, and I grew afraid.

Hıdır was third. The cleric had trimmed his gray beard and was wearing black trousers, a snow-white collarless shirt, and a dark-green belt. His lips were moving as if in prayer. He stopped at the entrance and took the first step with a ‘bismillah.’ He then proceeded rapidly with confident steps as if a bright path was showing him the way. I wouldn’t have thought that even the ones who’d built the labyrinth could have gotten out of there so easily. When he reached the exit, the screen again stopped, this time at zero meters, four minutes, twenty-eight seconds.

When we turned to him, he greeted us with a gentle smile and opened his hands. “Sometimes you need to believe in luck,” he said humbly.

“Greetings to the second best,” Fatin chuckled. “I’ll send you the pictures of the awards I won.”

Dr. Feryal Özel now entered the labyrinth in a dark cream-colored suit accentuating her beauty. A pink scarf completed her outfit. She chose one of the walls and put her hand on it, and without drawing it away, she began to move, trailing her hand against the wall as she went. It was a very strange method, but interesting to watch, especially on the pilot camera. She navigated the maze in a different way from all the others. She was proceeding toward the exit, though slowly, and it seemed as if she was going to take the wrong path at any minute—but she made zero mistakes. When she reached the exit, the screen froze at zero meters, ten minutes, forty-three seconds.

In the lounge, we turned to Feryal, even more surprised than we had been at the previous winners.

Feryal smiled. “In fact, it was very simple, something my father taught me as a child. If you proceed while constantly touching one of the walls of a labyrinth, though it may take you a while, it always takes you to the exit.”

I was next. I took a deep breath as I saw myself on the screen wearing a blue leather outfit and a black belt. Although I felt uncomfortable at first, I had become accustomed to the clothing. I approached the entrance of the labyrinth and, after a little pause, I took my armband with the sensor off and attached it to my left shoe. Then, I took off the shoe and threw it over one of the walls, toward where I thought the exit was.

I relived those stressful moments, as on the screen, I watched myself begin the arduous process of proceeding back and forth down the corridors looking perplexed and aimless. I had considered the possibility of an elimination or disqualification but as I manipulated the rules of the competition, I worried that I was just making a fool of myself. The count on the clock got higher and higher, and, after a long time and quite a few attempts, I reached the place where my shoe had fallen. At that point, I made the logical choice and simply accepted my score. I didn’t know where the exit was and didn’t want to push my luck by throwing my shoe in what might be the wrong direction. The display clock stopped at 251 meters, 18 minutes, 12 seconds.

When the others turned to me, I said, “Do not ask me anything. That was the best I could do out of desperation.”

Gizem was the last competitor. She wore a very nice turquoise outfit that brought out the sheen of her red, wavy hair. When she passed the entrance, she held in one hand a folded astrological chart, and, in the other, tarot cards. She was very focused and confident as she stopped at the first intersection and proceeded, sometimes looking at the cards, sometimes at the page in her hand, and sometimes touching a bright red stone on her neck. This ritual took place at each of the intersections without exception, and at first she was successful. The meter countdown proceeded rapidly and I began to feel her excitement: 270, 269, 268, 267—

But then, she came to one more intersection. She knelt down and spent some time looking at the written pages in her hand and mumbling to herself. Then there came a sudden faint movement that only I seemed to notice. Something was there with her: a thin, gray layer of smoke hovered over the papers on the floor and changed their order. Like the others, Ms. Gizem probably hadn’t seen it, because the red light began to flash shortly after she rechecked her papers and took a few steps. I was shocked, but no more than she was. The clock read 268 meters, 12 minutes, 23 seconds.

The show was finished and nobody wanted to talk. We turned the screen off, stood up, and went to our rooms. I had just opened my door when I heard Fatin whisper, “The problem is not only to win, but also to decide who will lose.” Moving away, he turned his back to me and opened his own door. As he entered his room, a thin, gray smoke followed him before he disappeared behind the door.

The Exchange

In pitch-black darkness, I suddenly woke up from a deep sleep with a deep sense of uneasiness. I became conscious of a dense, sulfurous smell and sensed that there was something else lurking in the dark.

Though hesitant to move my head, I nervously began to look around, scanning the empty darkness. Suddenly, two small, bright-red globules appeared before my eyes. I blinked to make sure I wasn’t still dreaming. The two red dots faded away slowly, then reappeared, brighter than before. My heartbeat became a violent storm and I started to shiver.

A headlight beam of a moving car outside my window, ripped apart the darkness for a moment, and, in the upper corner of the room, I saw a creature with its hands on the ceiling, its feet on the walls, and its head, against all logic, turned fully backward staring at me. It was still, and its shade was darker than the darkness itself. My body melted in a wave of adrenaline. I could neither move nor scream.

Making a crackling sound like that of an insect rubbing its legs together, the creature crept down toward the floor in a manner that mocked all the rules of nature and physics. Suddenly, I jumped when I saw the speed with which the creature reached the floor. It rose up on its feet without taking its eyes (now more yellow) off of me. Then it stepped toward me as its head, completing another full rotation, turned abruptly to face me. I felt its breath on my skin and suddenly knew the source of the sulfur smell.

My face was bathed in a cold sweat, my lips trembling, and my jaw was clenched. Nonetheless, I managed to speak, my voice trembling in the darkened room. “Who are you?” I asked.

The creature cast its eyes to the floor and replied, “Do you still have to ask this?”

My eyes followed the creature’s gaze downward, and I suddenly shuddered with recognition when I saw its misshapen tail with thin fur and its cloven feet. Somehow, I managed to meet its eyes again as I asked the only logical question. “What do you want?’”

I’m the Devil

I sat in the top corner of the dark room, at the furthest end that the universe could offer me, deliberately flexing the rules others imposed. Oktay was suitable for the purpose I was seeking. I had been staring at this creature for a long time. “For a long time” is an understatement: I had been observing these creatures and the community they formed since the beginning of their existence. It was a flawed, pathetic community that somehow still managed to surprise me with its unnecessary self-glorification.