OBSESSIVE MURDERS

It was well past midnight when he returned home after spending two days at the bureau. Standing before the door, fumbling for his keys, he realized his hand was still trembling. The palpitations in his heart and the lump in his throat had not yet abandoned him. The cause of it all was undoubtedly the carton of cigarettes he’d consumed over those two days and the endless stream of coffee.

After a few attempts, he managed to slide the key into the lock and pushed the door open slowly. As he stepped inside, the familiar, comforting scent of home hit his face. He tried to be as silent as possible while taking off his shoes, careful not to wake his wife and children. To rid himself of the bitter tobacco taste, he headed straight for the kitchen. He took a random glass from the cupboard and filled it to the brim with water from the pitcher. He downed it like a wild animal that hadn’t seen water in days. Though the first few gulps made the pain in his throat even more unbearable, he seemed relieved once he’d finished the last drop.

He began to walk with a limp, like a wounded soldier fresh from battle. Now, he only wanted a hot shower and to sleep beside his wife. As he entered the hallway, a sound from the living room caught his ear. He held his breath, straining to listen—was it coming from upstairs or from within his own house? After a few seconds, he was certain. Yes, the sound was coming from the living room. It was like a constant, creaking door. Back and forth. At the same pace, in the same tone. He stood before the living room door and clenched his hand around the handle.

The sound was still wandering inside the room. It was natural for working in homicide to make one overly paranoid. Things that were ordinary and ignored by everyone else could turn into vital clues for a detective. Now, because of this sound, dozens of poisonous possibilities rushing into his brain had suddenly seized his entire being. With a sudden reflex, he pushed the handle and burst inside. There wasn’t a single word to describe what he saw or to explain what he felt. The lump in his throat had now buried itself back in its place, firmer and more determined than before.

In the middle of the room, a man sat on a chair, his wife’s head resting against his neck, calmly cutting the woman’s throat. The right side of her neck was completely severed from her body, dangling in the air. The blood flowing from her trachea soaked into the white shag rug on the floor, like water dripping from a leaky faucet. Her eyes were still open. She was looking at the man in terror, as if asking for her husband’s help one last time. It was possible to understand how much pain she endured just by looking into her eyes as her throat was being slit.

Standing there, watching the blade wander through his wife’s trachea, he suddenly thought of his young daughters. Were they both still sleeping inside? Or were they lying in their sweet, pink-colored beds, their heads severed from their bodies, covered in blood? The horrific image of his two daughters’ decapitated heads flashed in his mind. Now, he was surrendering to an agonizing darkness in the deep void that time had opened for him. When his knees refused to carry him and he collapsed to the floor, he felt even smaller. He raised his head and looked at his wife’s killer.

The man was wiping the sweat from his forehead with the hand holding the knife. At that moment, he saw a drop of blood fall from the tip of the blade into his wife’s blue eyes. When the man went back to his task, he saw his face in full detail. He didn’t know if he would feel less pain if a stranger had done this, but he recognized the man beheading his wife. He knew him very well. Yes, the person before him was exactly him.

Arda struck the final key on the typewriter with a sharp thud and sank into his leather chair. He wiped his hands over his pale, hairless face in frustration. Suddenly, he snapped back to attention. He grabbed the cigarette pack and the lighter, which sat in perfect symmetry on the table, and lit one. After watching the fire of the cigarette crushed between his trembling, delicate fingers for a while, his eyes drifted to the piece of paper hanging from the typewriter. Perhaps he should burn it now and watch it turn to ash. The things he wrote felt so foreign to him now that, far from evaluating them objectively, he approached them all like enemies. What else could watching a man cut his wife’s head off in the middle of a living room be but violence porn?

He was being crushed under the disturbing feeling of writing such crude things just to excite people. Actually, when he first started writing, it had felt like therapy to him. At least the episodes he had during the day had decreased by almost half. This hobby, which he started on his psychologist’s advice, made him feel better than he had imagined. Eventually, he thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start making money from it. When his first novel was rejected by every publisher he sent it to, he suffered a great disappointment.

Afterward, he spent nearly a year searching for the answer to the question, “Is the perfect murder possible?” He researched murders and serial killers from the last century and read detective novels. Finally, his efforts paid off, and his first novel garnered great interest when it was published. Now, he was writing his fifth novel. His first book had impressed even the critics. Shortly after, many publishers called him, wanting to work together. Finally, one publisher convinced him after long efforts, and they reached an agreement after paying him a large sum of money.

The second book published afterward reached a considerable sales volume, but it failed to satisfy readers and critics. This situation continued with his other book, and his fourth book was subjected to even more brutal criticism, leaving everyone in great disappointment. The idea of a blind man committing a dozen murders without leaving a trace had seemed quite logical to him, though. While writing it, the thought that it would be the best thing he had ever written had excited him. A blind serial killer... However, after the book was published, he realized that no one shared his opinion.

This sharp decline had most angered the publisher. He called him almost every day to complain. He even went beyond that and offered suggestions for the new book. Arda, hoping that the ten-year contract he signed would end before he killed this man, listened patiently to everything he said and tried to find common ground. He was suddenly startled by the sound of the doorbell. The bell rang twice short, then one long, then one short, and finally twice long. This was the pattern he had defined for the publisher. Still, he rose silently from his chair, walked to the door with cautious steps, and checked through the peephole one last time.

Standing before the door was a short man with white hair, looking anxious with black-framed round glasses perched on the tip of his nose. Arda first removed the door bolt, then turned the two locks at the top. After looking through the peephole again and seeing that there was no one else in the corridor, he turned the bottom lock. Finally, he opened the door.

“Welcome, Sezgin Bey.”

Without answering, the man nodded his head rapidly a few times and walked in. Arda closed all the locks again, checked the inside of the apartment building through the peephole one last time, and followed the old man. The man had settled comfortably into Arda’s chair as if it were his own home. Arda sat on the pouf where he usually rested his feet while writing. The man took a pipe out of his inner coat pocket and put it to his mouth. After lighting his pipe with the lighter from the table and taking a deep puff, he began to speak.

“How is it going, Ardacığım?”

“Fine, Sezgin Bey.”

There was a brief silence.

“How are you?”

The man again did not answer and shook his head reprovingly from side to side. Then, he suddenly narrowed his right eye and stared intently at the paper in the typewriter. Without feeling the need to ask Arda, he pulled the paper from the typewriter and started reading.

“That thing...” Arda said.

The old man raised his right hand with a sharp movement, demanding silence. Then, he slid his glasses up and began to read hungrily. While he read, Arda involuntarily stared at the brown spots on the man’s head. These spots, visible through his greasy white hair, were nauseating. No matter how much he wanted to look away, his eyes would return to the same spot after a while. To avoid torturing himself further, he closed his eyes with both hands and waited. After a while, the man finished reading and tossed the paper onto the table without even straightening up.

“At least this one isn’t blind.”

Arda took his hands from his eyes and looked at the man with a guilty expression.

“That’s just an experiment, Sezgin Bey.”

There was neither reproach nor determination in his voice.

“I don’t want experiments anymore, Ardacığım. I’m fed up with experiments.”

Arda didn’t answer.

“I’ve invested a lot in you and your ideas. In return, I want to start earning something now.”

Arda settled for nodding his head as if in agreement.

“There’s a kid,” the man said then. His voice was suddenly filled with pure excitement. “My brother’s friend’s nephew. The kid is sharp as a tack. He’s a bit young, but never mind. He has a disease, ‘dilseksi’ or something.”

Arda interrupted:

“Dyslexia.”

Sezgin Bey waved his right hand a few times:

“Whatever, same thing. The kid’s imagination is incredible. He comes up with things that my brother told me a bit about, and I was floored. He’s coming to see me with his father during the week.”

Arda was relieved that the topic had shifted away from him.

“How nice. You’ll have a little writer.”

You can ruin his life too by preparing a thirty-year contract and giving him two percent royalty, he thought to himself. The old man moved restlessly in the chair. He scratched the skin hanging under his chin like a turkey’s wattle a few times with his hand.

“The kid can’t write, Arda. How’s a kid going to write?”

Arda looked at him with blank eyes. The man took another puff from his pipe, and as the smoke trailed out of his nose, he continued.

“I’m just wondering if something could come out of what he tells. Maybe if a good idea comes out, he tells it, and you write it.”

The moment Arda heard this, his whole body went stiff. He froze for a while. The moment he realized the man wasn’t joking, this astonishment turned into anger. He stood up, quickly grabbed a cigarette from the table, and lit it.

“Are you joking, Sezgin Bey?”

The man didn’t pay much attention to this artificial anger. Still, he stuttered slightly before he began to speak. He was also aware of how heavy what he had said was.

“One has to try, Ardacığım. Just like you did. If you told the kid ‘blind killer,’ maybe he would laugh at us with his ass too. But look, you even tried that. And I put money into it. Then we became the laughingstock of everyone.”

“I can’t write a child’s fantasies or whatever, Sezgin Bey. Not that much.”

“Then write something decent. No publisher pays a writer monthly like that. I’m always giving, never receiving.”

“We didn’t talk like this in the beginning, Sezgin Bey.”

“In the beginning, you weren’t writing such nonsense either, Ardacığım.”

The area around Arda’s blue eyes had turned completely red. Raw tears began to gather at the tips of his thin eyelashes. He gritted his teeth in anger but couldn’t open his mouth to say a single word. Maybe the man was right. Maybe he was writing such terrible things now that he needed the ideas of a small child. He swallowed with difficulty.

“Anyway, I’d better go now,” said Sezgin Koçak. He stood up and headed toward the door. Arda stood motionless as if rooted to the spot. While putting on his shoes, the man said breathlessly, “If something good comes out, I’ll tell you.” As if he hadn’t heard or didn’t care at all about what Arda said. Then he pulled the door shut and left.

The moment Arda closed his eyes, the tears gathered on his lashes began to trickle down his face. He was crying only out of anger. He hated himself for being so fragile. He was aware that the reason for all this absurdity was that he showed too much humility to people. People could comment on him and give him ideas as they pleased. The publisher’s audacity in insulting him so boldly was exactly because of this. Now, those lines he wrote in his third book began to flutter before his eyes:

“People are like a type of virus that spreads rapidly through the body. If you once inhale their poisonous ideas and accept them into your system, they will never stop. First, they interfere with your lifestyle, then your ideas, then your clothes, and finally even how you should breathe. They spread so fast that eventually, you have to cut them out to stop them. That’s why when they first contact you, you must determine where they stop. Just as Apel bravely told that know-it-all cobbler not to go beyond the boot. The antidote to tactlessness is courage.”

Maybe one day he could succeed in applying the things he wrote to his own life. While thinking about this, the sharp heat he felt between his fingers suddenly took over his mind. Noticing the cigarette struggling to melt his skin, he threw it from his hand with a sudden reflex. And a direct hit. The cigarette fell onto the piles of crumpled paper where he had previously described the pitcher in hundreds of different ways. One of the pages began to burn greedily. Making the most absurd decision in a panic, he ran and stepped on the fire with his bare foot.

Startled by the burning sensation in his foot, he involuntarily stomped his right foot on the floor a few more times. Then he thought it would be more logical to go and find water. As he tried to throw himself toward the kitchen, this time he caught his pinky toe on the leg of the antique table he had placed under the typewriter and collapsed to the floor. Now all the pain in his body was concentrated in his pinky toe. On the bright side, he had forgotten the pain of the burn for a few seconds. Now, the strange tingling sensation in his nose and the blood slowly trickling over his lips made him even more helpless.

Does the house want to burn? Fine, then let it burn... He was lying helplessly in the middle of the house surrendering to the smoke.