DAY DREAM (Gülçin Özbek Kuyumcu-GÜNDÜZ DÜŞÜ)

- Prologue -

Writer: Gülçin Özbek Kuyumcu
Translator: Elif Erdem
Editor: İdil Mendoza
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Prologue; The End Of One Road Is The Beginning Of Another...

She had spent one year of her life with icy hatred and another year drowning in pain. The young woman was leaving the hospital room in secrecy, just like how she came in and painted its walls with her tears. Leaving the city where noone would recognize her any longer, except for a few familiar faces she saw in the past months whom she bid farewell to. In exchange for the life that had been stolen from her, she was left with a new life shaped by those who remained. She was leaving behind everything she knew, loved, and recognized in this room, knowing she would never see them again.

What use would she make of those that were presented to her on a silver platter anyway? She was no longer the girl who grew up with dreams, who worked tirelessly to make them come true. All the branches she held on to had been broken. The pieces of a bomb that suddenly fell into the middle of their lives had scattered everywhere, destroying everything she touched. It had settled like a disease, rotting her from the inside out.

The woman had only been able to keep a tiny piece of her heart to herself, unspoiled by the disaster. But soon enough, she had shattered her own heart with her own hands. Because life was asking one last sacrifice of her, to avenge what she had lost.

The woman had sacrificed her heart along with the tears she had shed. She had given herself up, and in doing so, she saved thousands. Thinking of this, she would breathe with ease, tend to her wounds, and find solace. She knew that if she had to, she would sacrifice herself again and again. There was no other life she knew anymore: this was it, and she believed it was all there was.

There was no such thing as the end: the woman would learn that. But first, she had to tell her story.

***

Not even the bone-chilling cold could affect them as much as the expression of the woman staring at the horizon. Her steps had such determination to them that pedestrians gravitated to the sides in a stupor when she walked. The woman's willpower effortlessly subdued each and every one of them. As they gave way, they couldn't help but take notice of the beautiful golden-haired woman who captivated their attention without even trying.

The graceful body that stood tall exuded a power that drew them in. They watched the pain that hardened the soft contours of her face and feared her cold gaze that had settled in her warm brown eyes. She had lost what she had once possessed, yet at the same time, wherever she went and everything she touched felt like it belonged to her. People were both frightened and enchanted: she awakened a cerain curiosity in them.

Would that be the end of it, her walking away like that? Where did this woman's story begin in the first place?

***

On the day when the sky was weeping and their lives changed forever, three funerals left the same house in one coffin...

In a modest, ice-cold wooden coffin, they carried away the man, a loving husband and a devoted father, who had reached the ultimate end of the path he had paved with good intentions.

No one saw, no one knew about the other two corpses that were connected to the lifeless body of the man. Yet, in the same coffin, there were two women, with tears in their eyes and heads held high, who were condemning themselves to eternal agony.

Unaware of everything, a woman who had built her whole life upon the infinite love she carried in her heart, also had her heart taken out and placed inside the body of the man she loved, who had passed away. The leaves of her second spring had fallen off.

And then there was also what they took from the young woman...

They took not only her father, her playmate, partner in mischief, biggest supporter, the one who chased away her nightmares and gave her the one gift that no one else could have - her father - but they also put his childhood filled with striving towards a future of dreams that were now mixed with nothingness and impossibility in that same coffin.

The funeral killed the innocence of a soul and gave birth to a desire to erase and destroy the memories of the past twenty-five rosy years, leaving only the memories behind.

The woman was stripped of all her colours. She was washed with unpredictable shades of gray and bright red. She hid herself. She recreated herself.

Her mother's gift of golden hair faded. Her father's legacy turned her blue eyes to gray. Her hopeful heart was tainted by the black stains of revenge. Her pink lips were stained with blood-red poison. A poison that she would make her enemy taste in the most painful way possible, even if it meant drinking it herself.

***

And so, the story of the young woman began. She had closed a chapter, unaware of the new beginning that she thought was an already written ending.

In the game of life, the roles assigned by fate would begin just when it seemed they were over. It would set up obstacles and watch them crumble, silently waiting and rewriting until the debris was cleared. It would tirelessly work until balance was found and desires were fulfilled.

Life always finds its way and destiny always follows what it knows...