"A shadow in an empty doorway... Call your name but no reply
I still see your face... but there's no trace"
Kill the Pain - Accept
***
She dreamed of the angel gliding from the sky, swaying as if a feather, and the black monster man rising to the fallen angel with the woman in his arms.
When she awoke from her strange dream, she could not understand where she was at first. The bed she slept in seemed different to her than before, she was sweaty from the dreams she had had.
She loved the cold, although she didn't know why. Her room, on the other hand, was warm, although she liked the cold, and the sunlight coming in through her window was disturbing. She slowly got out of bed and went into the bathroom and washed her face with cold water. Her reflection in the mirror looked strange, she frowned.
The expression in her brown eyes that she couldn't understand bothered her. She shook her head as if she could get rid of that expression, but failed. "It's beautiful…" she muttered, drying her face. "Damn."
Gazelle stared at her reflection in the mirror for a long time. She was feeling alone. Why didn't the strange feeling in her heart and the expression in her eyes just go away?
She came out of the bathroom with a slight rage and she stepped out onto the balcony of her room with great strides, the balcony covered with ivy. Her father always wanted to have those ivies removed, but Gazelle had never let him do that. She loved seeing nature come to life around her.
She leaned her hips against the balustrade of her balcony and watched the chaos in the city. She smiled faintly because it all seemed silly to her. Then she walked in from the balcony and looked at her laptop on her desk with annoyance. She had a book to write, and the publisher kept pushing her, but Gazelle could not write a sentence at all.
She was making her money off of her books at the publishing house, but she was pretty sure that sales would drop if she couldn't even give them a book anymore. How would she take care of herself? She did not want to return to the family home, she was already used to her free life. Even the thought of disrupting her own carefully constructed order made her heart ache.
No, she didn't want to do that. Gazelle was even willing to write the world's worst book instead of giving up her freedom. She felt sick to her stomach as she realized the words coming through her mind. "What have I become like this?" she said, her voice stuck in her throat. "I've come to hate my favorite thing."
She rushed to her dressing room, took off her pajamas, threw them in a corner of the room, put on one of her casual clothes, put candles, a hairpin, and a book in her wooden basket then fled into the nearby forest in the city.
There was a place she loved so much in that forest where she always fled, full of green grass and flowers. Sitting on the fragrant grass and leaning her back against the tree, she put the candle between her feet and took the matchbox from the pocket of her jeans, and calmly lit the candle. Gazelle stared in amazement at the glowing fire. For a moment she could not take her eyes off the light of the fire rippling in the warm wind. She smiled, the small and peaceful moments in her life always fascinated her. But she still couldn't find the lost inspiration to write a sentence.
She took the hairpin she had put in the basket and put her hair in a bun, because her hair was so long, she always collected her hair while reading a book. As she took the book about dragons in her hands, the warm wind blew against her face, her baby hair caressing her skin. The flame of the candle she lit flickered but did not go out, she continued to read her book.
As she read her book about dragons, she remembered how much she loved them as a child, but remembering her childhood did not do her good. She could not sleep well because of the nightmares she had as a child. She wanted to do anything to prove that the voice calling her at night wasn't real, but a little girl's determination and courage weren't enough for her little, scared little heart.
She took her usual deep breath, lay down on the grass on the flowers, and closed her eyes. She loved to sleep here because people were so busy with their city life that no one would ever come to the forest and bother her.
The wind blew hard, the flowers and grass moved, and a raven passed over Gazelle, but she continued to sleep.
When she opened her eyes with a startle, she stood up in fear because of the man she saw in front of her and looked around. It was dark. Seeing that she was frightened, the man stepped back and sat on the grass, tilting his head to the side and grinning. "Don't worry. I haven't even touched you."
"Who are you?" said Gazelle, leaning against the tree behind her. The candle had gone out.
"I'm your creation." said the man, looking into her beautiful brown eyes. "I am a novel character." She froze at the unexpected answer and studied the man. I think the man was making fun of him, but his joke wasn't funny to her. She was starting to fear him.
The man had a sharp jawline, red lips, thick eyebrows, a stern facial expression, dark and short hair, and brown eyes that were like void. His muscular body looked beautiful as he sat on the flowers. For a moment, she couldn't help thinking that the heart of this man who claimed to be a novel character would be as dark as his hair.
"I have to go," said Gazelle as she gathered her things. The man calmly watched her pack her things and stand up.
"Goodbye," he said, looking beyond the forest. Gazelle froze.
"Goodbye, novel character." The man squinted his eyes as he stared into the forest, smiling.
Gazelle walked briskly until she was far from the man in the forest, and when she got farther away from him, she started running at full speed. When she stepped out of the forest and onto the street near her home, she took a deep breath and thought she was relieved, but what she saw made her eyes widen. Heart beatings were hurting her chest, and she had forgotten to take her heart medicine today.
"What's going on?" she muttered. "No, none of this can be true." The city she lived in looked like the same city, but it was definitely not the same city. People, shops, streets, and even the smell of the air were different. No, this was not the city where she lived for a long time. "Am I still dreaming?"
She started running towards her house. Despite the unbearable pain in her heart, she ran towards her house without losing hope, but when she arrived in front of her house, all she saw was an empty field. "My home should be here," she said absentmindedly. She laughed. People around stared at her. Gazelle had goosebumps, these people were not normal people of a normal city. Their gaze was so heavy that she felt her back hunched. After a long time in her life, she felt a great fear.
Then she remembered that man. The raven-haired man in the forest. She thought, she thought a lot. Where could she find that man again?
"I must go to the forest." she thought. "He's definitely still there."
She made her way into the forest, trying not to attract people's attention, but still with quick steps. When she entered the forest, she realized that she had not considered something. The weather was pitch black. She turned on her phone's flashlight and wandered through the forest, walking long enough to feel that she looked everywhere, but never found the man.
Eventually, when she came to a clearing in the woods, she encountered a small hut. She knocked on the door of the hut, but no one answered. Maybe the man lived here. "I'd better wait for him in the cabin. He'll be back any minute... I guess."
When she creaked open the door of the hut, she felt sick to her stomach, boiled, and choked up. The smell of the dead man lying on the ground took over her whole body, she could not move. She just vomited frozen at her feet, panting. She must have been having nightmares. What had she done to deserve this? "What should I do?" she whispered. "What should I do?" She was afraid.
"I can't go back to the city. It feels more dangerous there than here." She looked thoughtfully at the dead old man. "For the first time in my life, I saw a dead man." She frowned. "What does it matter? I must be crazy!"
She approached the man, holding the flashlight of her phone to his face. "I guess you died a long time ago, no wonder you smell so bad." She looked around the cabin and saw a shovel by a small stove. She went to the shovel and took it hesitantly, she had no choice. "I need to bury you. You don't deserve to sleep like this." She hesitated, having already left the shovel some distance from the house. She was holding the man's legs. Her eyes filled with tears. "I'm in too big of a problem to be upset that you're dead. I'm sorry."
She knew the dead were heavy, but she hadn't expected it to be this heavy. Gazelle, heart in pain, crying, falling, panting, barely carried the old man to the place where she was going to bury him. Her lips weren't trembling as she dug, she was just out of breath. The tears flowing from her eyes could not stop. She was even used to the smell of dead by now.
She rolled the old man's body into the pit and covered him with earth. She wept, wept, and wept.
Finally, when she had finished the burial, she walked towards the hut, dragging the shovel on the ground. She wanted to bathe for a long time, but instead, she could only wash her hands and arms. She put the shovel back in its place and did not touch the stove even though it was cold. However, there was even coal and wood in the hut.
She opened the door to the first room she came across, and the old man's bed lay cleanly in the corner of the room. She lit the candle with a match on the nightstand before throwing herself on the bed. She brought her hand over the burning flame, it hurt. The flame burned her, but she did not take her hand away from the flame until she came to her senses.
She lay quietly and watched the ceiling, the candle burning on the nightstand by the bed. She looked at her hand, it had a huge burn mark on it. "I don't have to write a sentence anymore. After all, I no longer have a home. From now on, I have nothing." She stared at the ceiling for hours, as her trembling lips gave a smile to this world, tears spilling from her eyes and mingling with her hair.