Jahannam is Jahannam

The flames had barely reached the roof.

Now the only taste left on Asem’s lips was that of gin. There had been a taste of ashes, of smoke entirely drowned out by the all compassing smell of smoldering plastic as the fire began to lick at the power lines and to eat away at the insulation like a starved dog.

But the flames had barely reached the roof, when he turned around. They had not touched the car at all, but even so he had not considered taking it. Maybe he should have. The night had been surprisingly cold, considering that it had started with a bonfire. Or maybe the numbness in his limps was not caused by the wind and the rain that made it through the broken window of the bus station. For even now, after he had taken the bus to Paris, to Krakow, to Budapest and to this sodding place with a name that he couldn’t even pronounce, the cold had not left him.

And the alcohol didn’t help either.

But at the end he knew it was not that bad. He had done the right thing.

There was still more than enough money in his bag to carry him all the way to Istanbul, to the small house at the corners of the city, where colorful flowers grew all year long to cover benches and hard walls in summery blooms and where the wind smelled of ocean, only sun and salt in the air.

Admittedly, it was not the best plan, but the thought provided a glamorous distraction from his surroundings. Here they served cheap gin with its nearly empty bottle and had given him a hotel room, small like a sardine tin with half-torn wall paper and a broken lipstick case swimming in the toilet.

“Why look like that?” the barkeeper said in broken English, a feat made no more impressive if one considered that the dark mouthed man seemed to be the only one working in this seedy hotel.

Asem shrugged.

 “The gin sucks.”

The man gave a toothy grin and he would have shuddered at the disgusting display of rotting teeth if it still mattered. “You can order other.”

Asem leaned back, trying to look at something else. “Can you promise me that another drink won’t suck as much?”

In the corner was a barely dressed woman straddling the leg of a young man who held a cigarette in each hand while she was biting the gold chain hanging around his neck. At least some people were having fun.  

Following Asem’s gaze the old man looked over at the eagerly engaging couple and his grin fell.

He said something in Romanian. And the young man responded with something that sounded like sarcasm before licking his lips. The woman let go of his chain and punched him in the arm before standing up. She pulled at his sleeve and they looked as if they were about to leave when the man changed the direction of his steps, approaching Asem head-on. The stranger threw an arm around his shoulders as if they were friends before speaking to the barkeeper, who proceeded to put a drink in front of both of them.

“He says it is better drink”, the old man explained.

Looking skeptically at the opaque liquid, before deciding to chug it down. He was already feeling a little buzz and willing to fully jump into that pit. He was about to thank the stranger, but even before he had swallowed it all, the younger man had left his girlfriend in tow, bouncing excitedly as if she was about to win a price.

After that everything returned to the same dreadful silence. Asem had never made a habit of drinking, but with things being as they were, he ordered another gin. Instead of opening a new bottle the old man held it in his hand at arm’s length from Asem.

“First pay.”

And Asem smiled bitterly. The man had been able to see the money Asem carried in his bag when he paid for the room, so there was no wonder he wanted to be payed up-front. It was probably not wise of him to keep all 20 000 Euros in one envelope. A fact that became all of a sudden abundantly clear.

Asem couldn’t find it.

It wasn’t in his bag. Panicked he opened the back of it, took out the jacket, put the bars of Pöttyös and the bag of chips as well as the empty bottle of water that was still in there on the table to find it.

But it simply wasn’t there.

“I had it. Just an hour ago.” He pointed at the barkeeper, who was frowning at him and the openly displayed contents of the bag. “I paid you. You saw that I had the money.”

He looked around. “Shit.” Then back at the bag and then at the old man. “Shit. I am sorry. I think the guy with the cigarettes took it.”

The old man held his hands up defensively. He didn’t seem to understand.

Asem pointed to himself, then he spoke slower. “I will leave, I will try to get the money back and then I will come back and pay you.”

The old man frowned, before he said: “You still sleep here?”

Asem nodded, while absentmindedly shoving the items back into his bag.

“Ok”, the barkeeper said, but Asem was no longer listening. His head was buzzing, maybe from the adrenaline, maybe from the alcohol kicking in, but he his steps were balanced as he rushed out of the door. The air was cold and smelled mostly of car fumes and cat urine. Asem had chosen this area specifically because it looked so run down. But now as it was dark and all he could hear was old, loud cars rattling in another street and some drunk people having a fight too close for his liking, he wished that his choice had been different.

Following his instinct, that still didn’t want him to give up and die yet, he went into the other direction, away from the shouting drunkards. There were many small alleyways, a true cliché of a less welcoming area, strung up like beads on a dirty string and any of them could lead to whatever place the man and woman had disappeared to.

He heard them first before he saw them. Not even deep in an alleyway barely two street corners away from the hotel, like idiots. It was then that he realized he hadn’t really thought of what he would do after he found them. Was is wise to confront them? He could hardly call the police and ask them to help if he could not explain why he carried a bunch of 500 Euro bills with him, especially in this area. Was it better to hide and follow them? He couldn’t just give up now, not after everything.

Careful to be quiet Asem stepped into the dim light of the alleyway.

The man’s pants hang around his knees while one of his hands was on one of the woman’s breasts and the other one somewhere where Asem couldn’t see it. He wanted to advert his eyes, but really, what for?

Flowers crawling all over the walls, just like on the pictures, he reminded himself. The ocean not even an hour drive away, warm meals and sunshine. That’s why he did this.

“Hey”, he called out, which was admittedly, a stupid idea. The strangers froze. The man turned around to him, his manhood still mostly hanging out of his pants. He said something in Romanian, which sounded like a curse. The woman answered, hissing at her companion, while he made a shrug-like gesture.

“Faggot, here to earn your money back?” the man spit and Asem could have laughed. It wasn’t really the kind of curse that shocked him. He had fallen under the spell of a Shaytan, there was nothing worse and nothing to lose.

“Give me the envelope and I won’t call the police.” He hoped the man’s English was good enough to understand the threat and not just to insult him based on Pornhub knowledge.

“You think you can call the police on me.” The young man laughed, he sounded a lot drunker than he had seemed just a moment before.

It made Asem feel braver and with this bout of bravery he strode towards the man, pulling his fist back to punch him directly in his face. It wasn’t a good punch. His knuckles slide off the other man’s nose and cheek, barely grazing the eye socket while he himself nearly lost his balance. Maybe the man would still have been able to block it if the woman hadn’t also been pulling on his arm, causing the man to fall on his side. Asem stood stunned for a moment. He was thinking of attacking again when the woman suddenly stood in his sight, holding a short, but sharp looking knife.

“You leave or I kill you!” she said.

What was a little more torture before he went into the fire?

“I will leave if you give me the money.”

The woman was kicking the man’s legs, cursing until he stood up. He wiped his nose spreading bright red strings of snot over his lips and cheek.

“Give me at least half of the money. I need it to get home”, Asem tried to argue.

The man spit. And all three of them stared at the wet spot on the ground. Then, suddenly, they began to move. The man lunged forwards and the woman tried to hold him back, while Asem took a step to the side, looking at the knife. It was so fast he didn’t realize what happened. His skull hit the dirty wall and someone cursed in Romanian. The woman screeched and Asem kicked forwards, the man stumbled and screamed as well, before falling back down. The woman screamed again.

And then when the black sports moved from his vision, she was gone and all Asem could see was blood, where it reached his pants and dirty shoes on the road, where the man was trying to grab his leg, his voice sounding angry, distorted in his Romanian accent.

“You fuck. You stabbed me.” There was indeed a knife in his chest. But he was still speaking only accompanied by a grueling sound of thick soup running down a broken pipe.

The man, no the boy looked so young like this. So much younger than Asem had thought he was, maybe just twenty years old, maybe just eighteen. Just a boy, with his pants still mostly undone, a gold chain falling from his neck into the dirt and into the blood, his entire face stuck between an angry and pained grimace.

Asem grabbed the knife. He knew better.

“No”, Asem said, now fully kneeing in the dirt. “You did this.”

His eyes locked closed, he pulled it out.

There was a strangled gasp, wheezing, a short-lived whistling sound and something touched his knee. Glancing down he saw the helplessly grasping hand and Asem’s mind turned blank.

Like a man trying to avoid a bullet he fell forward, pressing his hands to the shacking, still wheezing body. Look at what you made me do, he thought. Born a sinner and turned a murderer twice over. Allah knew it was too late to ask for forgiveness. Allah saw red on his hands and it just kept growing, no matter how much he pushed. The clothes were in the way, he tried to tear them angrily, feeling dizzy, bile curling up at the back of his throat and teary wet sports distorting his vision, shaking as if it was his body that was growing colder. He tried to put the knife back in, but it slipped of a rib and Asem cried, “I am so sorry” before trying again. He only saw the chest red and fuzzy, unmoving.

He felt he might explode, when he heard it. Directly behind him.

Footsteps. Fast. Echoing loudly against the alley walls. A voice calling “What are you doing? Stop!”

And without picking up his disregarded bag or looking for the money, he started running. It was far from a straight line. It was dark after all and he was feeling feverish, but it wasn’t as if the day could get any worse.

And then he stopped.

As soon as he was out of the alleyway.

In the light of a flickering lamp, standing still, blood still on his hands.

“Of all the places I thought you could be, this wouldn’t even have made it to the list of possibilities.”

That wasn’t real. None of this was. Everything must have been a dream.

This was impossible. 

But as he turned around he saw it anyways.

He had thought, no, he had known that James was dead. He had felt for his pulse. But there he was, right in front of him, in the middle of this fucked up street, smiling.

Asem’s mouth fell open. “No”, he said. “No.”

He took a step back, then froze and took a step forward. “This can’t be.”

James was still smiling. Just like he had been before. Only his hair looked a bit different and the crappy suit and jacket he was wearing were definitely new, but all in all...

“Astaghfirallah.”

He was close enough to touch, to see the smile slowly fade in the flickering light of badly maintained street lamps.

“How could you? You fucker! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Asem pushed him, not caring that he was probably drawing attention from every criminal who was willing to walk around in this area at night. Not caring for the red dots his hands left on the other.

“How the fuck? How did you do that?”

His eyes were tearing up and half-heartedly he wished that he still had this bloody knife to stab him with.

“How? Why?”

James hand was on his neck pressing him down while the other hand was holding his shaking shoulders. Asem threw a weak punch against his stomach. He was openly crying now.

“I tried to find you”, James said. His voice. His voice. Hai Allah, it still sounded the same.

“I found you. Yesterday. I wanted to surprise you.” James swallowed and the hand on Asem’s neck spasmed, squeezing tighter. “I had planned everything perfectly. This time. I didn’t want things to go wrong. I thought you would feel safer in your house and it would only have taken me an hour or two with the damage. It was just the one bullet and I would have woken up in an hour and I thought you trusted me, the money, I promised you we would go together, I told you not to call anyone, I said everything would make sense. Why didn’t you listen?”

Asem wanted to kick him, to take the hand of his neck, to scream, to punch and to bite him, to tear his flesh from his body until he felt real, until James felt what it was like.

“What you did to me…”

James raised his other hand against his throat and pushed it forwards.

“You wouldn’t have believed me without proof.” He was pressing against Asem’s throat, choking him just barely. “I saw what you did.”

His hands trembled even more and his eyes glittered, like that of a child throwing a temper tantrum, as Asem looked at him and he let go, let him take a breath, disbelief in his eyes. Asem gasped, but didn’t move.

“I saw what you did. I wasn’t fast enough. I saw you murder him.”

Tears started to run down Asem’s face again, to the point where he could feel them accumulate where hands still hold onto his throat making his skin itch.

“After what you did”, Asem’s voice was barely a whisper, “everyone would have thought I had done it.”

He did not say “And I had thought of doing it that night”, instead he raised his hand to touch the cheek that was red from the cold and rough from the beard that Asem knew too well only grew in spots.

“The gun”, Asem continued, “it only had one bullet.”

James lips opened, but he didn’t say anything for a moment.

“You bastard.” Asem smiled.

“In all my years-”, his laugh sounded like a cough, “You were always a special kind of idiot.”

How could Asem respond? When the man smelled neither of burning plastic nor like alcohol or bloody damnation? He had never smelled of latter, though this right now made him think that maybe damnation was all James had been.

“We should leave. I got a car. Let’s drive to the nearest train station and then take the night train south.”

So simple, so not okay.

“To Istanbul?”

“That’s what I promised, isn’t it? A cottage just outside the city you were born in.”

“What about…” There was too much wrong with this plan, with what he had just done, the boy still lying there, fingerprints on the knife, with James, with all of this fucked up, unrealistic, unexplained bullshit life had just pushed on him, but James said:

“Let me watch you grow old. I trust you.”

And all he did was nod.

“Let’s go and burn the evidence. You seem to have a nick for it.”

He didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or to puke or to kill James as well, if that was even possible, but they left without looking back.

And maybe Asem would forgive one of them when the flowers of their new home had grown enough to reach the roof.

Or maybe he wouldn’t. What mattered a little bit more torture? Jahannam is Jahannam.