Ruins of Autumn

66• Knife And Travelling

    "Someone has broken into your room!"

    Upon receiving that silent warning in her mind, Anila immediately opened her eyes, and their brown colour froze like the crystal surface of a sphere when she recognised the face of the man who approached her bed.

    She was stunned by fear when her dad forcibly removed the blankets that were covering her and didn't let her get up from the bed. He positioned himself on top of her and placed his hand over her mouth just in time before she screamed for help.

    Her lack of strength killed Anila's hope that she would be able to escape, and she closed her eyes, wistfully accepting the repetition of history.

    When she opened her eyes a second later, Anila no longer felt the heavy weight of a body on her, and she instantly half-raised from the bed, took the knife from under the pillow on the right, pushed her body while trembling towards its head, and she used the pale blue blanket as a shield so that no one who could have entered her room could see her body, even though she was wearing black pyjamas.

    The small, lighted lamp showed only the shapes of the furniture and their pale colour. There was no one in her room with the door locked. The recent dream, coupled with the bitter feelings it caused, made her eyes water. The front of her head began to ache, and she clutched her knees tightly to her chest as she sobbed. Was it a sign that she was also in danger from her father, Xhelili, and she had to be careful?

    She lay again with her face towards the window and the black knife in her left hand, not at all ready to use it if she would have to. Sidoreli would have known how to calm her down if she had had the opportunity to call him, but for his sake, she had erased him from her life.

    The terrified face of the tattooist at the sea was ingrained in her mind and made her think that he didn't deserve to have negative memories in his life because of her.

    She couldn't tell him the truth about Blerimi, in order to heal completely, she knew that she would never be able to, and who knew how difficult it would be in the future? He would have continued to stay by her side because he loved her, and because of that love, he could suffer more. She couldn't have done injustice to him like Blerimi had done to her. Sidoreli deserved someone different than she was-someone who didn't have such a past on her shoulders and who was stronger.

    Anila only seemed like that. She gritted her teeth tightly from the silent sobs so as not to wake her parents and her sister from the crying of despair that had taken her hostage and was smashing her soul against the walls filled with the frames of bitter memories from the mistakes that she made with self-awareness, the deliberately missed opportunities, and the bleeding present as much as the wounded heart until it was in its comatose state.

    Blerimi had separated her from Sidoreli. Even dead, he was ruining Anila's broken spirit.

••••
    Sidoreli saw the time 02:34 on his phone and placed it on the adjacent bedside table to the left. She was most likely sleeping peacefully in those moments, free from overthinking and without any regrets about them.

    "Anila, what happened?" He sat at her level.

    "My thoughts are killing me!" She asked for help with her eyes filled with tears, and Sidoreli could only put her hands on her elbows, powerless to erase those thoughts. "I'm very evil!" Anila pressed her fingers into a fist on her head and used hateful force on her hair to pull it out.

    It seemed impossible for such behaviour to have been a game. He had thought that Anila had been pretending, just out of momentary indignation. The intuition insisted, with all the power it possessed, that she hadn't played with him but had decided to heal without him by her side, so that he wouldn't suffer the consequences if Anila didn't succeed.