Gonca sips from her metal bottle again.

“And the man—what was his name?”

“Kamer.”

“Kamer… does he look like me?”

“No. He is you. You’re the same.”

Her father gives a low whistle.

“I’m going to ask your doctor to cut the serum and whatever else they’re pumping into you.”

“It’s not because of that, I think. It’s like… I feel lighter.”

“I mean, you did lose some weight, but—”

“No, I mean… I finally remembered something I’ve been trying to remember for so long. It’s weird. I wasn’t even alive then.”

“Guess you hit your head harder than we thought.”

Her dad pushes the wheelchair back through the hospital corridors. They enter the elevator and rise.

“You should write all this down, kid. You’d make a lot of money. Maybe even pay for the car.”

“I said I’m sorry!”

“I’m joking, joking.”

He helps her back into her bed and tucks the blanket around her.

Morning has come.

“I’m so tired of this sleep cycle. It makes me feel… wrong.”

“I know, honey. It’ll get better when you’re home.”

His phone rings.

“Just close your eyes and dream about times you didn’t exist or something. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Okay.”

He leaves her in the dim room. Only a sliver of sunlight begins to creep in.

Times I didn’t exist.

She closes her eyes—when she opens them, she’s seated on a chair, the world draining into black and white.

She’s wearing a black skirt, a fitted jacket, and a small black hat pinned to her curled hair. She sits near a movie theater. The newspaper in her hands reads: 1935. A breeze flutters the pages, but she isn’t reading any of it. Her attention drifts.

A man is crying not far from her.

Poor man. I wonder what happened.

She thinks of the tissues in her bag.

Should I? … I shouldn’t. Should I?

She sighs, tosses the paper aside, takes her bag, and walks hesitantly toward the figure. She can’t see the face, only the shaking shoulders and soft sobs.

“Hello.”

The figure sniffs and looks up. Gonca realizes the man is a woman—dressed like a man, with bright brown eyes, nearly orange.

What a spectacular color.

“I… um. Here.”

Gonca lifts her hand, offering the tissues. The woman looks at them, then at her. Gonca blushes. The woman takes them with a small smile. She’s dressed all in white, except for the purple silk draped over her shoulders. Gonca notices a small red stain on her chest but says nothing.

“Thank you.”

She wipes her eyes. Red smears on the tissue.

Makeup, maybe.

The woman smiles.

“Your English is better.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s nothing. I was going to watch a movie. Care to join me?”

“I… yes. Okay. Are you alright?”

 “Quite alright, dear. Come.”

The woman takes Gonca’s arm gently—but it makes Gonca stiffen. Her mind stutters. She forces a nervous smile anyway, letting herself be guided even as her pulse flutters in her throat.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Gonca asks again, her voice thin. She isn’t asking only about the woman—she’s asking about this entire moment, this strange familiarity she can’t place.

“Yes, yes. Just a little upset. It happens.”

Gonca hesitates.
Then why does this feel wrong?
But the woman is already pulling her along, and Gonca doesn’t know how to refuse without causing a scene.

“Okay,” she says quietly, though she doesn’t feel okay at all.
Her steps are tense, cautious, as she follows the stranger toward the theater—every instinct split between fear and a strange, inexplicable pull.

They sit beside each other.

So familiar.

The woman smiles again and winks, lighting a cigarette. The movie begins. Gonca feels as though she has sat beside this woman before, in another theater—older, darker. As the figures on the screen dance and embrace, the two monsters lost in one another, Gonca begins to remember.

She sees herself and Maria dancing in that blood-soaked place—Maria killing everyone except her, performing a twisted show meant only for Gonca. Then the memory shifts: they’re dancing again, but before the moving pictures. Their bodies blur across time—1935 becomes 1526, then 1878, then 1910…

There are more, aren’t there?

Memory-Maria doesn’t answer.

She only speaks the lines she once said.

“Anamaria!”

A man’s voice booms from the entrance. Maria stops their dancing but doesn’t release Gonca.

I didn’t want you to let go.

Memory-Maria doesn’t hear her.

“Kamer.”

Gonca’s back is pressed against Maria’s chest. If Maria let go, she would’ve spun out of balance.

“Let her go. We need to talk.”

“Well, my old friend, I have nothing to say to you.”

“Then give her to me. When you find your words, I’ll find you.”

“Oh, I have my words. I just don’t want to be rude in front of this beautiful lady.”

She finally releases Gonca. Gonca stumbles, spinning toward Kamer, who catches her.

“Maybe not now,” Kamer says, “but you will answer my questions. And you will die. I’ll burn you myself, I promise.”

Maria lifts her hands and drops them.

“Empty man. Empty threats.”

She looks at Gonca. Her confident mask cracks; sadness flickers there. Then she turns back to Kamer.

“I’ll return when she remembers. I won’t hold back then.”

“Remembers what?”

Maria looks at her one last time.

“Güneşten uzak dur, aşkım. Goodbye.”

Gonca turns to Kamer. He drags her out of the building and into their apartment of that time. Her knees tremble.

Maria. Maria. Anamaria.

She remembers the fire. Her dead mother. And everything else crashes into her like a train.

“Gonca?”

“Kamer.”

Gonca clutches her head, swaying.

“No. No, it’s killing me.”

Kamer steps toward her.

“Honey, it’s alright.”

Gonca lifts her hands—not sure if to strike or to stop him—but the gesture holds him back.

“It’s not! It’s killing me, Kamer! Something is rotting inside me, and every time I remember, it consumes me. It turns me into this—this monster again. I don’t want to be this!”

She looks around the apartment: the drawn curtains, the papers taped over them. She whines, remembering her first victim, her second. The rest is darkness. Hunger rises. Sadness rises. She sobs.

“I’m so hungry. It’s making me sick. It’s making me so sick!”

Maria’s joyful voice. Feeding her blood. Asking for her heart. Trying to save her from a lonely, quiet death. Her lips. Her blood. Her blood.

Gonca feels her fangs lengthen. A realization hits. A painful one.

Painful, painful idea.

“You done?” Kamer asks quietly.

Gonca doesn’t look at him.

“Çözüm ölümdür belki de. Unutmak yerine yok olmak. Evet… yok olmalıyım.”

“What?”

She laughs, blood tears staining her face. She strikes the curtains and the papers behind them. Sunlight spills in. Her skin ignites in agony. She screams and laughs as she crumbles toward ash. She hears Kamer screaming, but it’s distant, meaningless.

So alike, you and bats.

She sobs. She sees Maria across lifetimes—holding her in a coffin, whispering to her in the dark.

I don’t belong in the sun, do I, Maria?

Kamer yanks the curtain shut over them both. Gonca collapses, crying blood. She sees Kamer’s burned neck, his scorched arm. She apologizes over and over.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Drink.”

He feeds her his blood.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

“You’ll survive you. We’ll both survive you.”

I didn’t kill. I wouldn’t. I was just a child. What is death, what is life? Too young to know anything but my name.

Wake up.

Gonca rises with the taste of blood on her tongue. Her room is dark. She stands, carrying the serum pole with her.

“Dad?”

She steadies herself on trembling legs.

I don’t need to be carried.

Walking is still difficult. She enters the bathroom and looks at herself. Her eyes carry a faint red sheen. She touches her face.

It doesn’t even hurt.

She unwraps the bandages.

No pain. Nothing.

When she’s done, she sees—not a single scratch. And she sees herself from centuries she barely remembers. Too much. Too much to remain sane. She stumbles out of the bathroom, kneels beside the black bag by the couch where Kamer once sat, and finds the metal bottle. She opens it with shaking fingers. Crimson glints inside. She drops it. Blood spills across the white floor. Gonca whines.

The door clicks open.

“Kamer!”

But it’s Maria standing there—dressed as a nurse. Smiling brightly.

“Hello, pretty yarasa.”