Sitting in the basement, her hands still sat lifelessly on the head of the centuries old idol. It stared at her, filled with a silence that then filled the room. Its empty eye sockets dark and infinite and deeper than its dimensions could allow. Her body was withered but strong, like a stunning oak standing defiantly in an open field. Deep cuts into her petrified face showed where the fear began to creep in before it had stolen her, turned her body into another husk as its appetite culled another of The Loved. She was my wife, she was the woman I’d found after years, decades of failing and trying and doubting. She was the result of a lifelong journal and this, ‘The Hungry One,’ as my family had come to name it, had claimed her. It was a beautiful thing to know she was accepted completely by the beast; it was the only tribute I could muster, and it was the purest way I could honor her. A quiet fell between us and my heart swelled. The idol rotated to meet its eyes with hers. The ancient looking body of Angela went rigid from foot to shoulders. And her mouth began to shape words, as the voice of a woman introduced to me as my great grandmother escaped her lips: “O tarih icin kalp icin ruh icin yapilir.” Though I hadn’t heard this voice since I was a small boy, back in the village, around my father, my aunts, my uncles, it was clear to me, so clear, the face of that woman who held my chest so heavily, who had stared so calmly into me, yet paralyzed me in a way nothing has since the wonder of this moment. Angela’s body loosened, like a ghost stepping out from under a sheet and then burst into a pile of dust on the floor. I placed the idol back into the paper bag and held it close to me. --> “Thank you,” I said into the still air and ascended the stairs and went out the back door of the corner store. I walked to a park that sat across from a church. “Baslamadan benim kurtulus yeryuzune ruhundan,” I spoke into the bag before burying it beside an oak. A beautiful, simple, serene week later, I came back to that spot and set myself ablaze.
