What The Murderer Had Left

by Bahri Gordebak

What The Murderer Had Left

by

Bahri Gordebak

It was nearly evening when a young albino came to the café that I was in and sat down at one of the tables.

He was facing a teenage girl at another table whose eyes widened when she noticed him. It was apparent that she saw an albino for the very first time.

I did not care about them first.

After a while, I realized that the teen was trying hard not to look at the albino, but she could not manage and went on staring at his white hair. Who knows what she was thinking?

Surely, the other one was bothered and he never turned his head from the sandwich he ate. Obviously, he was trying to ignore the examining looks on himself.

When I threw them to the winds and looked out from the window, I was thinking about the man I saw in a railway station several years ago.

There were half an hour to the departure of the train and I was going to wait. When I found a spare seat and sat down, the man sitting against me struck my attention.

One of his eyes was grippingly prominent. This eye gave the man a somewhat scary appearance, although he had an amiable face.

I was thinking a hundred things, “Surely it is inborn. It must be hard for him. Maybe he is used to it. I wonder what would it be being like him. I wonder what kind of a childhood he spent.” and so on. The questions I had absolutely would go unanswered. But as I thought these, I must have been staring at him.

Suddenly he smiled, “Are you going somewhere or welcoming someone?” he asked.
I sobered and answered, “Returning home.”
“Me too.” he said, “I am evicted from prison.”
“Really? I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I murdered a man.”
I could not find anything to say more.

He triumphantly went on, “He was staring at me.”

Since then, when I saw someone staring at another, I recalled him. Maybe he lied but that was all the same. I was looking out through the window to the reddening sky, smiling pitifully. “If only,” I thought, “the albino boy has killed someone too.”

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Bahri Gordebak is a writer whose two novels and some comic scripts were published in Turkey. He’s a short story enthusiast and wants to write them more.