Layla

The soft caress of the wind on my cheeks is like a mother’s embrace. I pull my knees closer to my chest and put my head in the crease that action forms. The sun sets slowly, gracing the horizon with its arrival. The lake I sit before is at peace; more than I ever could be.

If only I am peaceful. It seems as if for the past days, the universe has been conspiring against me. I urge for the ground to swallow me open and end this misery; because I cannot fathom how I will live like this.

Forgotten, unwanted—I am not even a memory to those I love. I am the latest stardust that the universe has decided to sweep away from the face of the earth. If only I could forget myself and this life I used to be so proud of, things would be so much easier.

My hands are damp from the wayfaring tears, but I close my eyes. Breathing in the fresh air, I sense my muscles relax. I repeat three words my mom used to make me repeat every morning until the age of 5:

“I am strong, I am powerful, I am beautiful,” I whisper.

My stomach growls; but I gulp what is left of saliva in my mouth and take in every breath instead of food.

What flabbergasted me is the fact that I got kicked out from Aiden’s house. It was all I had left; the only place where someone knew me as who I was. Thankfully I had Aiden, he was the only remainder. If it wasn’t for him, I would’ve probably gone insane by now.

I wonder why his mom wanted me to leave. Perhaps she was fed up with a stranger staying in her house. I only hope that she doesn’t hate me; the last thing I need right now is to have someone hate me. (Besides my mother and supposed brother, who think I’m a thief.)

And Ariel.

Oh, my lovely Ariel. If the world gathers half of the sadness in the world, it’d be stuffed inside of her. Seeing the person I’ve known for half of my life in a broken state is like shards of glass stuck in my heart. I want to help her; I want her to be okay. I’m not used to seeing her like this. I’d always known that she had depression as a child due to her parents’ divorce, but I never saw her in this state.

The sole person who understands is Aiden. He is the closest thing I have to a friend; he stands by my side even if he’s known me for the shortest amount of time. The kindness and good will of that boy had blown my mind away; he took me in and took care of me. He believed me and never once doubted what I said. The personality he has is unimaginably noble and pure; I find it hard to believe that he’s romantically alone.

(And plus, he’s handsome in a down-to-earth way.)

I look up to the dark sky and begin to cry. “Please, God. Please let me out of this. I’ll be a better person. I don’t know if this is some kind of a lesson, but I’ve learnt from it. Please, I want this to be a nightmare. I’ll be better, I promise.”

My thoughts swirl through everything like a storm. My body weakens; the wind gets to my bones. I stretch my body out on the bench; feeling the thin wood planks press into it. I put my arm underneath my head and try to take pleasure from sleep.

Maybe when I wake up; I’ll realize this is nothing but a nightmare.

“This is nothing but a nightmare,” I repeat the same words I’ve been saying before going to sleep everyday for the past week; “I’m going to wake up and it’ll be over.”

-

My body is sinking in a couch; which felt like I slept on a cloud. My toes are warm. Moving my fingers, I no longer lacked comfort. I open my eyes and am greeted by Emmeline; the woman who is the cause to all of my misery.

She gives me a smile and sips on a steaming cup. There’s a tray with another cup of the liquid and a plate of delicious-looking cookies and muffins. “Was wondering when you’d wake up,” she says.

Her hair is pulled into an elegant bob. Eyes scrutinizing my every move, I sit up. Gentle fabric surrounds my body. I’m dressed in bright blue jeans and a fitting sweater. Even my hands look cleaner than they had been in a week; it’s as if she scrubbed every inch of fatigue out of me. I reach up to touch my hair; it is in a perfectly done French braid. My phone is on a table.

“Where am I?” I ask, terror flooding my thoughts. “What have you done to me?”

Her face tightens, “I helped you, my darling. You are in my home. You were sleeping homelessly on a bench. Did you expect me to let my nie—you suffer? Of course not,” she waves her hand.

“Why?” I fold my hands into fists, ready to leave. “Why would you help me? After all, you’re the one who got me in this mess. It’s all your fault.”

I stand up, taking in my surroundings. I am in a wide living room. There seems to be a  theme; elegant witchcraft. Framed pictures hang in a corner. The couches are in bizarre shapes, pieces of them placed in awkward positions. I’m almost completely sure that the bear skin rug waved its paw at me.

“Layla, sit down. We need to talk.”

“No,” I protest. “You kidnapped me.”

“You were sleeping on a bench, love,” she sets her cup on the table, “Did you expect me to let my nie—you suffer? Of course not,” she waves her hand.

“Why?” I fold my hands into fists, ready to leave. “Why would you help me? After all, you’re the one who got me in this mess. It’s all your fault.”

I stand up, taking in my surroundings. I am in a wide living room. There seems to be a theme; elegant witchcraft. Framed pictures hang in a corner. The couches are in bizarre shapes, pieces of them placed in awkward positions. I’m almost completely sure that the bear skin rug waved its paw at me.

“Layla, sit down. We need to talk.”

“No,” I protest. “You kidnapped me.”

“You were sleeping on a bench, love,” she sets her cup on the table, “Did you expect me to abandon you?”

I shake my head, incredulous. “Who are you to abandon me? You’re not responsible for me, you witch.”

“Sit down,” she warns. Her eyes pierce through mine, I sit. “Good. Don’t make me do that again.”

“I need answers, lady. And I need them now,” I say. I grab my phone and stuff it in my pocket.

She scrunches up her face, “don’t call me lady, please. Just call me Emmeline or Em. Your answers, you’ll get them. All I need from you is your patience, but you seem to be bad at that.”

“I’m impatient because I’m in a stranger’s home. You’re the reason for all the bad shit happening in my life right now,” I say. “You expect me to thank you with open arms?”

“No,” her eyes flash, “but patience is key. I will answer your questions, I promise it.”

She gets up. I wonder how a person can simply stand up and show so much grace. She turns to me with a smile in the corner of her mouth. Her skin seems to glow.

“Are you coming?”

I try to move, but my butt is glued to the couch. She notices that and snaps her fingers. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “Let’s go.”

I follow her cautiously, watching my every step. The walls of the hallways are black and red; naked of any painting. Small portraits of women and men are occasionally present. They all have the same eyes; it is creepy. I feel as if their eyes follow me.

She stops in front of a door, and says: “Aperire januas ad filias Asli.” Her voice is filled with power and control. The door swings open. She steps inside and I follow, but strange energy makes my feet jitter. It is almost as if the room welcomed us inside.

It is a moderately big room, reminded me of a library. Books are stacked on a gigantic bookshelf. There are two white loveseats. The room smells of spring.

Emmeline searches through the shelf and takes out what looks like a journal. She whispers something under her breath and the book opens. She sits in one of the loveseats and ushers for me to do the same. A candle’s light on the table falters.

She hands me one of the journals.

“What are these?” I ask.

“Your ancestors’ journals.”

Shivers run up my spine, “ancestors? You know the Asli family?”

“Know the Asli family?” she chuckles, “Yeah. More than you’d think.”

I read the first page, slowly. The calligraphy is near perfect, my own would curl in shame. Ink spots are around every page.

Constantinople/ 23d of January 1805

‘I think I might be in love with a woman. Her  name is Rosa Ozim. She is the daughter of an Ozim, but I do not care. She is beautiful. Her eyes are intriguing; unlike anything I have ever seen. No woman holds a candle to her beauty. I wish I can spend the rest of my days with her. She makes me feel alive. I hope it is the same from her side. We meet every sundown, it is the only time her father is gone and does not suspect her absence.

Until the next, A.A.’

 I look up to Emmeline, who is watching me closely. I touch the ancient paper, “what’s his name?”

“Arthur Asli,” she says. Her hands are touching her cascading dress softly. She is absent, in deep thought.

I keep reading.

Constantinople/ 14th of February 1805

‘I am empty. I do not know who this Rose I’ve spoken of here is. A woman came crying to my door, demanding to see me. She called me Arthur. She kissed me. I do not know what happened to her; she might be insane. But her name is Rose Ozim. For all I know, the Ozims’ don’t have a daughter. The woman accused me of forgetting her; but how can I forget someone I’ve never met?

Until the next, A.A.’

Aiden’s last name is Ozim. Mine is Asli.

No—this doesn’t make sense. This is impossible.

“Emmeline, what happened to him and to her?” I ask her, because she is the only one in possession of answers. The only who could make me understand.  “Please.”

“They fell in love,” she says, “He forgot her. She was forgotten.”

I’m already reading another one of the journals. Emmeline opens specific pages for me to read. I skim through the paragraphs, feeling my pulse quicken.

'Isnik - 1859

A man called Luca Ozim wants my hand in marriage. He hasn’t spoken to my father, but he says he loves me. I think it is love; what I feel for this man. I might be crazy, but I want to spend the rest of my life with him. He is the definition of love.

                                  Madeleine.

A few months later, she writes about a strange man invading her house and claiming she loves him. She calls him insane. Stupefied, she writes about his death a few days later. There are tear streaks of pity on the paper. The journal suddenly feels heavy in my hands. I grab the other open journals and read through them; whether they’re in the 1700’s or the 1900’s, someone gets forgotten and my ancestor would forget their loved one.

“What is this?” I look at Emmeline. “What is the meaning of this?”

She waves her hand lightly, “this is what you’re living. For the past 300 years, the Ozim and the Asli families have been cursed. A witch named Cemile Asli once loved a man with all of her power. But her family refused to give her to him. She was saddened to the point of no return. Her heart broke; they kept her a prisoner from seeing him. At her weakest and angriest moments, she placed a curse on both Asli and Ozim families.”

All breath is knocked out of me. I watch Emmeline carefully, believe her every word. She has no reason to lie to me; none.

“What is it?” I breathe out.

“Caritas amittitur. Medium, ut oblivioni dimidium obliviscar,” says Emmeline. “Quid non sit.”

I put my hand in my hair and pull it out, messing it up. “What does that even mean?”

“It means,” her face darkens, “love is lost. Half will be forgotten, half will forget. What is meant to be will not be.”

“Wait,” I hold up one hand, “how do you know all of this?”

“My family name isn’t Laforte. It’s Asli,” she smiles. “I’m your long lost aunt. In a way.”  

“Aunt? How?” I begin to trust her. Nothing is stronger than the bond of family; she is the only family I have who knows who I am.

“I’m your parental grandmother’s sister.”

“But you’d be like 80 years old? You—”

She smoothes her hair, “don’t look like it? I’m a witch, Layla. I can look whichever way I want to.”

“But,” I shut the journal in my hands, “does this mean that I’m meant to be with Aiden? Is that why all of this happened?”

“Yes.”

I open my mouth to speak but she stops me and gets ahead. “You’ll blabber excuses about not loving him. I know. But in a certain way, you do love him. As a friend or more, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you and Aiden have a bond that might or might not transform to romantic love. The curse doesn’t know the difference between romantic and platonic love; you’re in the latter. It knows your heart’s deepest feelings. Besides, it might be platonic now; but it’ll transform into more. I know it.”

I love him, I think. I love him in a way. He is my friend and I love him. 

The temperature in the room goes from freezing to warm; my heart’s worries cease to grow. There’s someone who can help me. “Emmeline,” I start, upon realizing something, “why am I the one forgotten? If what these journals say is the veracity of things and the Asli half is the one who always forgets, why am I the one forgotten?”

Emmeline’s expression hardens. She takes back the books from me and shuts them, rubbing them and placing them on a small table. She rubs her temples.

“I don’t know,” she says, “I have no idea. That’s the problem. The night of your wish, I thought you were the Ozim half. I didn’t know who you were. I’m a witch—my role is to continue Cemile’s legacy. I’m forced to.”

“How?”

She taps her fingers on her leg, “I’m an Asli witch. The bloodline of witches comes from Cemile; and when a curse as impacting as this gets placed, every witch that gets born after the caster is forced to impose it. The person who is chosen by the curse to be forgotten is shown to the witch, and it was you.”

“Can’t you break the curse?” I rummage through my brain for everything I’ve heard about witches in my life.

Emmeline purses her lips, “I’m not powerful enough. No one’s ever bothered to try and break it, no one knows—”

My pocket buzzes loudly, interrupting her talk. The only person who has my number and is able to call me is Aiden, but according to my phone: it’s far from 5:15 yet. We aren’t supposed to meet for another five hours. It’s barely midday.

I give Emmeline a look of apology and answer. “Hi, you okay?”

“Uhm, yeah. Actually, no. Not really,” he blabbers. “I need to talk to you.”

“I’m kind of in the middle of—”

“I think I’m forgetting you. I mean, even more than I already did. I was thinking about what I’d do to help you two minutes ago, and then I blacked out and completely forgot about you.”

“Give me a sec,” I cover the phone with my hand and turn to her, “can he come over?”

“No. He’ll be suspicious. You’re not supposed to know me. I’m breaking enough rules by showing you all of this. My job was to perform the spell and get everyone to forget you; I’m not even supposed to be involved in your life. You cannot tell him anything you know; things will only get worse.”

I shut my eyes and opened them, in thought, “Aiden?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we meet up somewhere?”

“Course. Where?”

“Um, does the bakery still exist in this universe?” I say to Emmeline, hoping she knows what I mean.

She nods, “but—”

“Wait,” I tell her. Then back to Aiden, “I’ll meet you in my parents’ bakery in twenty minutes. That alright?”

“I don’t know where that is,” he says.

“Layla, the bakery exists. But it’s not your family’s. Your mom sold it five years ago.”

The news makes me freeze. Aiden shouts my name through the phone. Emmeline gives me a kind, small smile of pity. I force the sense of weakness away. I have to adapt to this life before losing it. I can’t cry, I can’t let my guard down. Not in front of Emmeline, who barely knows me.

“Aiden, where do you want to meet up?” I say.

He answers, “how about the small coffee shop near my house? You know the one, it’s called Screw the Brew.”

I usually piss my pants at the name of that coffe shop, but the emotions controlling me now are far from humorous.

“Yeah. See ya there in a few.”

“Okay,” he stumbles. “Layla?”

“Yeah?” my mind is preoccupied by a million answers I need to get from Emmeline.

“I miss you,” he laughs. “How are you doing?”

This makes me smile for the first time all day, “I miss you too. I’ve got a lot to tell you, but let’s just say that I’m taken care of.”

“Good. I’ll see you later,” we hang up and Emmeline is smiling bizarrely.

“What?” I snap at her.

She shrugs, “nothing at all. I’m just saying, the platonic to romantic ship is sailing.”

“Emmeline,” my voice gets sharp, “please tell me everything about my family. I know you know everything.”

“Your little brother at the time, Dominic, is the one who got born instead of you. He’s your age; you share the same birthday. Your mom has been taking care of him with all of her power. Your dad, he and your mom got a divorce six years ago. A year later, your mom took the bakery down. She couldn’t handle all of it by herself, no matter how much Dominic helped.”

“A divorce?” my voice comes out in a whisper.

He is dead and no longer with my mother.

She nods, “your mom’s friend, Jillian—”

The memory is triggered in my mind. “She kissed him at a house party, she had too much wine to drink. And that got Mom mad and jealous. They kept fighting, and she didn’t want to talk to him.”

“You were the one who convinced her to forgive him. But without you, he started drinking, way too much. The more he drank, the more your mom hated him. And a few months later, she filed in the divorce papers. The impact of all the loss; not being able to see his son, losing his wife, being divorced, it drove him to depression and off a bridge.”

Without me, my parents got a divorce. There’s no bakery. There’s no newborn brother. My mom lives alone with the apparent second version of myself. My dad is dead form a suspected suicide.

Oh, this just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?

-

I sit on a table for two near the wide window, waiting for Aiden. The cup of cappuccino in my hands seems to get colder by the minute, but I have no appetite to drink from it. My fingers circle the tip of the cup, the steam warming my fingers.

“Layla,” sighed a boy. I get up and look at Aiden. It seems like I haven’t seen him for too long, even if it’s been less than 24 hours.

I surprise myself by hugging him tightly. I’ve missed him more than I thought I had. He puts his head in the crook of my neck and hugs me back, but holding me like I am a fragile porcelain piece.

“Are you okay?” he pulls away, concerned. His dark hair falls on his eyebrows, I itch to ruffle it.

“No,” I huff, but I smile. “But you’re here, right? We can be not okay together.”

We sit at the table and he tells me what happened exactly. His eyes sparkle with fear and excitement; he finishes his orange juice smoothie in minutes; while my cup of coffee stays untouched. I told him that I’m staying at an abandoned aunt’s house, she never came home.

“Are you saying you’re forgetting me more and more, even if you know me?”

“I think so,” he says. “I forgot you for a certain time, but then I remembered you. I had to think of you again to remember you properly. But until I heard your voice, you were still hazy to me.” 

Emmeline’s warning to keep my knowledge from Aiden is in my mind, but I chew on my lip and begin to speak. “I’m going to take care of this. I’m not going to lose you, okay?”

“How?” he asks, “I think I’ve got something, though.”

“Shoot.”

“I found out something about our families. I read these ancient diaries my ancestors had, and in most of them; they loved an Asli and got forgotten. But I mean, if this applies to us, I’m the one who must’ve been forgotten.”

So he knows. He doesn’t understand, but he has the facts. He doesn’t know anything about the curse or why any of this is happening, but he knows of the consequences of this curse.

“What happened to them?” I ask him, curious and confused.

He bit his lip, “they eventually committed suicide, or at least that’s what their journals show. They couldn’t handle any of it.” A flicker of worry and sadness go through him and I give him an audacious smile.

“They didn’t have you, did they?” I tell him.

“But, Layla,” his eyes meet mine, “these people were all in love, some way or another. I don’t get why this is happening to us.”

“Maybe we love each other. Not necessarily in a in-love way, just in a platonic way.”

He crooks his head to the side, “maybe. I mean, I know I care about you.” His eyes widen as soon as he speaks. “In a friend way, you know?”

“I know,” I say.

But all I really know is that I need to break the curse.

 -

from yas:

sarah and i would like to thank you for reaching 50k. this is incredible, thank you all so much. written by yas, edited by sarah