“They’re calling you a King Maker, can you believe it?” the aspiring actress said to her husband. “They’re calling us Turkish Beauty and the Beast.” She clapped loudly before throwing her head back; her laugh full-throated and sudden, like the crack of a pistol.

“Who’s calling us that?” he said.

“Don’t you think it’s a good idea for me to be in your next movie? Don’t you think it’s my time to shine?” She spoke with the ringing confidence of the young: with such ambition and charm that he had no choice but to plunge a butcher’s knife into the soft flesh of her throat.

She was eleven years his junior. Just a baby, just a baby. Surely, it would be all downhill from here. Surely, a life spent under the glaring light of scrutiny would strip his young wife of all purity. A life spent dancing atop all those thick and unhappy tongues, performing. And then what would they do, the two of them? And then who would be to blame? What had he been thinking, marrying someone like this?

He needed to perform his duty. He said it out loud: “I am performing my duty. I am doing you a great service.” Really, she was such an innocent. Straight to Heaven, she’d be delivered, spared the fate he had now cemented for himself. The knife came out reluctantly. But each time he pushed it back — again and again and again — into the skin of her, he was born anew.

About Hilal Isler

Hilal Isler teaches college social justice in Minneapolis. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, the Brooklyn Review, and the LA Review of Books online. She earned her doctorate from UPenn.

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