He cut the dusty light falling across the black metal horse with his calloused fingers, then took the piece by the head and set it down on the white square.
“Check…” Illyrian hissed again.
His eyes remained fixed on the woman. He leaned back. The leather armor on Illyrian’s body creaked, as did the wooden chair beneath him, while the metal bracers clanged against the scabbard of his sword.
The Tailor sat as though she were hiding inside the shadow. The only sign that she was breathing was the sudden shifting of dust motes in the air. Her hand darted out of the darkness like a snake. She swept her long navy-blue hair back and leaned over the small table between them. The yellow daylight fell across her now. With her slender, delicate fingers, she picked up the white horse from the white square and placed it on a black one.
“Fifty…” she said.
Illyrian picked up the two horses from the table and placed them beside the other thirty horses in the wooden box standing next to the chess table.
“The horses running inside us may kill one another,” the Tailor said, “but they can never defeat each other.”
“I thought many times of killing you in the depths of your silences,” Illyrian said.
The Tailor was not surprised, even though Illyrian himself was astonished by how easily he had confessed it, as though he were saying something that had never happened.
The woman smiled.
“I cut your reins in so many wars, and still you came back. Your god has worked very hard to keep you from dying, Illyrian.”
As the Tailor rose from her seat, she cut through the light once more. She headed toward the barn door. When she pushed the half-open door all the way back, the flood of light made Illyrian squint.
The young woman stepped outside. Illyrian followed.
They stood alone in the endless field.
“Why are you still armed?” the Tailor asked.
“I have one last battle.”
“Our murders will never end. Every death will give birth to another, writing new endings. You know that, don’t you?”
“If only he could see it…” Illyrian said.
“Then let us go to our fate.”
As the sun was setting over the backgammon board, the ’87 burgundy Buick that had pulled up in front of the Black Swan’s Soul Hotel suddenly abandoned its stop and turned toward the complex where Chloe lived.
David gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles whitened, flooring the accelerator until there was no space left between the pedal and the floor. He nearly caused an accident when the strange entrance to the Lilith Hotel caught his attention for a moment.
“I remember…” he murmured. “It couldn’t have been a dream.”
The car came to a halt with a shriek of brakes.
David leapt out and ran into the apartment building where Chloe lived. As he stepped into the elevator, bits of straw scattered across the floor caught his eye. They reminded him of Biensen’s house.
The files had been strangely closed—and destroyed.
He began pounding frantically on the apartment door.
Chloe opened it calmly.
David stood before her, visibly shaken.
“Do you remember?” he asked.
“Come in, Dave…” Chloe said.
Her voice was inviting, almost childlike.
Seeing Chloe this way for the first time, Dave stepped into the apartment uneasily.
“Would you like something to drink?” Chloe asked.
Without waiting for an answer, she headed into the living room.
Dave ran his eyes over the books in the library, touching their spines one by one with his index finger. Then he noticed the embroidery hoop lying on the sofa.
His finger left the spine of a book titled Chaotica, and he walked toward the sofa.
“I didn’t know you were into needlework,” he called toward the kitchen.
He picked up the embroidery hoop.
When he saw that the murders committed so far had been stitched into the fabric, horror seized him. He threw the hoop away.
When he turned around, Chloe was standing there with two large glasses of liquor in her hands.
She leaned toward Dave’s ear.
“Take it, Illyrian. Let’s start the game.”
Startled, Dave took a step back.
The figure standing before him flickered between Chloe and a woman with long navy-blue hair whipping in the wind, dressed in a voluminous velvet skirt.
When the woman became the Tailor, the floor of the room transformed into a black-and-white checkered chessboard.
Dave rubbed his eyes.
“Are you all right?” Chloe asked.
“I’m fine,” David managed to answer. “It’s just…”
He hesitated.
Then the Tailor’s breath, cold as ice, whispered against his ear again.
“If you’re fine, then let’s begin, Illyrian.”
“Enough!” Dave shouted, shoving Chloe away.
“Then let’s begin.”
As the words left the Tailor’s lips, vapor mingled with her breath. Dave watched in terror as the surface of the liquid in his glass froze over.
Trembling, Dave asked, “Who are you?”
“Don’t you remember me? I’m the Tailor, Lipoendra. Your wife.”
Dave lowered his head.
A treacherous smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
“At last, you’ve admitted you’re the Tailor, Lipoendra.”
Then he shouted:
“Checkmate!”
The Tailor charged from the other side of the room, pulled a needle from the horse-shaped pincushion strapped to her arm, and lunged at Illyrian’s chest.
Illyrian slipped to the left and avoided the thrust. He bent his arms in front of his body, protecting his torso, and clenched his fists.
“My move, Lipoendra,” he said calmly.
He stared directly into the woman’s eyes.
He advanced with cautious but certain steps, driving his prey toward the corner of the room. With every step he took, the oil paintings on the walls trembled.
Lipoendra retreated with every step, counting silently to herself.
Illyrian swung his right fist toward her jaw.
The Tailor struggled to rise from where she had fallen. When she saw the blood dripping onto the floor, rage overtook her.
She drew a sword-tipped needle from her pincushion and swung it through the air several times.
The needle suddenly grew into a gigantic sword.
“Twenty-one!” she shouted, and struck.
Illyrian tried to retreat, but caught his foot on the table behind him and fell.
The sword grazed his chest.
Consumed by fury, Lipoendra raised her eyes toward the heavens.
“Let this man die by my hand!” she cried out to God.
“Not yet, Tailor,” the man said with a laugh.
With a sudden, agile movement, he sprang to his feet and seized Lipoendra by the wrist—the hand gripping the sword.
He slammed her wrist against the doorframe, knocking the sword from her grasp.
The force of the impact cracked the wall.
When the sword fell, Illyrian stepped back and waited for the Tailor’s next move.
The Tailor slapped Illyrian hard enough to make him stagger.
Illyrian answered with the back of his hand.
The Tailor fell to the floor.
She rose again as Chloe.
Then she ran to a drawer, pulled it open, and began firing at Illyrian with a revolver.
“Ah, these earthly elements…” Illyrian mocked the bullets striking his armor.
He broke into laughter.
“Forty-nine!”
An aria rose from the poolside below.
Illyrian froze.
He moved toward the window.
The voice belonged to Kristin.
He opened the window.
Moonlight illuminated every detail of the statue beside the pool, casting Kristin as the soloist on a magnificent stage.
Illyrian’s eyes filled with tears.
By then, Chloe had become the Tailor once again.
Not waiting for the aria to end, the Tailor charged toward Illyrian.
“Fifty!” she shouted.
Hearing her voice, the man turned.
Lipoendra was coming at him like a train that could not possibly stop.
The woman slammed her shoulder into his chest.
Illyrian lost his balance.
Together with the Tailor, he crashed through the window frame and began falling from the fourth floor amid a rain of shattered glass.
First came the glass and splintered wood.
Then Dave.
And Chloe landed on top of him.
Kristin’s aria had ended.
The sound of water pouring from the fountain in the poolside courtyard spread through the street like a thunderous ovation.
The Tailor set her embroidery hoop beside her and arranged the black and white horses across the checkered board on the table.
Outside, Illyrian was chopping wood.
She called out to him.
“How about we let the horses go to war?”
The Tailor smiled mischievously.
“Come on. One last time…”
“The last.”
Chaotica ft. lacivertiğnedenlik
ANARCHISTALES 