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Choice: Seven

After a very confusing night or afternoon—for many reasons, you have trouble telling the time—you awaken to see a naked Irem next you. Her tinted skin rolls down her sleeping face across the neck, clavicles, and breasts, ceasing at nipples so dark they seem to be foreign to the rest of her. Hair streams over her face in ecstatic lines of separation, only moved from natural exhales in sleep. She is a sight of both feminine conquest and masculine forfeit. She is beautiful, and why wouldn’t she be?

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Breaking through the stillness, Irem wakes and quickly becomes embarrassed. She grabs her clothes and exits the bedroom, despite your pleas against it.

That was a little worrisome. Not sure how handle that, or how it even happened. But you decide to ignore the thought and leave the matter for another day. After you’ve spent few moments trying to remember the past six hours, a servant comes to the door and announces that dinner starts in half an hour. The staff have laid your outfit in the corner. The suit they’ve provided is made of a fine black silk. With its three golden buttons and delicate pinstripes, the two-piece suit is the most handsome piece of clothing you’ve ever received.

The cloth almost resembles that of the suit Timur wore before he invited you to sip from the cup. But something about his previous outfit seems causally bourgeois when compared to yours, which you take as intentional.

You put on the ensemble piece-by-piece. Checking the mirror, the suit reveals another Icarus: one without a drug addiction or a poor history with Turkish nationals, but instead, one with a riveting fake history of travel and a not-so-bad history with Turkish nationals. Now clothed, the stroll from the bedroom to the banquet hall feels organic—no doubt a refined side effect of the new suit. Steps become strides, sight becomes vision, and wants become necessities in your new clothes.

Down the staircase, it becomes clear that none of the other guests have arrived at the banquet hall.

*It looks like I’m the first to arrive. I’m sure Timur’s night was just as chaotic as mine. I can’t imagine how he’s recuperating.

I’ve got to make sure I get the name of those drinks for later though. That’s for sure.*

The hall stands empty except for the table and all the beautiful silverware adorning it. Not a single servant has been seen in the room, for their silent work has already been done. Glimmering utensils sit atop small islands of red and black linen napkins. Next to them the grace-white china waits in front of redwood chairs decorated with strange and beautiful carvings. Beyond them candelabras shine with the light of gray candles. You walk around the redwood table in the center of the room and attempt to absorb its majesty. Every flick of the grain amplifies the ornate features of the room. The chandelier, the table, and the tiny forks for every dish: it all simply tells a story of splendid fortune.

“Do you like it, Mr. Holmes?”

Turning around, you see Timur walking down the steps of his enormous staircase. His outfit has moved from the commanding black suit to a now angelic white suit, with a faint citrus-yellow tie. “Perhaps you should take it.” you are put off by this confusing suggestion as well as Timur’s tone. For the first time, you hear him speak with a voice that doesn’t ring with hospitality. Instead, it’s something much colder. “Perhaps you should take my hospitality, you should take it, take it with everything else in my life. Except you have already done that. Haven’t you, Mr. Holmes?” Stopping in the middle of his staircase, Timur pulls a pistol from the inside of his suit. The gun’s white handle and obviously polished barrel create a mocking tone of stateliness to the death machine.

“Timur,” you say, flinching in the presence of the gun, "what in God’s name is wrong?” Timur screams an unknown order and two guards bring out Irem. At the top of the staircase, you see her struggling against her captors.

“Tell me, what do you see? My daughter,” he flicks the gun in the direction of Irem, “or your whore?” Timur turns his gun on you now. Already you feel the hot trajectory of the bullet on your chest as he cocks the hammer and prepares to fire. Between inertia and chaos, in the time known as impending doom, perception slows down granting a better sight at what would ordinarily remain the torturous second before death; however, in this instance, you perceive something else. In the narrow window of possibility Irem changes the world in front of you: summoning a power great enough to earn her freedom, she leaps out of her captors grasp from the second floor and flies down the stairs at her father. She tackles Timur down the stairs and his shot goes into the air. The bullet strikes the ceiling and ricochets a few times before going silent. With a thudding, grunting, and falling the two roll down the staircase. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, both look broken, and Irem especially so. You run to help her up from the floor, but stop when you hear the mournful groan of bending metal.

The chandelier shakes back and forth. The ceiling moans a warning to all of those that may hear: the chandelier’s mounts will soon break. Sensing the inevitable, you sprint to Irem. Petty karmas must pay their debt, for the second you step to save the girl is the same second the chandelier’s chain breaks free. Move. Move. Move! Rush as you might the obvious becomes clear in the periphery of your eye. The chandelier falls directly into the table in a spectacular crash.

The force of the crash throws you to the ground just short of Irem, where you see her reach for help from the floor. The clamor from the fallen chandelier deafens her cry for you. The massive ornament has destroyed the redwood table and thrown silverware around the room. Several guards appear from the entrance and grab Timur and Irem, rushing them away to the front exit.

“Irem!” you shout. Coward! He thinks he can—

Snapping tile and concrete create splintering lines across the floor, and along with them comes the realization of what will happen next. Climbing to your feet to run after them, dread and adrenaline feel the same to you against the growing slip of gravity. Under the weight of the fallen chandelier, the floor caves in and the room flies upward around you. In the chaos of the fall, you and the chandelier tumble in the air downwards towards the bath house one floor below. In a stroke of fortune, the chandelier wedges itself in the crevice that leads from the first floor to the bath. Its massive chain jolts back up in retaliation to its lost momentum. Falling just past the wedged ornament, you see the chain whip in your direction.

The whipped chain slashes into you, and despite the pain you seize it. Grabbing ahold, the chain rips your hand apart as you slip down the metal line before ultimately stopping at its final rungs.

Swinging side-to-side, you slowly gain equilibrium on the swinging motion of the chain. Salvation, thank God. Above the immaculate Turkish bath, you hang sweaty, dirty, bloody, but alive. Okay, well I’m still, I’m still here. How am I… how do I get out of here? The chain creaks. I can’t jump down. Too far. I gotta climb back up, get past Timur, and then get home. Jesus, I used to be a painter. Another creak. If I stay any longer the chain is going to break. Gotta move! With a champion’s drive, you reach up to begin the climb.

“AAAAAA!” Your throat feels shredded as you scream at the attempt. Painfully you realize the damage the chain has done to your right hand. Just the left then, just the left. Slowly you lift your left arm above and pull yourself up. Your right hand slides up on the grease of your own blood, and you lift the left above it once more. You attempt to climb back up as slowly as possible: conserving energy has become your priority now. Light seeps through the gap of land the chandelier has wedged itself in. Blurry spots pop in through tears and sweat as the slow process of climbing up continues. Just the left, just the left, you mentally chant with every pull. With enough chain climbed, you now clinch your legs onto the metal line.

The creaks have yet to stop, but for now you ignore them. Adrenaline and pain have pushed you so far, how can you stop now?
Just the left, just the left—oh no! Something has moved the chandelier. Its body has only partially been nudged: the slow sways of its crystals serve as proof of this. “Come on. Come on,” you urge yourself farther up the chain. Suddenly, you vomit.

Anxieties flare at the idea of this being a sign of early withdrawal.

More pressing matters call your attention: your hand is slipping now from the sweat and fear. Need to keep moving. Just the left—“AAAAA!” you slip down the chain before saving yourself by clutching it with your knees. Holding it for dear life, you begin to weep at the lost progress. The room is spinning in moist disorienting exhaustion. With your right hand numb and bloodied, and your left hand sweaty and useless, metaphysical facilities of the body start to shut down. Where your blood once boiled, you feel now only a stagnant detachment. What was once adrenalin-fueled inspiration has become sluggish realization. This must be the instinctive preparation for the end.

“Please! Is anyone there? Please, don’t let me die! Please! I’m sorry. I just don’t want to die.” With your forehead to the chain, you weep even further, letting the little slits of water roll down your eyes, past the chain, and into your left hand granting them some relief. A slow bubbling acceptance of death is growing inside. It does not hurt to feel, in truth it is the emotional equivalent of optimistic nihilism: a small sigh to a sharp coldness. No one is going to save you.

“Icarus?”

Your head pops up as you hear the call. Looking through the chandelier, you see the man who had brought to this disastrous palace in the first place.

“Kara!” you rejoice. Pulling yourself upward out of happiness, you see Kara’s figure come into view standing at the gap in what now remains of the palace’s first floor. He wears a suit very much like yours (minus the sweat and blood), and appears to have his earrings on again. He retreats for a time and then returns. Giddy from salvation, you begin to laugh. “I thought I was a goner! Kara, please help me! Throw me a rope and pull me up! The chain has ripped my hand apart!”

Kara says nothing and retreats again. This time you hear a death-cry in his absence. From your distance, you can only see the few streaks of red on his jacket.

“Take this with you,” Kara says before he throws Irem’s body into the gap. Her corpse makes a pathetic flopping noise upon landing into the chandelier’s frame. You believe that the worst has happened in Irem’s death, but things quickly darken as the frequency of the chandelier’s creaks increase with dangerous connotation. Despite being dashed, the new hope you had found in Kara revitalizes a second wind. Ignoring the pain, both hands quickly grab hold of the chain and pull. Screaming out with every pull, you feel a warm trickle of blood roll from your hand to your elbow. The red warning goes disregarded.

Every pull pushes you closer to freedom and closer to what was once Irem. Her body has been impaled with a crystal near the center of the chandelier, holding her in place. When she had been thrown, you saw only the inhuman impact, but up close now, not even that seems real. Her rolling hair and pomegranate lips still intoxicate as they had done before. However, with the gap between you now closing, her eyes come into view. They’re heartbreaking. Her auburn eyes look strained and out-of-focus, pointing down the pit. They’re bloodshot, glossy, and without luster. Nearly ten feet above you now, her final look of despair weakens you. Irem, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry this had to happen to you.

Ignoring the hurt once more, you pull again, and ascend for the last time. This latest pull has done something to the structure of the chandelier. Small vibrations have accompanied the change, and the little tremors have done something to Irem. Slowly her corpse seeps forward over the metal frame above. Head, shoulders, and then waist slide out and over the frame in a slow, painful manner, leading to a falling tumble. Plunging away she takes a piece of crystal in her abdomen. Past you, she falls shortly down landing on the chandelier’s farthest ring, dislodging it entirely with the force of her remains. There is a split second of floating where thought moves faster than reality: Well, that’s that.

Hopelessness has never struck you so fast. The chandelier falls past you in a mere moment, turning your lifeline into an anchor before you know better than to let go. The crystal and metal fly down like a meteor into the bath and pierce its floor with little delay. Crushed fountainheads and ornate sculptures plunge down an unknown level of the mansion, with you following close behind.

Past the bath, you and the chandelier find an underground lagoon nearly fifty feet below the bath. The crashing waters are too quick to see, but painfully felt. The water smacks your body with a greeting from the salty remainder of the Black Sea. You struggle as you try to swim free, but regrettably, the huge chain has wrapped itself around your arm during the fall. Gone. Gone. Gone. Into the water you sink. The bottom of the lagoon meets your back as you look up at the world submerged.
Above, you see only the enormous hole that leads to the palace. Soft light leaks from the gap, illuminating the few pieces of silverware that sink besides the wreckage, furniture, and Irem.

Your lungs lurch at the sight of her. You cough out the small amounts of air your body has left. Afraid for your life, you unwind the heavy chain from your arm and swim upwards towards the light. Each stroke harder than the next, you push with painful desperation—right up to the moment your body betrays you with an instinctive inhale. An act that is as painful as it is tragic. You know you are going to drown. As you sink again, you take one last look up and watch the light of the outside world twinkle all around Irem’s body.

I’m sorry, Irem.

You sink down and watch the light grow brighter and brighter, until it blinds. The coming reckoning eclipses all possibilities. It grabs you and pulls you into the radiant brightness. Until no life is felt.