The Unexpected Guest 

Long ago, in a distant land, there was a kingdom ruled by an understanding and loving king and queen. In this place where injustice, theft, and slavery did not exist, people were incredibly happy and extremely loyal to the government. Everyone minds their own business and does not meddle in anyone’s, so everything always had gone very well. One day, the good news was heard in the kingdom: Finally, the queen was going to have a baby! Celebrations and festivals were held all over the kingdom because the people had known for a long time that the queen wanted a child, so the news almost made the people happier than the queen.

These celebrations continued for months until the child was born, and finally, the baby was born on a summer day, but the queen did not survive after giving birth to the child and the king took on endless mourning. Black clouds covered the whole kingdom, the castle turned black, and all the trees around were bare. After that day, people never saw the light of day and the social structure consisted of dissatisfied, complaining, and unhappy people. Robbery, murder, and slavery became daily topics, and the king did nothing but drink and sit in his room and look outside desperately. He always blamed the baby for the death of his wife and didn’t even take care of her. The princess has always been in the hands of the palace people, and she grew up almost never seeing her father. When the princess was nine years old, her father was an alcoholic, and he fell into bed and died, unable to bear the wrath of his wife. The little girl had no relatives, so she took power at the age of nine. Despite having received a comprehensive education, she was not ready to ascend to the throne and take the burden of a huge state on her tiny shoulders, but she had no other choice. She learned every detailed information about the state at a young age and she couldn’t even live her childhood and worked nonstop. But no matter how hard she tried, those dark clouds never went away, and the unhappiness on people’s faces was never erased. She met with qualified economists, opened factories, and established courts, but despite all this, the crime rate never decreased and even increased so much that there was no room left in the dungeons of the once empty castle, so the princess had to build a separate dungeon building. Moreover, there was no place for people to escape because this kingdom was far away from the whole world among the steep mountains.

 

Years passed like this, and the princess reached the age when her mother died. The more tolerant her mother was, the tougher the princess was. The princess did not even wear make-up, while her mother was dressed in a different color dress and adorned every day. She had jet-black tangled hair and icy blue eyes framed by long eyelashes. Her dresses were always all black, even if they were torn and ugly, the princess did not care and continued to wear them. Her heart was as black as her clothes as if the endless dark clouds surrounding the castle had captured her heart forever.

 

On the night she turned twenty-five, a dinner was held in the palace and all the people of the palace had to attend this dinner. The princess pulled out the chair at the long table and sat listlessly. She started to eat her dinner without speaking and the people of the palace did the same. The chandelier, which was magnificent but turned gray with dust and cobwebs because it was untouched for years suddenly swayed and fell on the table, and the princess died on the spot.

When the princess lowered her head, she found herself in the bathroom of her room looking into the mirror with her hands on the sink. She was there a few hours before the dinner and had no idea how she got there after the chandelier fell on her. She left there and went to the hall where the chandelier had fallen, and encountered a very surprising sight: The people of the palace were waiting for her, as they had been a few minutes ago. Everyone was standing, with only the chair at the head of the table empty, just like a few minutes ago. The princess sat back in her amazement and looked at the chandelier above her. The people of the palace could not understand these astonished eyes of the princess. When everyone started to eat, the princess noticed that the chandelier was starting to shake, she jumped up and at that moment the chandelier fell on the big table. Several people sitting near the princess died, and the princess went into her room in horror. She went into the bathroom in her room, looked in the mirror again, and closed her eyes, thinking that she had gone crazy. When she opened her eyes to the screams coming from outside, she realized that nothing had changed and immediately went down to the front of the palace. A man who she didn’t know was pointing a gun at someone she thought was his wife, and while he was slowly pressing the trigger with an incessant fire in his eyes, the princess swung the man’s hand and the gun exploded in the princess’s heart, killing her.

When she opened her eyes, again, she found herself leaning her hands on the sink, staring at her reflection in the mirror. No one knew what was going on except herself and she didn’t know what to do. She ran first into the royal hall, telling everyone to get up from that table, and then ordered the knights to arrest the man outside. First, the chandelier in the hall crashed onto the table, then the man was arrested before he could even straighten the barrel, and everyone questioned in horror how the princess had predicted this. As if nothing had happened, time was always wrapping around the same point and taking the princess to that moment.

When the princess descended into the public, she witnessed the deaths of many people, but none of them took her back. Only when she died did she return to that mirror again, and still no one knew it but her. Now the concept of time has disappeared, the princess is saving someone from death, and while doing this, she often died herself and relived the whole day. Moreover, even if she didn’t try to save anyone, she found herself in the same place at 12 o’clock at night. This went on for days, months, and even years. Everyone except the princess was getting older, the fruits in the palace were rotting and the food in the fields was getting infested. The princess tried everything she could think of not to go backward in time, but now she was discouraged and she locked herself in her room like her father. She spent years doing the same things and everyone was saying the same sentences and even the music played in the hall was the same. So everything was the same except for her. She was stuck there.

 

One day a very old woman entered the castle door and said that she wanted to meet with the princess. The princess was surprised because this was unexpected, extraordinary that someone entering the palace in that period of time. She looked at the woman in amazement and told her everything that had happened. The woman told that every person whose heart is petrified is stuck in a specific period of time and cannot get out of there. When she took off the long scarf wrapped around her head, the princess saw that this woman was her years later, and she realized that she was also stuck in her own time zone, and somehow the two of them were stuck together. As if the woman’s eyes were clear enough what to do, she took a gun from her waist and killed the younger version of herself. The old woman thought that if she kills herself when she was young, she would get rid of this stuckness, but her younger self returned to the beginning in front of the mirror in the same way. They both continued to live the same day forever.

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