Hasan the Schizoid [short story]
It took nearly a thousand days, but Hasan's insides are peacefully empty now. All the rubbish of childhood is gone. What used to trigger his discomfort, fails to elicit a reaction. His heart was washed with ice, humanity is kept at bay, and he wouldn't exchange this calmness for anything in their world. Bad memories stopped trying to resurface. All the negatives accumulated throughout the years were carefully, painfully, extracted, examined, rationalized and understood, then dealt with. The minuses were confronted, new positives were attached to them accordingly, and they happily turned into zeroes, disappearing into oblivion. Who knew that the disappearance of his mother would have that profound effect on him? Maybe *she* knew! Maybe finally, as a weird form of atonement, she realized that her existence was the flame that ignited his kerosene. How blind was he not to see it! It stands to reason. The only two episodes of mental breakdown w...