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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Mystery
- Subject: Crime
- Published: 09/03/2012
The Girl from the Obituary
Born 1985, F, from Woodside, NY, BulgariaIsn’t she too killing beautiful to be dead?
Iliana Ivanova Kishisheva (1993-2009). Happy third anniversary in Heaven, angel! We will always miss you! Love, Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Grandma. The laminated obituary stuck in-between a half-torn poster from a recent mayoral election and a Help Wanted ad read. Yet, eighteen-year-old Martin wasn’t so struck by the presence death notice itself, a weird die-hard habit for the Bulgarians to put obituaries in public places, as he was by the accompanying picture of the departed girl. Wearing a tank-top above perfectly chiseled six-packs, holding a microphone as if singing karaoke, and sporting long blonde hair falling over her naked shoulders, she looked like a model or an actress on the cover of an OK! magazine, these picture-filled magazines his mother tagged along every time she returned from a business trip in the United States. This can’t be, Martin thought, this girl can not be dead. She is so beautiful, so full of life, so young- only sixteen. Yet, the announcement at the very bottom about where the memorial service would take place ( Varna Central Cemetery) reminded him that she is not to be found strolling the posh sidewalks of Beverly Hills.
Bizarrely enough, Martin felt he was falling in love with the girl. He couldn’t take his eyes off the picture. An old lady with a walking stick waiting on the bus stop next to him glanced at him and murmured, “Young kids, you shouldn’t be looking at things like this. Don’t occupy yourselves with such sad occurrences!” Martin hardly heard her. He was already cooking a plan in his head: he was going to find out who Iliana was and how she died. He was going to look up her father’s name in the White Pages, call the number, even go to the neighborhood where she lived and knock on a few doors. If only he could get out of the private literature lesson this afternoon. Yet, why did he suddenly get obsessed with that dead girl, why, he thought while running to the bus.
“Martin, unless you focus and create a decent intro paragraph, you will never make it on the university exam,” Mrs. Mariana Stoeva, his private teacher, tapped with the pencil on the table, “which will give your father a perfect reason to kill me. You know how much he insists on you getting into a law school and becoming a partner in his law firm.”She tsk-tsked asMartin sighed. He knew that his father had so much money that he could bribe the university, the same way he bribed the principal of the elite high school to let him in. He was there because his family had money. Yet, he couldn’t tell Mrs. Stoeva that, neither could he tell her what was bugging him. “It’s just that I am thirsty.” He said. “Can you please bring me a glass of water, Mrs. Stoeva?” The teacher nodded and headed for the kitchen. Martin seized the moment and grabbed the thick dusty White Pages book lying on the sofa and opened it to the letter “K”. Kirkov, Kirov, Kishashev, his finger was gliding down until he stopped at Kishishev and…Martin froze. The name “Kishishev, Ivan” was highlighted in red and the address was, Martin gaped in horror, the address was Mrs. Stoeva’s. He knew that she was divorced and her daughter lived with her father in Sofia . Could he be sitting in the same apartment with an insane woman?
“Here is your water, Marty!” Mrs. Stoeva said cheerfully upon entering the room. “Do you, do you need anybody’s phone number?” She blushed and almost spilled water on the tablecloth. Martin stared at her. The teacher approached him, “Is everything OK?” “Mrs. Stoeva,” Martin said firmly, “where is your daughter? Is she alive?” Mrs. Stoeva shook her head in disbelief, “Marty, what kind of question is this? Of course she is. I haven’t seen Iliana for a long time but…” Upon hearing the name Iliana, Martin threw the book on the floor and almost cornered his teacher, “Then how come I saw her obituary on the bus stop this afternoon? It said she has been dead for three years,” he yelled overcome with a mixed feeling of terror, disgust, curiosity, and love. Part of him wanted to run away and never look back, another part- to grill her till she told him the truth. Mrs. Stoeva’s eyes moistened as she sighed deeply, “Oh, I don’t want to talk about it. I will never forgive Ivan for killing my daughter.” She sat on the table and started crying. Martin found himself running down the stairs. He was determined to call the police and maybe the mental health institute.
He was in a taxi out of breath when his cell phone rang. It was his classmate and girlfriend of three yearsAdelina. “Hi honey, do you want to go to that cool karaoke bar tonight? My cousin Silvia works there and she will get us drinks for free.” Martin motioned to the driver to stop, dropped a ten-lev bill without getting the change, and got out. Once the taxi was out of sight, he whispered into the phone, “Adi, I am not in the mood tonight. I got to tell you something. Maybe we have to go to the police.” “The police?” Adelina half-gaped, half-chuckled, “You know what? Come to the bar in two hours. It’s on 14Drin Street and is called Bulgarian Idol. You can not miss it.” Martin pressed the “End” button and looked around at the scaffolds for new apartment complexes. Should he involve sweet, hard-working, parentless Adelina into all this? Should he ruin her karaoke night? Karaoke.
The room was filled with cigarette smoke and someone was singing Britney Spears’ “Born to Make You Happy” off beat when Martin made his way to the table where Adelina and Silvia were sitting. Adelina was showing her cousin pictures and they were chuckling as Silvia pointed to a picture. Both girls looked at Martin. “Wow, Adi, your boyfriend is so-o-o-o cute! Like a movie actor.” Silvia eyed him sheepishly and extended her arm, “I am Silvia, Adi’s freak of a cousin and Varna’s biggest party girl.” Martin muttered something and sat next to his girlfriend. He kissed her on the forehead and shuffled her hair. Adi kissed him back and shoved Silvia gently, “Hey, Sissy, why don’t fetch us a couple of vodkas with tomato juice ? I don’t want to sound like a P.A. system while doing the karaoke.” Then she looked at Martin, “What’s wrong, honey? Why did you want to call the police?” Without even looking at the vodka with tomato juice Silvia had fetched him before tending to other customers, he told her everything. “Her husband killed her daughter and she keeps saying her daughter is in Sofia. That crazy woman should be either tried as helping cover up the crime or, if found mentally unfit to stand trial, institutionalized.” Adi rolled her eyes as she was sipping vodka. “You know what, Marty?” she said. “I think that she just hates her daughter so much that she wishes she were dead. And there is not only one Ivan Kishishev in the world. Now let’s drink our vodkas and look at some pictures.” Adelina showed him a picture, “Look how cool we are. This is me, Silvia, and her maternal cousin. We are all wasted at that beach party in Greece where…” Martin couldn’t make the rest of the words. He was blinking nervously after realizing that the picture was the same as….that on the obituary. And the girl on the picture was she- his girlfriend and best friend Adelina Asenova Mitkova whose parents were killed in a car crash and who was raised by her uncle.
“Adelina,” Martin waved the picture under her nose, “the girl in the picture, I saw it on the obituary. Who are you, Adelina?” He shaked her as several patrons turned their heads, “Who are you?” Adelina pushed him away and smiled viciously, “I am not Adelina, honey. I am Iliana. At times, I was also creeped out to see my own death notice, but that was the wish of my father.” Martin gasped, “The wish of your father? What are you talking about?” Adelina/Iliana made a motion to Silvia to stay away. “Yes, my father and mother, you know her, divorced when I was three. My father left her the apartment, took me, and moved to Sofia. We were living perfectly together until I fell into the wrong crowd. Started stealing, doing drugs, hanging out with older men. Kiril, he is not my uncle but my lover and he has connections with the Italian mob.” Subdued by curiosity, Martin stared at her blankly. “So,” she continued, “after I spent a brief time in a juvenile jail, my father, a respected professor at the Medical Academy , disowned me and declared me dead. Made up some stupid story about me being eaten up by a lion while on a summer study trip in Africa. No body. I was even able to sneak in on my wake. Couldn’t help rushing to the bathroom after seeing my favorite clothes arranged in a coffin. My mom agreed to the plan with a broken heart. I saw her crying while sticking my own obituary on the bus stop. Thanks to Kiro, who knows people who know people, I got a new identification and we moved to my hometown where I enrolled in your school.”
Martin dragged her outside, kicking in the shin the dismayed bouncer who tried to intervene. “You, dirty liar, you slut!” He banged her against a lamp post. “You know, I am so mad that I could strangle you with my bare hands so I will give them a real reason to write you an obituary. You have been deceiving everyone, tormenting everyone. How could you do that to me? How?” Martin looked into her face. “Are you playing evil tricks with me? You don’t look a bit like the girl.” Adelina smiled “My dad was kind enough to have a colleague of his who specializes in plastic surgery give me a discount. He wanted me to start my life anew, just not related to him. Speaking of starting anew, Kiro and I had set our eyes on a small house in a village in Sicily. Of course, we will need a bit of a financial push and his mob buddies are not very generous. I know it won’t be a skin off your lawyer father’s and your businesswoman of a mother’s noses to give us some euros to start over.” Martin took out his cell phone. “I am calling the cops right now.” He said through teeth. “Nobody is giving money to anybody and you are going to jail.” Silvia fixed her skirt and looked at the starless sky, “Your father too, because Kiro was right behind him during school registration day and he captured on his phone camera your father sliding money to the principal. And I remember you telling me how you got a two on your math entrance exam.”
A siren of a police car was heard in the distance. Some drunken voice was singing Kelly Clarkson’s “Beautiful Disaster” in Bulgarian Idol. Martin fixated his look on the digits as he was contemplating an escape from this situation. Adi shoved him on the shoulder, “Are you calling the police or do you want me to do it?” She reached for his phone.
“I will do it. I overheard everything.” A raspy voice startled both teenagers and they turned around. The old woman, the same one Martin saw on the bus stop, emerged from behind the dumpster, clutching her walking stick in one hand and a nylon bag with bottles in the other. “It’s a very sad thing how young people are nowadays.”
The Girl from the Obituary(Raya Dimitrova)
Isn’t she too killing beautiful to be dead?
Iliana Ivanova Kishisheva (1993-2009). Happy third anniversary in Heaven, angel! We will always miss you! Love, Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Grandma. The laminated obituary stuck in-between a half-torn poster from a recent mayoral election and a Help Wanted ad read. Yet, eighteen-year-old Martin wasn’t so struck by the presence death notice itself, a weird die-hard habit for the Bulgarians to put obituaries in public places, as he was by the accompanying picture of the departed girl. Wearing a tank-top above perfectly chiseled six-packs, holding a microphone as if singing karaoke, and sporting long blonde hair falling over her naked shoulders, she looked like a model or an actress on the cover of an OK! magazine, these picture-filled magazines his mother tagged along every time she returned from a business trip in the United States. This can’t be, Martin thought, this girl can not be dead. She is so beautiful, so full of life, so young- only sixteen. Yet, the announcement at the very bottom about where the memorial service would take place ( Varna Central Cemetery) reminded him that she is not to be found strolling the posh sidewalks of Beverly Hills.
Bizarrely enough, Martin felt he was falling in love with the girl. He couldn’t take his eyes off the picture. An old lady with a walking stick waiting on the bus stop next to him glanced at him and murmured, “Young kids, you shouldn’t be looking at things like this. Don’t occupy yourselves with such sad occurrences!” Martin hardly heard her. He was already cooking a plan in his head: he was going to find out who Iliana was and how she died. He was going to look up her father’s name in the White Pages, call the number, even go to the neighborhood where she lived and knock on a few doors. If only he could get out of the private literature lesson this afternoon. Yet, why did he suddenly get obsessed with that dead girl, why, he thought while running to the bus.
“Martin, unless you focus and create a decent intro paragraph, you will never make it on the university exam,” Mrs. Mariana Stoeva, his private teacher, tapped with the pencil on the table, “which will give your father a perfect reason to kill me. You know how much he insists on you getting into a law school and becoming a partner in his law firm.”She tsk-tsked asMartin sighed. He knew that his father had so much money that he could bribe the university, the same way he bribed the principal of the elite high school to let him in. He was there because his family had money. Yet, he couldn’t tell Mrs. Stoeva that, neither could he tell her what was bugging him. “It’s just that I am thirsty.” He said. “Can you please bring me a glass of water, Mrs. Stoeva?” The teacher nodded and headed for the kitchen. Martin seized the moment and grabbed the thick dusty White Pages book lying on the sofa and opened it to the letter “K”. Kirkov, Kirov, Kishashev, his finger was gliding down until he stopped at Kishishev and…Martin froze. The name “Kishishev, Ivan” was highlighted in red and the address was, Martin gaped in horror, the address was Mrs. Stoeva’s. He knew that she was divorced and her daughter lived with her father in Sofia . Could he be sitting in the same apartment with an insane woman?
“Here is your water, Marty!” Mrs. Stoeva said cheerfully upon entering the room. “Do you, do you need anybody’s phone number?” She blushed and almost spilled water on the tablecloth. Martin stared at her. The teacher approached him, “Is everything OK?” “Mrs. Stoeva,” Martin said firmly, “where is your daughter? Is she alive?” Mrs. Stoeva shook her head in disbelief, “Marty, what kind of question is this? Of course she is. I haven’t seen Iliana for a long time but…” Upon hearing the name Iliana, Martin threw the book on the floor and almost cornered his teacher, “Then how come I saw her obituary on the bus stop this afternoon? It said she has been dead for three years,” he yelled overcome with a mixed feeling of terror, disgust, curiosity, and love. Part of him wanted to run away and never look back, another part- to grill her till she told him the truth. Mrs. Stoeva’s eyes moistened as she sighed deeply, “Oh, I don’t want to talk about it. I will never forgive Ivan for killing my daughter.” She sat on the table and started crying. Martin found himself running down the stairs. He was determined to call the police and maybe the mental health institute.
He was in a taxi out of breath when his cell phone rang. It was his classmate and girlfriend of three yearsAdelina. “Hi honey, do you want to go to that cool karaoke bar tonight? My cousin Silvia works there and she will get us drinks for free.” Martin motioned to the driver to stop, dropped a ten-lev bill without getting the change, and got out. Once the taxi was out of sight, he whispered into the phone, “Adi, I am not in the mood tonight. I got to tell you something. Maybe we have to go to the police.” “The police?” Adelina half-gaped, half-chuckled, “You know what? Come to the bar in two hours. It’s on 14Drin Street and is called Bulgarian Idol. You can not miss it.” Martin pressed the “End” button and looked around at the scaffolds for new apartment complexes. Should he involve sweet, hard-working, parentless Adelina into all this? Should he ruin her karaoke night? Karaoke.
The room was filled with cigarette smoke and someone was singing Britney Spears’ “Born to Make You Happy” off beat when Martin made his way to the table where Adelina and Silvia were sitting. Adelina was showing her cousin pictures and they were chuckling as Silvia pointed to a picture. Both girls looked at Martin. “Wow, Adi, your boyfriend is so-o-o-o cute! Like a movie actor.” Silvia eyed him sheepishly and extended her arm, “I am Silvia, Adi’s freak of a cousin and Varna’s biggest party girl.” Martin muttered something and sat next to his girlfriend. He kissed her on the forehead and shuffled her hair. Adi kissed him back and shoved Silvia gently, “Hey, Sissy, why don’t fetch us a couple of vodkas with tomato juice ? I don’t want to sound like a P.A. system while doing the karaoke.” Then she looked at Martin, “What’s wrong, honey? Why did you want to call the police?” Without even looking at the vodka with tomato juice Silvia had fetched him before tending to other customers, he told her everything. “Her husband killed her daughter and she keeps saying her daughter is in Sofia. That crazy woman should be either tried as helping cover up the crime or, if found mentally unfit to stand trial, institutionalized.” Adi rolled her eyes as she was sipping vodka. “You know what, Marty?” she said. “I think that she just hates her daughter so much that she wishes she were dead. And there is not only one Ivan Kishishev in the world. Now let’s drink our vodkas and look at some pictures.” Adelina showed him a picture, “Look how cool we are. This is me, Silvia, and her maternal cousin. We are all wasted at that beach party in Greece where…” Martin couldn’t make the rest of the words. He was blinking nervously after realizing that the picture was the same as….that on the obituary. And the girl on the picture was she- his girlfriend and best friend Adelina Asenova Mitkova whose parents were killed in a car crash and who was raised by her uncle.
“Adelina,” Martin waved the picture under her nose, “the girl in the picture, I saw it on the obituary. Who are you, Adelina?” He shaked her as several patrons turned their heads, “Who are you?” Adelina pushed him away and smiled viciously, “I am not Adelina, honey. I am Iliana. At times, I was also creeped out to see my own death notice, but that was the wish of my father.” Martin gasped, “The wish of your father? What are you talking about?” Adelina/Iliana made a motion to Silvia to stay away. “Yes, my father and mother, you know her, divorced when I was three. My father left her the apartment, took me, and moved to Sofia. We were living perfectly together until I fell into the wrong crowd. Started stealing, doing drugs, hanging out with older men. Kiril, he is not my uncle but my lover and he has connections with the Italian mob.” Subdued by curiosity, Martin stared at her blankly. “So,” she continued, “after I spent a brief time in a juvenile jail, my father, a respected professor at the Medical Academy , disowned me and declared me dead. Made up some stupid story about me being eaten up by a lion while on a summer study trip in Africa. No body. I was even able to sneak in on my wake. Couldn’t help rushing to the bathroom after seeing my favorite clothes arranged in a coffin. My mom agreed to the plan with a broken heart. I saw her crying while sticking my own obituary on the bus stop. Thanks to Kiro, who knows people who know people, I got a new identification and we moved to my hometown where I enrolled in your school.”
Martin dragged her outside, kicking in the shin the dismayed bouncer who tried to intervene. “You, dirty liar, you slut!” He banged her against a lamp post. “You know, I am so mad that I could strangle you with my bare hands so I will give them a real reason to write you an obituary. You have been deceiving everyone, tormenting everyone. How could you do that to me? How?” Martin looked into her face. “Are you playing evil tricks with me? You don’t look a bit like the girl.” Adelina smiled “My dad was kind enough to have a colleague of his who specializes in plastic surgery give me a discount. He wanted me to start my life anew, just not related to him. Speaking of starting anew, Kiro and I had set our eyes on a small house in a village in Sicily. Of course, we will need a bit of a financial push and his mob buddies are not very generous. I know it won’t be a skin off your lawyer father’s and your businesswoman of a mother’s noses to give us some euros to start over.” Martin took out his cell phone. “I am calling the cops right now.” He said through teeth. “Nobody is giving money to anybody and you are going to jail.” Silvia fixed her skirt and looked at the starless sky, “Your father too, because Kiro was right behind him during school registration day and he captured on his phone camera your father sliding money to the principal. And I remember you telling me how you got a two on your math entrance exam.”
A siren of a police car was heard in the distance. Some drunken voice was singing Kelly Clarkson’s “Beautiful Disaster” in Bulgarian Idol. Martin fixated his look on the digits as he was contemplating an escape from this situation. Adi shoved him on the shoulder, “Are you calling the police or do you want me to do it?” She reached for his phone.
“I will do it. I overheard everything.” A raspy voice startled both teenagers and they turned around. The old woman, the same one Martin saw on the bus stop, emerged from behind the dumpster, clutching her walking stick in one hand and a nylon bag with bottles in the other. “It’s a very sad thing how young people are nowadays.”
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