I picked. Picked all day. Oftentimes, for days and days when harvest afforded me to do so. Green globules of life, picked clean away, leaving them to slowly age in my once human hands. For decades this was my pursuit, diverging only to claim citrus orbits from orange and lemon trees when in full bloom and prime for my rising hands to steal away their fruits. Otherwise, olives were my livelihood, a lifeline.
A new holiday complex has been built around my picking ground. A collection of villas boasting private pools and luxurious living space. Once, many years ago, this land only served to grow, not hosting a plethora of holiday opportunities to the privileged. Much has changed. Too much in my time here upon this patch of scorched Turkish earth.
No one notes me. No care stirs for my ghostly displacement. I am invisible to them: resort managers, tourists, locals who visit on weekends as a treat, chefs, cleaners, housekeeers, entertainment staff – to all, I am a chimera, bending clean away in bands of Turkish sunlight, like a disdainful stain washed blind by bleach, running invisibly to a gathered loss. A pile of cleansed yet heartless clothes, pummelled by breathless rungs of the washing board – that is I, all I amount to. Rags. A partial existence. A being of hollowed ribs and chagrined heart, hiding beneath a floral headscarf, tattered from age.
As tourists filtrate, filling more and more space with their wheeled cases, Botox fillers, and bling accessories hanging from iPhones, I feel more and more obsolete. Noise of hilarity from jumping in private pools and sipping cooled beers from mini bars, streams past me as fast as daylight. Human din suffocates me by day. A sharpened discordance when compared to the relative silence and emptiness of the dead. Not even a faint whisper attends me now. I’m voiceless. A bat without wings, struggling for independence in a flightless world where only darkness can afford me a nourishing balm.
I drink in night, heady and sumptuous as it is, folding around me are its velveteen strokes, enclosing my world to what it was before: me and the olive trees, their spectral branches, once again, become my nocturnal friends, true confidantes and witnesses of my loneliness.
Without meaning to, my morals loosen as the living claim more and more integral parts away of my former life, turning memories smudgy, hazy as clouded waters. I cannot help myself but muse upon wrongdoings, ill-fitting schemes that turn as cogs in my head as I stalk old ground, thirsting hot for revenge.
On a bright August day when the sun bakes tourists’ skin to a crisp bake of golden brown, I can bear them no longer, and decide, to strike. At first my movements and attacks are subtle: reflecting my face back at one guest in the glimmer of their held knife as they carve into a succulent steak in The Garden restaurant. On another occasion, I surface as a female face in the moon, causing travellers to squint, double guessing the clarity of their eyesight. Shamelessly, I laugh, indulge in teasing souls that have taken my former peace and livelihood from me. Playful boys in one villa pool pluck meanly at the olives that overhang their pool, using them as a game: diving to the bottom of the pool to retrieve my precious gemstones. My emerald orbs are too precious to be squandered into use as mere folly for children. All must pay. This must stop. I long for my Turkish lands of old, the antique legend that was once a reality, a place I thrived in rustic, womb-like valleys, skirted with fertile soil.
Uncontrollably anger rises, bubbling, frothing at my tattered mouth; a mouth that bears flailing dry flesh. The fettered flesh of the dead. I have black slashes for lips, a hollow echoes beneath them, no longer the tender lips of a mother and wife as I was in life. Rotted teeth have turned to fangs, blades of corruption, hungering to bite, to take revenge whilst it fiercely brews, churning a pit of chiselled salt for morals within my cauldron soul. I am no longer the woman I was. Loved, dignified, wanted. A trusted, faithful olive picker. I’m thwarted, marred by corporate exploitation and big Turkish money lenders.
As the Turkish sun fades, I hatch a plan, take my chance. I aim for the resort manager’s villa. He stays en site during the busier summer season. He has profiteered greatly from my homeland's reformation, turning olive-rich soil to wineries and exquisite restaurants that furnish and extend this holiday complex. He is not the only beneficiary, but he is close at hand. Known. A reachable, easy target and I lace my bow, aiming an arrow of vengeance to pierce his heart.
As midnight approaches, I glide to his bedroom window, curtains open, so he can watch the moonlit flickers upon the swimming pool’s surface. It lures him to sleep, for I have observed his habits many times. A nocturnal haunting, shall we say. His gold rich hand, covered in oversized rings, glints above the bed cover as a devilish smile. I slide seamlessly close, making myself clear to view from the sliding patio doors. I knock. Wait.
His face starts, as if he knows I’m here without seeing me. I cannot resist paining him, so I tap, tap, tap on the glass with my blackened fingernails, carrying the dirt of olive picking everywhere I go. The rubbled remnants of my former life of simplicity and quietude.
Dawning that I am a threat, his mouth hollows, quivering into shaky folds of pinkish flesh. His eyes dilate, drinking in my ghastly appearance: the haggard apparel of an olive picker, one aged now by centuries and the ever-turning sun, cast high as a winning dice. He longs for daylight to break. I discern his desperation for solace as he scans the skyline, searching for a glimpse of lightened hope. Thickened darkness gathers instead, drenching me in a spectral cloak of obsidian, where only my tattered face glows preternaturally at him. My skull of a face draws him upwards, as I plan to guide him to unfasten the door, to walk blindly into the pool’s waters. He does so unthinkingly, entranced by my rage that powers a secured sense of control over him. As bubbles rise from his mouth, his lungs fill, dilate until they are rabbit lungs, small and measly. He struggles, coughing for breath as the waters drag him downwards. I snigger, playing with death as a game of skittles to a child.
As I turn to leave, I cast my gaze to the olive trees. They glisten. Licked leaves of metallic awaken, gleaming, breathing more freely, in moonlit rays. Purged of my revenge, I reach to pick one, a full, ripened bead, perfect in its circular orbit of green. Bitter juices now taste sweet, as I pop one into my unhallowed mouth, squashing its flesh, reclaiming my roots, rekindling myself. This is a start.
It is a new start for me, the olive picker of ancient lands, flying high upon winds of spectral change. Taking back what is mine with olive-rich, ghostly fingers, I look forward, plan my next move upon the chessboard, a game of chance, battled out between the living and the long dead.
Emma is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with various literary journals and magazines. She enjoys writing flash fiction and short stories also.
Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 and her short story entitled ‘Virginia Creeper’ was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021.
Recently, she won Dipity Literary Magazine’s 2024 Best of the Net Nominations for Fiction with her short story entitled ‘The Voice of a Wildling’.