A Desert of Sorrow by Elina Haloian

He left his window wide open.

The only way to the theatre he knew stretched along the busy street full of people in the centre of the city. He smiled slyly and slipped quickly into a multitude of stories and emotions. Every sign of life on their faces — this is what nourished him, gave him the infinity of power to laugh in a desert of sorrow. He peered into there as a psycho, hoping to find something he had been looking for the past seven years. The court acquitted him on all counts for killing her in a car accident. This happened before, he killed before and was acquitted every single time. No, he had no money for that. The thing is, nobody wanted to deal with all these cases. And the reason for that was that the women were all the same. 

He was sneaking into every woman that reminded him of those eyes he saw every single night. Those eyes haunted him for all his life, for they were his sin. He knew it, and he got mad every time somebody solved the mystery. “They are creeps”, he would say and start laughing loudly in a creepy and disgusting way. The crowd was not afraid of him, though. Some people already knew him, and some of them did not want to know. They were indifferent to whatever they saw, not to mention a madman. But he laughed once again and in the sound of savagery, she looked up. 

And she saw her.

And smiled slyly before she closed her eyes forever. 

They were Syrian.