Anastasia
A love that doesn’t feel like love
New flash fiction — from Woman with a Thousand Faces
A story about longing, desire, and distortion. Some are true love stories; this one is an entire battlefield.
Grab your coffee and a warm blanket. Wishing you a touch of magic as you read.
ANASTASIA
A love that doesn’t feel like love
🎧 Listen as you read: All of Me, Billie Holiday
It was close to midnight. I’d been sitting in a dingy bar for hours, waiting for her. Anastasia.
That wasn’t her real name, but that’s what I called her. There was no way to describe her beauty with words. Let me put it this way: I had taken hundreds of photos of her, turned them into posters in different sizes, and covered every square meter of my living room walls with her face.
The bartender asked if I wanted another drink.
“I do,” I said. I was certain Anastasia would come; she just wanted me to suffer a little. Our war was still going strong—at least for Anastasia. In times like these, a person had to be ready for the most unexpected things.
Let me tell you a little about myself.
I’m a war criminal.
I’ve lost my arm, my leg, my eye, my ear—everything that made up my life—to terrible wars that ravaged me. And believe me, I have no idea what’s left for me to lose.
My phone was ringing nonstop, and I kept refusing to answer. I had turned the sound off, but the screen lit up every time someone called. The bartender and I were both fully aware of this phone that wouldn’t shut up. He was smirking like a flirt; I kept drinking my beer as if nothing was happening.
“Maybe the lady you’re waiting for is the one calling,” he said. “Something might’ve happened to her.”
He was sure that wasn’t the case—he just wanted to start a cheap conversation.
“Nothing will happen to her,” I said. “She just wants a little excitement.”
His eyes lit up like a treasure hunter finding the map he’s been looking for. He stared at me, imagining nonsense fantasies, expecting a man-to-man smirk in return. But I didn’t give him one. Fantasies didn’t amuse me anymore—they exhausted me.
I couldn’t deal with twisted, passionate sex.
I was unbearably tired of loving Anastasia.
The bartender decided I was boring and turned away, wiping a beer glass with a filthy rag as he moved toward another man.
Meanwhile, I sat frozen, waiting for a mortar shell to explode or a rocket strike to rain down—at any moment.
Anastasia turned everything into a struggle.
She behaved like a wild animal that constantly sensed danger, afraid she’d fall into a trap if she relaxed even for a second. I never understood who or what she was afraid of.
She couldn’t rest without hearing that I loved her—every single day.
If she sensed the slightest tiredness in my voice, she took it as coldness, betrayal.
We spoke several times before bed; she needed to know we were on the same frequency to fall asleep.
I couldn’t be out somewhere else, with someone else.
I had to be at home—alone—thinking of her.
She always wanted a relationship better than the last one.
We had to update daily.
But no matter what I did, we were never better than “before” in her eyes.
The past was an unreachable utopia.
And no matter how meaningful the present was, it could never compete with it.
Looking back, I understand why:
The past becomes perfect because memory reshapes it.
Only women can do this with such mastery.
And as a man, I fell into that trap over and over again, barely escaping each time—bruised and bleeding.
Anastasia never extended a hand to pull me out of the trenches she pushed me into.
Suddenly, a delicate hand with red nail polish entered my field of vision.
Between two fingers rested a long, thin cigarette.
She leaned toward me and asked if I had a light.
Of course I did.
I lit her cigarette.
She blew smoke into my face with a sultry expression.
“May I sit?” she asked.
“I’m waiting for someone,” I said gently, tilting my head with a sorrowful look: a silent unfortunately.
After all the beatings I’d taken in life, I had learned one thing:
Never bruise a woman’s pride.
Lie, be a bastard, do whatever—but don’t say “I don’t want you,” or even imply it.
And the truth is, what you want doesn’t matter anyway.
Women always do what they want.
This woman did exactly that and sat beside me as if I hadn’t said a word.
The bartender turned toward us with a sly grin. Luckily, since I had rejected his earlier attempt at bonding, he had no desire to get involved now.
She wore a deep-slit skirt that ended below the knee—tight and dangerously elegant.
I was sure she was Anastasia’s agent.
Anastasia knew about my ridiculous weakness for sculpted hips and high slits. She must have dressed this woman in a costume I wouldn’t be able to resist.
The space between a woman’s legs is a deadly weapon in the hands of someone aiming with precision.
This was strategy.
War tactic.
I grabbed my phone, pretending to be busy, hoping to avoid the woman’s sharp gaze, her slit, her everything.
Anastasia was doing what she always did—this time through another woman.
Random women would suddenly take center stage in our relationship because of questions like:
“If you had the chance, would you sleep with her?”
These women had the power to test and certify the strength of our relationship.
Not even I had that kind of power—but these strange women did.
Because of them, I had been found guilty countless times and sentenced to the harshest punishments.
My life was spent trying to prove my innocence, dodging traps, giving the right answers at the right time.
I had to become the world’s most patient, wise lover—and prove myself endlessly.
As I was thinking all this, the woman next to me was sucking on the rim of her wine glass, watching me without looking away.
“Your friend will be here soon,” I said with a knowing smile.
She looked confused. She was playing the role well.
“What did she tell you to do? How long do you have to seduce me?” I asked.
Right then, thanks to the beer, my stomach churned and I burped.
The woman looked at me with disgust, got up angrily, and moved to one of the tables.
The bartender watched me with disapproval, shaking his head.
He thought I deserved this for not being his wingman.
He then burst into a filthy laugh with the drunk man he’d been talking to.
I had heard a similar laugh from Anastasia once.
I had told her, foolishly, that I didn’t know what I was being punished for—that I had forgotten my crime.
She reacted with a level of shock, devastation, and disappointment that could be felt across continents.
Right before she started crying, she’d laughed—just like the bartender.
Then I remember the slap.
Hot and burning against my cheek.
I had to accept it:
This was a war I could never win.
And I still had no idea why I was in it.
Her intelligence and manipulation crushed me constantly.
My simple answers weren’t solutions—they were catastrophes.
Not because I intended them that way, but because, in Anastasia’s universe, they meant something else entirely.
That’s when I realized:
There isn’t just one universe.
And I didn’t have the strength to explore hers and find the “right” answers.
All I wanted was a break from the war—just long enough to drink an ice-cold beer on a sand dune in the desert.
A moment. That was all.
But if Anastasia is in your life, this is impossible.
Without meaning to, she was transforming me into a monster.
In war, you can do two things: hide or fight.
After everything we’d been through, I was done hiding.
I had become angry, arrogant, rude—capable of anything.
In this chaos, I finally understood how wars start, how countries fall.
War is politics.
Great egos demand combat.
It isn’t people who rule the world—it’s their egos.
And any man who falls into a woman’s battlefield becomes nothing more than a one-legged toy soldier.
My anger was boiling.
I walked toward the woman in the slit skirt.
I told her I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
I grabbed her by the waist like a swaggering Don Juan and kissed her fiercely.
As our lips parted, a blow came out of nowhere.
It felt like a bomb went off on my face.
I couldn’t feel my jaw.
When I lifted my head, I saw a bearded, dangerous-looking man.
Probably her boyfriend—or her husband.
Maybe she wasn’t Anastasia’s agent after all.
I tried to collect myself.
These things happened sometimes.
False alarm. That’s all.
They kicked me out of the bar, beating me along the way.
When I finally stood up outside, Anastasia was standing there.
She looked at me like she wasn’t surprised at all.
Inside, I could hear the shouting of the brute who cracked my jaw.
Anastasia extracted every wrong meaning possible from what happened. She never chose the right ones.
She turned to leave, but graciously spoke to me one last time.
“You’ll never understand,” she said.
“Understand what?” I asked. Bloody spit dripped from my mouth onto my shirt.
My face must have been swollen like a balloon.
My head weighed a hundred tons.
I couldn’t feel my lips.
“All I ever wanted was for you to stay in love with me,” she said.
I laughed.
“All I ever wanted was an ice-cold beer,” I answered, my voice blurry.
“On top of a sand dune in the desert…”
And the last radio frequency between our worlds went silent.
Everything after that was just static.
Aslı Eti (2012)