Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

Amal looked up at his face. He was smiling. But his eyes... his eyes were just a little too wide. A little too dark.

"Are you lost, Auntie?" the boy asked.

"We're looking for the main road," Amal said, gripping Yasmin's arm tight. "Can you show us?"

"The road is gone," the boy said cheerfully. "The soldiers ate it."

"Ate it?"

"They were hungry. They ate the bakery too. And the school." The boy giggled. "They are very hungry tonight."

The other two boys stepped forward. "Are you hungry, Auntie?" one asked. "We have stones. Stones are good. They taste like history."

"Yasmin," Amal whispered. "Run."

"What?"

"Run!"

Amal pulled Yasmin, and they sprinted down the alley. Behind them, she didn't hear running footsteps. She heard... rustling. Like dry leaves blowing across pavement. She heard a high-pitched, chittering sound, like insects.

They burst out of the narrow alley into a wider street.

It was a market street. But it was abandoned. Stalls were overturned, rotten fruit spilled in the gutters.

"There!" Yasmin pointed. "The car! I see the car!"

About two hundred meters away, parked under a lone streetlight, was Amal's Kia. It looked like a beacon of sanity in a world gone mad.

They ran toward it.

But as they ran, the street seemed to stretch. The faster they ran, the further away the car seemed to get. The "Dolly Zoom" effect—the Vertigo effect—twisted Amal's stomach. The buildings on either side seemed to lean in, elongating, looming over them.

"Amal!" Yasmin gasped, stopping to catch her breath. "I can't... I can't breathe. The air..."

"The air is thin," Amal realized. "They're sucking the air out."

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