Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Children of Olive

But she was looking now. Really looking. And she couldn't pretend she didn't see.

Noor walked beside Amal in silence, her small hand warm in her mother's grip. She had been quiet since the lockdown ended, quieter than usual, her eyes flickering to corners and alleyways as if tracking movements that only she could see.

"Are you okay, habibi?"

Noor nodded, but she didn't speak. Her gaze kept drifting to the shadows, to the spaces between buildings, to the places where something might be standing and watching if you knew how to look.

They were passing the alley where Amal had glimpsed something the day before—the shape in the shadows, the outline that might have been a soldier or might have been nothing—when Noor stopped walking.

"He's there," she said.

"Who?"

"The one I told you about. The one who's been standing there since the car burned." Noor pointed into the alley with her free hand, her small finger indicating a spot of deeper darkness between two dumpsters. "He's watching us."

Amal's heart was pounding. Every instinct told her to grab her daughter and run, to look away, to pretend she hadn't heard. But she remembered what she had told Noor the night before. Some things don't go away when you stop looking. Some things get worse.

She turned her head. She looked into the alley.

At first, there was nothing. Just shadows, just trash, just the ordinary detritus of an urban street. But as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw—

A shape. Tall. Still. Standing in the space between the dumpsters as if it had always been there, as if it had grown up from the ground like a terrible tree.

The outline of a helmet, domed and smooth.

The bulk of a vest, heavy with equipment or armor or something else.

A weapon, held at an angle, its length extending past where a normal weapon's length should end.

And the eyes.

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