Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

The words hung in the air like a held breath. Amal felt something cold settle into her bones—not just grief, but understanding. The terrible logic of it.

Children who died in violence became watchers too.

Not all of them. Not everyone. But some—the ones who died angry, frightened, unmourned—they didn't pass on. They stayed. They stood. They watched.

"The small one," Amal said carefully. "Did she have red eyes too?"

Tariq shook his head. "Not red. Not yet. They were still brown. Like hers. But they were open, and they didn't blink. And she was looking at me like—" He swallowed. "Like she wanted to say something but she couldn't. Like her words got stuck."

Yasmin rose to her feet, her face pale. She pulled Amal aside, lowering her voice so Tariq couldn't hear.

"This is new," she said. "The child-sized watchers. I've had reports from other clinics—Jericho, Bethlehem, Gaza. Children are seeing smaller figures now. Children who become watchers."

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know. Maybe the rules are changing. Maybe the violence has reached some kind of threshold. Or maybe—" She hesitated, her voice catching. "Maybe so many children have died recently that they're becoming a significant portion of the watchers themselves."

Amal thought of the news reports. The statistics that scrolled across the bottom of the screen every day, numbers that had become so routine they barely registered anymore. Children killed in airstrikes. Children killed at checkpoints. Children killed waiting for water. The numbers were staggering, but numbers weren't names. Numbers didn't have faces or histories or the small details that made a person a person.

"We need to find out more," she said. "About the child-sized ones. About what happens to them."

"I agree. But carefully." Yasmin glanced at Tariq, who was still drawing, still processing his trauma the only way he knew how. "The children who see them are already traumatized. If we push too hard—"

"We won't push. We'll listen." Amal turned back to Tariq, kneeling beside him again. "Tariq, we need to find her name," she said gently. "Your sister. We need to add her to the lists. If we can keep speaking her name, if we can make sure she's remembered —"

"What will happen?"

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