Dark Black

The anxiety hit slowly and all at once as she awoke. The figments of yesterday’s memories lethargically discoursing and recharging as she blinked the sleep away. Back to the dilemma of the ominous sum of money dubiously transferred into her account. She had hopscotched back and forth on the quandary of spending or reporting it then decided to sleep on it. Sleep, although not well, she did. Now what? She reached for her phone, limbs half asleep she accidentally tipped her father’s framed painting over. A failed attempt then another to grab her phone to once again check her accounts. Still there – abstract numbers of black and white – twenty thousand pounds. Zara sighed into the silence absently staring for a while.

The questions simmered down whilst she worked through the motions of the day but they remained in the backdrop. Condensed, intense, asking the owner to impose sense. Now sitting at the tiny desk littered with drafts and research papers she hopelessly scratched into her notebook words vaguely shaped like questions. What if it was a simple mistake? What if they ask for the money back? She absently clicked her pen in thought. What if it’s bad money or blood money, either way, at the end of the day, it wasn’t her money. “Gah.” She impulsively took out her phone and bought – after mindlessly scrolling – watercolor paint. Harmless and silly, worst comes to worst, it could have been from her money? Anxiety frothing within her chest cavity and her mind pacing faster than her feet, she, picked up the painting she had dropped and sat down. Serene white swans the autumn leaves dotting the blue stretch of sky and lake. She silently smiled. After her prolonged ruminating over all the possibilities. Zara decided to leave her decision suspended. Yet the image of bills on the table were tacked to the back of the tapestry of her head. And Yousef, she could help him too. Anyway! She was running late.

***

Zara checked her phone to message Julia once she had parked. Her brother Yousef had messaged asking to borrow the space heater they had downstairs. She felt a pull to call Yousef and check on him. He had recently arrived back from studying medicine in Egypt. They could barely solder time to see each other; he was too busy revising for exam after exam or working to pay for them. But he needed to come over for iftar.

“Hey, Yousef.”

“Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Why’d you call Zara?” he asked in his usual apathetic tone.

“Remember you said you needed money for your PLAB and CA exams?” “Yeah” he elongated with a questioning undertone.

“I can give you the money.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I have the money; I can give it to you.”

She was biting her nails in the midst of pushing the words out. If you say it, you have to do it. Yet she couldn’t possibly tell him how she had come to acquire the sum. He wouldn’t accept it and he would force her hand to return it somehow somewhere. Yousef was like that. Righteous and right. After all, he could afford to be like that. He needs the help she debated staring into her reflection in the side mirror.

“Zara, What the hell? Don’t worry about it, you don’t even have money.” She tried to interrupt but he spoke over her. “Why are you randomly bringing this up?” he chuckled. “I inherited the money.” “You inherited it?” There was an awkwardness that settled within the air that seeped through the bridge of their devices. Her mother had left his father when he was a kid, came to England, and married hers. They were close, but it was complicated. “Yeah, my father’s lawyer got in touch a few days ago” the lie was smooth, slippery, and easy to mould into words. She couldn’t pinpoint why but she didn’t want to tell him. He was superstitious like their mother. Open umbrellas bring death into the house. Recite this prayer before you come in and this one before you step out. She smiled in relief when he caved. She had always wanted to repay Yousef for his kindness, even if it had been merely a few brash kind words, a ruffle of her hair as, or a proud gummy smile.

***

Zara dropped by her dreadful drab bank branch after her lunch. Productivity and all that jazz. She was cutting through the lunch crowds of Canary Wharf when she spotted the Rolex store. A cliché staring-at-the window-display moment. Although she wasn’t awe-struck per se, just in a bit of a moral predicament. The thought of purchasing the watch for her fiancé Andre sparked excitement she so scarcely felt. Yet she was still reluctant to spend frivolously. This specific watch on display wasn’t the one he wanted, but its pristine glaze represented what he could have. Andre had won first chair violin she reasoned—plus it was his thirtieth birthday in a few days. The meagre gifts she had bought him would pale in comparison. It was in her means to do so. So, why not? And so, she followed her feet into the store.

***

The next few days were gloomy and grey, full of rain. Zara hauled her mother’s favorite homemade dishes to the hospital. There was a lot—Yousef was coming over to eat today. The hospital visit was the usual assortment of dullness, death, and the antiseptic awkward air of the mundane. Zara’s mother, after complaining about everything in general and nothing in particular, had asked for their old photo albums. She internally scowled and cowered; they were stashed within the dark dingy basement below. She mentally noted that she would snatch them once she got home, then practice piano before Andre got home. That way they could practice their duet together after dinner.

Zara struggled to shake off the rain and close her umbrella whilst stepping into the house. She barely managed to close it to aggressively wipe her shoes against the doormat, when it burst open again. “Ughh, for God’s sake.” She grabbed at the damn thing clasping and buttoning it thoroughly this time then shutting out the howling wind and rain. After taking her coat off and following through with her usual routine, she sighed again for dramatic effect, then went to brew some tea.

“Okay albums,” she said to no one in particular and commenced with her search. There was a stale moldy stench characteristic to the room. Over the years a plethora of junk had accumulated to occupy majority of the space. “Albums are in the corner storage unit.” After extracting the three large albums smothered in dust she was curious to check the locked section at the bottom of the unit. They never opened it because her mum had always shrieked “No. Cursed.” “Hmmmm.” With help of the toolbox, she laboriously broke the lock apart. Inside was her dad’s large leather duffel bag. A few random tidbits peaking out. “Whelps, that was not worth the work.”

She picked up the little black diary, dusting it off the particles dancing in the light. “Ew,” She wiped the cloying dust from her hands onto her trousers and sat down tugging at the lapel. Excitement tickled at her. What if it was a diary of her dad’s everyday life? She had never known that he had kept a diary? ‘Anyway’ she mentally chalked. Zara made herself comfortable and started thumbing through the pages. The smile etched on her face staggered in three distinct stages till it dropped. Colors, not so vividly preserved with their original vivacity, but bursting forth in violent splashes. Her brain hadn’t caught up to what she had seen, before she could, she turned back to the beginning. Her heart thumping maniacally in her ears and mind racing to pierce thoughts together. Corpses? Severed bodies and morbid paintings of rearranged cadavers? The woman’s limbs were rearranged into a… statue of some sort, as though…a centerpiece? Her legs were twisted behind her, head semi-slashed lolling forward. Hands clasped in prayer and silky lumpy guts spilling forth. “What the fuck…” she mumbled to herself thumbing through the pages for more. It was art she told herself, it was art.

This woman had an uncanny dead-alive quality to her ghastly disposition. The sheer Pre-Raphaelite likeness of existence stitched onto the page in this gory fashion was unsettling. The skill, however, one had to agree was impressive. The grotesque but fantastical details called out to your eyes to probe further, and in a parallel fashion to the artist, stitch meaning. She flicked to the next page where a woman sat with a severed head fashioned in her hand as though she were Salome. Zara abruptly stood up. Then started pacing back and forth whilst scanning the pages suspended in the midst of frenzy and calm. There were symbols of some sort carved into their skin with blood gushing forth. “What the fuck is this?” she aggressively whispered. There were small scribbles next to each piece. ‘Pretty Joy’ one said. Zara bit down a scream. She frantically scratched at her brain unable decipher what the obscure shapes meant. Her heart leapt from an unrecognizable emotion. She was torn between looking through the whole book at once and deciphering each piece one-by-one. A sickening feeling was starting to condense within her—a cloying of fear and guilt coating her airways. She had to confront and assimilate what this meant.

Warm eyes, dimpled smile, and a moustache that tickled were how she remembered him. His eyes were as though there, piercing her frozen in place. She had heard loud noises and rattled at the door repeatedly screaming for him. “Zara” he had roared, yet calmly detached the door. A dark blackness glossing over the warmth. “Leave. Don’t you come in here again.” There was faint red splatter on his face, no smile in place. Joy! Joy had gone missing. Her hands dropped the book to stifle her silent scream.

***

Someone was calling her incessantly, grunting in frustration she violently grabbed her phone with an aggressive “Hello?” It was Andre.

“Zara”? He sounded wrong.

“Andre, what’s wrong?”

“Where are you?”

“Home. Why?”

“Okay sit for a second.” What now?

“Why, you’re scaring me.” Her insides clenched in fear.

“Is it mum?”

“What? No, no.”

“Then what’s wrong?” the words tumbled out angrier than she intended, the anxiety leaking through.

“Yousef and I got into an accident.”

Her brain hadn’t comprehended the words fully as though they were abstract-arbitrary-detached from reality. “Are you both okay? Where’s Yousef?” a voice replied. Oh God. She clutched her face with her spare hand as though to hold her head together. “We’re…Yousef needs to be taken in for surgery, can you get to Royal London?” “Yeah, yeah I’m on my way now” finally breaking trance, her limbs automatically moved as she spoke. A doctor was talking to Andre. “Andre, Andre are you injured, are you okay?” “I’m fine.” He wasn’t. “I’m fine, it’s ….My wrist’s injured. It’s fine. Yousef was the one driving—he got hit, badly.” What could she possibly say? “I’m so sorry Andre. Is it bad? What did…what did the doctor say?” A few beats of silence. “I need to go in for surgery” his voice broke “I’m sorry, the watch you bought me is completely shattered too” he laughed off.

There was a sinking feeling, a familiar sensation of oil and water sickening guilt and silent dread. She couldn’t say the words but they were loud and clear in her head. She slammed the car door shut. “I’m on my way, it’s going to be fine, we can get it fixed.” Could they? She could barely focus her vision blurry and mind in frenzy. The images of the women, the cadavers kept flashing reappearing, the tears searing out in panic, but she drove on. “I have to go now, they’re calling me.”