HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some writers and artists who’d sent in work the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, in the run-up to the release of The Green Issue…
Vanwy MacDonald Arif
Concealed
Fatima wished she didn’t know the statue was there. Peeping Tom’s sallow, grimacing face twisted perversely. An untidy black beard could not hide how strangely elongated his neck was. Green eyes peeked obliquely, malevolent like his grin. Mounted over the entrance to the precinct, Peeping Tom saw all. And he wasn’t the only one.
The perception that she was being watched never left Fatima. She felt it every day. When she stepped from the gaudy brightness of the department store into the murky city, she was never alone.
At first she thought her imagination was on over-time. Time-and-a-half. Unsurprising, considering that the staffroom chat centred on the Coventry Cutter.
Five people had been attacked near the precinct.
“Bloody cops. Never there when you need them,” said Rosie.
“It’s not like they ever caught Jack is it?” she added.
Fatima looked confused.
“Jack the Ripper!”
Rosie’s fixation with true-life crime gave her an easy familiarity with names like ‘Ted Bundy’ and ‘Fred West’. A stifling sense of scrutiny sunk Fatima into imitation of herself. Her voice, when heard, was robotic.
“Good morning madam. Would you like to try the Chanel,” she’d ask flatly.
Like Peeping Tom, Fatima squinted surreptitiously at the customers. Was someone lurking behind the moulded mannequins? Their fibre-glass gaping seemed to shrink her, causing her to miss several sales.
Usually, Rosie and Fatima lunched together, visiting a different fern-coloured food-shack every day. They’d been friends since nursery. No longer the solid little girl with rebellious brown curls, Rosie flicked her straightened blonde hair and did her comic jazz-hands.
“Hot dog?” she asked.
Beyond the display window, shoppers dissolved into heavy fog, which pushed against the glass, peering in, searching. Fatima gazed towards the store front, wondering what might happen if the glass gave-way.
“Come on, Miss Cat’s Eyes!” Rosie said.
“What?”
“Your eyes are green today. New eye shadow?”
Fatima frowned. Green eyes reminded her of hunting owls and cruel cats. Fatima described her own eyes as blue, ignoring the emerald glints.
“I’m not hungry. I’ve got flu,” Fatima said.
“You do look flushed,” said Rosie. “No phone?” She bit the end off her bratwurst at the staff-room table.
“Given up social media,” Fatima said.
“So you don’t know about Shabnum’s party on Saturday?” Red ketchup dripped from Rosie’s glossy lips.
“Not going.”
Rosie tore at the sausage and shrugged.
Fatima didn’t know which oppressed her most; the ashen mornings or the leaden evenings. She felt observed wherever she was. Even in the bus, heaving with pallid-faced workers, Fatima was anxious. Gazing through grimy windows, she imagined hands tugging her red hair; taking her.
The light was later and the frost less relenting each day. Head down, eyes fixed on the gum spattered pavement, Fatima listened for anything that might be different. At the bus-shelter, spotted with postcode venom, slouched a man; his face behind a newspaper. He’d never been there before. Inside deep pockets, her hands became fists. Had the watcher walked before her? Ready to seize her as she relaxed, assuming she’d made it safely to the bus? The man appeared absorbed in the news. ‘Coventry Ripper at Large.’ stated the headline. There it was. The Cutter had killed.
At work, the talk was of nothing else.
“I was going to the cinema tonight but Dad won’t let me,” said Rosie.
As Rosie broadcast details of the murder, Fatima felt shaky. On Fridays they caught the bus together. Unwilling to hear more of Rosie’s serial- killer facts, Fatima excused herself and tried a new route. Despite placing a sharp metal phone-charm between her knuckles, as was her habit, Fatima regretted stepping down from the number 17. The street was unlit. The single-decker pulled away and the driver didn’t seem to see her frantic waving. Then she heard a discordant metallic jingle.
“Damn!”
The phone-charm, her dagger as she called it, had dropped from her hand. She looked to the ground without expectation; night hid everything.
This part of the city, once crowded with shops, had, like the rest of Coventry, become like a ghost town. Only last year Fatima had visited with Rosie. They’d drunk milkshake at a dessert parlour on the corner. Now, she’d have to walk alone past brick factories and deserted car parks, fettered by thorny shrubs.
Fatima walked quickly, almost clearing the dilapidated buildings, broken metal-shutters and shattered glass. Then. Footsteps. She hurried, mud splashing her calves. One more minute and she’d get to Shelley Abbey, the inner city area where she lived. A few steps more and she’d draw even with the grubby door of the burger place.
Hands grabbed. Clamped her arms to her side. Fatima screamed.
“Fats, shut up. I’m joking!”
Through stinging tears Fatima recognised Aysa, another childhood friend. Vomit swallowed, Fatima forced herself to calm.
“God, Fats! I’m not a Jinn.”
“Of course you aren’t!”
Fatima was surprised to hear the word. Jinn sat in her memory along with the smell of unheated mosque rooms and sweets hidden beneath Arabic primers.
“What are you even doing here? This isn’t your way home.”
“Getting a burger,” Fatima said.
“Shutdown.”
“Oh. Anyway. Why are you here?” Fatima asked.
They passed betting-shops, pubs and fried chicken outlets.
“I’m a packer. I shove fake football-shirts into boxes,” Aysa explained. “Why aren’t you coming to my sister’s Mendhi?”
Fatima missed her stride. “I’m sick,” she said.
“Not too sick to run to the fast-food shop.”
“I hate the way everyone sits around telling Jinn stories,” said Fatima. “You know. Jinn incinerates mosque. Worshippers baked like kebabs on the grill. I’ve grown past it and that’s all that ever happens at a Mendhi. D’ you remember how I wanted to know how-come Jinn fire is green?” remembered Fatima.
“So I lit a candle and chucked food colouring in to scare you? How can I forget your face? But I was only seven.”
Fatima shivered.
“And there won’t be any Jinn stories. Not at Shabnum’s Mendhi.”
They’d arrived at Jackson Street where Aysa lived.
“So you’ll come tomorrow! Dad’ll pick you up and drop you.”
Fatima, remembering the watcher, hesitated.
“Please, Fats. Me and Shabnum need a proper friend.”
“You’ve loads of friends. Rosie’s coming.”
Aysa kicked a stone into the gutter. “We need a friend who hasn’t been saying that Shabnum is possessed by a Jinn.”
“Who’s saying that?”
“Everyone except for Rosie, and that’s because she doesn’t know what a Jinn is. Shabnum’s getting married quickly to get away from it all.”
Fatima smothered the temptation to ask why anyone thought Shabnum had a Jinn in her. It would be mean. As would refusing to go to the party, she realised.
Aysa anticipated the question anyway. “Shabnum’s been stressed. Uni was hard.”
“Okay. I’ll be ready for six?”
“Yep!” Aysa disappeared down the litter-strewn street.
“Thanks,” Fatima said to Aysa’s dad as she stepped from his elderly van. Her white Sari-suit, all spangles and sequins, seemed too big for her now.
“Couldn’t have you walking with that Monster loose,” said Aysa’s father, a cadaverous looking man with deep-set eyes.
“Daaad!” said Aysa.
“You girls should stay in the house, you know ”
Aysa’s semi-detached was at the end of a terrace. Set back in an overgrown garden, it must once have been a cut above. Now it was as needy as the rest. White render had soured and cracked; the crazy-paving was obliterated by weeds.
To her relief, Fatima knew all the girls at the Mendhi. Eight of them squashed into Aysa’s front-room. It looked just the way it always had; patterned red carpet, Indian divan, a glass cabinet containing the Quran and a heavy wooden dining-chair for the bride-to-be. The girls proficient with a henna bag created intricate patterns on Shabnum’s hands while the rest helped out with Shabnum’s make-up. Fatima, feeling rather surplus, picked at the burfi.
Shabnum’s face was taut as Rosie added shimmer to her tight lips and Aysa braided her sister’s hair. The gas-fire was on full and with so many in the room, Fatima felt sick. She wished she hadn’t to wait for the party to end before she could go home. She stumbled out dizzily. Her feet found the kitchen. The work surfaces, thick wooden slabs, were deeply cut. Of course. Aysa’s dad was a butcher. This must be where he butchered private order meat.
At least it was cool. Fatima rested her hot head against the cold tiles and thought about the watcher. Was he here? Had he been outside her house, staring from the shadows of the boarded-up shops? Was he surprised when she disappeared into the van? Or had he sat in a parked car gawking? If so he merely needed to turn on the engine and follow. He could be here.
Footsteps clattered down the corridor. He had got into the house. Fatima looked around for something sharp. In the corner, half-hidden under a stained tea-cloth, were butcher’s knives. As she moved towards them, the door opened.
“I know about you.”
Fatima didn’t know whether to be relieved or not as Shabnum entered. The girl’s face was pale and overwrought. Fatima saw that her way out was blocked.
“I’m either mad or possessed.”
Fatima’s mind searched for words.
“Either way, you shouldn’t be alone with me.”
Fatima was surprised to hear a voice inside her own head agree.
“Because I see you. The real you.”
Shabnum’s scarlet fingernails, newly extended, dug into her own hand. Gashes disrupted the convoluted swirls of rust-coloured patterning. Fatima watched, fascinated yet fearful, as blood soaked into Shabnum’s sleeve.
“The Jinn is here,” said Shabnum.
Then she lurched forward, grabbing Fatima’s suit. Chiffon ripped as Fatima pulled away from the older girl, ran to the back-door and tried the handle. It was open. She sprinted down the gunnel, not stopping until Shabnum’s footsteps faded.
She realised, with panic and inevitability, that she was lost. She had veered into a service-yard, full of skips over-flowing with food and rubbish. The smell of fat pumped out by a raucous air-filter confirmed this. Only then did Fatima consider the watcher.
A noise. A scuttling. Rats scurried between bins. Sounds of scrabbling ; scratching. A cat leapt. A laugh. And a whistling.
From behind tall metal-racks stuffed with decaying cardboard, appeared a youth. His face, lit by his phone torch, was stark white. His lowered hood cast his face into silhouette. Another boy stepped forward. Then a third. Scarves masked their features.
“Alright, love? Lost, are we?”
“Looks like we found ourselves a little Muslim girl,” said the second.
“Where’s your rucksack, darling?” laughed the third.
He moved closer to her.
“Don’t worry. We aren’t the Coventry Ripper. But he’s out there. Waiting for a throat to slice. Be friendly to us and we’ll let you go. You can run home so the Ripper doesn’t get you.”
“Be very, very nice to the lads,” said the first boy.
Rigid with fear and anger, Fatima opened her mouth wide. Howled into the night. “No! I won’t be frightened.”
That’s when the watcher appeared.
At first there was only green smoke. Next, green fire. Nibbling at the bottom of the first boy’s hoodie, stroking his body, jumping from arm to chest as the other youths tried to punch it out. Then the fire was licking faces, tonguing mouths, pulling flesh, probing bones, melting…
Fatima stood. The watcher no longer looked at her. It was out from her now, consuming her attackers.
When the green flame subsided it seemed to wait. It was seeing her again. Should she run? Escape ? Fatima felt the watcher would allow her to.
No.
Now Fatima understood the watcher had been looking at her from within, she felt differently. Yes it was Jinn. But it hadn’t harmed her. Having the Jinn inside would make her safe; be her strength.
Fatima spoke sweetly, as if to a sister.
“Let’s be one.”
Her lips parted. The green flame slipped back inside her.
Vanwy MacDonald Arif is a Coventry writer and graduate from the Warwick Writing Programme. Supported by partner Ahmed, Vanwy writes poetry, short fiction, leads workshops, edits and co-presents Flash Fix on RAW radio. Vanwy is interested in post-colonial gothic and magical realism.