Hints We Never Saw

Blurb

Saadiq found Uncle Jam's dead body, lifeless in his one-bedroom flat. And Saadiq alone holds the truth of why his uncle died.

Those that caused his death have no idea, none at all.

But Saadiq will make them realise, even if it's the last thing he does.

A riveting short story by S. H. Miah that is equally as thrilling as it is poignant. Read it today!

Chapter 1

Saadiq was the one who'd found Uncle Jam's dead body in his one-bedroom flat on the outer skirts of London, in Ilford.

Saadiq had, admittedly, been excited that fateful day. Uncle Jam (or Jamal as the rest of the family called him) had invited Saadiq over to his flat for the first time. It was a first because Uncle Jam was as secretive as they came—straight after A-Levels he'd moved out of their family house in South London and right to the farthest edges of the East. A strange move, especially for a Bangladeshi boy who lived in quite a traditional household where children weren't expected to leave even after marriage.

But whatever, a then sixteen-year old Saadiq was merely happy to have a room to himself. And there would be ample time to link up with his uncle, with whom he'd grown up as basically brothers, whenever they fancied. Ilford wasn't that far from South, in any case. And distance made hearts grow fonder, as they said.

But it seemed as if Uncle Jam's heart hadn't grown fonder—it had frozen over entirely.

For a few months, aside from random sporadic texts, Uncle Jam kept little contact with Saadiq, Saadiq's parents, and everyone else in the wider family. Visits weren't allowed—it wasn't actively said, but the message was clear.

Why else would someone move out so quickly after becoming an adult, essentially dropping off from everyone's radar? And have to live, at least initially, in a shared house with only part time work and their student maintenance loan and bursary to live off?

It didn't make sense to Saadiq.

But as he would come to learn with Uncle Jam, little sense did make.

Until it all would make sense.

But that part was for later.

That day, Saadiq had been excited because, after four years of only talking through texts and speaking over voice chat in Call of Duty Warzone, Uncle Jam mentioned something in the morning.

“Yo…what d'you think about…coming over to visit, innit?”

“What?” Saadiq had exclaimed, head jerking back from surprise so hard that his headset fell off. Thumped the carpet that cushioned his bare feet.

In the resulting distraction of frantically picking it back up, Saadiq had been killed in-game. Meaning he had to wait thirty seconds until he respawned, so long as Uncle Jam managed to stay alive and not succumb to the opposition himself. After readjusting his headset firmly back on his skull, Saadiq asked—

“Come over to visit? Like, your house?”

“My flat, yeah,” the reply came after a few seconds of pregnant pause. “Like, come over and we can…like, chill and get some PFC and all that, you get me.”

Saadiq hadn't been able to believe his ears, so after rubbing the side of headset a few times, he said—

“Bro—is Jamzy, the guy who basically fell off the planet like four years ago, legit telling me to come over?”

“Yeah I am,” Uncle Jam said, though his voice was a little terse. A level of tension injected into it that Saadiq hadn't heard before.

Uncle Jam was, although an avid slang user who sounded like they both smoked drugs and dealt them, someone with a remarkably soft voice. He'd always been someone who pleaded rather than fought—a trait Saadiq always found odd, but never commented on.

Everyone was different at the end of the day. Different personalities and traits that all meshed to form the person themselves. And in Islamic history, there were some companions of the prophet who were fierce whilst others were more shy and meek. That alone didn't make them any more or less in the eyes of Allah.

So what gave Saadiq the right to view Uncle Jam negatively for his traits?

Regardless, Saadiq did always find it odd. And it made Uncle Jam's tense tone even more odd to hear.

But the excitement of visiting his uncle quelled his fears, then stomped on them, then banished them to the farther corners of his mind.

“When you thinking, then?” Saadiq asked, having respawned and even gotten a kill.

“Like, three o’ clock.” Uncle Jam took a deep breath, then let it out, sounding grainy over the voice chat. “Don't bring no one else though, just you innit. Cool?”

“Definitely cool,” Saadiq said, elation brimming in his chest for the first time in years.

They both died in-game moments later, and were consequently forced back to the menus to start another one.

But Saadiq hadn't cared one bit.

He was seeing Uncle Jam later that day, after all.

At least that part—unlike almost everything else—wasn't a lie.

Chapter 2

Ilford was sort of a strange place for Saadiq to traverse through, phone in hand with Google Maps showing him the way to Uncle Jam's flat. On one hand, Ilford had lovely detached houses spanning rows and rows of different roads, bustling high streets with more shops and Asian smells than you knew what to do with, and a sense of freshness in the air that was like breathing with an air purifier constantly up in your nose. Almost aggressively fresh, in a way, like it was trying too hard.

Space was another thing Saadiq noticed—it was his first time here, after all, and Google Maps made it out to seem like everything was bunched together and crowded in. In South London things were crammed like rats in a cage, everyone slaving away whilst their belongings got fewer and smaller over time. But in Ilford, everything appeared larger than life almost, as though Uncle Jam's old infectious personality had seeped into the surroundings.

And yet a gloominess stuck to the area like gum underneath a table. Not there unless you probed it with your fingers, but once you noticed it more bits of ancient gum would plague every other surface in sight.

Saadiq shivered, and it was due to more than just the autumn chills that typically overlook London at this time of year. He paused and glanced down at Google Maps again, rotating his phone to get his bearings since the signal was a little off, before setting down another quiet calm road and into the street on which Uncle Jam's block of flats was located.

Saadiq froze in place from the shock of how different everything looked.

It was as rundown as something out of inner city London—and not just inner city London, but its poorest areas. As though crossing from gentrified Aldgate into Whitechapel past Aldgate East Station. Bits of litter, wrappers and rotten fruit and debris-like fragments, almost punctured the pavement Saadiq trod on, embedding their permanent residencies into the concrete. Bins overflowed that hadn't been collected in months from the look of things, with the flats themselves looking worn down, paint chipped and discolouration settling into every bit of exposed brickwork, as though forced to fight against its occupiers for thousands of years. And a dank smell drifted through the air like the street was alive and hadn't showered in months.

As if every flat was homeless amongst the rest of Ilford, fighting for its territory on this one forgotten, neglected road.

Uncle Jam's block of flats sat a little deeper into the street, and Saadiq felt more creeped out the further he ventured in. Cars more rusted than clean, parked at all sorts of angles, bolted themselves down on either side. One of them had its front smashed in from grille to windscreen, and its rear passenger window shattered, with the glass having rained onto the pavement. A chill swept through the air, more whisper of death than gentle sweet nothings, and Saadiq wrapped his jacket tighter around himself.

His shoe scuffed the ground, and crunched a dead leaf underfoot.

Saadiq's teeth chattered, not just from the cold.

But finally, before long, he reached the block wherein Uncle Jam's flat was located. On the fifteenth floor out of fifteen, according to the text Saadiq received after their gaming session concluded.

‘Ring number 15-C,’ the text had read.

Saadiq did just that, and the ringing sound rang in his ears for a few seconds. Then a few seconds more. An incessant noise, like an alarm bell, but the excitement seeping into Saadiq's bones quelled any annoyance he might have had.

The first time he was seeing Uncle Jam in years.

But Uncle Jam never opened the door.

And that ringing ceased moments later. Like a static radio station suddenly cutting out. As though it had forcibly been turned off.

“Please try again,” a female voice said from the intercom.

So Saadiq did, and again the same thing happened. An annoying ringing that echoed in his ears, before being violently cut off once the answer never came.

Maybe he's out or something, Saadiq thought. Or maybe his doorbell ain't working. Wouldn't put it past a block like this.

Saadiq glanced around, but the area was deadly silent. Even the wind slowing its whispers. In the distance, he spotted boys in tracksuits lurking with their trousers halfway down their legs and hoodies similarly halfway down their faces.

With knives probably hidden halfway down their underwear.

Alarm bells began ringing in Saadiq's mind. He was stereotyping, sure, but the stories around South London told a reality only those who lived it would understand. A lone sheep outside his ends like Saadiq was ripe for the robbing.

Thinking there was nothing else to do, Saadiq just grabbed the door handle and pulled it. And magically, the door swung open, creaking like an old person's spine after a surgery but opening nonetheless.

Makes sense, Saadiq thought, closing the door behind him and entering into the dimly lit reception area.

Chapter 3

Inside, the autumn chill was at least a little easier to manage—though Saadiq still shivered, perhaps from another source of unease he hadn't yet uncovered. White lighting failed to be so bright, instead coming out as a dull sort of mashed up colour. Like someone had mixed the original light with brown and then lazily lathered it against every chipped-paint wall in sight. In front of him was a lift cubicle with grey stains against the front, and the button had something sticky against it—was it gum that hadn't yet come off, or the red remains of someone's blood after getting their head slammed against it?

Saadiq had thankfully never lived on an estate such as this, aside from a brief childhood stint he barely remembered. His mother and father had managed to snag a two bedroom council house in the days before the council stopped giving them out easy as pie. Saadiq having his own room of course, since he had been, and still was, an only child. After Saadiq's Nana and Nani had passed away of illness, his parents had taken in Uncle Jam, since no one else would, and stored him in Saadiq's room on a spare bed.

Most kids would've been a little miffed at suddenly having to share a room and losing their private space. But Saadiq was thankful to have a friend for life with whom he could share every secret and make lasting memories. And someone who was an older brother who could help him through life—Saadiq was thrilled.

If only he knew.

Saadiq reached a finger out and pressed the button of the lift as carefully as possible. Then snapped his finger back to his side. A whirring sound (or was it grating?) that resembled a dying howl of pain emanated from the lift's innards. Once the doors opened, the reeking smell of piss slapped Saadiq in the face so hard he turned the other cheek.

So potent that he clamped a hand over his mouth and nose and beelined it for the stairs. Nearly letting out the contents of his beri gus curry and rice lunch in the process. The smell there wasn't much better, to be frank, but open windows at least brought in some air fresh enough to carry vital oxygen.

Since Uncle Jam lived on the fifteenth floor, the climb was absolutely excruciating. Saadiq did go to the gym a couple times a week, lifting weights and getting a good pump, but cardio wasn't exactly his forte. By the time he reached the fifteenth floor, clawing open the door whilst hunched over, he was huffing and puffing as though wishing to blow the whole block of flats down.

His legs burned as he stepped onto the floor and, through pants of breath and slightly blurry eyes, scanned the hallway for 15-C.

Right at the far end, he noticed.

Nice. More walking.

Saadiq ignored his mind's complaints and instead focussed on the thudding of his heart. On the excitement that carried him across the hall and to that brown coloured wooden door with a ring doorbell right next to it.

As a little joke, Saadiq leaned down and waved to the camera before pressing the button.

A ringing sound echoed through the house, for a few seconds, before fading into silence. A rather eerie silence, with no other sound being made from inside the flat.

No response.

The tiniest worry slipped into Saadiq's mind like a drop of poison. But for now, he ignored it. That anticipation, as always, clouding over everything else.

But poison, even a drop, could spread like wildfire.

It was after the third ring went unanswered that Saadiq began to worry proper.

Maybe he’s gone out to the shops or something, Saadiq thought, feet tapping the stained floor and his hand on chin. Then his mind remembered those boys from earlier lurking the streets, fists halfway down their trousers likely gripping the hilt of some crazy dangerous knife.

What if they did something to Uncle Jam outside? What if they tried to rob whatever he’d bought from the shops, or stabbed him after a brief altercation?

Saadiq wouldn’t put it past hooligans to do such a thing. He’d heard many stories of the same happening in South London, or videos on TikTok from East London fights.

Panic seized Saadiq’s mind, and he was about to bolt down the stairs again were it not for one convenient fact that caught the corner of his eye.

The front door to Uncle Jam’s flat—it was open. Ever so slightly on the right side, the door was ajar. As though someone had tried to close it, but couldn’t quite push it all the way.

Or someone tried to keep it open. That’s also possible.

Saadiq didn’t want to think of that other possibility. Cold rationality doused his mind and cooled his worries—maybe Uncle Jam just didn’t want him to knock on the door and wanted him to merely open it right away.

But then…why didn’t his uncle answer the doorbell when Saadiq had rung it?

With tense fingers, Saadiq poked his right hand into that gap on the door’s right side and tugged it forwards. With a brief shuffle and a creak reminiscent of old staircases, the door gave way. And Saadiq’s hand fell through the resulting gap. And a film of dust crept across the ground as though forming a waypath for Saadiq to find…

Find…

Find…

Find his uncle’s body in the hallway, lying on his back, eyes closed and body utterly limp, tense skin on what appeared to be a lifeless face, hands outstretched on either side as though attempting a hug yet never quite managing it.

What puzzled Saadiq through the sheer shock was how skinny his uncle looked lying there on the floor. Sure, Uncle Jam never had more rolls than a bakery, but he wasn’t exactly stick thin either. Saadiq had always joked that his uncle looked like an uncle despite his age.

But a little belly was far different to a body with more bones than skin. A body that looked as if vultures had ravaged it over years.

Saadiq remembered to breathe. “What on earth…”

Saadiq leaned down on shaky trembling legs, sweat perforating his forehead as his hand touched Uncle Jam’s face.

Cold.

Way too cold.

The kind of cold you would find in a cemetery in the dead of night. He tried to find a pulse against Uncle Jam’s icy neck, then his chilly wrist, then poked his face to wake him up—but nothing. Not a single sign of life.

And below that wrist, in the fist, was held a bottle of some kind of pills. An orange bottle that almost glowed in the dimness. With a few of those little white circles of death having spilled onto the wooden flooring.

He’s dead, that voice within Saadiq told him, with a tone of finality. He’s actually dead for real.

And the worst part wasn’t just that his uncle was dead. It was that he had killed himself, for a reason lost to the world. Overdosed on some kind of prescribed medicine, from the looks of things, when not three hours earlier Saadiq had spoken to him. Had played PlayStation with him, battling together on the front lines.

Had promised him that they would meet later today.

But not like this. Never like this.

Not in a million years did Saadiq ever think…

Through the tears Saadiq didn’t even bother to wipe or stop, he grabbed his phone and called the ambulance, voice shaky as he told them the situation. Mind in all sorts of dark places and the contents of his stomach threatening to shoot up his throat and onto the floor beside his uncle.

Nausea ate at his belly as though gnawing at it. Clawing at it. Trying to rip open the exterior to get at the juicy bits inside. Some monster devouring his gut bit by bit.

Those chills racing down his spine and across every inch of his skin. Hairs on his forearms rising in protest, but flattening back down from the sheer fear and disgust and horror raging through Saadiq’s body.

He could almost taste the blood leaking into the cracks between the wooden floorboards.

He dropped to his knees, legs no longer able to hold him up, tension brimming inside his arms, questions frothing in his mind the same way some white substance from the medicine frothed at Uncle Jam’s mouth.

And then he saw it.

In Uncle Jam’s other hand, the one not holding the bottle of pills—

A slip of paper.

Curled so tight in the fist the paper looked ready to choke to death.

Without a second thought, Saadiq pried that paper out of Uncle Jam’s tight and cold fist. Then unfurled it, his heart pounding with tumult, and read what was inside.

And Saadiq—the more he gazed at it, the more he found his blood running cold. Icy. Frozen over with a mix between guilt and shame and anger.

At himself, and at everyone else in his family.

He slotted that piece of paper into the sole of his shoe so no one would find it, even after a potential search, and then waited for the ambulance to arrive.

That slip of paper had given him an idea, and Saadiq knew what he had to do.

Chapter 4

It was a month later that Saadiq finally enacted the plan he’d concocted whilst waiting for the ambulance inside Uncle Jam’s near-destroyed old block of flats in Ilford. The ambulance had come to the same conclusion as Saadiq—that Uncle Jam was dead. The autopsy had revealed a suicide—a clear cut case with no suicide note and no real understanding of what had led Uncle Jam to overdosing.

Only Saadiq knew that tale of events.

Saadiq’s parents had asked for a police enquiry to go out—maybe his uncle had been murdered and then the crime scene made to look like a suicide. But Uncle Jam lived on the fifteenth floor, and no one had any probable cause to murder him. And it wasn’t like Saadiq’s parents, who hadn’t kept in contact with his uncle, could put forward a proper reason.

They were just firing shots into the dark and hoping one of them would pierce some semblance of truth.

The guilt inside them likely causing them to do so.

Also, the fact that Saadiq had found the body and alerted the ambulance services rendered that theory false.

Unless, of course, his parents were accusing him of murdering Uncle Jam. After all, he was the only one who'd bothered to keep in contact with his uncle, despite how limited that contact was.

But despite their countless flaws (which Saadiq planned to reveal in due course), they weren’t that ridiculous. Weren’t that spiteful. Not towards him, anyway.

It was a fairly downcast day over London when Saadiq enacted his plan. Not that he'd planned it to be that way, of course—he wasn't omnipotent after all. Shadows glanced over the country from ghoulish clouds floating overhead, shedding a little light onto the cars rolling up to his house and parking outside.

Saadiq had already set up the visitor permits ahead of time. Then logged out of the council parking website—he would never need it again, Allah-willing, after today.

Faces streamed in through the front door, with Saadiq's mother and father greeting them all in. Shoes deposited on the shoe rack, before bodies floated into the living room where seats and food were prearranged. Saadiq would let them eat first—that was the best for now.

Smiles were there, of course, since no one could fake everything one hundred percent. But the smiles were noticeably muted—considering Saadiq had suggested this dawat to remember Uncle Jam, beaming radiant grins weren't par for the course.

At least the food itself was banging. Goru gus, beef curry, with sticky rice instead of regular basmati, which was always a delicacy. There was gual mas as well on the side, and a few other fish dishes, plus some vegetable curries like spinach with khatol seeds layered within the greenery. But Saadiq never touched the vegetable curries. He was a protein man through and through, though the carbs from the rice did dull his energy somewhat.

But the prospect of his plan perked him right back up.

After eating, and once everyone else was dulled down with boring conversation, Saadiq set to work. Whilst no one was looking, and whilst his cute little pesky cousins were otherwise occupied with their parents’ phones, Saadiq grabbed the house keys and quietly locked the front door. Then flicked over to the electrical distribution board in the storeroom.

He'd never noticed it before, but each room had its own switch. Meaning he could separate out the kids playing in the dining room with the rest of the adults in the living room. But that was a little risky, so instead he ushered the kids to play in the garden turf with a football, then locked them outside.

They weren't at fault here. They didn't need to be present for what Saadiq had planned.

The house’s electrics were then cut off, killing the Wi-Fi and lights, and the locked doors ensured no one could escape. Or enter, though that was less of an issue.

“What’s going on?” someone said. Probably Saadiq’s mother. Not that he cared, since his mind was on other things.

“The Wi-Fi is gone,” one of the uncles on his dad’s side said. “Maybe we should turn the router on and off? That usually fixes things in my own house.”

“Light’s not even working,” his father said, and Saadiq heard the flicks of a light switch, likely the dining room one.

Saadiq let out a smirk, before reaching into his pocket. Fingering that slip of paper carefully deposited there. The slip of paper that told the whole story—Uncle Jam’s side of the story.

He quickly went upstairs to check on everything else he’d stashed. Once sure in the knowledge that those things were safe, he headed back downstairs.

Steeled himself with a deep breath. Fingering that slip of paper once more. Finding comfort in what Uncle Jam had written.

Then he opened the door and ordered everyone to sit down, voice loud and booming.

It was time, finally, to begin.

Chapter 5

“What is the meaning of this?” his uncle on his dad’s side asked. A portly old man with greying hair and so many wrinkles it was as if he lived under the waters of Bangladesh.

He gave Saadiq a little sneer when he spoke, as though looking down on a young boy unworthy of speech itself instead of seeing Saadiq as the man he was.

A common theme within Saadiq’s wider family, it seemed.

He would make that fact known very shortly.

“Everyone sit down,” Saadiq said, standing tall in the doorway. “NOW.”

Saadiq didn’t let his voice falter, and even his own father gazed at him warily as he took a seat. As though seeing him in a new light. Almost with a tinge of…was that fear in his father’s eyes?

It oddly made Saadiq feel a little proud of himself. Although the evening had just begun.

“Saadiq,” his mother chided from her seat at the table. “Don't speak to your father that wa—”

“NOW,” Saadiq shouted, some sort of possession overtaking him, as though that slip of paper was transferring confidence through his fingers to the rest of his body. “You will all listen to me…now.”

Thankfully, none of them objected. Likely stunned into silence from the fact that Saadiq, typically soft and reserved, was acting out like this.

He took a few deep breaths and held their eyes, one at a time, and the wariness in those eyes—it only served to brim his confidence. Bubble it like a potion in a cauldron about to overflow.

“We are here to remember Uncle Jam—or Jamal, as you all referred to him as,” Saadiq said, his fingers tensing over that piece of paper. “Or other names: Little Rat, Idiot, Stupid, kuttar bacha. I Wish You Never Existed.”

Saadiq watched them, all in turn, and noticed his father's brother, Khaled Sasa, gulp a lump in his throat. Forehead sweating, and he rubbed the back of his hand across those stress lines.

“I wonder why, Khaled Sasa, you wish he never existed. I wonder why you ever said that to him—directly to his face as well.”

The atmosphere could've been cut with a knife, diced up like meat cubes and served with a side of loaded fries.

“I never said that to him,” Khaled Sasa said with a panicked look on his face. “I swear, I never.”

The rest of those at the table—two other aunties called Taybah and Sumaya, and Saadiq’s mother and father—turned to stare at him.

And the impression was clear. They all believed, without a shadow of a doubt, that those words were said by Khaled Sasa. It was as close to his nature to utter scathing comments as his fingers were to his hands.

Because that was the essence of Bangladeshi families, wasn’t it? That those who behaved in disgusting ways were well known, gossiped about amongst family circles, but publicly their actions would never face consequences.

Abuse your children, your wider family—and no one will speak a word to outsiders. Even if it drives someone to taking their own life in the end.

At the back of Saadiq’s mind, he was aware that the person taking their own life made that choice. And they would, of course, face the consequences of that in the afterlife when Allah judged them.

But he couldn’t—under any circumstances—allow the other culprits to believe they were innocent in the entire matter. Believe that their hideous actions were well and truly justified. Believe that they would not be held accountable for their sins.

He couldn’t allow that to happen.

He fingered that slip of paper again, recalling the second thing that Uncle Jam had mentioned. Had scrawled onto the page, the meds clearly taking effect since, the more he wrote, the more dismembered his handwriting became.

The slurred writing spelling out his impending doom.

“You two are interesting cases, aren’t you?” Saadiq said, shifting his eyes and pinning them to his two aunts—and older siblings of his uncle. Taybah and Sumaya.

Though Saadiq had never really met them or gotten to know them—the piercing stares they levied at everyone else and the gossip that hissed from their mouths like the tongues of snakes—they were enough to know their ilk.

Devilish personalities, with claws so wicked they slashed everything in sight whilst barely realising the damage they were causing.

And Uncle Jam had illuminated those personality contours with specific details in his slip of paper.

“I never had any younger brothers,” Saadiq started.

“You were supposed to, Saadiq-fut,” his mother said, in an attempt to calm his anger. “But then that idiot Jamal came and ruined it all because we could not affor—”

“I never had any younger brothers,” Saadiq said, pinning his mother with a glare and promptly halting her words. “But Uncle Jam treated me the way an older brother should. Always including me in everything, teaching me what he'd learnt in life, helping me whenever I needed it. Guiding me whenever I made a mistake.”

He switched his glare to Taybah and Sumaya. “Tell me, then, how is it that the two of you used to rip him to shreds every single chance you got? Were you jealous that your younger brother did better than you? Couldn't handle someone younger getting better grades or having more friends at school or being smarter in every single way? And then never visiting him, giving him a call, not even a bloody text. What crime did he commit to get abandoned that way, huh?”

Taybah and Sumaya—his aunts who had never behaved like proper aunts even once—glanced at each other. Nervously. Cowards who wanted the other to speak first so they could stumble into the shadows with their tail between their legs. Hiding from Saadiq's rising ire.

Avoiding responsibility, avoiding accountability, every single small step of the way.

Eventually, after the silence became palpable and with cold sweats on everyone's foreheads, Taybah spoke first.

“I-it's a lie,” she stuttered, and when Saadiq's glare intensified she walked back her words slightly. “Well, n-not a lie but not the whole truth, anyway. Like, we did treat him well, didn't we, Sumaya?”

“Yeah, we did,” Sumaya agreed, nodding a little too eagerly, although a flash of annoyance preceded it at her sister flinging her the question. “Like, yeah it's tragic and that, that someone would kill themselves. But like, we never had anything to do with that. We barely ever saw him anyway—if he needed help and that, he could've seen us and chatted to us any time.”

“Could've seen the two sisters who never gave him the time of day for his entire life?” Saadiq said, the disgust dripping down his voice and right to his chilled heart.

Those same aunts had neglected him the entire way too. But at least he'd had parents. Uncle Jam was an orphan, and they had abandoned him regardless.

At the end, really, Uncle Jam didn't have anyone.

The slip of paper in Saadiq's pocket grew hot against his fingers. As though urging him to continue, and siphoning more anger into him.

Before Uncle Jam had left the house, Saadiq questioned why he took the abuse as much as he did. And Uncle Jam had replied that—“You can’t convince someone of their guilt when they are convinced of their innocence, innit. Like, it don’t matter how much you try, they’ll always see themselves as guiltily innocent, you get me. Deep down they know the truth, but they’ll always say some crap to make it seem like they ain’t guilty.”

Saadiq was slowly, and surely, beginning to understand Uncle Jam’s words.

“Ain't like you visited him, is it?” Khaled Sasa said. “It is not fair to blame your aunties like this, Saadiq. I know you are grieving—”

“And you all aren't?" Saadiq challenged, gritting his teeth. “You all came here acting all happy, smiling and gobbling up the curries like someone literally hadn't just killed themselves a month ago. And not ONE OF YOU spoke about him even once. Not even ONCE.”

Saadiq could feel the anger that had simmered beneath the surface finally threaten to boil over. Surging through his veins with a tenacity not even a tornado could match. He tried to quell the anger, the utter rage, but it wouldn’t be dampened. It would overpower every other sense if he wasn't careful.

His fingers trembled against that piece of paper, whilst his mouth blurted out whatever was on his mind.

The words he needed to say. He had to say. For Uncle Jam's sake as well as his own.

“And you two,” Saadiq said, switching to his parents. “You were never his real parents, fine, but you agreed to take him in and act as parents. But what did you do instead? You—you bullied a little orphan ever since he lost his own parents. Told him he wasn't good enough, belittled him whenever he tried to get your attention.”

Saadiq sighed, clenched that slip of paper now, the anger giving way to more emotions buried deep inside his chest. Emotions he hadn't tapped into in years.

“What did he ever do to you, huh? Every time I did something good, you lorded it over him as if he didn't belong in the family. Like he was an outsider. As if he was just some little rat you let live behind the kitchen cooker.”

“He took away our true second child,” his father snapped, his own anger flashing as he banged the dining table. “You—who are not even yet married let alone a father—would not understand in the least. You think we wanted to put up with him? You truly believe we wished for another mouth to feed when we were ourselves struggling?”

“So you took it out on a little kid? You were so frustrated that you decided a child should be the target of your anger? Is that what you're telling me?”

“He is the culprit of his own downfall, is he not?” Saadiq's mother said, her voice soft yet sharp as a knife-edge. “Killing himself—his own choice, no?”

The words so shocking that Saadiq, for the first time, was genuinely speechless. Throat drying up from the audacity of what his mother had just said.

To wholly blame Uncle Jam when they all had a part to—

“That's right,” Taybah said, jumping on Saadiq's silence, almost a glee in her voice. “Allah's given everyone free will. Doesn't matter what we did—he still made that choice in the end.”

“Correct,” Khaled Sasa said, smiling now. “Ultimately, without his own choice, he would still be alive. That is a fact that cannot be disputed.”

“So like, even if we did do all of that,” Sumaya said. “It don't make a difference. He was the one who took those pills.”

“So we can't be blamed, can we, in the end?” his father said, and his mother nodded along. And they all began patting each other on the back, verbally massaging the guilt out of each other, washing their hands as though the stained blood was not permanent.

As though Uncle Jam killing himself was just a choice he made on a whim, and not a flame erupting after they stoked the fire one too many times.

And Saadiq couldn't believe his eyes.

Couldn't believe his ears.

But he could believe his heart.

And he would always believe that, had Uncle Jam not been treated horribly, he would've still been alive today.

Still been breathing and laughing and smiling.

Still been the Uncle Jam Saadiq knew and loved.

Epilogue

Another portion of Saadiq's heart, the one not steeped in a relentless and ruthless anger, knew another truth. That people like his parents, his sasa, and his aunts—those of their kind always needed a victim to pursue the way a moth sought out light. The way lungs needed air and leaves needed the sun.

And if one light was extinguished, whether by themselves or by others, the result was very clear. That those moths wouldn't grieve the light—they would seek out another in quick succession.

And the next life to extinguish after Uncle Jam—

Saadiq suspected it to be his own.

The month after Uncle Jam’s suicide had been a busy one. Not least because Saadiq had set up this meeting to remember his uncle and remind his family of the sins they had committed. But also because Saadiq had a lot of planning of his own to do.

First there were the funeral preparations of course. The police conducting their investigation, the autopsy coming back to deem it a suicide and declare no criminal undertone to the death, and then the janazah prayer and actual burial of the body.

All in quick succession too, as though everyone wanted to be done with the matter and leave everything in the past, including their memories of Uncle Jam.

Saadiq had held back the emotions during the whole ordeal, including the police questioning and subsequent viewing of the body in the East London Mosque basement. The burial had been swift and quick—no long speeches beforehand, and in fact Saadiq and his father were the only ones there besides those that worked in the cemetery.

A pitiful ending, in truth. And Saadiq knew a similar fate could await him if he let his family aim the barrel at his head next.

Therefore he had to plan his escape, and scheme he did. Creating a proper route of escape, hatching a plot to make sure all his bases were covered and he could be as independent as required despite being a university student. Making sure all the right people were in the right place.

It all took time; thankfully, by the fateful meeting it had all been complete.

Now, however, after his family had successfully convinced themselves they were not at all at fault for Uncle Jam’s death, Saadiq turned the electrics back on properly. Ignored the snide comments hurled his way from Khaled Sasa and his two aunts.

They, obviously, hadn’t taken kindly to his grilling of them earlier.

Saadiq unlocked the garden door and let his little cousins back in. Gave each of them hugs, not knowing if this was the last time he would see them or not.

They were baffled, of course, an innocent confusion entering their eyes as they showed Saadiq the different types of dirt they had collected in grubby hands and regaled him with how many goals they had scored in football.

I’m sorry, Saadiq told them internally. I’m sorry because one of you may become the next victim once I’m gone. And for that—I can only apologise.

When the kids sufficiently joined their parents again and they were chatting amongst themselves, Saadiq went upstairs to his room and shut the door. Clicked it tight so it couldn’t be opened.

Grabbed the large duffel bag he’d bought last week—filled with spare clothes, every essential he needed like his laptop, chargers, and a spare phone hooked up to a different sim just in case he needed to cut contact entirely.

Just in case they pursued him the same way they had pursued Uncle Jam for his entire life.

Was he doing the right thing? By Allah—he did not know. Uncle Jam’s death rattled him so much that fear was the main driver in all his actions, as opposed to cool rationality. With anger being the second cylinder to the engine behind that fear.

After grabbing all his belongings, he texted the friend he would be moving in with during the university year—sharing that apartment with two of his other mates. They never questioned Saadiq—they trusted him, thankfully. That friend’s father owned a store and had hooked Saadiq up with a job during the year—giving him enough of an income to pay for his portion of rent and groceries as well as general expenses.

A support system—a proper support system—was as valuable as the life it supported.

The reply came back swiftly—a yellow thumbs up, meaning they were all good to go.

Saadiq, with all his essential belongings in the world, hopped out of the window and landed in the grass area of the front porch. Softening his fall with legs shivering a little from the autumn chill. Backpack roughing up his spine just a tad—a premonition of the struggles he would face in the future.

But Saadiq knew that, as long as he went out on his own before the insults arrived as opposed to after, he may be saved in a way Uncle Jam never was.

Patting his body dry of dust, Saadiq sent a silent prayer to Allah above. Asking Him for guidance and His help and for Him to reunite Saadiq with his family in a healthy manner rather than in anger.

Then Saadiq took his keys and shoved them through the letterbox. Listened to them thump the doormat with a finality he felt deep in the recesses of his heart.

Then he fingered that slip of paper once more in his right pocket. Took it out for the first time that evening, and opened it up.

Glanced at what was written inside, laughed once dryly, before chucking it in the recycling bin for good.

As he walked out the front gate and to the nearby train station, his mind flicked back to something interesting in the autopsy. A note from the doctor conducting it regarding the confusion behind the lack of a suicide note at the scene.

And the doctor had written that the concoction of pills Uncle Jam had taken, given their severity and dose, would’ve killed him within less than a minute. And caused violent tremors and shakes and trembles, such that coherent thinking, let alone writing a suicide note, was entirely impossible.

The piece of paper Saadiq had recovered from Uncle Jam’s hand—it was blank.

Not a single word written on it.

But Saadiq knew the truth. Uncle Jam had told him the truth. And the truth had been conveyed, whether it was received properly or not.

Saadiq was just the messenger, after all, and not the controller of hearts.

Thinking back to the blank paper, with a wry smile whilst standing on the train platform, Saadiq supposed that, in a weird way, his family were guiltily innocent, after all.

Just the way Uncle Jam had told him they would be.

JazakAllahu Khayran for reading!

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