They are the arms that fill the space around us. They lurk hidden in front of our faces, but we do not see them. They go wherever we go, they follow us like our shadow, they remain dormant until they are called upon, until the gate that separates us from them is unlocked, then they become active and ready. They lurk like a tiger groping for an opportunity, and now we are both out in the open.
Maybe a passing car driven by a drunk, or a knife hidden under your clothes, or a lookalike tying you to a chair to play death games on you... then it pounces on you without mercy, pulling you to take you behind the last gate from which no one has returned.
Frams had just left the disciplinary committee, which had, after negotiations, decided to suspend him from work temporarily while his fate was considered. He might lose his license as a doctor, or things might go wrong and he might end up behind bars. They hadn't decided his fate yet. As he got into his car, the signal telling him to go, he looked at his father's watch for a long time, as if addressing what remained of his father's soul that he had tarnished: "You were right. I really am a failure."
The horns of the cars behind him were honking to tell him that he was blocking the road, and he had barely started when that large truck passed in front of him. Had it not been for a few centimeters, it would have almost crushed his car. He looked at the watch gratefully; had it not been for those moments in which he contemplated it, his fate would have ended in being run over. It was as if it had been one of his father's miserable attempts in the afterlife to save him from the death that was approaching.
Were the arms of death short now? Well, not for long.
He continued on his way home, then got out of the car and entered the building's entrance.
Something is wrong; these elevator wires shouldn't be sparking so much, and this pulley shouldn't be coming out of place like this. The scene screams that the elevator is set to be the next disaster.
Ramez entered the elevator .
He called the floor he was on and started up.
After a moment, the lights started to flicker.
The elevator is not working properly.
The elevator stopped.
He started hitting the buttons nervously ... to no avail.
Tension began to creep up on him.
He took out his phone, of course there was no network.
The tension increased.
He started banging on the elevator asking for help ... to no avail.
So he rolled up his shirt sleeves, grabbed the ends of the elevator doors and with all his might pulled the doors open, and they did. The elevator was a few feet below the floor, but it left a small gap just enough for his body to slip through.
Ramez clung to the ground, until his body slipped outside like a victim escaping the mouth of a snake that was about to swallow it . When he finally crawled outside, he leaned against the wall, panting. This was the second time that the arms of death had proven to him that they were short.
He got up to dust it off, when his father's watch slipped off his wrist, then bounced off the ground and slid through the hole he had just passed through, falling into the stuck elevator .
Ramez cursed his bad luck, knelt down, then crawled through the hole again, stretching his hand out as far as he could to grab the watch . At that moment, the elevator wires snapped like raging snakes, and the elevator fell, biting Ramez's upper half, causing him to fall inside the elevator, leaving his torso at the top, staring at his father's watch with an eye from which life was slowly draining away. He did not have time to realize that the arms of death had finally caught up with him.
***
"Maybe you're right after all."
Hesham said it to Adel, then got up from his desk, grabbed his hand and headed to the buffet.
Then he continued, filling a glass of cold water, saying:
" Irene told me that Adam has been erratic lately, and seems to be having hallucinations, and his absence from the company has become unbearable, and this behavior indicates that he is no longer fit to manage. As his deputy, I will pass the resolution to relieve him of his chairmanship at the next meeting. So I invite you to become the vice chairman of the board."
Adel's face lit up, then he frowned and said:
- "Who will be the chairman of the board?"
Hisham replied after drinking the water, looking at him askance:
- "Who do you think? You're smarter than that."
Adel replied with uncontrollable joy, saying:
"Of course you ... who else?"
He quickly took a cup and filled it to the brim with water, then put it to his mouth in one go. Hisham patted him on the shoulder and said:
" Now that you have achieved your goal, you scoundrel, I want you to listen to these words and remember them well: I did not do this based on your instructions or even under the slightest influence from you, for no one has yet been created who can influence Hisham or dictate to him what to do. And if I am doing this despite my deep feeling that I am betraying one of my friends and one of the most skilled leaders I have ever had the honor of working under, then remember well, what Adam would have allowed, I will not allow. So, if you have any ambitions towards me, I will not hesitate to kill you. Understood?"
The latter replied eagerly, saying:
" Of course , of course . "
"Okay, go now, and don't be late for the next session."
Then they both left their glasses of water on the windowsill and went away.
Adel disappeared into the hallway, he roamed the corridors whistling happily, he took the elevator until he reached the ground floor. At the exit door on the street, he looked at his shoelace, he found that it had come undone, so he bent down to tie it, then he stood looking at his shiny shoes with his back to the exit door, the exit door that was resting under the window, the window with the glass cup on it, the window that someone had just closed to make the glass cup fall from above. This worker was hanging outside the building on the ninth floor, halfway between the window from which the cup fell and Adel in the street, and he was carrying a glass pane to be installed in one of the windows, but when the glass cup fell on the worker's head, the worker lost control and let go of the glass pane, which fell from it into the street.
Screaming sound.
Adel feels a sudden terrible headache, his eyes can't see well.
The glass pane shattered under his foot into thousands of shards.
Bloody shrapnel.
But what is this between the fragments?
Is this part of his skull below his feet ?!
Are these parts of his brain ?!
Are these the arms of death?!
Is this.....
****
A few hours ago:
Shadia in the basement hugging her daughter. She covers her head. She remembers the day she suddenly entered the room to her daughter Sama. The latter closed the laptop in confusion, then claimed that she wasn't hungry, and that she was talking to one of her university colleagues, but the face she saw on the screen was a man's, not a girl's.
Shadia knew that her daughter was lying, she did not know what to do. If this had happened in her generation, she would have been beaten or perhaps had her bones broken, but this generation is different.
So she decided to leave her some privacy, because if you tighten the noose around her now, she might deny it, she might die in denial like teenagers do, and the gap between her and her daughter would widen, the gap that swallows girls at her age. No, you won't ask her.
That day, when she was in the kitchen peeling some zucchini, waiting for her husband Shawqi, who was also unusually late, the phone rang. It was her daughter Sama's number . She put the phone between her shoulder and her ear and went back to peeling, but the caller wasn't Sama.
Sama is not well. Sama was hit by a car and is now in the hospital.
The bowl fell from her hand. She ran quickly towards the door, not knowing whether she had put on her going-out clothes or had gone out in her home clothes. On the way, inside the taxi, she muttered all the verses she had memorized from the Holy Quran . Tears were falling from her eyes without crying, as if a hammer in her chest was regularly hitting her heart, covering up the voices of passersby. She told herself : Sama, be well. Be well and get married in a customary marriage. Be well and go and loosen your hair, I don't care, but be alive. Please. She sought refuge in God when she reached the place the speaker had described to her.
It was a deserted place, devoid of passersby, and before she knew it, the cover had been placed over her head.
- "mama?".
Sama snatched it from her mind and took it back to the basement. She looked at it in alarm and said:
- "Yes, my love, I am here with you?"
Tears accumulated in the corners of Sama's eyes before falling down the sides of her face.
- "It's all my fault, I'm the one who did this to you?"
Shadia hugged her daughter tightly, then cried with her, kissing her forehead and cheeks.
Here came a sound from outside. Someone was breaking down the door upstairs.
Although they were exhausted by terror, although fear consumed them every time the murderer approached to drag one of them outside? They screamed with all their remaining strength, perhaps this scream would be the reason for relief. Then someone entered below ... They found out that it was Adam.
Shadia was filled with fear once again; what now? Is it my turn? Or will you take the apple of my eye from my arms? But unexpectedly, he turned around to go back again.
Her time has not come yet.
Then there was a commotion upstairs, before two policemen came in to tell her it was safe, and she thought she was finally safe.
The police left again before you could hear gunshots in every direction.
Then Adam came back this time, he was like someone running away from someone . He pulled her by the arm, she almost screamed if he hadn't put the muzzle of the gun to her daughter's head, so she surrendered to him.
He pulled her forward, then motioned for her to go out the door at the top of the stairs.
As for him, he hid in the entrance, and when she came out, she saw him.
There was another Adam standing in the hall, but he was different; he was wearing a suit and tie, and he was holding a gun. If that was the Ripper, then who were you?
I looked at the other one and found him shouting:
" Look carefully at what your hands have done?"
Then the shot rang out.
She felt faint. It was a sudden, sudden feeling she hadn't expected. She couldn't move any of her limbs. She heard a buzzing sound, and then she fell to the ground.
A scream began to seep into her ears, mixed with a buzz.
She is not well.
She couldn't close her eyes, she couldn't feel her left side, she lay on the ground listening to the ringing in her ears and smelling something burning.
She screamed for help, but no words came out of her mouth, just scattered letters; she had lost the ability to speak, her thinking was sane and she felt these things in her mind, but she was unable to express them. How could she ask for help when she could not speak or move?!
She felt a kind of peace surround her when she looked at Adam in the suit and tie that soon disappeared. She was not bothered, on the contrary, she liked the sight and began to contemplate its details.
A hand grabs her violently and shakes her, holding her head ... It's Sama screaming and crying, Why all this sadness? I'm fine my love, I've never felt this comfortable before. Sama left her against her will, so she returned to the ground, she felt light and could fly and the air could carry her far away. And here came a thought: Death is near.
No, no, no. She screamed inside, she kept screaming and screaming silently, until she felt every organ in her body resisting and saying: Surrender, Shadia, let's go in peace, leave it; isn't it enough for you that we have been working around the clock for more than fifty years without a moment's rest? We just want to stop.
Above her, Sama was screaming in sobs, and Adam, who had just killed her, was pulling Sama forcefully, causing them both to leave his field of vision.
Okay, you'll sleep now.
She closed her eyes, not knowing if it was for seconds or hours.
When one of them slapped her gently across the face, she saw him return, the other Adam in his neat suit standing above her, then saying to the others:
She's still alive. Quickly take her to the nearest hospital.
***