Wadiha sighed in relief as he removed the last piece of golden jewellery from his sister’s nightstand. He added it to the collection of various paintings and items he needed to remove from the room. The walls were now bare, resembling a prison cell.

“Perfect.” The healer stated as he entered the room, surveying the surroundings and turning his attention to the old woman in a black burqa. Her eyes were closed as she laid dead still on the couch, her eyes moving to look at the healer from her peripherals. 

It was a cumulation of months of hard work from the family; the woman had undergone month-long sessions of swallowing dozens of litres of holy water and being kept on a strict diet of two spoons of yoghurt a day. Verses from the Quran rung in the background as the healer turned to the woman. 

‘Bismillah irraḥmāni rraḥīm alḥamdulillāhi rabbilʿālamīn,’ the man began reciting Al-Fatiha as the family watched eagerly, praying the Jinn would be exorcised from the woman’s body swiftly and painlessly.

The healer turned to the woman and struck her in the head.

“What are you doing?” The woman’s mother screamed as her sons, Wadiha and Shabir, held her back.

The man continued to beat Wadiha’s sister senseless, her gasps and cries echoing throughout the room. Wadiha could physically see the breath being knocked out of her, her abdominal muscles tightening. She turned to the side and spewed her guts up all over the floor.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Her mother inhaled, almost as if she was a fish out of water. Wadiha saw her struggling to restrain herself.

The hit to the stomach forced her back into an unnatural position, her limbs contorting. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, gasping for air. The slow, methodical thump of her heart could be heard throughout the silence in the room. 

“Please…” she whimpered, turning to her family, staring into Wadiha’s eyes as the man  continued pummelling her in the stomach, causing her to collapse into a foetal position.

The fear in her watery brown eyes was an unforgettable sight; as tears began to cascade down her face, the man turned to her and began pouring water down her throat. Water was forced down her throat until her stomach became distended and swollen, all the while her mother was sobbing and collapsed to the floor.

The woman on the floor began to spasm, until her black and blue body went still. A shadow began to appear from her open nostrils and mouth, almost as if taunting the family. And with that, her heart stopped thumping rhythmically, her body falling to the ground, limbs mangled and bloody.

"What have you done?" The woman's mother turned to the man, who had gone red in the face. The woman broke out of her son's arms, attacking the man with the strength and agility of a wrestler, fuelled by adrenaline and pure rage.

Hot air began to rise out of the woman’s corpse, until it filled the room so fully Wadiha could no longer breathe. He turned red in the face as he pointed to the wall, mouth agape.

"Mama...look." He fell silent, staring at the words burnt into the walls:

The Sihr is coming.