Sundowning Diary - part 1

After what I heard, I felt my limbs numb, so shocked I was. Two of them kept on muttering something, and this time they climbed in for me. There are two kinds of people in terms of facing something extraordinary, force –majeure if you will. The one whose brain is stormed with ideas, making him as agile as a monkey, as fast as a NASCAR, and overall active. Unfortunately I belong to second group of people, who become motionless like an Egyptian mummy or Caspian shrimp caught out of seabed whilst facing unforeseen circumstances. Therefore I didn’t even bother to resist my kidnappers who gently took me from hands and legs, making me feel like dead body of a saint pilgrim killed by a sandstorm.

African sounding gunmen, put me on tough, arid and warm soil, outside the van, untied my arms with a sharp razor, removed the burlap sack, that badly scrubbed skin out of my nose amid total silence around. What I did see first was endless desert, destitute of any vegetation, on a pale background of fading daylight , and nothing but high and low dunes of monotone and tedious sand. Darkness is quickly beginning to fall,… the first sunset I watched in a years. I even temporally forgot about my fake bodyguard ‘Jafar’ – executed just minutes before. My God, Sundowning starts pressing me already. Just like a soul of person leaving for night-float while dreaming, I began gradually losing my rationality, fibril chill advancing from toes to head, I feel terrible nausea with strong inclination to vomit – the last time I remember to experience after have eaten two plates of Bozbash, bouillon with handful of beef meatballs. Here they are, in fade sunlight and gradually glowing moonlight I see my captors who stare at me, very much surprised of my condition. But to be honest , I’m the one –who is surprised most of all, because who stand in front of my, my captors or terrorists whoever they are, happened to be men in make-up of a funny clowns Bim-bom and Batatinha.

I literally loath the clowns, because they used to give me bad time back when I was a kid. Not like they abused or assaulted me in kindergarten parties, just a fear which had grown to colossal level after I watched a particular horror movie with clown antagonist, after my 7th birthday. So in order to kill my fear I was going through a therapy of watching documentaries of friendly clowns, and those two rascals very much resembled aforementioned famous clowns of Portugal and Russia.

I couldn’t see them holding any weapons. Standing in front of me, me kneeled, unable to distinguish between their clownish gloomy makeup and real face expression. Batatinha – the one with black hat and bushy moustache, gave me a strong shake, to check my consciousness , whether I was aware and responsive to my surroundings.

He reached for a small bottle of water in his pocket and handed it to me without saying a word. Bim-bom – the second one, instead uttered some angry words with African-English creole as if commenting the actions of his associate, hardly comprehended. Now image of sun completely vanished below the western horizon, my body and soul was invaded by heavy dizziness.

“Hey , I osked Yuu….Du yu speak Inglish?”

“Yes” I bearly uttered.

“Then fokin… drink this, boy.. its not water, it’s a remedy that will help your condition.”

I did as I was told to. Sweetish, blue colored liquid instantly removed my dizziness and nausea. What was that, I wondered. I felt like completely cured of dementia after finishing the last drop of this magic sherbet. View of an evening sky cheered me up instead of previous desperation. As far as I knew, my father had invested millions of dollars to develop a unique scam system, hoping to somehow alleviate my pains, but couldn’t afford to find a proper scientist who can design this ‘God-bestowed’ formula….

“Don’t even ask! –Luk streyt” out of somewhere, a pink walkie –talkie appeared in his hand and he spoke to someone in his own language but with less aggressive tone, just like speaking to his superior “ Now they’ll give you a sign with lantern blink two time…”

“Yes I see….”

It was at least 3-5 kilometers away from where we were standing in empty desert. After second light signal had gone, I tried to concentrate my eyes on source of unknown message. With reddish-brownish pale color and cone shape, it utterly resembled wooden house with a red roof. But dark could be misleading, as my eyes were almost virgin to nighttime after all those years with my dementia. After several seconds of visual reconnaissance, I turned back to check whether kidnappers changed their minds.

“Whatta…? You must be kidding me”. There was no sign of my captors, they vanished without giving me further instructions and they took the car as well, I guess. It was shocking to see the van gradually disappear in vast desert where I was left with no food and water to survive. After several minutes of deliberating , I threw off the empty bottle of this magic remedy, exhaled, got up to my feet and navigated myself across the dunes of high sands. The closer I get to the house, the stranger it becomes to experience the state of perplexity, the object i thought of as a little house on desert, actually was some kind of installation serving the entrance to a massive and endless passage leading God knows where.

“The second phase of assimilation to start within 10 seconds”

It was a loud voice of badass woman , spreading all surroundings with high volume. Have I lost my rationality, I would have thought that, somebody had been screaming from the sky, hiding behind the “rain-pregnant” clouds. Her voice made me creepy. Numb and confused, I checked my surroundings to identify the source. Not even a soul. Then began this dreadful countdown.

- “Five…Four…Three…- I decided to enter the gate before she finishes on zero, like something bad’s gonna happen…- Two….One.” .

Total flash.

I knew that my eyes were wide open, but there were nothing to see other than complete paradoxal white color. “Is it heaven how they try to describe in cheap American dramas. This fascist voice raped my ears once again…

“Assimilation process. Second phase complete”

Who the fu.k are you and what-da fu.k do you want from me? Hey I cannot see anything, You filthy whore, I’m talking to you bitch.. Where am I?

Zum…Zum…Zum… just like the pixels from high definition screen, I saw allsurrounding white material distort, and transform into different shapes, changing their projection and shadow effects and as my eyes were getting used to this metamorphosis, I found myself in front of the gates of some Institution; school or kindergarten, before this devastating changes had finished.

CHAPTER 4

Return to sources

Pale face of Dr.Jamal , the Pakistani professor of neurological surgery and frequent long pauses in his speech, did its best in terms of making the parents anxiously nervous. As pause lasted almost half a minute, overhead clock inside mosque shaped framework penetrated the silence with its gradually hearable ticking sound.

“Is it so bad, doctor?”- father asked begging for some positive response.

“You see, transplantation of one third of donated temporal lobe and one seventh of cerebellum which mainly serves for body control, motor functions and all- was totally successfully but …”

“But?”

“There’s one but, in his matter. Because of age differences of organ donor and his recipient – your teenager son in this case- how me to put it mildly , imagine that you bought a new memory for your personal computer having old generation motherboard. As a surgeon we did our best for plugging new part into so called motherboard – thereby I try to depict the surgery and transplantation . These are all that we do as a medics. Now it is up to system to decide whether to process or not with new integrated memory, as we turn power on. His body has to form synapses – hook up and communication between existing neurons and implanted brain cells. So it’s almost the same with your son, Me with the help of globally respected, well-trained and sophisticated neurosurgeon team, conducted this surgery following your written consent as legal parents , operation was successful. However its normal that patients fall into temporal comatose condition after surgery is finished, which is result of integration of transplants to a new – alien if you will – body. Now it’s up to God and your son be able to wake up from “dead space”. He must be strong and overcome let’s say visual and projective mind attacks of his donor, ‘cos if you asked me to describe it for your, I would say that his dream is nothing but realistic battleground of conflicting memories and characters. He can lose mind battles but has to win the war for his survival, in order to wake up as your son – totally cured of dementia, not as 45 year old Latvian philanthropist who donated his brain before smashed in car accident.”