Slowly, I'm regaining consciousness.
My mind is coming back ti it's focus.
DARKNESS...
Hollow darkness.
I'm opening my eyes but nothing. I'm still in darkness.
At least I think my eyes are open.
Nervous. I'll stay still. I have a feeling I'm not alone, like someone is watching me.
I'll lie still, observing, listening for any sound.
SOUND...
Nothing. Not even the chirping of insects or croaking of frogs I usually hear
when I wake up at night in the middle of a power outage.
I'll get up from my bed.
Nothing happened. I can't move!
PANIC!
KEEP STRUGGLING!
Still nothing is happening.
Calm down... relax.
Take a deep breath or two.
I can't smell the air.
I can't even smell the cigarette butts I leave in the ash tray that usually
stinks up my air conditioned room.
SHIT!
I think I am no longer safe, inside my apartment.
Someone must have taken me some place else.
But how?
When I was asleep?
No! That's impossible. Even the movement of my cat when she sleeps on
my bed wakes me up.
Unless I was drugged.
Again, struggle! Fight against the bonds you are in man!
...
What kind of bonds?
Straps?
Ropes?
I don't feel it...
What the-- I don't feel it?!
SHIT!
START MOVING YOUR TOES AND FINGERS MAN!
No response.
I got it. I'll scream and let my captors know I'm awake...
My scream...
I screamed! I screamed, I know I did.
Why didn't I hear it?
Not even my whimper.
I have to calm down.
Think, man think!
Where am I?
Hell, if I know!
Where was I last?
Sleeping--
Wait..
Now I remember.
I was at school in my political science class.
The class ended with the professor cancelling our next two meetings
with him because he had to go somewhere.
Then I got out of school, had a smoke and went up to the transit.
I was going home to my apartment. I even remember an old man picking his nose on the train. Then I got home--
I got...
I can't remember.
Am I still on the train?
Have I fallen asleep? But why can't I smell the other passenger's on the---
OUCH!
FUCK! THAT HURTS LIKE HELL!
FUCK! THAT'S TWICE ON BOTH SIDES OF MY CHEST!
WHAT THE FUCK IS---
MOTHER FUCKE---
Dr. Reyes' private notes on pathology:
the subject is male, Filipino, 5 feet 5 inches in height, approximately 60 kilograms, in his early twenties. He collapsed on a train on his way home. He was pronounced dead on arrival in (DELETED). When I got to working on his body, to try to find the cause of death, it was already going in to rigor mortis. I figured his blood would already be coagulated at this point but as I made the first two incisions, his blood was still fluid and warm. I checked his vital signs again, there was none. He was dead, I was sure of it. I continued the autopsy. to my surprise, there seems to be nothing in his blood stream that could be poisonous, let alone weaken him. His organs were all healthy, no swelling pancreas, no battered liver. Everything was clean except maybe for the lungs which had tar and nicotine, but by the amount of it could not even kill a five-year-old. The tests on his blood was clean, no poisons, no narcotics, not even a hint that used cannabis sativa. As I see it, he is as healthy as he could be. All his past medical records were all normal. Just a few scrapes and bruises when he fell of a tree when he was five and the common cold which his mother thought was dengue fever. Aside from that he was never hospitalized for any diseases.
How in the world could this young man have died?
No lacerations, no contusions, no bleeding, just die?
It's like he just seized to exist. This is the first case I encountered that had baffled me and my staff. A mystery beyond our grasp.
(END OF ENTRY)
-Orville "chubby" Basas
