EPISODE 2

"What?" Joseph wondered. Either he heard wrongly or the doctor in front of him was insane. Him, death? Then how come is he having a conversation with a living being. Surely it was a dream and he was soon going to wake up. 'Wonders really never end' Joseph said to himself. That revelation was so sudden that he began laughing. While he thought Dr. Primera was delusional, he at least accepted the fact that 3 months of his life were missing. That was what he had to discover. The only person who could shed U.V light on it was the doctor sitting in front of him.

"Are you done laughing?" Dr. Primera asked.

"Yeah. All is well." Joseph responded, regaining his composure. Joseph had picked up another piece of information. The serial number 2-4-8-2-1, corresponded to the day he supposedly died. He had to lead the conversation towards the events surrounding his death.

"So, my serial number corresponds to the day of my supposed death. Am right?" Joseph began.

"Bingo. As expected of a doctor in applied Calculus and advanced algebra. Your deduction skills are really interesting." Dr. Primera happily answered.

"You have done your research. Not bad there." Joseph said. "Could you be a darling and tell me what happened after my death?"

"I was coming to that." Dr. Primera responded, double-clicking on her desktop icon. She opened the disk and drives explorer and manually opened the DVD reader of her PC. She picked up the CD with the number 1 written on it and played it. Joseph saw his body on a hospital bed. There were several nurses around him. He could distinguish a defibrillator being hastily connected and a nurse removing the drip connected to him. He saw Dr. Primera giving orders,

"Is the defibrillator ready?" Dr. Primera asked.

"The adrenaline syringe is also ready." A nurse voiced.

"Ma'am, there is no pulse. He is already dead. What are we trying to do here?" Another nurse asked.

"We are trying to bring the dead back to life." Dr. Primera answered.

Joseph paused the video after hearing that. His expression had changed. The proves were solid. He died but somehow came back to life 3months after. That wasn't right. In the space of 3months, his body would have been in advanced decomposition. That time gap was not coherent. When did he come back to life? And what transpired after that?

"How were you so sure of bringing me back to life?" Joseph asked.

"I wasn't sure of anything. But your body behaved abnormally." Dr. Primera answered.

"What do you mean by that?" Joseph wondered.

"The extract you just saw is 3hrs after your death. 3hrs after your death, your body was still warm and could still respond to stimuli. When your knee cap was hit, your leg lifted up. Your heart wasn't beating but yet your blood did not show any signs of coagulation." Dr. Primera explained. That was strange and illogical. When you die, every function of your body ceases. You can't respond to stimuli. You don't receive any oxygen and your body loses heat. Hence, your blood begins to coagulate and your body becomes stiff. But Joseph's body behaved in a way that wasn't taught in school.

"And with those proves, you resurrected me," Joseph asked.

"Yes and no." Dr. Primera answered. That opened up a myriad of questions in Joseph's mind.

"Yes, with those proof, I engaged the reanimation process. No, because you weren't resurrected that day. Something else came back to life." Dr. Primera explained.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Joseph asked, looking even more confused.

"Joseph, do you believe in God? Do you believe in the existence of ethereal beings?" Dr. Primera asked.

"If a man of science doesn't believe in such, that person is a fool," Joseph responded.

"What a bold answer. So, do you believe in spirit possession?" Dr. Primera asked, dropping the jovial face and looked straight into Joseph's eyes.

"Where are you going to, with all these questions?" Joseph asked in return. Dr. Primera remained silent and continued the video. Joseph watched attentively. Trying to see if anything unordinary would happen. But his disappointment was massive. For 2hrs, he watched himself being shocked by the defibrillator. He watched how he was injected with adrenaline, with the doses increasing as time went on. And after an extra 30mins, the unprecedented happened. A pulse was registered on the electrocardiogram. Joseph wanted to see a light shining on his body and bringing him back to life. He expected something more grandiose. He didn't notice that the video was a recording of something unordinary. Yes, being dead but the body is still warm is not a piece of daily news. Reanimating someone for more than 2hrs isn't something you will hear in a market square. It was all but ordinary. Upon coming back to life, he vomited heavily. It was a mixture of his last meal and blood. That wasn't surprising. The body had to balance all the pressure received from the defibrillator and all the excess adrenaline in his blood. The video ended there.

"What happened next?" Joseph asked. Dr. Primera inserted the number 2 disk.

"What happens here on is more than horrifying," Dr. Primera said. "Viewers discretion is strongly advised."

The video opens with Joseph in his room. The date on the videotape showed that 2weeks had passed after he came back to life. Joseph was sitting on a chair, looking at all the corners of his room. He had nothing to distract himself with. No paper or pen to scribble with. Suddenly a female janitor entered. It was the same janitor that screamed when she saw Joseph. She greeted Joseph but Joseph didn't respond. In fact, there was no sign of a soul in that body. Just an empty shell. The woman began cleaning the room when Joseph pounced on her and began strangling her. He stopped when she was unconscious and he then began drinking the bucket of dirty, soapy water. He emptied the 10 litres bucket and began convulsing. Nurses immediately arrived and provided treatment. That was his second escape from death's grasp. Dr. Primera paused the video and looked at Joseph. The expression he had wasn't that of a confused person. No, Joseph was looking scared at the version of himself he was seeing. It is as if his body remembered all those actions but the brain didn't.

"Do you remember something?" Dr. Primera asked.

"Not really. I don't recall any of these events but part of me is convinced that it all happened. My body keeps shivering but my brain doesn't bring up any memory." Joseph answered.

The video continued. The date showed 3 weeks after Joseph's attempted suicide. He was served food on plantain leaves without any eating utensils. All he did was eat with his hands. When he had finished eating, two men would enter and tie him up and a nurse would clean his hands and face. He would then be untied and left to roam in his room. For his baths, a similar thing would take place. He would be undressed and then tied. A nurse would bring a clean towel and a bucket of warm water. The warm water would be poured on him and then dried using the towel. For his homeostatic issues, Joseph had no restraint. He had no concept of self. He would urinate on himself or on the floor. He would defecate on the floor, sometimes on the bed. He was in a sorry state. It continued like that till another event happened. In the third week of the month of October, Joseph suddenly broke his wooden chair, picked up one of the sharp pieces, and began digging into the cement wall. Those who observed him through the cameras did not understand what he was looking for. He dug the wall and found the live wires connected to the lamp switch. He pulled them and began biting them up. Before he could peel off the insulating plastic around the wire, electric energy in his room was immediately cut. It was in order to prevent him from being electrocuted. That was his second attempt to commit suicide. The staff decided to take grave measures for Joseph's death call. They first sedated him during each working session. They completely renovated Joseph's room by first removing anything electrical. That included electric plugs, switches, and bulbs. No electrical energy was supplied in Joseph's room. They went on in drilling holes in the wall having the door to his room and plastering the others with a rough layer of cement. Then, they painted them in a silver-mirror colour. With a system of concave mirrors, they channelled light into his room. Of course, this system worked perfectly, if and only if the day was sunny. If it was cloudy, Joseph would stay in the dark for the whole day. In the night, Joseph was left in the dark. The staff didn't care about his rights. In his state, did he even have rights? In order to prevent him from knowingly choking to death, even his meals were nutritive pills. He would swallow and be sustained for a maximum of 8hrs. One day, Joseph began hitting his head heavily on one of the walls. That was the last suicidal action he pulled. Immediately he was rescued, he was chained to his bed. The video ended there. Dr. Primera's office was deadly silent. After watching himself for several hours, drenched in filth, called towards death at each second, Joseph was left speechless. He didn't know what to say. He didn't even know how to react to what he was just from seeing. He was sad. He felt like vomiting. He looked at Dr. Primera and asked her to play the last video.

The video began with Joseph tied on the bed and the date showed that they were in the month of November. During the day, Joseph was fed with a bowl of nutritive pills. In the evening he slept empty stomach. When he pulled too much on his chains, nurses will come and sedate him. This was to prevent him from further hurting himself. At night, he was monitored with thermal cameras installed in his room. When his thermal signature began randomly shaking on the bed, they knew he was up and still not yet his proper self. This continued for 1 week. The following week, they placed electrodes in his bed and pillow. It was to monitor his brain signals and vitality. That was to come out with a means of differentiating between the suicidal Joseph and the normal Joseph. The suicidal Joseph had a very high pulse rate, and flushing nerve signals. They just needed a different reading to conclude that, amidst all this madness, the real Joseph was still somewhere. And one night, their proof came to them. Dr. Primera paused the video and closed the media player.

"The video is not yet over. How does it end?" Joseph sadly asked.

"As from that point, you know the rest." Dr. Primera responded.

"How did you even know this time around that it was me and not alter-Joseph?" Joseph asked. "Because so far as I watched this video, there was no means of telling who was who."

"From this video, you can't understand anything but all your brain signals and heartbeats were monitored. We were waiting for a certain sign. It was a far-fetched sign but that was the only means we had at hand" Dr. Primera answered, smacking her lips from time to time.

"Don't tell me you just needed a different nerve pulse or brain reaction, in order to conclude that alter Joseph was no more." Joseph inquired.

"You have nailed it right again," Dr. Primera happily responded. "It was a very simplistic method. Some would say crude, but it had all its chances. And here we are now. Proof that the method worked."

Joseph didn't know what to think or say. All these revelations were just bizarre in his eyes, ears, and brain. But Joseph was a rational man. A man of the moment. A man of the present. He convinced himself that these revelations didn't matter. All that mattered was he was alive and he had a new chance to make things better for himself. But one thing bothered him. That thing was his family. What did the doctor tell his family? In the first video, he was declared dead. And when it is so, the family is informed immediately. Does that mean that during 3 months, his family had already moved on? If yes, how would he return to them? He began turning those questions silently in his mind. Surely his super-powerful brain would find the answer. If you can solve questions on advanced abstract algebra, then convincing your family about the abstract concept of death should be easy as saying a-b-c. He nodded confidently. But part of him had to be sure. So, he asked;

"There is still one thing that bothers me, doctor."

"Go on." Dr. Primera voiced.

"Does my family know about all of these? Like how am I supposed to face them when I get home?" Joseph asked, with a lot of anticipation.

"Ah yeah. Tricky question. All I can say is that I can't spoil the fun. You will discover it sooner" Dr. Primera answered, with a smirk on her face. Joseph seeing that smile, knew he had to prepare a very good explanation on the concept of death. All left, was for him to gather his belongings (if any) and leave the hospital. When he was at the door, Dr. Primera called to him.

"Joseph, when the signs start manifesting themselves call me immediately."

What was that supposed to mean? Joseph deeply pondered while leaving the doctor's office.