The Phantom School - 55 Anamnesis

I regained my consciousness with an intense pain, especially around my chest and back. I was laying on a table in a room I didn’t recognise.

I screamed in agony. I tried to get up, but Mr. Kenan immediately pushed me back on the table and held me there. He was wearing gloves, his hands were cold and were covered in blood. So was I. My entire upper body was covered in my own blood.

“Hold still!” Mr. Kenan yelled. I shouted again in pain and tried to escape his grip, but when I moved, my chest hurt so badly that I stopped trying. I looked into Mr. Kenan’s eyes like I was begging for mercy.

“Truth hurts, doesn’t it?” he said.

“What was that for?” I asked in tears, clenching my teeth and fists.

“Your impatience.” he replied, calmly.

“Don’t you think this is a bit too harsh, though?” I asked.

“You are feeling good enough to talk to me already, eh?” he said in return. “Good to see.”

I took a deep breath.

“What did you just do to me?”

“Destroyed your neural implant.” he answered.

“And… what does that do? Why did you do that? What the hell is that even?”

“It is, or rather was, a neurotransmitter inhibitor control hub… sort of. Not exactly, but this is the closest description I can make.” he explained.

“Excuse me, I didn’t understand a single word of it.” I said.

“It basically interrupts the way your nervous system works.” he replied. “It can control your senses, your movements, and at a higher level, it can even control your emotions and your thoughts.”

“What the hell? I don’t remember paying for that.” I said.

“You don’t remember how or when it was installed?” he asked me.

“No.” I said.

“What is the last thing you remember?”

“Let’s see… The fire, I guess.” I answered him.

“No, that’s not what I…” he stopped and thought for a while. “For example, do you remember your high school days?”

“No, you’ve already asked this bef-” I didn’t finish my sentence. Something was different. “Wait.” I said. “Where is Idil?” I asked him. “Did you find her?”

“There we go, you are almost back!” Mr. Kenan said and smiled. “And, to answer your question, I don’t know. I couldn’t find either one of you; in fact I barely saved my own life.”

“What will we do?” I asked him.

“So it worked, you finally start to remember everything again.” he said without paying attention to what I said. “Don’t strain yourself to remember everything right now, and don’t forget it’s been years since those events. You are not a student anymore, you are a teacher, a young adult. It will take a while until the inhibitor is cleared of your nervous system and you can think clearly. You should just rest for a while. Then, I have some questions to ask you.”

“I have a question, though.” I said. “Why did you hit me and knocked me out instead of asking me to… you know…”

“It’s because of the implant itself. That implant would never let you give me permission to remove it. Besides, it is a very painful thing, so you would never let me do it anyway.” he said.

“It is weird…” I said. “Your behaviour is creepy. Until now, I’ve never noticed an implant on my body.”

“You probably did. Many times even.” he told me. “But every time you noticed something, you were forced to forget about it in an instant. That’s what I think. Also, it usually doesn’t interfere with daily tasks.”

“None of the doctors that examined me all those years have noticed it either.” I said.

“It is a relatively small device deep inside your skin, so unless you had a major operation, it is very hard to notice.” he replied.

“How did YOU know about it, though?” I asked him.

“Well, that’s quite a story.” he said. “The implant in one of the older victims have malfunctioned and stopped working after a while. That victim was one of my students, so we knew each other. We were just like you and me; but I had never got into adventures myself until your generation showed up, and I was much less knowledgeable than I am now. Anyway… One day, after the implant had malfunctioned and he remembered everything he forgot, he contacted me. He knew I had information about the subject. Only after a few months of examination, we found the implant on his body. Taking him to the hospital and literally getting an implant out of his body would undoubtedly make the doctors curious, and later, of course, the police. So, we could not do that. In order to-”

“Why?” I interrupted him. “Why didn’t you get the police involved? They could handle the situation and stop this evil once and for all.”

“Smarty… Don’t you think I didn’t do that? I called the police myself many times before. A lot of people went missing all those years in this school, but they could find nothing suspicious, people even accused me of hiding things or misleading the police. The next time the police got involved again, I would be a number one suspect; and they wouldn’t be able to find anyone else.” he said. “Maybe I wouldn’t be charged because of the lack of evidence, but it would surely create a crisis.”

“That’s very unfortunate.” I said.

“Well, to continue… It was the first time we were aware of the existance of those implants. In order to get the implant out and examine it, we had to do the so-called operation ourselves. It barely even qualifies as an operation to be honest, we just had to get that thing out somehow. I had a close friend who was a surgeon, but at the time, he was abroad. So, I had to consult with the biology teachers to find the best way to remove the implant. All the teachers were already aware of what was going on, so they all tried to help with the operation. Unfortunately, being a biology teacher has nothing to do with knowledge on surgery, but leaving the implant in was considered the worst idea, so we decided to continue… Anyway, we decided that the best course of action would be opening the body from a safe point that is far away from any vital organs, blood vessels and the central nervous system; and some place that could easily heal once damaged.” he said.

“I honestly can’t believe you decided to do the surgery yourselves. That’s very dangerous and certainly illegal.” I told him.

“I already know, we were aware of it all… But, it wasn’t a really big deal that required lots of professionalism. You just cut open the skin and some muscles, take the device out and get everything roughly back to their places and let it heal.” he said. “Though we had to look after him for a week or so until he was completely healed, and he suffered a lot of pain.”

“Where is the implant you removed?” I asked him.

“I didn’t remove yours, I just reached out and broke it apart.” he said. “I can’t do the removal just by myself.”

“Thanks, idiot. What if the pieces scatter around my body?” I told him.

“You asked for it in the first place. This is the only way you can quickly regain your memories.” he said. “I told you to be patient, it would be much less painful for sure.”

“Since you knew about it… Why didn’t you remove it from me or other victims before? What took so long?” I asked.

“It is actually a very recent discovery, and performing an amateur operation on a real living person is certainly out of our interests.” he said. “Besides, most of the older teachers of the school are gone, so it becomes hard to explain everything to everyone all over again.”

I suddenly felt an urge to vomit. I couldn’t continue the conversation.

“I need to use the restroom.” I told him. “I feel really bad.”