Suffice to say, I had gone out like a light and napped the whole of the flight. After the touch down in Zurich, things had gotten a wee bit easier . I’d wanted to go back to my apartment and nurse myself to recovery but Lucas insisted that we go somewhere else. He even offered to go get my change of clothes and of course, he kept the reason for whisking me to the country close to his chest. I had better luck pulling it from Cassandra’s teeth.

“ So why are we in the country again―?” I asked, squinting at the greenery as far as they could see. The only sound in the pickup cabin was the sound of Indie Pop muffling Cassandra’s snores in the backseat. For the umpteenth time Lucas deflected with some random tete-a-tete about one thing or the other. It was getting on my nerves but I realized I’d been had because I was too mentally wrung out to argue. Lucas could be as stubborn as a cow if he wanted to. I wonder where he picked it from because it sure as hell wasn’t his parents.

I’d known them for a while too. Lucas’s family, the Kaufmanns, were warm folks who lived near the Swiss Alps. They lived in a manor with picturesque views of alpine pastures swathed the rolling hills snd ridges of prickly conifers.

Nestled in the slopes and plateaus were idyllic fairytale homes where tradition was as steady as the mountain them selves. Every compound they passed had the ringing of bells and cows―in this part of the country, cows outnumbered people. Yet even more present was the breeze that brought the tickling scent of freshness and pine needles trolling down the ridges. Finally we arrived.

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I would have given anything to have a laidback recovery; to pick up the pieces and get my feet under me again. Maybe I could have gone frolicking with the cows and spent my day in indolence, gazing at the mountains like a hippie—becoming one with nature and those sorts of things.

But no, there was nothing relaxing about recovery. It wasn't the pestering of the Kaufmann's lastborn, a precocious child who kept asking me what heaven was like. Nor was it the overflowing kindness of Mrs. Kaufmann as she tried to feed me silly like one of her sons.

One worked on the farmstead with the man of the house, a Dane taller than his Swiss wife who was already head to head with me. Everything was hunky dory, save for the feeling that every time I went to sleep I would feel as though someone else was there with me. It was a tingling feeling at the nape of my neck that I could not explain.

You know that feeling of thinking there's someone in the room with you?Now imagine that happened to your own mind. The thought that I was sharing my body with someone else made my skin crawl.

Occasionally I would dream of being outside my body looking in, watching someone else wear my face or see my body change in real time—It was gene editing meet character creation. Every waking moment would have me breaking in sweat in the middle of the night but surprisingly I did sleep unperturbed afterwards. In the mornings I would always try to ascertain whether the events of the last night had been real or imagined but my memories of it were as fickle as the dreams I had. And lest I forget, my appetite also doubled.

I was not one to stuff myself really, but that was something else. Were the Kaufmann's not big eaters I would have been embarrassed at the way I was putting away plate after plate or carbs and proteins. Also The number of milk pitchers I'd unwittingly chugged were nothing to scoff at.

Maybe that had been expected for convalescing—Like a normal person I would have paid it no mind. However, I was anything but normal; I knew something was wrong with me. Something had definitely happened in that gap in memory between the boat and the hospital—why were we in a boat in the first place?

Was my life in danger to the extent Lucas had to drag me to his parents farmhouse? Or was it just paranoia and false memories? I had to get to the bottom of things so, one day while most of the house was away I cornered Lucas. I could no longer live in an illusion of safety that would crumble at the slightest inconsistency.

“You know something—,” I said. “It's been a week and not once have you told me what all this has been for…what truly happened out there?”

He flinched—Lucas was never good at covering up his expressions. Unlike me, he could not switch masks at the drop of a hat. Was I two-faced for working as a bartender with my kind of disposition? People were quick to forget that personalities operated on a spectrum. Even if my Myers-Briggs test said I was an INTJ, it did not make me any less of a functioning adult in a job that was my butter.

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Mussing his dirty blonde hair was the first tic that gave away that he was going to lie. Before he could, my glare made him swallow his words. With a world weary sigh, he threw up his hands saying,” you might want to have a sit down,”

“Was that so hard?” I said.

“More than you would ever know—” he replied deadpan. I assume he picked that up from me. I did say he was a good actor—though a terrible liar. How those were mutually exclusive were beyond me.

“ Spit it out…what's the ruse about? Whisking me to the backcountry, dissuading me from visiting my apartment and a not so subtle cover up? Are the CIA out to get me?” ‘Maybe a callous reporter looking for a scoop? But Switzerland was generally polite, not like the place over yonder. They would have called my cell—Oh, I forgot I left it at the apartment before we went boating.’

A wince—maybe that was too on the nose? I didn't like where this was going. The gears in my mind were already grinding; what would the Swiss equivalent of an intelligence agency want with me?

“How long do you think you were in the hospital?” Lucas put across. An uneasy smile danced on his lips—I had an inkling the answer I gave would mean I'd suffered some form of dissociation.

“ Two to three weeks?” I said, styming the anxiety bubbling at in the pit of my stomach. Lucas averted his gaze—I caught fragmented mumbles of curses under his breath.

“You were missing for three days—then after that, you stayed in hospital one month two weeks—”

My first thought was to call his bluff. Sometimes Lucas tended to start off something serious with a joke as a way of letting me down slowly—I remember the way he broke the news that my then girlfriend, ex-girlfriend has been a cheat. I was not as socially inept to recognize that was not that kind of stalling. I clenched my fists clamping down on my urge to lash out as I let out a breath between my teeth. I needed a thread to unravel this convoluted tapestry of inconsistencies to straighten everything in one fell swoop.

“If that were true then, what about my insurance? Doesn't that mean I'll go broke when they deduct the rest of the bill above the claim?” ‘I doubt there's even a job to go back to at the White Raven’

“Huh? How were you discharged then, did you sign the discharge form without looking at it?”

Now that I thought about it, although I raring to leave the hospital, I'd been in a daze at the time. I didn't even remember what hospital it was.

“Give me your phone,” I prompted. If I could just check my bank balance and credit transactions I could put the matter to rest. Lucas slid the phone across the dinner table—I paused rolling a thought at the tip of my tongue. I brushed it away as some sort of Mandela effect and jumped into the browser. I barely even looked at the date—it could not provide me the context I needed.

I almost fumbled the password as I logged in to my banking account via the online platform. Then I went to the list of transactions debited to my account. I would have dropped the phone if Lucas hadn't caught it in time.

“What the hell man—hold on what the fuck!” Lucas swore. He too dropped his phone. “Bruv, when were you going to tell me you went into crypto?” he asked with surprise.

At the time I didn't even realize I'd stood up. The transactions one week before today were unexplained—

“So let's assume what you're saying is true, that I've really been in the hospital for one and a half months,” I murmured. Lucas was still flabbergasted by the zeroes in my account—the income was clean but how come it felt criminal go have that money? I needed to get in touch with the Swiss Bank but my phone was back at the apartment.

“Lucas!” I snapped bringing him out of his stupor.

“Yeah yeah, right…I haven't told you what really happened,” he said. Then he gave me a blow by blow account of what had transpired.

It was utterly inconceivable that I was almost tempted to laugh. Not because it was funny or because Lucas was pulling it out of nowhere—for once I choose to suspend all skepticism as he narrated it from start to finish. Not once did I interject, question or poke holes at his story because by the end of it he was shaken.

Even if it felt like I was listening to an account of someone else's experience, there was no shaking the feeling it really had happened. The feeling of being sucked into the dark abyss and then nothing after that. Or was I suffering from post traumatic amnesia? That theory was true as the next events were forever going to change my life in unprecedented ways. It all began with three words.

// Gestalt Insertion…Initializing…