Evandro opened his eyes to a ceiling that wasn't his. White, smooth, without the cracked corner near the chandelier he had known for four decades. The air smelled of neutral detergent and a slight mold, not of laundry soap and stew. The emptiness beside him in the bed was physical, a depression in the mattress where Célia's body should have been, but wasn't. The silence wasn't that of a sleeping house; it was the silence of a strange place.
Move. The order came clear from his brain to his limbs. Nothing happened. His body was a sandbag stuck to the sheets. A cold panic, not the hot panic of a common man but the tactical alarm of a cornered predator, rose in his throat. He forced his right arm. The limb responded with agonizing slowness, a coarse tremor running from shoulder to fingers, which contracted like useless claws. It took a full minute to roll onto his side, panting, cold sweat blooming on his forehead.
That's when he saw the cane.
Leaning against the bedside table, dark wood with a rubber grip. An insult. A sign of weakness. To the mind that still reasoned in terms of survival and threat elimination, it was also a weapon. With an effort that stole his breath, he dragged himself to the edge of the bed, bones creaking in mute protest, and grabbed the handle. The wood was cold and solid. A club. It would do.
Leaning on it, he forced himself to stand. The world swayed. His legs, once firm even in old age, seemed made of jelly. A low buzz populated his ears. He ignored everything. Focus. Threat. Neutralize.
He staggered to the door, ear pressed to the wood. No sound from the other side. He opened it slowly.
The hallway was short, illuminated by a window with floral curtains he had never seen in his life. The walls were light yellow, new. The house seemed small, single-story. None of the stairs that led to his old room. Where was he?
From afar, came a sound. Voices. A woman speaking, perhaps on the phone, coming from what would be the kitchen. His instinct sharpened. Accomplice. Jailer. Target.
He moved down the hallway, the cane striking the ceramic floor with a tap-tap-tap that seemed absurdly loud to him. Each step was a conquest, an agony. His heart, a tired muscle, beat irregularly in his chest. Adrenaline, an old acquaintance, began to pump, clouding somewhat the fog enveloping his thoughts. The hand not holding the cane clenched into a weak fist.
The kitchen door was ajar. He pushed it.
A woman with her back to him, in front of the stove. Brown hair with gray strands, a simple apron. A stranger. Completely strange.
She kidnapped me. Drug administered. I'm weak. Need to neutralize. Approach from behind. Cane to the neck. Twist until it stops.
He took another step inside, calculating the distance. The woman turned.
She didn't have the face of a jailer. She had the face of someone tired. Worried. And she smiled. A gentle smile, but laden with a pity that made his instincts roar in alarm.
"Mr. Evandro, you're awake!" said the voice, soft. "Let me help you walk."
Evandro took a step back, the cane raised not as support but as a defensive staff. The voice came from his throat hoarse, a husk of what it once was: "Don't come near me. Who are you?"
The woman's smile didn't fade, it just tinged with a deep sadness. "Calm down, Mr. Evandro. It's me. Carla. Your daughter-in-law."
Carla. The name echoed in some empty, dusty corner of his memory. Nothing lit up. No face connected. Just a vague feeling of irritation at constant noise, cheap perfume. But daughter-in-law? That implied a son. A son implied... family. Home. Where was his home?
He brought his hand to his forehead, fingers finding skin looser, more wrinkled than he remembered. The confusion was a maze of mirrors. "What..." he murmured, losing focus on the threat for a second.
That's when a touch on his shoulder made him shudder, almost lose his balance.
It was a boy. A skinny teenager, with dark and serious eyes... of someone. The face had a familiar feature he ached not to recognize.
"Grandpa, are you confused?" the boy's voice was deep for his age, laden with a patience that wasn't childlike.
Evandro looked from the boy to the woman—Carla—, his daughter-in-law. The math didn't add up. Where was Célia? Where was the green velvet living room? Where was he?
"Lucas, take Grandpa to the living room, stay with him," said Carla, turning back to the stove with a sigh. "I'm making lunch."
Lucas. The name struck a distant, muffled bell. Grandson. The boy from his lap. The boy with the nice-smelling hair. This one was a tall stranger.
He let himself be guided, with no alternative. The strength had left him, replaced by a bony weariness and a mental fog that made everything opaque. The living room was small, furnished with a common sofa and television, without personality. Someone's house, not his.
He sat down with a low groan. Lucas stood before him, hesitant, then took something from his jeans pocket. A yellowed, handled envelope.
"Grandpa," said the boy, his voice slightly tremulous. "You told me to read this letter to you every day. It's... it's a letter from you. From four years ago."
Evandro fixed his eyes on the envelope. A letter from him? To him? That was a procedure. A protocol. Something a man who anticipates his own failure would do. A flash of professional pride, absurd in the context, passed through him.
"Read," he ordered, his voice regaining a fragment of authority.
Lucas opened the envelope carefully, unfolded the sheet. His hands trembled slightly. He swallowed dryly and began:
"My name is Evandro. I was born in 1954, on April 15th. I am a renowned doctor. I write this letter to my future self. I have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and dementia. The doctor said I don't have much lucid time left. Soon, I will be a prisoner of my own mind."
The boy paused, his voice choked. Evandro listened, analyzing the clinical data with a detachment that was, in itself, a symptom of the disease. Alzheimer's. Dementia. Fiction. It couldn't be. His mind was... slow, yes, but he was thinking.
Lucas continued, fighting the tears stubbornly blurring his vision: "I am using Lucas, my grandson, to convey this message to myself every day. You... you have Alzheimer's and dementia, Evandro. I, that is. Our wife... our wife, Célia, died three years from the date I write this. I will probably forget this sadness."
Célia. Dead. The information arrived like a weather fact: it's raining outside. No pain. No void. Just the confirmation of an absence he already felt upon waking. A corner of his mind, the corner of the monster that knew its own nature, laughed silently. Of course he wouldn't miss her. Even with memory slipping away like sand, he knew the abyss within himself.
The grandson choked, wiped his face with his sleeve, and forced himself to finish: "I have already retired from all my services." Lucas made a dramatic pause, raising his eyes to his grandfather, as if testing his understanding. "And when I say all... I mean all."
The phrase hung in the air. All the services.
And in a flash of intuition that came not from memory but from the deepest, most sinuous instinct of his psyche, Evandro understood. A shudder ran down his spine. It wasn't recollection; it was recognition. It was his own shadow waving from the bottom of the well.
The letter ended with banal instructions about medications, the address of that house, the doctor's name. Lucas folded the paper, put it away with ritualistic care.
The silence that followed was thick. Evandro broke it, his voice now calm, almost conversational: "Thank you, Lucas, for reading that letter to me every day. Tell me... I'm sorry, I don't remember your father's name... I mean, my son. Where is he? I presume I have a son or daughter, since you are my grandson."
Lucas laughed, a short, sad sound. "Dad went to work. You've been living with us since Grandma Célia passed away."
Evandro nodded slowly, fingers stroking his chin. He found a sparse, poorly trimmed beard. Another data point assimilated. His current reality: a mental invalid living in his son's house. The acceptance came not with resignation but with pragmatic coldness. It was a diagnosis. A new operational scenario. As a doctor, he knew the destructive power of a mental illness. As a monster, adaptation was the first law of survival.
"I'm tired," he announced, suddenly exhausted by the physical and mental effort. "I need to go to sleep. Can you take me to bed?"
Lucas smiled, relieved by the apparent placidity. "Of course, Grandpa."
On the way back down the hallway, Evandro, leaning on the teenager's thin shoulder, spoke without looking at him: "Even with my brain lacking energy, I shouldn't be this sleepy. I'm taking medication, right?"
The question came out light, almost disinterested. Lucas hesitated a second before answering, and in that hesitation, Evandro grasped everything.
"Yeah... yes, Grandpa. It's for the Alzheimer's. And... to help you stay calmer. It helps with the... confusion."
The grandson's voice was controlled, but Evandro, a master at detecting fear in others since forever, saw the brief flash of terror in the boy's eyes when he said "calmer." At some point, on some day lost in the fog, his "confusion" had manifested as aggression. Probably against Carla. Perhaps against the grandson himself. The beast, cornered and disoriented, showing its teeth.
He understood perfectly. "Good," he murmured, reaching the bed. "That's right."
Lucas helped him lie down, pulled up the blanket. "Need anything else, Grandpa?"
"No. You can go."
The boy left, closing the door carefully. Evandro lay there, looking at the white, unfamiliar ceiling. His body heavy, his mind a room full of closed doors. But somewhere, behind all the locked doors, his core, glacial and observant, remained awake.
He closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to take stock of the day. The post-operative evaluation.
Identity preserved. The letter was a brilliant containment device, created by himself to contain the disaster. The past, the "services," were sealed. The family saw a sick old man, not a monster. The facade, though reduced to this borrowed room and this humiliating dependence, was still standing. More fragile, infinitely more precarious, but standing.
An almost imperceptible smile touched his dry lips. The mission, against all odds, continued.
In the darkness of his new, reduced world, he whispered the final report, the only ritual that still belonged entirely to him:
"End of day. Everything occurred within parameters. Identity not discovered."