The Brain Collector

“I’ve always seen him as such a good man, a great man and you know that. I would have never accused him of murder, unless I was really, really, convinced.”

“Have you thought that, that maybe you’re just jumping to conclusions?!”

“You tell me why would anyone have that much Inactin in his possession?”

“Sara, I understand that this ... this ‘Brain Collector’ you speak of used the same anesthetic on all of his victims, but that doesn’t mean Uncle Saber is ...”

“But the desflurane, Elyas!”

“You said that you had ‘smelt a hint of it.’ He’s a surgeon, Sara. A senior surgeon –”

“A neurosurgeon - the perfect skills to –”

“Come on! He’s 62 years old! He doesn’t have the strength to gas three college students with... with... what’s that anesthetic? Desflurane? And then, inject a longer lasting anesthetic into them to go dissecting their skulls and collecting their brains. And he could certainly not pull that off all in one night.”

“But the precision of these surgeries, Elyas, if you’d seen the victims’ remnants. The .... the smell of formalin in his house, his paranoia about visitors going out of his sight...”

“Get some sleep, Sara, okay? I never liked Uncle Saber, neither did he appreciate anything about me. I might see him as cold-blooded, crooked, but he’s not some sick... serial killing fanatic! He’s a sane man.”

“You’re right, yeah,” Sara looks away, sighing, “maybe I’ve just been taking too many of those anxiety pills. Maybe I need to change them again.”

Elyas smiled heartily. And although the creases across his forehead showed beads of worry, seeping down from the glimmer across his bald spot- it seemed his forehead smiled with him too.

Arguing and raising voices isn’t new amongst the Selby siblings, their best conversations, confrontations and heartfelt appreciations have been expressed in this way. Ever since the passing away of their parents, back when Elyas’ temples had more brown locks covering them and when Sara sucked on cherry lollies and not pills to feel less anxious.

“Well, I’ll head home then.” Sara made her way to the door absorbed, it would seem, in the patterns on the carpets.

“Come by more often, okay?” Elyas let’s his pat on her shoulder evolve into a warming hug, “Spend some time with your nephews, me, Rania – I know, my boys maybe troublesome but they sure are entertaining, right?” His sister’s weak smile, makes him pull away. She needs her time alone, and so he quits pressing.

As she slips by the door, her weary expression triggers more worry for him: “I’m serious Sara, spend less time with all those corpses, and with that old man. The world outside the forensic lab can be fun too you know.”

His wife would be mad, but the fact was, when was she not? Dr. Deen fingered through his grey hair as he sat down comfortably between a dewed window, and an empty seat; he always sat in the first few rows whenever empty. A&E departments aren’t the most posh, most paid or the most valued, but that sigh of satisfaction, that sense of achievement at the end of each day is the one thing that he will never been able to let go off. Just like his wife has held onto him, despite everything about him she regularly screams she can’t anymore of. Occasionally, he’d stay in an extra hour and because the thought of maintaining a car had always overwhelmed our doctor, these late night bus rides home was one of wife’s greatest worries. He tugged on his coat, maybe hoping that it’d somehow stretch across the round tummy his wife keeps telling him to reduce, but of course the coat remains loyal to the size it’s been for the last 9 years. Five drowsy people (including the bus driver), soundlessly empty city streets, a decrepit city lighting system and very creaky bus doors are the exact scenarios seventeen year old girls shouldn’t be in; but of course, when their occasional giggles are the life of the city, no one complains. Dr. Deen keeps thinking of how his parents would’ve never allowed such a thing, of how he wouldn’t be allowed in home if he’d crossed the curfew by this much when he’d been in high school. The last of a five is a man who regularly sleeps on the bus, whether he’s here because he blacked out or because he’s homeless or because he hasn’t reached his destination yet or because he doesn’t have a destination is something no one else on the bus cares to give any second thought to. It’s funny, Deen thought, how every night it suddenly get’s so cold yet when the sun breaks through the horizon, it’s rays seem to hurriedly warm up the planet until by noon, it’s become unbearably hot. He doses off, his last thought was of his wife, probably still waiting at the kitchen counter with food that’d need heating now and a scowl that’ll make him both smile and feel guilty. If only he had charged his cell phone more often.

The next time a memory registered in Deen’s head, can’t have been more than 20 minutes away. But the streets were suddenly much darker, if they were still on the streets. All he could register was the screeching shrieks of the high-school girls behind him, the smell of damp fog mixed with smoke, a tiny figure which looked like the driver running frantically away from the bus and horribly ominous feeling. As he dazed awake, he saw a few fire extinguisher cylinders rolling in through the front bus door. The driver must’ve dozed off and crashed the car off the road, that must be the firemen. It took two seconds, before he realized the terror in the eyes of the two now hugging girls mirrored the lack of fire truck lighting and that they would never use those red extinguishers. Alarm resonated in his mind, as he caught the delirious eyes boarding the bus. It seemed too dark to make out anything but a satisfied predator’s look on a set of human eyes. The blood stained driver’s window and the creaky bus door close too soon, the extinguishers click open and a very familiar and pungent gas diffuses across the bus and into their lungs demanding sedation, the masked figure makes way towards it’s victims. Deen coughs and holds his breath struggling to keep the anesthetic he knows is the compound desflurane from seeping into him, conquering him. The last thing he ever sees is tinge of blue of the eyes that inject him with a stronger anesthetic dose.

The camera’s skid across the warm, morning, greenery outside a sterile white block of buildings as the reporter continues, “The police were able to apprehend ‘The Brain Collector’ who has taken the lives of 29 civilians over the past two months, all of whom were night bus passengers. Here is a clip from inside the courtroom:”

Several cut-pasted scenes of a sometimes sweaty, sometimes trembling, but always puffy eyed Elyas reel in; all with him sitting at the defendant’s stand.

‘I can’t believe how I never noticed. I could have, I should have stopped this! She thought it was Uncle Saber all along, and... I didn’t listen. She said she was feeling less emotionally stable again, that she was hearing voices again. I,... I just told her to take anti-depressants and sleep more, I...’

‘I visited his house, found out what he was hiding. He said it was an experiment, the drugs- anesthetics- were all FDA approved, that he was hiding from the animal rights activists’ – and I fell for all those rat cages and jarred rat brains swimming in formalin. After 21 years, I trusted his good will and...’

‘My parents were mistaken, they thought that he could raise us in their absence and I was mistaken when I left Sara to be raised by him. I was so shocked then, that getting away seemed like the best way to cope with things. I left the city for my college education and he, he scarred her 5 year old mind when she watched those experiment and operation tapes with him while he studied, and when he realized he was creating a monster- he just ... let it grow. The –‘

Elyas breaks down, weeps for a moment cupping his face in his bony red hands. As he partially regains composure, he manages to croak some words out, ‘He must’ve manipulated her fragile mind into helping him get what he couldn’t have otherwise. He was always talking about how fascinating the human brain is, kept saying how he’d love to work on real human specimens some day. He used her I tell you! She doesn’t remember doing anything wrong, our Sara wouldn’t do it!’

Our reporter is reeled back in, patting down her red collar against the wind as the camera zooms in on the signboard amidst all the blinding white that shines off sunlight, ‘Armosa Psychiatric Hospital’. She continues now, in a concluding tone:

“That was the statement of the brother of the prosecuted. Her medical report has confirmed Multiple Personality Disorder, one of Sara’s two personae being the psychopath that’s cost us so many innocent lives. Dr. Saber has also been arrested, for providing Sara Selby with the drugs that used and for the possession of the preserved brains of the deceased.

The questions remain- Has our quest for scientific advancement made us this desperate? Are our scientific communities harboring more monstrous ways to expand their knowledge?

Stay with us, as we uncover more of the story behind Sara Saber, the forensic lab trainee or serial killer, nicknamed ‘The Brain Collector’ and the other secrets harbored by our scientific communities.”