Demiurge

@ Synopsis of the Novel, written by Džena Andersone "Demiurge", 2025

@ Translated by Žanete Vēvere Pasqualini, 2025

Synopsis

One Christmas Eve, four-year-old Damian is decorating the Christmas tree when he picks up the Christmas lights. To his parents’ disbelief, the bulbs light up in his hands - despite not being plugged in. His mother recoils in fear at what she has just witnessed while his father realizes that their little boy may have a special, paranormal abilities.

As Damian grows, his abilities become more evident. At first, they manifest unconsciously but, over time, he learns to control them. He can hypnotize people - or as his classmates call it, ‘freeze’ them. Anyone who meets his gaze, whether a teacher or a shop assistant, suddenly becomes motionless and unable to act of their own will. Later, they recall nothing of what happened. Older children eagerly take advantage of his power while Damian’s parents live in constant fear that he might get himself into trouble. 

Jakov, Damian’s paternal uncle and a doctor, tries to comfort his worried parents. He suggests keeping the boy occupied with sports, believing this will help him release any excess energy, but warns them to keep Damian’s abilities hidden. If the wrong people were to find out, their son could easily become an object of interest for powerful state institutions.

Damian’s parents watch over him with extra care, picking him up from school every day. Following Jakov’s advice, his mother enrols him in a figure skating class but an accident occurs, triggered by Damian’s lingering gaze on a boy skating nearby. When she realizes her son is responsible, she is thrown into a state of profound shock, convinced that Damian did it on purpose. A perfectionist - or perhaps a control freak -she struggles to accept the idea that her son might be different from other children. She dreams of a flawless family and a son with a bright future, shaped to her vision. But Damian does not fit into that fantasy and to her, he is a monster having no place in the world she imagined.

Only Damian’s father loves him unconditionally. He believes with all his heart that Damian is kind and would never wish harm on anyone. But as the divide between the parents deepens due to their diverse reactions to the situation, tension in the family grows. Damian is well aware of the situation. More than that, he possesses a unique ability - he can see the aura of others, their emotions manifesting as halos of light and colour radiating from their bodies.

As he grows, Damian becomes a serious, gifted boy, spending his days buried in books and dreaming of one day helping others. He hides his abilities as best he can, often disappearing for days at a time into the local library or his uncle Jakov’s home, where there is an extensive collection of books.  

To make life easier for everyone, Damian moves in with Jakov upon graduating from high school. He decides to become a doctor, determined to fulfil his dream of helping people. During one of Jakov’s house parties, a colleague introduces Damian to his daughter, Deborah, who is studying at the University of Medicine.

Deborah quickly falls in love with Damian, drawn to his honesty, his quiet strangeness and the way he stands apart from everyone she knows. After university, they get married. Deborah has no idea that Damian possesses the ability to induce people into a hypnotic state. Both begin their residencies in the clinic of Dr Weiss, who is Deborah’s father. Deborah is passionate about forensic psychiatry and hopes to persuade Damian to follow the same path, but he wants to work directly with people, ‘amending’ the flaws he perceives in them.

During a retreat, Damian meets a strange, unhappy woman named Anastasija, a librarian at the University of Medicine. He senses that she is in need of medical help and offers her hypnosis sessions. Anastasija hesitates but says she will consider it.

One day, Deborah shows Damian a newspaper article featuring a photograph of a notorious killer who had undergone psychiatric evaluation at Weiss’s clinic. The moment Damian’s fingers touch the image, he senses that the photo radiates the purest essence of evil.

During one of their conversations, Damian accidentally puts Deborah into a hypnotic state. Afterwards, she is shocked and furious. Damian confesses his secret, telling her about his gift. He goes on to ask her to speak with her father and request permission for him to practice hypnosis at the clinic. Deborah agrees.

With Dr Weiss’s approval, Damian begins treating patients with hypnosis. His reputation soon spreads and he becomes overwhelmed with work, spending days and nights in the clinic, pushing himself to exhaustion. After endless sessions, he is drained and needs time to restore his energy. Deborah grows frustrated as Damian is either at work or too exhausted to do anything but sleep.

One day, Dr Weiss observes one of Damian’s sessions and realizes that his abilities go far beyond conventional hypnosis. He warns Damian of the risks involved in hypnosis, namely the ease with which false memories can be planted in a patient’s head.

Deborah tries to rein in Damian’s increasing workload as he starts losing consciousness more and more frequently.

After a medical conference, Damian meets up with his parents. He is eager to reconnect but, going to a café to catch up, the meeting quickly becomes tense. His mother openly expresses her shame, saying he is no more than an ‘extrasensory healer’ instead of a proper doctor like his wife. Damian’s father defends him.

Despite it all, Damian still loves his mother deeply and longs for the affection he has never received from her. The emotional blow proves too much for him and he collapses. When he regains consciousness, he finds himself in an ambulance, at the start of what will be a long and difficult recovery.

As soon as he is a little better, Damian insists on returning to his work at the clinic, no matter the cost. One day, he is visited by Anastasija, the woman he met on the retreat. During a hypnosis session, he realizes that she is unlike any patient he has treated before - her life energy is dangerously close to extinguishing.

Anastasija starts attending his sessions regularly and, over time, Damian uncovers the dark reality of her life. She lives with her abusive mother and her brother, Martin - the murderer whose face he once saw in the newspaper article Deborah had shown him.

When Damian collapses yet again, Deborah pleads with Dr Weiss who bans Damian from practising in the clinic and forces him to undergo at least six months of treatment.

Despite this, Damian attempts to hypnotize Martin but once again loses consciousness and is returned to hospital. There, Deborah has an emotional outburst brought on by her deep concern for his health but also her jealousy of Anastasija. She fails to understand that Damian has no romantic interest in Anastasija or any other woman - his only obsession is healing people and uncovering the truth about Martin, whose guilt he is certain of.

Martin has been released from prison due to a lack of evidence but Damian is determined to gather proof and expose him to the police and the world at large. However, as his fixation grows, those around him begin to view him as increasingly unhinged - psychologically unstable and no longer to be taken seriously.

Deborah still loves Damian. She tries to protect him, shielding him from the world, instinctively sensing that if he doesn’t stop this madness, it will all end in disaster.

Damian tracks down Anastasija and she finally opens up about her family. She tells him about her mother, who covers for Martin’s secret outings, and reveals that Martin is actually her stepbrother. According to their mother, Martin's erratic behaviour began after he fell from a swing as a child and suffered a head injury. But Martin once attacked her with a knife, and she is convinced he was responsible for the death of their eldest sister. Still, their mother remains loyal to Martin, perhaps because she had him late in life, fathered by a man who drowned shortly before their wedding.

Anastasija confesses that she feels guilty for never reporting her brother’s crimes or her mother’s lies to the police. Yet she refuses to change anything and remains trapped in her abusive family.

Damian receives devastating news - his father has passed away. At the funeral, he faces an existential breaking point, realizing he is completely alone in the world. His mother has never loved him. No one believes him. Deborah does not support him in the way he longs for and, like his mother, only wants him to be ‘normal’. The police refuse to take him seriously and, worst of all, Dr Weiss has banned him from practicing hypnosis, forcing him into therapy instead.

Damian continues his pursuit of Martin, determined to gather the proof needed to expose him. His obsession leads to a final confrontation at the top of an abandoned construction site. Although physically weakened, Damian manages to induce Martin into a hypnotic state and is on the point of making the murderer jump to his death. But at the last second, Damian hesitates. Refusing to become a killer, he runs from the scene and is struck by a car. When he regains consciousness in hospital, his memory is blurred and he has lost his ability to see people’s auras. He interprets this as divine punishment for the crime he believes he has committed.

With each passing day, Damian’s psychological state deteriorates. He confesses to Deborah that he has killed a man but she refuses to believe him. Meanwhile, Dr Weiss informs Deborah that the police have arrested Martin again, this time due to new evidence. He advises Deborah not to tell Damian, fearing that the news would only increase his anxiety and push him further into instability.

It is Christmas once more and Deborah is preparing for a family dinner which she has persuaded Damian’s mother to attend. Deborah plans to share some important news: she is expecting a baby, and Damian is going to become a father.

But for Damian, the world is nothing but monochrome. Convinced that he has killed a man, he can never return to his hypnosis practise and the colours and lights he once experienced. His memory remains shattered and his health shows no signs of improvement.

On Christmas Eve, Damian is tasked by Deborah with decorating the Christmas tree. He does so, but without the ability to see colours. When only one spare bulb remains in the box, he picks it up and it suddenly lights up in a vibrant green. Green has always been the colour that he associates with himself and now, when everything around him is black and white, it gleams in his hands.

Fixated on the green glow, Damian steps out onto the terrace. The light begins to detach from the bulb, slowly expanding and forming something that resembles a galaxy - glowing and rising up into the sky. He tries to reach out, desperate to hold onto it, but misses his footing and tumbles from the fifth floor.

His fall is witnessed by all the guests gathered outside, yet Deborah remains inside, still preoccupied with her preparations and calling out for Damian to answer the doorbell.