Verbal Medicine is a product of the collective ‘Writing Game‘ (CEO project).

Verbal Medicine 1

Stephen Steeplton meandered his aged blue Volvo 940 along the main road between his place of residence (he was going home) and his work-place. A man of fifty plus years, he didn’t feel the need exceed the speed limit or to even drive up to it. The car wasn’t powerful, and he didn’t care. It accelerated pitifully, it dragged up hills, he braked excessively at small bends. It generally annoyed the fuck out of every driver behind him. Today he possibly drove even slower on account of his mind pouring over the details of a patient at his Phytocorp clinic.

Stephen was a medical herbalist or at least that’s how he named himself internally. In fact, this name had been abandoned when the corporates swept through herbal medicine business over 10 years ago. Phytocorp and the rest of them had swept through the market purchasing every small herbal practice and health store in the country. The business model was appalling. These companies borrowed vast amounts of money to purchase and transform these shabby small businesses into sleek metallic operations. It hadn’t really panned out like that. Of course phyto-therapeutics had been getting increasingly popular as an alternative to the mostly wealth oriented ‘real’ drug biomedical industry —the poor turned back to the plants in desperation of their increasingly sickening plight. This made it look like the industry (if you could call it that) was ripe for corporatization -it wasn’t. Business after business failed, corporates lost vast amounts of money as they endlessly failed to turn small herbal clinics and health stores into shiny capital producing machines, because the poor were, well, poor.

However, determined not to let the shabby grass roots practices of snake-oil re-emerge, companies like Phytocorp grimly hung in there until this wasteland cleared somewhat. They then set up the Phyto-clinics in hotspots where the practices had been actually successful and bought politicians that banned the re-emergence of any independent herbalism of similar practice (in case you wondered, acupuncture suffered a similar fate of corporatizing, the independents were removed and lucrative deals were made involving the syphoning off bioelectricity from clients on the sly). These hotspots were of course places where the middle classes were wont to indulge themselves with every alternative therapy they could lay their hands on. These people initially expressed a mild disingenuous dissatisfaction at the lack of the feel of authenticity corporate world exuded (they wanted to feel like they attended something more earthy) but quickly embraced the smooth plastic curves and carefully manicured philodendrons that adorned the practices. Once reconciled with this herbalism-of-the-future image they came in droves to (mostly) have their chronic conditions mildly ameliorated and talk about themselves.

So Stephen Steeplton was not a medical herbalist, he was a phytoclinician. This was his official title. This was somewhat confused by the fact that the corporates had even created a new title in law for them: Pr. So he was Pr Steeplton. No one knew exactly how you were supposed to pronounce ‘Pr’; because they hadn’t thought about it that hard, someone in PR had just noticed that Doctor becomes Dr and they liked that. Running with this idea, the same ingenious PR operative board switched the D for a P to make the Pr title. In theory it was short for phytoclinician, but of course that didn’t make any real sense. Worse still, since the title came from the PR dept more confusion ensued when some covetous management officials started adopting Pr as their title despite not being phytophysicians (but working in PR). Professors from various universities chucked in their tuppenceworth by writing to the government, protesting potential conflation with their own titles but these complaints were burned.

The patient Steeplton was considering was one he’d seen earlier that day. He considered most of his patients to be malingerers of some sort, middle aged people with mithering complaints symptomatic of little other than age itself; infected with some kind of ecological ethic these people came to the phytocorp clinics rather than mainstream biomed for the holistic touch. Pr Steeplton was at least proficient in this. He invariably had a variety of plant allies that hovered around him in adjacent realms. These beings would often whisper diagnostics to him saving him the trouble of thinking about the patient himself or even listening to them. The only problem with taking his eye completely off the ball was that sometimes the allies would just make things up for their own entertainment, suggesting wildly inappropriate remedies for conditions the patient didn’t even have. One time based on such recommendations he gave an old lady an Rx of 50% Capsicum 50% Datura (10ml TDI) for what turned out later to be haemorrhoids. It all turned nasty and Phytocorp had to clean up the mess —quite literally. So nowadays he paid attention to his own mind and what they said. This was usually highly effective.

The patient he reflected on at the moment was, though boring in character, interesting in case. He had come originally about a series of paralysing headaches which biomed centre had at first diagnosed as idiopathic tumours. However subsequent scans has shown the tumours to be only occasionally manifest. Interdimensional tumour interference was something they couldn’t treat since even if they scheduled surgery there would be no way of telling if the tumours would be there that day or not, furthermore this came with the extra danger that an ego driven surgeon (and they all are) would not be able to live with not removing something in the operation and hence would remove sections of brain and pass them off as if they were the tumours. Biomed didn’t need the hassle so sent him to Phytocorp who immediately gave him to Pr Steeplton (being the most esoterically capable of the Prs and this unit).

Gary (that was the patient’s name) was a talker. He talked so much Pr Steeplton’s allies even got bored and switched off. Steeplton had a hard time staying awake enough to try to sift through the endless waffle ‘So Pr, how do I say that is it like ‘prr’?, doesn’t matter? Okay, I’ve been a little better, I took my medicine like you said. It doesn’t taste as good as the last one and I uh, feel it goes more left side than right if you know what I mean? My Cynthia says I can’t tell my right from my left, maybe she’s right I do sometimes get confused, I mean not so confused I don’t know which hand I’m writing with if you know what I mean. Anyway…’ and so it went on, and on.

Aside from the fact that occasionally manifest tumours was an interesting case, it was what Gary had said that had sparked Pr Steeplton’s interest, Gary had been talking about a dream he had had. Stephen had always been interested in dreams. He considered himself a bit of a Jungian on the sly, or maybe a neo-Jungian, whatever that was. Jung seemed so distant now that it seemed sticking on neo as a prefix might be a good idea. ‘So I had this dream Prr, just after the last headache, which was big but only lasted a short while, which is good as they used to last much longer, except it was more painful, do you think as the tumours get shorter in time, they might get bigger in space? Anyway I was sat in this armchair and a man walks in. He’s only small and he’s old but really spritely. He says, ‘get out of the chair!’ and I get out of the chair. Then he says ‘you know your problem pal?’ I say ‘No’ he says ‘You walk all wrong!’ ‘I do?’ ‘Yup, so listen up I’m going to show you the right way to walk!’ Then he walks round the room in this weird low walk, leaning slowing forwards as he does so. It looked pretty creepy to be honest but there was also something kind of, uh, powerful about it. Anyway he goes round the room a few times and then shouts ‘Now you!’ I start trying but I can’t lean forwards, I just lean sideways, then I wake up’.

Pr Steeplton was worried that Gary might be right about the tumours growing as they were temporally compressed. He obviously needed to adjust the prescription, the last thing he wanted was Gary’s haemorrhaged brain on his conscience. Gary wanted to know if he should try the weird low walk or not. Stephen felt unsure. He needed to know if the old man was a bad symbol or not. He tried asking Gary what colour his clothes were, but Gary couldn’t remember. This was frustrating as decoding dream clothing was his favourite interpretive device. He liked it so much he even had devised a whole a categorisation system of items of dream clothing, their colours and what the various combinations meant.

His mental flitting between the various areas of this conversation were suddenly interrupted by his noticing of a quickly approaching police vehicle in the rear view mirror. He attempted to pull the car to the side of the road to allow the vehicle by but it sped past him before he could do so. Upon passing him though, rather than speeding on its way, it screeched sharply to a stop forcing him to do likewise, or at least meander to a stop (given that he had only been driving at 42mph).

Stephen sat confused as a slender pale policeman swung himself out of the car and strode towards his vehicle. ‘Good evening sir’ ‘Evening officer’ ‘Any reason why you didn’t pull out of the way of our car just now sir?’ ‘Well, I was about to, but then you just went round me’ ‘Sir the reason we did go round you was because you were in the way, we’re on our way to a very dangerous incident you know.’ ‘Right’ ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic sir’ Steeplton was understandably confused. If the incident was so urgent, why bother him? It did however seem unwise to point this out.

The policeman stared in at him through the window, his eyes looked glassy and pink. Stephen shuddered and looked again and they seemed to looked more normal. ‘Well sir?’ Realising his mind has wandered and the policeman had continued talking for some time, he had no idea what he should say ‘Yes..’ he tried. ‘Yes?’ said the policeman ‘Yes’ said Stephen. ‘Right then sir, you had better come with us then.’

An excerpt from Memory Alchemycal

By: Sean Duffield

“Anabeila” She heard it ring in her ears. It wasn’t angry or even loud, but Notum Raysolas voice had a coercive effect. Anabeila could sense the set pegs of her mechanical music box heart being adjusted and arranged so that her cadence would again match the other children’s in the class. Her meditations would find accord with the other children’s. Her eyes would close and the conservatory’s natural fabrics, flush with microbes basking in the greenhouse sunlight would melt away into the fascinations of the spirit realm. 

“Anabeila…” the voice was in her ear. It tumbled waves of green grass liturgy around the soft cartilage of her herbaceous scapha, passing the juvenile concha and entering her ear canal still wet with birth; they would say, even if several years ago. 

The lush voice of a natural Notum scrubbed the inner workings of her mind and washed the leaves green. She removed fig seeds from the crooks of her branches. Stripped the knots from the bark, tilled the soil round’ hungry roots and left a canopy of light above the naked sensations of her ego’s tree.

“Anabeila.” The forest of synchronicity was dusted in summer daylight dimensions that refracted equally through the missing corners of every tree tops green spectrum. “Anabeila.” 

“Yes Notum Raysolas.”

She was tall and lean in front of Anabeila now. Notum’s pupils were constellations that read for signs. Her iris, the planets of Cratum and all its intelligent design. Her face, the universe in singular sum. Her hand reaching out, touched Anabeila’s heart, attempting to quell the distractions she so often, naturally, succumbed.

“Anabeila you must focus with the class.”

“I am focused, Notum.”

“You should be working in your forest. Laying ash from memory and sowing the seeds of your apple trees.”

“Yes, Notum Raysolas.”

“I know the conservatory insects are distracting to you but… 

The tell tale legs of a meelywag began kneading the soft innards of Anabeila’s clavicle skin. She opened her eyes and looked over. The small creature’s great blue pupils shored up and made safe the deep well of its ocular beauty. Anabeila threatened to lower herself to the bottom and collect the nectar from the meelywag’s well. It almost smiled, then cocked its quadruple mandibles, turned a sectionalised body of metallic feathers and flushed its wings out right. Jumped from the cliff-side of Anabeilas focus and floated into the conservatory’s vast open skies, heading for the windows that it truly could not be imprisoned by.

Anabeila again found herself sunk into the art that was the conservatory’s delightful reprise. A place not unlike the one she crafted in her mind. In place of deciduous trees however, were what was referred to as ‘chitin trees’. Tall woody structures with Amber tinted transparent leaves that stretched out like man-made wings on a single network of black nutrient thickening lung bronchioles. They filtered light through to the fauna beneath them, but stole all the blue from the spectrum and left the forest floor in a dark orange sheen. 

“Anabeila!”

Again focus was stolen and replaced with placated desire.

“Yes, Notum. Sorry.”

“Anabeila, you have much work to do here. An enlightened cannot just be strong of body and soul. She must be strong of mind.” 

“I work on my forest Notum. All the time.”

Skepticism washed the painted canvas of stars from Notum Raysolas’ face. A master’s emotions were usually only shown here. For the sake of communicating without language. To be what they meant and Notum always meant what she was.

“Anabeila.” She said with remorse pooling in pores and concern washing the skin of lions away. 

Notum placed her hands on Anabeila’s shoulders. Twisted her sternum, gentle suggestions of heart, and positioned her to look in the opposing direction. Away from Notum. Peering into the true shadow of Anabeila’s mind. 

Away from the tree under which they stood, passed the dividing lines of desire and intention. The river laid. Fast and grey. Full of serpents and yellow eyes and jaded riddles or devious games. It struck a path of violence between the island on which Anabeila and the Notum were standing and the true face of the forest of ash in which Anabeila should have been working was layered in the banks beyond its other side. 

The truth of her forest was obvious. Passed the rage of the river was a towering horizon of red waves and putrid fruits, acorns and den mother cries. It was a wooded anomaly of oak trees tied under strangler fig piano lines, whose great flowers stretched tendril roots down through bark and into sulphur rich earth full of rabbit pelts and skinned skink spines. They pulled nutrient from every crevice and fed every line until swollen with molestation crimes. The vitamins and carbon rose beyond the suffocating tree limbs, powering the huge soot laden fig tree flowers that hung in the sky, imperious ravens, eyes like owls. Mice in the field. Anabeila and the Notum prey to the rotating stigmas of thousands of predatorial blossom sties.

“This is what we must conquer, Anabeila. Not small islands of pleasure, but huge territories of fear.”

Anabeila looked at herself. Somewhere inside the second self, right now. She could feel the island beneath them quiver. It was shaking. Fear was all powerful. It was encompassing.

“Child, I am here. Do not be afraid.”

But it began as Anabeila looked into the maw of a fig flower where wasp stings putrefy. She felt them without looking, and she had looked on them with true eyes.

The flowers shook. Their scried stems pulsed. Their ovaries opened, anthers pulled apart. The angular focus of petals stretched back to the forest and the forward facing leaned directly into Anabeila’s sights. The receptacle appeared, a mouth in its bloom. A set of sawed teeth, mucous lined and stained with rotting rabbit feet, smiled. They all smiled. They all turned their smiles to the two on the island on the other side of a river shrinking. Violent, but shrinking. The forest getting closer. The wind picking up powerful pace.

“Anabeila! You must overpower it. Stand above it. It is YOU. Do not let it empower that which you’ve hidden, it must be brought to light! Not embiggened!”

It made nonsense of her senses. Anabeila began to slip further. Her eyes spiraling into the shoreline of demons. Her heart disappearing. The monster within freeing itself and using her thin scarred arms as levers. 

The sky turned a crude dark oil spill dripping hydrocarbons and tannins from the roof of an acidic lake. Upside down into the ephemeral timescape of the halfway empyrean nested with bodies of Abbadon above the forest of smiling snakes. The sour rain from the locust filled sky drenched the ground with sulphur and fed the soil with wine.

“Anabeila!” Her voice was growing softer. Leaving her ears. “Ana! Truth is the ego of the beast… Conquer it a—” her voice disappeared into the din of demons.

The storm turned its soil to a churning of tentacles like cardboard waves righting stage left, held in the hands of imps and spectres. The ground splashed amongst itself, spears and sceptres. Tarot card pulp turned the soil fuel line rider and all the tendril roots grew seven times larger. 

The flowers rose even higher, the trees beneath them shrinking into old towers overpowered by time and vines and raising volume waters. The bloom smiles grew wider, teeth larger, throats emptier, stronger, muscles inducing sky semen down harder. Great casts of shadows, sails billowing with dark jolly roger. Monster minds, and blowing bombs. 

“Anabeila!” Her voice was quiet and it was scared. It was very far away… evanescent.

The forest continued and grew into a giant, its legs rising from the backs of turtles lodged in hands of logs of reptile riots. The beast rose from the deep, mouth opened, behemoth ready to reap. Its hands now pointed towards the stars, it grasps the great WYRM! The cycle of God! And it pulls! It pulls God’s mouth down onto —

Shock. All white.

Notum’s hands were a description of pale and hot. She had clapped them together once and entirety disappeared from thought. The forest shrank and dissolved. The island washed out beneath her, and Anabeila was drowning for a moment. Coughed of raging waters and Notums palms.

She opened her eyes, still coughing. In the conservatory. The entire classroom of silent unwatching children were all focused on the back, where Notum Raysolas stood, holding Anabeila in her arms. She turned them both away from innocent but curious eyes and placed her chin into Anabeila’s shoulder, joining physical self to physical mind. “Don’t fret child.” Spoke Notum while tears welled in their eyes. “Egos are the beast of the mind. Terrors to be tamed and brought in line. We will conquer them. All in good time.”