DEVIATED

MEDICAMENT


A Short Fiction
In Celebration Of Fall

By

David A. Archer
02/15/1968




09/14/2006




The “blipper” was still “blipping” which supposedly meant that she was still alive.

You couldn’t tell though. She just lay there not even breathing on her own.

The sound of “inhale” and “exhale” was made with a gurgle by the machine that continued to force her once attractive chest into motions of “up” and “down.”

The tubes protruding from her nostrils which acted to drain the continuous flow of fluids, were reminiscent of hamster tubes for worms. That is surely what it reminded me of as the bloody mass would ooze down the tube now and then, moving much as a person might imagine of an annelid.

I found myself recalling our last exchange of any sort while still wondering through the sparse understanding I presently had of her ailment. I felt helpless in that direction of thought given that the specialists were only now beginning to understand the causes of these increasingly common occurrences.

I remember that her nose began to bleed, which neither of us felt too concerned about until it then began to gush accompanied with considerably sized pieces of some fleshy matter. I would soon find through consultation, that the fleshy matter was actually pieces of her brain.

Her “prognosis” was none too good for several reasons. The most obvious of which being an impossibility of return to any recognizable normality given the damage she had suffered to her brain, and the next of which being that the physicians didn’t even know much about the affliction itself, much less any way to treat it.

I had already spent hours on end with various specialists. Each giving their account and best guess at what exactly it could be that acted in such a quick manner. The specialists themselves tending to lean toward an area with respect to their given specialty, though obviously having deviated somewhat from the standard lines of medical approach and diagnosis given the uniqueness of this condition. Each specialist I spoke with had a similar explanation but predictably from the perspective of their own given “area” of medicine. Not yet understanding just what they were dealing with.

It was a compilation of ideas manifesting as a radical theory, and hardly centralized as of yet, but it stood to all of the questions and really was the only thing which presented any comprehensive explanations. In so many words, it was really all that they had.

It had to do with humanity having failed to consider the resulting effects of so many types of saturations on the human existence, which we have introduced ourselves through development and hasty use in the market place.

We weren’t “mutating” ourselves directly it would seem, but were doing so to some degree over a period of time frames which became staggered and tangled in the social movements and said developments within given societies.

It was very much that our human progresses, as we have managed to heap them upon one another, were now somehow reacting to the influence of each other.

In so many words, the “frequency” saturation and consistencies were causing a strange effect with, on and during the process of ingesting and absorbing medications. Diverting their expected course in action and in effect mutating their resulting manifestation and interaction with and within the human host. This transpiring as per the added influences to some extent, of the subtle variations in chemical presence from region to region. Then further promoted with differences in diet and personal elemental configurations and consistencies.

There was just no way of pin pointing it in the present state of ignorance and excitement of discovery now sweeping the medical world. And it was obvious that “head in the sand” would no longer suffice.

Best guess estimates I had been told in one of the numerous and blurred meetings with specialists, is that it first began to happen with early diet pill deaths. They just didn’t know how to diagnose it as per what it really was beyond the known mortal effects.

This as well being true in regard to several other medication mishaps as they appeared to happen. No one knew that this phenomenon was transpiring. All anyone knew, was that for some reason even medications which had been through extensive research prior to introduction and use, were suddenly looking to be the root cause of severe side effect developments.

It was when it started to happen with various forms of pharmaceutical inhibitor medication, that someone decidedly took note and explored what was really emerging as a consistent effect.

Between the normal mutation in human progression and those other saturated forms of influence, the medication was being changed in the digestive process itself. This producing rather caustic effects as result. Including the decomposer like changes to various organs and other living tissue, including the brain.

The initial symptoms of many forms of this mutation occurrence are suspected to be the presence of olfactory disturbances. That is to say, the presence of smells that can’t necessarily be explained and have no real affiliation with anything in the general area. Most times being fleeting, though at others being quite pronounced.

It was overlooked for the longest time as just some sort of strange human development. Some psychological affiliation with memory having been stimulated to cause the effect and didn’t seem to be of any great concern. It was even accepted in many social atmospheres as simply a part of life.

They were correct in the smallest part of the assumption being stimulation, but were grotesquely mistaken in the meaning and severity of such mystery “smells.” They had no idea that it was to be an indicator of epic proportions. It was just that none had even begun to consider the area of “development” as a possibility, much less a developing reality.

Soon they would know that in the present time, the occurrence of such symptoms meant nothing more than the presence of said mutations. The effect and result of what was now known as “Deviated Medicament,” and with that again, in the present darkness pertaining to the depth of knowledge in such results, meaning nothing less than impending incapacitation if not death.There was just nothing they could do about it.

To use more medications was to only amplify and even diversify the problem.

Polarizing the effects in result and mutation, far past even the inability to diagnose and treat them which was currently common.

To no longer use medications was to allow it to continue as a strain of mutation within the human realm of existence.

It was very much juggling the self imposed unraveling of humanity. And doing so blindfolded at this point. All while having no reference point from which to begin to address it, beyond the results now manifesting in pandemic numbers through out various societies.

For me the realization began with small bits of brain matter mixed with blood on the linoleum kitchen floor as I watched the gurney wheel away under a dark and gloomy sky. Absent mindedly then looking at the new pumpkin in the window still waiting to be carved for the nearing holiday, not yet really grasping the gravity of the situation. Only moments before having heard about the smell of fresh bread mixed with the distant olfactory sensations connoting an untended, modern outhouse.

For many others the realization was yet to take hold and might not if they were lucky enough.I looked again.

She still lay there with no motion of her own volition, and the “blipper” kept “blipping.”Her chest kept moving up and down as I had seen it do similarly in other situations now more than worlds away.

I began to feel the fatigue of having been awake for several days and not moving much as I again noticed the worm like sludge which kept oozing down the tubes protruding from her nose…

…And then in that moment of relaxation, I suddenly found myself comforted in a slight daydream like state…

…With the presence of baking cookies from somewhere down the hall.