Unusual afflictions (part 1)

Oddities come to Everbleak as a last resort, but discover that it’s a resort for oddities

Student nurses (c.1960) study a patient with severe Tudor syndrome: ‘What if the Spanish Armada sinks all the potatoes?’.

The doctors and nurses at Everbleak have seen and dealt with all manner of bizarre illnesses, diseases and syndromes over the years. Some have been of their own making: unforeseen side-effects of unconventional treatments and experiments. Others were brought to their door by chance: the afflictions of travelling carnivals and twilight towns of creeping, inbred darkness.

Dr Randall Poole, head of Freak studies at the Everbleak institute once said: “Oddities come to Everbleak as a last resort, but discover that it’s a resort for oddities, so they end up staying”. And it was true. The circus freaks were always treated with great sensitivity. Even the nuns would lighten their brutality (a little…), for the most physically and mentally deformed. Sylvan Kane had also mellowed somewhat over the years, gradually phasing out his Bedlam impresario act of showing freaks to the public. He started showing uncharacteristic tenderness to his charges some time in the late 1920’s. Rumour had it that following a fleeting romance with a dwarf trapeze artiste, Kane himself had become father to a child with ‘terrible afflictions’ – but this, along with the identity of the child in question, was never confirmed.

On the way to surgery, c.1969. An uncommon case of Bulbitus, also known as ‘bud head’.

In the 70’s, interviews were conducted with some of Everbleak’s nurses by ‘Pussy Revolver’ – a counterculture magazine run out of a laundromat basement in Savannah. They contained some interesting historical insight into the strange afflictions that had passed through Everbleak’s wards, laboratories and corridors.

I saw some stuff, sure. All kindsa filth and freakery. But we always felt sorry for them, ya know? There was this whole group of sightless albinos that got bussed in. Seven of them. They’d been working underground at some secret government facility and had started turning into blind moles with all the colour drained out. Ultraviolet, vitamin D, and amphetamines – that’s what we gave them. And they’d get taken outside in this blacked-out sedan chair thing, where they could get fresh air without getting fried up.

Staff Nurse Judy Thornball

The age of social media has ushered a plethora of new afflictions and conditions into Everbleak . In the ‘Idiot Ward’, the inmates can spend up to half the day taking selfies – on phones that have no battery or signal. They call themselves ‘influencers’.

There was this strange syndrome – Lacrimosa Separation Syndrome… LSS. It affected Ventriloquists who couldn’t bear to be parted from their dummies. This is the dumb, wooden dummies we’re talking about: not the sinister ones who run around with sharp blades causing mayhem. LSS manifested itself in this strange, irrational anxiety about death: would their dummy be cremated or buried with them? Who would care for their dummy after they’d gone if the dummy didn’t go with them? We had this fake crematorium chapel built, so the ventriloquists could lie in a coffin with their dummy and experience how it would be; that they’d be reduced to ash together. It seemed to help.

Dr Frank Coomber, Psychologist

Balloon-head deflation needs to occur as slowly and as naturally as possible in order to avoid potentially lethal side effects

Everbleak is a place of light and dark, of fluctuation and ambiguity. They didn’t always get it right – medically or morally, but they tried. And that has to count for something, right?