Identy Disorder

Before I begin: a brief list, names only minimally disguised, of some of my clients:

Purple Storm Jones
Four
Filth Williams
Quentin Freak (changed own name from Quentin Adams)
Legalise Marijuana Jackson
Thor Bludskullen (brother of Odin Bludskullen)
Odin Bludskullen (brother of Thor)
Yoo Suk

And a Dagger, a Knife, countless Blades, Scars, Edges and a Katana.

I should also point out that Chastity Virginia was nothing of the sort, and Wolf Storm was always being beaten up by his fourteen year old step-daughter.

Anyway - I noticed Mr Glub* as soon as I opened the clinic door. Everyone always does. Amongst a clientele of truly unusual characters, Mr Glub stands out. Any reference, in the north, the south, the east, as far south as Ratbite River and out to the prisons a day's drive from here, to "that really weird looking methadone guy" will be immediately understood as referring to Mr Glub.

He's tall - something over seven feet, although some of that is his hair, which is vertical, and that "safety orange" that roadside workers wear. His eyes are as bulging and as blue as the earth seen from a Lagrange point, his ears almost bend forward. He's skeletally thin, probably about fifty kilos. Precisely none of that is melanin - Mr Glub gets sunburnt by a fridge light. His nose bends so that he can - and occasionally does - touch the tip with the tip of his tongue. He sports a pointed goatee.

Add to that that he has some undefined impairment - maybe genetic, maybe a result of his several overdoses - so that he speaks in a high-pitched sing-song voice, and sways back and forth as he does so - and you've got a truly unusual looking individual.

Thing is, Mr Glub's a very nice man, and I was horrified to see what had happened to him. He was bruised and beaten, with a black eye and scratches and scrapes all over him, and when he got up from the chair he walked with a limp. I ushered him in.

"What happened?" I said.

"Well, Doctor Bronze" he trilled -

- It may help if you read his dialogue to yourself in a thin, reedy, sing-song voice, and sway back and forth as you do so. That's how I'm typing it -

"Well, Doctor Bronze, I was waiting in line at the pharmacy -"

and he told the usual tale of how some car had screamed to a halt, some big guy had leapt out with a pick-ax handle and a look of rage and had fallen upon him and beaten him half to death. This happens to my clients quite a lot. As I have written before, it helps to be prepared**.

"Good Lord - that's terrible. We've got to get you to somewhere safe - I think there may be space - " I scanned the secret list of pharmacists we have on the computer. We keep it secret to slow the rate of holdups - "Jekyll's Allcare at Mordor Park, or Crippen's Family Pharmacy - "

"Oh, don't worry about that" he said, rocking from side to side. "It's all sorted out now. The bloke who did it came over and explained."

"Explained?"

"Yes" sang Mr Glub, all seven feet of him. "Turns out it was all a case of mistaken identity".

Explains it all. Anyway, back to the sick.

Thanks for listening,
John

*Not his real name, obviously, but it's close. Something Nordic, almost Viking. He's got the height and the scarlet hair, but he's too harmless. You could imagine him getting out of a longboat, sauntering up the shore and wondering around to stare at the animals and chat to the villagers.

**Sorry, can't do the link exactly right.