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Extract Twenty-Two: The Case Notes of Dr Maximillian Vaughn: Subject 1932z/12 – Sir Mumphrey Wilton – incurable Tuesday, 07-Dec-1999 18:49:05
Extract Twenty-Three: The Case Notes of Dr Maximillian Vaughn: Subject 1932z/12 – Sir Mumphrey Wilton – incurable Herringcarp Asylum Stroker's Island December 11th: Met again with Wilton today, but I am still achieving only limited success. Since his compulsory admission to Herringcarp Asylum I have been unable to find the key to getting inside this rather baffled old man. How to overcome his deep suspicion of “blasted head-tinkerers”? The following transcription illustrates my problem perfectly. Dr Valium: And how are we this morning, Mumphrey. Wilton: That’s Sir Mumphrey to you, you young whippersnapper, and as for how we are, well you’re still a smug, pompous idiot and I’m still incarcerated in your hell-hole against my will. Dr V: Now Mumphrey, you know that kind of attitude isn’t going to make you better. Wilton: That’s because I’m perfectly alright, blast it. Right as rain. Dr V: Come now, Mumphrey. You know that isn’t true. Let’s talk again about those fantasies of yours, and I’ll sure you will see how inappropriate they are. Wilton: Give me my pocketwatch back and we’ll soon see who’s making things up, you jackanapes. Dr V: No, Mumphrey. We’ve agreed that the pocketwatch is an unhelpful enabling accessory to your fantasies haven’t we? We can’t play to those delusions you have about helping superheroes and fighting villains any more. Wilton: Dammit, man, it’s true. Call up Ms Waltz, my attorney, and ask her. Contact my amanuensis Asil and enquire about the Sempiternus Singularis… Dr V: Ah yes, this mysterious alien device that nobody understands which has had you running about the planet, throwing your money away and endangering the family business which you have cared for since your farther died. Wilton: Not in danger at all. I built that business up from scratch, and I know every I inch of it. Can run it in my sleep. Dr V: There you go again, Mumphrey. You know that Wilton Enterprises was founded in 1881 by your grand-father. If it had been you that would make you over a hundred and fifty years old. And that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Wilton: Not if one is the guardian of the Pocketwatch of Infinity. Now get me out of here because I have important things to do and I don’t need some psycho-quack proddlin’ about with things he doesn’t understand. You have no right to… Dr V: On the contrary Mumphrey, I have every right. You’ll be with us for a long time here at Herringcarp. But don’t worry, your daughter Mrs Cartwell-Potterbright has every confidence in us. Wilton (paling): Felicity? Felicity knows I’m here? Dr V: Mr and Mrs Cartwell-Potterbright have your own interests at heart. It was they who alerted us to your confused and dangerous condition, Mumphrey. And your son Roland is looking after your family business while you are indisposed. Wilton: My… my own children put me here? My children? Dr V: Ah, I think we might be coming to a breakthrough now, Mumphrey. Yes, your children are very worried about you. They want you safe and well and out of harm’s way. So you have to work with me. Wilton: I can’t believe it. Felicity and Roland. They’ve betrayed me. Oh Madge! Oh what have I done? [Wilton breaks down and cries] Dr V: Very good Mumphrey, very good. I’m quite pleased with the progress we’re making tod… [Wilton suddenly lashes at Dr Valium for no reason, striking him painfully on the superciliary ridge and nasal eminence before he can be restrained by attendants and sedated] December 12th: I strive to remember that as a healer and a senior member of the psychiatric profession one must not indulge in petty likes and dislikes with patients, even one as awkward and intractable as Mumphrey Wilton. It isn’t easy. He has no respect for me, no gratitude at what I am trying to do for him. He doesn’t even want to be made well. Witness today’s interview: Dr V: Well Mumphrey, I trust that you have calmed down somewhat from your irrational intransigent state yesterday, and have an apology to make? Wilton: Hmph. Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t get to break your nose before they got this straight-jacket on me, you strutting po-faced pustulence. Dr V: It’s an attitude like that which is preventing your recovery, Mumphrey. Is it any wonder that your children agreed to your treatment here when you go about behaving like that? Wilton: Oh, very good, old boy. Got the old man to blub about his children yesterday, let’s try it today as well. Well better men than you have tortured me, Maximillain Valium, and I’m still around. Dr V: You are not a prisoner of torture, Mumphrey. You are a patient in my care. You have been judged non compos mentis, which is Latin and means… Wilton: Not of sound mind. Yes, very impressed with the Latin but de minimis non curat lex contra bonos mores, et hic genius omne as I always say, doctor. Dr V: Um, yes, that is… [Finally go this translated as “the law does not bother with trifles about good manners and things like that”. That Wilton can be arrogantly patronising at times.] Let’s move on and discuss those delusions that you have recorded in your diary. Do you really believe that you were born in the early nineteenth century and have been living a succession of lives ever since? Wilton: I believe that you are the biggest ass since Balaam’s. I don’t discuss my private journals with nasty little snoopy oiks. I bet nobody liked you at school. Dr V: My school life is not important… Wilton: I bet it is. I bet that’s why you grew up to be such a smug, self-important, pointless little man, who has to project his insecurities onto others to prop himself up. I knew Freud and he was just the same. Told him where he could stick his cigars. You probably wetted your bed, maybe still do. Dr V: Back to the journals, Mumphrey. You must see that all this material about Chroniclers of Worlds and Shapers of Stories and undead mummies in lost Egyptian temples are not the imaginings of a healthy mind. Wilton: Absolutely. Dr V: You agree? Wilton: Of course. Not imaginings at all. Real. You really aren’t that bright, are you, old chap? December 13th: Wilton continues to be intractable, if a little less coherent given the drugs in his system, but I have hopes of eventually wearing down that arrogant façade. Perhaps the scheduled course of electro-convulsive treatment will assist? Today’s interview denoted an evolution in his delusional fantasy-world, which suggests that drastic radical treatment measures may need to be considered. Dr V: And how are we today, Mumphrey? Wilton: All the better able to ding you on the nose again if it wasn’t for this straight-jacket, Valium. Dr V: Now Mumphrey, you know the hospital rules about addressing medical staff with the respect they deserve. Wilton: Yes, but I’m not much of a swearing man. Besides, I know what’s going on here now. Your boss has blown the game. Dr V: My boss. I think you’ll find that I am the senior clinician at Herringcarp. Wilton: But not the boss. He came to see me last night, to gloat. Came to my cell. Dr V: You are claiming now that you had a visitor to your room? Wilton: That’s right. Your boss, the Hooded Hood. Dropped in last night to boast about how he’d had his revenge for me once giving him a well-deserved biffing, how he’d changed history so that I really was a crazy old man in a lunatic asylum. Told me how nobody would be coming for me because nobody even remembered me, not one of the heroes I’ve ever worked with. How he’d left me here to be treated as a lunatic for the rest of my days. Dr V: I’m afraid your delusions are getting the better of you again, Mumphrey. The Hooded Hood was once a fictional persona of a comatose patient we have here, Ioldobaoth Winkelweald – nothing more. You are spinning a very dangerous fabrication for yourself, Mumphrey. Wilton: He almost had me as well. Almost had me thinking that Roland was so venal as to lock his old man up to get control of Wilton Enterprises, and that Felicity was so spineless as to let him and that pointless husband of hers do it to me. But it was all the Hood’s influence, I see that now. Poor children could no more help it than you can. Dr V: This is very destructive and delusional reasoning, Mumphrey. Wilton: Oh shut up, you medical glove puppet. The Hood’s got his hand so far up your arse I could see his fingers in your throat. Dr V: I’m sorry it’s come to this, Mumphrey, but you are just not responding to treatment. Attendants, take him away. We’ll have to consider more radical therapies to make him safe and well. Wilton [struggling with attendants]: You may have got me here and have stacked the deck against me, Hood, but I won’t give in. Death to tyrants! I’ll see you hanged yet, you evil bugger! Thrash you myself… Conclusions: Mumphrey Wilton is a delusional and dangerous personality, whose confinement should be permanent for his own and society’s protection. He is unlikely to respond effectively to conventional therapies, leaving only radical techniques available to accomplish his safe rehabilitation. I await further instructions on this matter. I believe that Sir Mumphrey fully appreciates the futility and desperation of his current situation by now. You will continue to believe that you treat him under your own best judgements. You will schedule and perform upon him a pre-frontal lobotomy to remove those characteristics of resistance which prevent him from being a useful minion. You will ensure that he is aware of his lobotomisation ahead of time so that he can relish his last few hours as a human being, and reflect upon what is to come. I trust he will have a long, frightened, lonely, regret-poisoned last few hours. Thereafter he may serve as a faithful zombie of… the Hooded Hood. A possibly final appearance by Sir Mumphrey Wilton |
| Extract Twenty-Two: The Case Notes of Dr Maximillian Vaughn: Subject 1932z/12 – Sir Mumphrey Wilton – incurable (A possibly final appearance by Sir Mumphrey Wilton) (07-Dec-1999 18:49:05) |
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