issue 1-test - Monkey Pharmacy

Hypergraphia
By
Ken Lillie-Paetz

It was the book’s fault. Not yours. Something accidentally
triggered. Just let it pass. They shouldn’t have
read to you. That was a mistake. Given you more words.
Therapy is trial and error. The trial is over, leaving
only error. The dark wood of Error.
Stop thinking.
Don’t let the idea form. An idea, a story, was starting
there. Kill it. Stop the words from forming. The ideas
shouldn’t be there. You are getting rid of them. Keep
your words out.
Close your eyes.
swirling rotations in your mind, of your mind. The medication
is there, inside your head. You can feel it. Be
reassured. It is a presence in your body; let it cradle
come back to you.
Think of that.
Think of her. Make the medicine into her. She is with
you. She is now the warmth inside your head. Her voice is
the spinning echoes. She is carrying you, holding you so
tightly. You are safe. Like in a pleasant dream that will
not be gone upon awakening.
But don’t awaken.
Hypergraphia
By
Ken Lillie-Paetz
your hand from tracing letters. Stop.
right. Give yourself a sentence but nothing more. One
line, no comma, no semi-colons. Don’t cheat yourself with

your own tricks.
He found it there, in the chaos of fallen leaves.
Ignore the comma. The sentence is still short. You
can feel the words burn into the fabric of your blanket.
That is enough.
Be content.
Don’t let the words have life. Stop thinking of the
it that lies enigmatic in that line. Do not describe it,
move on. Think only of the drug swirl. Of your lover’s
soothing voice. Think of anything but what the it is.
Right now, it is nothing. It is nothing. Convince yourself
of that.
He found nothing there, in the chaos of fallen
leaves.
Forget the thought.
thing
simple. Just an empty mass of overlapping leaves.
Swirled together by a slight chill wind. Nothing more.
Swirled together like the medicine in your head. But
now it is still. Still, like your mind will one day be.
Still, like the promises they make you.
Stop it.
You are changing things. They are making promises
still. Their promises are not still. They are always coming
at you. Still, quiet. Still. Still happening. Neverending.
Ceaseless like your need.
You are deceiving yourself.
Do not give in. Go back to motion. It was the stillness
that got to you. That was a mistake. Do not think of
calm as stationary. Go back to the gentle swirls of mo-
forgotten lover again, your remembered lover. Was that
helping? Her hands moving over you. Soothing you.

He found her lying still, in the chaos of fallen
leaves.
That is not it.
is lifeless. Just as you found her.
He found her still and lifeless form, in the chaos of
fallen leaves. Swirled leaves that had fallen to rest in
the same way she had.
ing
letters. Tapping. Just a twitch, you say. But you
know the truth. That is no tremor. The movement of your
keys. Adding yet another line. Changing nothing into something.
Something. Something painful. Something you do not
want to remember.
You are doing this to yourself.
Swirled leaves, now matted with blood, that had fallen
to rest in the same way she had.
Two commas. Another thought caught in between. The
not needed. It still makes sense. It is still true. But
there is more. There is now blood. There is always blood.
Always.
Whenever you write. It ends in sadness. No, that is
not true. It begins with sadness. It ends with loss and
pain. It ends in blood. Always.
It begins with sadness.
She was crying when she left. She had been crying a
lot. The words that haunted him, the ones that had taken
him over, had found their way to her as well.
How could they not? They were everywhere. They had

changed their life. He could not stop them. They had
started in his head, but that was so long ago. Back in a
peaceful time when they could still be together. He was
there with her. But the words were always there too. Behind
his eyes, she could see them, when his gaze looked
straight through her.
They were not content with just his head. Not for
very long. They wanted out and maybe he did, for a time,
leave them unanswered to be with her. In the beginning.
Could that be why they grew? Maybe they wanted her gone
in the same way she wanted him rid of them. Maybe that
is why it seemed so hurtful. Because he had somehow made
a choice. Why did he need to think the way he did? To
things that scared her. When they had taken him, why did
she want to feel that his words could at least be about
her. She tried not to think like that. Tried for so long.
Maybe that was just some false hope, some strained
clinging. She would be content to be a villain, a monster,
a victim in his words. But the words were not
about her. They did not recognize her; to them she was
a stranger. They took him away from her. She could only
hope she still had some life somewhere in his head. Be
some light in his dead expression.
But when the words had escaped his head and hit the
page, it ended. Her hope and her feelings, if not her
love. She couldn’t ignore them or try to view them differently.
She, could no longer delude herself. She had
lost him to them. They were more important than her. She
knew it.
And for a time he seemed happy. So distant, like she
was not even there. But happy. Happy without her. Happy
with just the words.
They consumed him and they consumed them. The them
that should have been. It was no longer. It was erased.
The words were not. They were indelible and there were
just more and more of them. They began to escape the
sleep. What little sleep he got. She saw that his hands
were always moving, even then. One night, as she lay
there with him, but alone, she noticed the mark on the
gers
had taken off the color and she could see the letters.

L-E-A-V-E
The words she had read before, the ones always spilling
out of him, that now consumed their house, their life
top,
his notebooks. That had spilled onto anything they
pad. Onto the walls and etched in the wooden kitchen table.
They had hurt her. All of them. Because they took
him away. Even in the beginning when he wrote she knew he
closed down from her. That he entered a place where she
could not follow, somewhere that they could not be to-
her. Because it was evrywhere, because it had possessed
him and taken everything from her. The words had hurt her
so much, but not like this one word in the absence of
color on their bed comforter. The blanket
join their lives.
Leave.
That word did more than hurt. It killed what was left
inside her. For him. For herself, maybe.
She got up from the bed, her bare feet landing on his
scattered papers. The papers seemed cold. Cold as the
words she knew would be written all over them.
Tears came to her eyes. She went to the front hall
closet, she pulled on her coat, and stepped into a pair
of shoes. The tears kept coming. They were like the words
she had held back. The things she hadn’t said. The feelings
she had buried. The anger and hatred that had found
its way into her. Unwanted, but there. So very much
there.
The tears didn’t stop. She could not contain them.
She knew they were like his words. They would never run
out.
She left the house to go to their neighbors. Her
neighbors. He had never even met them. The kindly older
couple who had befriended her. Who invited her for coffee
and sugared biscuits when they saw she felt down. Which
seemed to be quite often.
“It must be hard living with a writer,” they would

say. And she would smile slightly, nervously, and nod.
Not yet ready to give up her pain to them. Not so much
of it. They tried to say things to comfort her. Speaking
quaint little expressions like, “Well, it’s nothing that
So, in her grief, she would go to them. She knew they
would be there for her. That they somehow thought of her
as an older child. One that had grown up, but not. One
that needed them for hope and cookies still.
There was a chill in the air. She felt it on her ankles,
her sockless feet shoved into old shoes. She felt
the bite of the wind on her face too. It moved through
her hair, lifting it and sticking strands to her wet
face. She tried to brush them away as she moved across
the road.
She did not see the car that hit her. The impact
head came down hard on the pavement by the curb.
Before she closed her eyes that one last time, she
saw the driver looking down at her, at the blood and horror
that is only visible from a car’s cracked headlight.
Then everything was quiet and still. Lifeless.
The wind died down. The leaves that had been swirling
in the eddies of the breeze soon ending their brief
Her body lay there, lifeless and still, in the chaos
of fallen leaves. Swirling leaves that had fallen to rest
in the same way she had, now matted with blood.
What you were writing was a lie. Always. Still is.
They found you.
You were writing when they came to the door. She was
not there to answer. Like she had always been. There for
you. To make sure that you were not interrupted. To give
you your space, your time. They entered because she had
not locked it. They found you writing. So lost in the
words that you did not understand, you did not listen.
She was gone. They told you about her body in the leaves.
They tried to comfort you. But they couldn’t reach you.
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what they were saying, all those words that seemed to
make no sense. How could she be gone? They decided to get
you some help.
Now you have the hospital. You have the pills. You
have these new words. Their books and their remarks. They
are supposed to make you better.
But they aren’t.
They aren’t.
Your words are too powerful. Your words can summon
gods. Whole cities breathe because of you. Their voices
are your voice. Your words have freed you.
No.
You.
NO.
Another lie.
You must stop it.
The drugs are not swirling. Only your thoughts are.
Listen to the thoughts.
To their meaning. Not to their words. Do not write
them down. Just hear them. You have been good here. They
have been nice to you. They say things like, “We think he
is making some progress.” You have tricked them.
Constant check-ups. When it is dark, only a night nurse
checks in. Tells you that “you are doing good.” Horrible
grammar. Good night nurse. Good night. At night they
strap you in. All is well.
night. Not so tight that your hands went numb. So tight
less.
Impossibly still. And inside you were screaming.

You could have no words, just screams. Not without mov-
life. Tracing their beauty or tapping out their forms.
You can move now. But you don’t need to write.
You mustn’t.
Free.
Do not do that.
Just get the hands loose. There you are, slide them
through the leather; don’t worry about how it rubs the
skin raw.
Now use that hand, remove the other restraint. So
easy, just concentrate.
Very good.
ined
your life. They can only bring one thing. They took
her away from you. It must end.
You don’t need them anymore. They are a poison. A
prison.
You can’t stay here. You are not “making progress.”
Look at your hands. They’ve ruined you. Destroyed with
the words they have created. They have stolen your world
You must break their hold on you.
close to your face. See them for what they are.
NOW BITE.

y: Ken Lillie-Paetz
Fiona Staples
Written by: Ken Lillie-Paetz
Cover by: Fiona Staples