Your Next-Door Neighbor Is a Dragon (8 page)

“Yes! Of course, Andy! We’ve been friends for—”

“Fuck off,” he said, and waved a hand at me dismissively. “Friends don’t drive hours and then the first words out of their mouths are ‘What about you being a crazy douchebag?’”

In my opinion, Andy did a very poor impersonation of me.

I sighed and said, “Andy, I’ve been here for over an hour.”

“So?”

“Forget about it,” I said.

I began the arduous process of calming Andy down. He still wanted to argue about it, but I managed to direct him back to calmer subject matter. Eventually he sat down on his lumpy couch and played some ridiculous fighting game on the Xbox. He beat me almost every time with the girl with the visible underboobs, although I got him once or twice with the guy wielding a sword bigger than his leg.

When I tried to gently nudge him back toward the Asperger’s syndrome conversation, Andy glared at me and flared his nostrils. After the third or fourth attempt he tossed the controller down on the carpet and threw the classic closed-fisted double birds at me. He let them sink in for a few seconds and then got up from the couch and stormed out of the room.

I heard a loud grunt and a thump as if Andy had moved something very heavy. The door to his bedroom slammed closed.

Sitting in the apartment by myself, I began to smell a sweet rotted stench. I realized it was emanating from one of the two trash cans.

“Andy, come on,” I pleaded through his closed door.

“Fuck off!” he shouted back.

In his own hostile, nonverbal way, this was Andy’s attempt to convince me that his Asperger’s was real. He never pulled anything quite like that before, and although his anger seemed real, I could not help but believe his behavior was a stunt.

It became clear Andy was not going to emerge from his bedroom while I was still there. I gathered my things and prepared to leave.

I shouted, “All right, I’m going.”

“Later, bro,” Andy called back through the closed door without a hint of anger.

Morgellons? I Barely Knew ’Em!

When it comes to fake illnesses caused by the Internet, nothing can hold a candle (or a mysterious blue fiber) to Morgellons. This fake disease is the perfect alternative for a hypochondriac who wants to have a unique and horrible illness experience without selling out to “the man” and choosing a real illness.

How many other diseases have an official website specifically to promote their existence?

As is the case with all good epidemiological research, Morgellons was discovered and named by an amateur who refused to accept the advice of a series of medical professionals. Mary Leitao’s two-year-old son began to suffer from sores around his mouth and he complained of “bugs.”

Like any concerned mother, Mary took her son to a variety of doctors and dermatologists in an attempt to diagnose the problem. None of the doctors could definitively determine the source of the sores and rashes afflicting Mary’s son. Some of the doctors even believed that the problem was with Mary and psychological in nature.

Mary refused to accept this diagnosis. Using her bachelor’s degree in biology and her expertise as a concerned mom, Leitao examined her son using microscopes.

What she found started a revolution in Internet medicine. She discovered strange red, white, and blue fibers supposedly sprouting out of her son’s sores.

Leitao could have been glad to learn her son was slowly growing an American flag. She could have viewed it as an opportunity and turned him into a patriotic icon celebrated by America. Instead, she was horrified by the strange discovery.

With nowhere else to turn, Mary Leitao founded the Morgellons Research Foundation to “study” the “flag disease.”

Experts from the CDC and elsewhere have studied Morgellons and found that the fibers are a bunch of malarkey and most of the cases are something they call “delusional parasitosis.” In layman’s terms, “crazy made-up bug disease.” Other individuals suffer from real dermatological ailments, but refuse to accept that they have a contact allergy or a skin infection instead of some kooky fibers sprouting out of their body.

Mary and her friends continue to accumulate evidence from sympathetic medical officials in much the same way questionable doctors provide testimony against aspartame or real doctors say just enough to leave the possibility open.

Could Morgellons be real despite all evidence to the contrary? Could Mary Leitao be right? Yes, anything is possible.

Could the Bible code unlock the secret of time travel? Yes, in exactly the same way.

At the fringe of the Morgellons community is another group who believes the fibers and the sores and the strange sensations associated with Morgellons are part of a larger government or alien conspiracy. Microscopic photographs on these sites picture fibers under magnification and include meaningless captions like, “Fluorescent Nano Arrays and Crystalloid Matter” for an image of some white dots on a slide or “Closeup of Gel Mass with Embryonic Features” accompanying an image of a thread with some gray gunk adhering to it.

If you remove the mention of aliens or CIA brain implants from the fringe sites, they are functionally identical to the regular Morgellons sites. They’re all about collecting threads and pieces of gunk and picking at scabs and then taking pictures. Many sites feature arrows added to point out particularly suspicious grains of sand or flakes of dandruff.

One alien Morgellons site quoted a U.S. Air Force colonel certifying the authenticity of a bunch of scabs as extraterrestrial. The Morgellons Research Foundation site quoted a 2006 ABC
Primetime
interview with a guy named Ron Pogue from the Tulsa Crime Lab in Oklahoma. According to ABC, Pogue said the fibers were “some strange stuff” and “not lint.” Mark Boese, also from the Tulsa Crime Lab, believed the fibers were “consistent with something the body may be producing.”

Alien implants, strange not-lint, and possibly human hairs are just a few among dozens of theories about Morgellons and each theory had its expert source. Which expert was I to believe in that sort of situation!?

Before I talked with a real live Morgellons sufferer, I wanted to talk to an informed non-idiot about the illness. I spoke on the phone to a Chicago dermatologist who asked that her name not be used in the book.

“If you say anything about this stuff you get swamped with letters and phone calls,” she complained to me.

Since she chose the coward’s option of remaining anonymous, it fell to me, your beloved author, to create a name for my dermatological expert. After a session of super prayer that rejuvenated my super faith in Super God, I decided to add weight to her words by bestowing on her the name and title of Doctor Elspeth Morgellons, Doctor of Morgellonic Science.

“Is Morgellons real?” I asked Doctor Morgellons.

She laughed.

“One word answer, ‘no.’”

“You can use more than one word,” I said, hoping to familiarize her with the process of talking.

“A lot of the symptoms are real,” Doctor Morgellons said. “Even if there is not a physical cause these people have real problems. That is why I think it’s so important to exhaust all avenues of treatment for the underlying causes, be they psychological or physical. Particularly when there are children involved.

“But is there a disease called Morgellons? The answer is ‘no’ to that. Absolutely not.”

“Have you dealt with any Morgellons patients firsthand?” I asked.

“A few,” she said. “They come in all wound up from things they read on the Internet. These message boards they get on…they’re convinced they have Morgellons. Some of them bring in these boxes.”

“Boxes?”

“Yes. Tupperware or Ziploc bags. They put their scabs and fibers in them and then bring them to show me to prove they have Morgellons.”

“And they don’t prove it?”

“No.” She laughed again. “No, usually it’s just scabs, stray hairs. Sometimes there are other fibers, maybe manufactured, but these wounds they have are either caused by an underlying disease or they are self-inflicted. They feel an itching sensation and then they cause the sores to form by scratching until they open themselves up. Their bodies do the rest.”

“What do you tell them when they come in?” I asked. “How do you break the news?”

“There you have it,” Doctor Morgellons said. “That’s the crux of the problem right there. Some of them simply will not accept a diagnosis of anything other than Morgellons, but most will. Particularly if there is a clear cause. I made the mistake once of telling one of my patients she had Ekbom’s syndrome.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Another way of telling her she was imagining things. I should have known she would look it up on her Internet group, but I tried to tell her that and give her a placebo. She had sores all over her shoulders and on both cheeks. She called me that night and left a very nasty message on my voice mail. I haven’t heard from her since then.”

“But sometimes telling them the truth works?” I asked.

“Yes,” Doctor Morgellons replied. “Fortunately, many of them will listen to reason. It can just require a lot of convincing. It’s an exhausting illness to have to treat in these patients.”

“Caught!” I exclaimed. “You just admitted it was a real illness requiring treatment!”

“What? No, I…what do you mean?” She stammered, totally busted as hell.

“I’m sorry, doctor, I have to update my website with this information. Thank you for your time,” I said, and hung up the phone.

At long last, definitive proof from a real medical expert that Morgellons was a real illness requiring medical treatment. When the Morgellons people caught wind of this, there would be shockwaves throughout the community.

But, wait, which community? Which faction would I honor with this news?

There were the original Morgellons people, who considered themselves the real Morgellons people, and then there were the crypto Morgellons people working on the fringe of Morgellons science.

The decision was clear. When in doubt, the crazier the better, and I had just the man to be my contact. Dr. Don Fuller. I knew him from a cryptozoological and etheric healing mailing list. He never specified in his posting to the list what field he held his doctorate in, but he claimed to specialize in “magnets and protective orgonite technology.”

During the three months or so I had subscribed to the list, Dr. Fuller seemed very interested in “combating artificial alien infestions[sic] including nanofiber Morgellons and reptoid mind control implants.” When I e-mailed him, I let him know I was working on a book covering Morgellons and that I had turned up some interesting insight into Morgellons plague.

Dr. Fuller was glad to chat with me via instant messenger. We set up an appointment to speak, but it took four separate scheduling attempts before Dr. Fuller managed to show up.

“My computer is a goof,” Dr. Fuller offered as his explanation. “Every time I want to do something on it the goofy thing goes haywire.”

I assured him it was no trouble.

“So whatcha got for me?” Dr. Fuller asked.

“I have interviewed a dermatologist for my book. The real deal. She slipped up while we were discussing Morgellons and she admitted that it is a real illness requiring medical treatment.”

I felt pleased to be able to share my incredible breakthrough on the subject, but Dr. Fuller was less than impressed.

“So?” He messaged back. “Have known Morgellons was real for years. Since original tests on nanofibers.”

I was crestfallen. This was my big addition to the field of Morgellons research and it was being scoffed at by one of the champions of the field.

“I thought it was still being disputed,” I contended.

“Maybe by the people who are still part of the problem,” Dr. Fuller countered. “Everyone who knows anything knows Morgellons is real. Just open your eyes. Look at the evidence. Look at Clifford Carnicom’s work. This is well-known factual stuff.”

“Yeah, but you claimed on the mailing list that it was an alien implant,” I shot back, feeling a bit irritated at being rebuffed.

“An artificial self-replicating illness created by aliens and implanted in the water supply and in certain foods.”

“Which foods?” I asked, wanting to avoid any self-replicating nanofibers.

“GM foods,” he said. “Monsanto and Dow are all over the place with them.”

“I thought you said it was an alien creation!”

“LOL!”

Oh, the indignity! Dr. Don Fuller was laughing out loud at me!

“Kid, you got bad info. Monsanto, Dow, and the military contractors are all working together. They’re a front for the reptoids.”

“So how do we fight back?” I asked, still stinging from Dr. Fuller’s rebuke.

“Neodymium magnets and orgonite technology,” Dr. Fuller replied. “You neo your sores and implants for a few hours, disable their energy fields so they stop replicating, and then you surgically remove them. You use the orgonite etheric collectors to consolidate your energy and disrupt the reptoid attempts to control your conscious brain.”

“I thought you said the reptoid implants and Morgellons were two different things.” I was becoming confused.

“They are!” He messaged back. “The reptoid implants are larger and inserted during abductions. The Morgellons nanofibers are produced when your body responds to certain triggers.”

“So your body makes them?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “Your body is slaved to the reptoid energy wavelength and is forced to produce Morgellons buds that will grow into colonies.”

“How do you disable them to prevent them from replicating if they can just send out an energy signal that makes you make more?”

“Ah, but that’s what the orgonite is for. You use the orgone energy to jam the reptoid signal.”

“Which is in food produced by Monsanto?”

“Right,” Dr. Fuller replied.

“And they make aspartame, too?”

“Right,” Dr. Fuller answered.

“Thank you for your time,” I said, and bid Dr. Fuller good-bye.

My world was becoming stranger by the moment. It was a little hard for me to believe that Morgellons and aspartame were related, but if I had two unimpeachable medical experts like Dr. Bitsy Schwab and Dr. Don Fuller telling me the two were connected, that was information I could not ignore.