bone drill trepanning

At the clinic, in a room with three glass cabinets, Dr. Jane Wormsly did trepanning on Lohbado. With a little bone drill, hand crank, she gently bored a hole the diameter of a pencil, Venus hb, into his skull and inserted a mucous plug, stitched up the skin. Lohbado felt better. It relieved the pressure. For a week he felt a floating euphoria and relaxation.


He fell in love with her. At first she was mildly interested. She had another man on the go. She liked Lohbado’s personality, but never thought of him as much more than a friendly fellow. He respected the boundaries. He enjoyed talking with her whenever she was in the mood and when she wasn’t, he left her alone. As she drilled with a bone into his skull, Lohbado heard seaplanes, twin engine planes followed by the sound of mosquitoes. The first sound, of planes, pulled him outwards into an expanding space. The second sound, of mosquitoes, gathered him back into his skull, into brain jelly ooze, phlegm, bile, spleen, vapors, dizziness.

His breath flowed slowly out and in, the sound of a wave crashing on the beach, hissing into foam, sliding back, then the next wave gathering and crashing on the sand.

His stomach ached, as though he’d ingested poison. The old wood and glass cabinets lining two walls of Dr. Jane Wormsly’s examination room reminded Lohbado of the office of Reverend Woodlot Stumps, CLM (Church of the Living Monument), grandfather of Peter Stumps. Lohbado, originally named Peter Stumps, was born into a religious household. He never knew until the first day of school that people lived without religion. He was taught from day one to examine reality, to call things into question. Don't take statements on face value. Of course, in practice, he was forced to swallow copious amounts of his father's, the Reverend Stonehenge Stumps, dogma. Lohbado gazed across waves of the past and saw a white dot on the horizon. It gradually turned into the letter A. It resembled the hole in his skull, trepanning of the horizon, a hole between earth, water and sky.

Jane offered Lohbado a soft dough cinnamon roll. He ate it plain, without butter and washed it down with a bottle of lager. The roll formed a soft dough glob in his mouth and went down like a hockey puck. It scored in his stomach, a fist to knock the hunger out of him.

Lohbado gazed out the window of Dr. Jane Wormsly’s office, into the distance where he had imagined a white letter A. The sky clouded over. Silvery green meadow and rows of dark green trees soothed his mind. Jane touched his neck and shoulders and asked him if he felt all right. Her warm touch revived him.