"For External Use Only" by Raoul Meuldijk

For external use only

I had warned Ravenhof that the festerstone was for external use only. "Yes," he said, "I will not swallow it unless I can dislocate my jaw.", for the stone was twenty centimeters long and ten wide.

That was the last time I saw him. When he didn't arrive five days later to return the stone, I started looking for him, and managed to reconstruct the last days of his life.

He had taken the airship to the top of the Sticky Mountain on the day he borrowed the stone from me. There I found Oolrik the Bluff Hermit, who told me Ravenhof had treated him for his festering foot and mouth disease. Ravenhof had done so in the manner I had described in the stone's manual: prepare garlic soup and boil the stone in it. Do no eat the soup, but apply it to the ulcers. Do so every day until the ulcers are gone. After three days Oolrik was cured. He still did smell of garlic.

Ravenhof had left on the other side of the mountain, and it was there, after a day of descending steep mountain goat trails, that I found his remains. His jaw was dislocated and the festerstone was lodged deep in his throat, entirely violating the instructions. He had clearly choked to death.

The path on which I found him, bordered a pasture with the typically large manure patches of ultracows. I descended further down the mountain and found a farm.

I asked the farmer if he had noticed anything unusual in the last couple of days. He told me, Yes, an ultracow, one that produced a lot of milk and was telepathically gifted because of severe inbreeding, had rather suddenly lost her insanity. She used to limp like she had an ulcer on her foot, but there never was one.

The farmer showed me the cow. In her crazed gaze I read what had happened: She had been convinced that she had an ulcer on her left hind foot. And as it is with telepaths, she had a poor understanding of which body was actually hers. During one of her delusional episodes, Ravenhof had passed by her pasture, and she was certain that he was the foot with the painful ulcer. Her conviction telepathically took hold of Ravenhof's mind. He became certain that he was a painfully festering cow's foot. The ultracow / Ravenhof realized she had a means to remove ulcers, and decided to heal herself.

In their shared insanity and the ultracow's inability to understand manuals, the ultracow / Ravenhof had forced the festerstone violently into the festering limb, which was Ravenhof. Harsh reality turned on Ravenhof by making him choke when he forced the stone into his throat. When he died, the pain in the ultracow's foot disappeared.

Tragic. I will add to the manual of the festerstone that one should wear a tin-foil hat.