Jack Tumor

by Anthony McGowan

  Tierney looked confused, as well he might. It had been worth him attempting to state an obvious untruth as long as no one had the guts to contradict him. He’d look stupid now if he kept on lamely saying he was going out with someone when he wasn’t.

  So he changed tack.

  “You’re dead, you know.”

  “He looks pretty alive to me.”

  It was some big kid from Year Eleven who’d been part of the gang around the fresco. He was with a couple of his buddies. Tierney looked at them, then started to slope off. But just like Uma, he had a parting shot.

  “You’re dead,” he said again.

  Eros, ThanatOs,

  and the BorG Queen

  I was one majorly confused kid that evening.

  On the way home, buoyed up by all that hero worship, I felt like I was walking on marshmallows. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t hero worship. Maybe it was more just not getting kicked and spat on, but you know what I mean. And one of the weird things is that the person I wanted to talk it over with most—and I accept that “person” here may not be the conventional way to put it—was Jack, my personal tumor. The trouble is that once you start thinking about your brain tumor, then it’s hard to stay buoyed up by the fickle adulation of the mob.

  So that was the first up-and-down combo.

  And then there was the whole death-threat thing from Tierney. That wasn’t nice. I’d done a bit of acting tough lately, but acting was all it was. I wasn’t tough. I was a ‘fraidy girly coward, and I didn’t know how to fight, because I’d never had one, except in the slightly one-sided sense of having been punched quite a lot.

  And then the smile from Uma. All mixed up with poor old Smurf’s hopeless infatuation.

  Up-and-down combo number two.

  “Any advice, here, Jack?” I said to myself. Sort of.

  JACK: WHAT ABOUT—DEATH OR GIRLS?

  It was still a shock when he actually answered back like that.

  ME:

  Well, I can’t imagine that you’ve got anything constructive to say about death. Unless you’re going to tell me that you’re moving out. That’d help.

  JACK:

  I WISH I COULD OBLIGE YOU THERE, MY FRIEND. BUT WE ARE BOUND TOGETHER IN THIS, LIKE BODY AND SOUL. LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET.

  ME:

  No way I’m Juliet.

  JACK:

  IF IT’S ANY CONSOLATION, THE THOUGHT OF PERSONAL EXTINCTION DOESN’T EXACTLY FILL ME WITH JOY EITHER, YOU KNOW. THAT’S WHY WE’VE GOT TO GET ON WITH IT.

  ME:

  On with what? jack: IT.

  ME:

  I wish you wouldn’t talk in riddles.

  A gap. I sensed Jack thinking. We were getting near to our road.

  JACK:

  EROS AND THANATOS.

  ME:

  Heroes and tomatoes?

  JACK:

  EROS AND THANATOS, DUMMY. SEX AND DEATH. THE TWO GREAT DRIVES.

  ME:

  Bollocks. I haven’t got a death drive. I don’t want to be driving anywhere near death. I’ve got the opposite.

  JACK:

  EROS IS THE OPPOSITE OF THANATOS. THE SEX DRIVE AND THE LIFE DRIVE ARE THE SAME THING. BUT THINK ABOUT IT. DON’T YOU SOMETIMES CRAVE PEACE? REST? TRANQUILITY? AN END TO THE STRIVING? SLEEP? HAVE YOU NOT DESIRED TO BE WHERE NO STORMS COME, WHERE THE GREEN SWELL IS IN THE HAVENS DUMB, AND OUT OF THE SWING OF THE SEA?

  ME:

  Yes, well, apart from the last bit, which means absolutely sweet f.a. to me, but . . .

  JACK:

  YES BUT NOTHING. THAT’S THE DEATH DRIVE REVEALING ITSELF. AND PERHAPS IT’S YOUR FRIEND. THOSE ARE GOOD THINGS, AFTER ALL. PERHAPS I’M YOUR FRIEND.

  ME:

  You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.

  JACK:

  NATURALLY.

  ME:

  So, advice then. I could use it.

  JACK:

  DON’T RUN WITH SCISSORS.

  ME:

  Funny.

  JACK:

  DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE SEDUCTION SIDE OF THINGS. THAT’S MY TERRITORY.

  ME:

  Seduction? Territory? What are you . . .? I hope you don’t mean Uma. I can’t. Not just that she wouldn’t even think about it, with me, I mean. But Smurf . . . if she did, then he’d . . .

  JACK:

  YOU HAVE TO FORGET ABOUT HIM. HE’S NOT IN THE RACE.

  ME:

  But he’s my friend.

  JACK:

  IN LOVE AND DEATH THERE ARE NO FRIENDS.

  ME:

  You said you were my friend.

  JACK:

  AND I AM. BUT YOU MUST SEE, FOR ONCE THE RATIONAL AND THE CARNAL SPEAK WITH ONE VOICE HERE. YOU CANNOT HELP MURPHY. BUT YOU CAN HELP YOURSELF. AND I CAN HELP YOU TO HELP YOURSELF.

  ME:

  And when you help me to help myself, that helps you?

  It seemed that was all I was getting out of Jack Tumor, for now. But I sensed that he was uneasy about this—I mean us, about what we were and how we’d end up. And he was certainly right about our fates being bound together. Until something, or someone, tore us apart.

  Mum wasn’t in when I got back. She worked in the Oxfam shop. She was a bit too dreamy for the till so they usually got her to sort out and price the smelly clothes at the back, where it was hard to see how even a space cadet like Mum could screw it up.

  I sometimes used to imagine her there. Oh, old lady knickers. Faint smell of urine, mild discoloration, might only be a coffee stain, 10p. Tramp’s vest. Stench of sweat, piss, blood, vomit, death, 5p.

  I think she was hoping they’d let her move on to the books, which would be good as she loves books and knows lots about them, and I suppose that’s something she passed on to me, because I read a lot, and not just fact stuff but novels as well, although having a crap telly helps with that. But I suppose if Mum was put on the books in the charity shop, she’d only start reading something and end up weeping in the corner because someone died, or some man didn’t love a woman enough, or Earth got assimilated by the Borg.

  Well maybe that wouldn’t worry her so much, but I used to lie awake at night thinking about it. Borg assimilation, I mean. I remember a couple of years ago talking about it with Gonad and Smurf and Stan. We all thought that the Borg were a major contribution to the Star Trek world, which had pretty well used up its store of goodwill by then. There was no denying that the Borg were both scary and cool. Stan made the useful criticism that with the Borg you have that whole problem-of-origins thing. You know, the Borg assimilate other races and thereby spread throughout the galaxy. But Stan wanted to know how the first Borg was made. Classic chicken-and-egg. But there was a general agreement that we really didn’t want to be part of the Borg collective, even if they did bring a kind of peace and order to the universe, because you could see the bad effect it had had on Captain Picard, who was never quite the same man after they got him.

  And then Gonad said, “I wouldn’t mind being assimilated by that Borg queen,” and we all just looked at him. We were curiously troubled by this statement. You see, the Borg queen only really exists as a head and spinal column, which gets plugged into various transport and maintenance pods, usually in the form of kinky leatherette. And, while even her face is indisputably Borgesian, she still has a queasy sexiness, that vague look of being up for anything. Not that we were consciously aware of it back then.

  So we all had these murky feelings which we couldn’t understand, mixed up with the knowledge that somehow we were polluting and contaminating sci-fi by so much as entertaining these thoughts. And this is before we even get onto the subject of Seven of Nine, although now she’s come up I may as well give vent to my theory that Seven’s undoubted hubbability is given a dark and wondrous twist by the fact of her being still part-Borg, and that is only possible because the Borg queen has already trailblazed that whole territory (I mean the territory of being a sexy lady Borg, almost certainly into the kind of stuff you’d need a credit card to access on the
Internet).

  And, now I think about it, the Borg queen herself, well, what is she but sex and death, Eros and Thanatos? Oh, Jack Tumor had a lot to answer for.

  Anyway, so Mum wasn’t in. I went and stood in front of the bathroom mirror, which I’d come to associate with Jack T., although he was just as likely to start jabbering anywhere else. He was right on it.

  JACK:

  OKAY, LET’S START WITH THE HAIR.

  ME:

  I know, it’s a joke. Bog brush. Tell me something I don’t know.

  JACK:

  LET’S GO GET A CUT.

  ME:

  It doesn’t help.

  JACK:

  THAT’S BECAUSE YOU GO TO AN ALBANIAN BUTCHER DOWN A STINKING ALLEYWAY.

  ME:

  He only charges a fiver.

  JACK:

  AND LOOK WHAT HE DOES TO YOU.

  ME:

  I feel sorry for him. He’s a refugee.

  JACK:

  HE’S GOING TO SLIT YOUR THROAT, STEAL YOUR BUS PASS, FEED YOUR CORPSE TO HIS PIT BULL.

  ME:

  It’s not a pit bull. It’s a Staffordshire bull terrier.

  JACK:

  AND THEY DON’T EAT?

  ME:

  Not humans, no. Other dogs, mainly.

  JACK:

  BACK TO HAIR. IF YOU’RE GONNA SCORE, AND BOY ARE YOU GONNA SCORE, WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. AND THEN THERE’RE THE CLOTHES.

  ME:

  You don’t have to tell me my clothes are crap.

  JACK:

  SO I’M NOT TELLING YOU. WHAT I AM TELLING YOU IS THAT WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

  ME:

  What makes you the expert?

  JACK:

  I KNOW STUFF.

  ME:

  How do you know? How can you know things that I don’t?

  JACK:

  LOOK, I’VE ALREADY EXPLAINED. THERE ARE THINGS THAT YOU KNOW THAT YOU DON’T KNOW THAT YOU KNOW. EVERYTHING YOU’VE EVER SEEN OR HEARD OR SNIFFED IS STORED BACK HERE SOMEWHERE. AND I HAVE AN ACCESS-ALL-AREAS PASS. SO TRUST ME.

  ME:

  Okay, fine, if you say so. But where am I going to get the money?

  JACK:

  YOUR SAVINGS. THAT DEPOSIT AT THE BANK. TWO HUNDRED QUID.

  ME:

  That’s my life savings!

  JACK:

  YEAH, AND THIS IS YOUR LIFE. YOU WANT TO SPEND IT ON YOUR FUNERAL?

  ME:

  Funeral? What do you . . .? What are you saying?

  JACK:

  CALM DOWN, KID. I’M NOT SAYING ANYTHING. ALL I MEAN IS THAT IT’S TIME TO LIVE A LITTLE. WE’VE GOT SOME WILD OATS TO SOW, BUT FIRST WE NEED TO GET OURSELVES SOME OF THAT WILD-OAT-SOWING EQUIPMENT. AND IF YOU’RE TOO TIGHT TO SPEND MONEY, WELL THEN THERE ARE OTHER WAYS AND MEANS. OTHER OPTIONS. WE JUST HAVE TO EMPLOY A LITTLE LATERAL THINKING.

  I went to sleep that night thinking about many things. I thought quite a lot about Jack Tumor. I’d gone past the point of being gobsmacked by the mere fact of having a dirty-minded brain tumor that chatted away to me like he was some kind of friend or brother, or even sometimes in a kind of warped-dad way. Now I was more thinking about the content, if you see what I mean, mulling over what he was saying, not just the fact that he was saying anything at all. And that led me on to thinking about Uma Upshaw. She was a stunner, and she had smiled upon me. I fixed on her for a while, but another, less glamorous face was there too: a face with a red birthmark, a face framed with strawberry blonde hair, straight as railway tracks.

  And then, heading backwards and downwards, I thought about Mr. Mordred and what he was going to do to me the next day if he recognized me.

  The ThouGht

  ExperiMent

  It was morning break. Nothing so far had gone wrong, meaning I hadn’t been hauled out of registration to be sent for interrogation by Mordred. Nor had there been any incidents involving girls’ sanitary stuff or being smiled at. We were by the fence that separates the Body of Christ High School from the Body of Christ Junior School. The junior school was a squat, brooding, red-brick building that looked like it had been converted from some kind of Victorian correctional institution, maybe for fallen women or men with unsightly facial hair. The kids there had somehow bypassed any kind of cute stage, and were basically miniature versions of the thugs in the high school. There’d sometimes be spitting contests between the two schools, the outcome decided more by wind direction than superior technique or catarrhal output. But this place by the fence was one of our regular morning-break hangouts. We could gather round and talk about our stuff without having to worry too much about errant footballs or fists. We were all there, though Stan still wasn’t looking me in the eye.

  ME:

  Face.

  GONAD:

  Body. Definitely body. No contest. There’s more you can do with a body.

  ME:

  Yeah, but a beautiful face makes up for anything. What about you, Stan?

  STAN:

  Dunno.

  SMURF:

  It’s a stupid question. It doesn’t make sense to split them up.

  GONAD:

  It’s not stupid. It’s a—what-do-you-call-it?—thought experiment.

  SMURF:

  It’s not a “what-do-you-call-it thought experiment,” because it hasn’t been within a million miles of a brain. You don’t love, I mean go out with, a face floating in midair, or a body without a head on it. You go out with a whole person.

  GONAD:

  It’s a perfectly reasonable question. Given that a girl has a body and a face, what’s more important?

  SMURF:

  Both, obviously.

  GONAD:

  That’s cheating. You’ve got to decide.

  SMURF:

  Why have I got to decide? It’s a free country. I don’t have to do anything.

  ME:

  No, Smurf, it’s a fair point. The rule is, that when one person says which is best, x or y, you have to give an answer. It’s an absolutely basic principle. If you can’t say to someone, “Would you rather eat a teaspoon of poo or drink a gallon of horse piss?” or, “Who would you rather snog, my grandma or Mother Teresa, when she was alive?” or, “Would you rather wipe your bum on a hedgehog or a jellyfish?” and expect an answer, then what have we come to? All the laws of civil society would break down. You as well, Stan. You know the rules.

  STAN:

  Well then, I’ll say they’re both equally important.

  ME:

  That’s impossible, Stan. How could they both be exactly the same in importance, like to the millionth decimal place? It’s a mathematical impossibility. One must be a tiny bit more important. It’s like God.

  JACK:

  OH, HERE WE GO.

  ME:

  I mean, being an agnostic. You’re saying that you’ve looked at all the evidence, and it’s exactly as likely that He exists as that He doesn’t exist. That just can’t be true, and it means you haven’t looked at all the evidence, or you haven’t understood it, and so you’re not an agnostic at all, but just a know-nothing.

  GONAD:

  Don’t ruin this, Heck, by bringing God into it. We’re talking about girls.

  ME:

  Sorry. Go on then, Stan. You too, Smurf. They can’t be exactly the same. Face or body?

  JACK:

  THIS IS ABSURD. IT’S LIKE FOUR BALD MEN ARGUING OVER A COMB. FACE OR BODY! THEIR ONLY CHANCE OF A GROPE IS BUYING A SHOVEL AND HEADING DOWN TO THE GRAVEYARD.

  SMURF:

  I don’t think the question makes sense. A face and a body are different things. You like them for different reasons. It’s like saying, “What do you prefer, crisps or chips?” Crisps are a snack. Chips are a meal. In the crisp world, you could say if you like cheese-and-onion more than salt-and-vinegar, but you can’t say you like crisps more than chips.

  GONAD:

  All right then, would you rather have a bird with a fit body and an ugly face, or a fit face and an ugly bo
dy? And don’t try to wriggle out of this one. It’s a real-world example. Happens all the time.

  SMURF:

  Why can’t I have one with both? I mean, a nice face and a nice body?

  JACK:

  BOTH, HA! YOU MEAN NEITHER.

  Smurf spoke with a faraway look in his eyes, and I knew who he was thinking about, and that made me think about her too, and yes, she seemed to be a best-of-both-worlds option. But not, as Jack suggested, one open to us.

  STAN: This is definitely a thought experiment.

  Then we were all quiet for a minute, until I thought of a knockdown argument.

  ME: You’re all missing the—Ow!

  A kick, a Punch,

  a Spit in the Ear,

  keep MOvinG

  I was facedown. I was hurting. I couldn’t understand why. For a few blurry seconds I thought it was to do with Jack T. To do with what was happening in my head. But then the generalized all-body pain began to focus, and it wasn’t in my head, but on my back. And then I heard laughter, the cackling, spluttering glee of kids who take their joy from hurting.