Beware! Killer Tomatoes

by Jeremy Strong

  There you are, you DO know what it is! I can hear you at this very moment going: Yeah, of course, the giant spoony-catapulty-thingy!

  So I saw this picture in the book about the Romans, and I thought, that’s it, that is how we paint the ceiling. We use a mangonel – a miniature one, using hospital spoons. And for paint, we will use… hospital food. Am I brilliant? Yes!

  I told Liam and he said: ‘That’s just what I was thinking.’

  ‘Of course you were,’ I grunted.

  The next day we tried it out, when the staff weren’t looking. Acne-Man had brought us some horrible stodge for lunch. (Acne-Man is one of the male nurses. His real name is Ashley, but I call him Acne-Man. You’d think the hospital wouldn’t allow someone with a face so full of pimples to work with the walking wounded, but they do.)

  Anyhow, I filled my spoon with mashed potato mixed with green peas. I put the spoon on my tray with the handle poking out over the edge. It made a perfect miniature mangospoon. I brought down my hand pretty sharpish – whump!

  PEEYOWW! SPLATT! That peasy potato went whizzing through the air! Brilliant! You should have seen it.

  Unfortunately it went nowhere near the ceiling. It hit the opposite wall, just above Princess La-La. It looked as if someone had suffered a spectacular sneeze. Then Liam took a turn and his dollop of macaroni cheese created a fantastic galaxy effect on the ceiling. It looked

  good, but sadly it didn’t stay up there for long. A few minutes later the biggest lump came unstuck just as Acne-Man passed underneath. Acne-Man keeps his head shaved so he got the full effect of a macaroni galaxy landing on his bonce from a considerable height.

  Hilarious! Acne-Man felt his head, looked at the splattered macaroni on his hand and almost jumped out of his skin because he thought the macaroni was bits of his brain. (Might have been an improvement!) Then he saw the splodge on the ceiling. There was a long pause as he tried to figure it out. He swung round and stared accusingly at Liam.

  ‘What?’ went Liam, but it was obvious he was involved because he couldn’t stop laughing.

  So that was an end to our brave attempt to redecorate the ward. At least it helped pass the time. As you can see, we have to make our own amusements in here. After that everything went back to normal – or to put it another way, boring. Tedious and – scary. Trouble is, there’s nothing to do in here except think and when I think my head immediately fills with tomatoes and a pair of feet. I am in deep, deep trouble and I’ve got to get out of here.

  I should be allowed up pretty soon. I get physiotherapy for a while to get the leg working properly and after that I should be able to go home. I hope so. Every day when the doc comes and does his rounds I wait for him to tell me I can get up, but he hasn’t, not yet, but it must be soon, it must be, it’s got to be. Got to. Because if it isn’t soon I am going to be in big trouble and I mean BIG trouble, with THEM, the police. They must know it was me that did it – that business with the tomatoes and the body. He wasn’t moving, not a flicker. He couldn’t. Not beneath all those tomatoes, because they weren’t just ordinary tomatoes. They were tinned.

  3 How to Talk with an Alien

  Hospitals can be strange places, especially at night. Odd things happen in the dark hours. Last night I was visited by a creature from another world.

  Her name is Maisie, which is an unusual name for an alien. She didn’t tell me herself. In fact she didn’t say anything the whole time she was here, but she is definitely from another world. I don’t mean a world in our own solar system and I don’t mean our galaxy. Not even our universe. She is from a completely different universe. In fact, quite probably, where she comes from isn’t even called a universe. It’s probably called a Qwrrrkknnikk, and her planet is probably called Spplinng. Or something. Who knows?

  At any rate she is definitely an alien, and she was under my bed. I’ve no idea how she got there. Maybe she teleported herself. It was evening and Acne-Man had been in and pulled the curtains. Princess La-La and Liam slid further down into their beds, lucky whatsits. If only I could do that, but of course I’M NOT ALLOWED TO MOVE! Just in case you’d forgotten. Sorry to keep going on about it, but you try lying on your back for four weeks – bet you can’t even manage five minutes. I don’t like to complain and I’m not complaining – I’m stating a fact, a fact of my life.

  I lay in bed in the semi-dark, watching cows that weren’t really there fly across the ceiling. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a head appear beside me, low down, right at bed level. It was an orange head. It kind of levitated upwards and just appeared there, hovering at my side, staring at me. So I yelled. As you do when you’ve had a nasty shock.

  ‘AAARGH!’

  That woke everyone, including Princess La-La. (Good.) The lights went on and Acne-Man came pounding across.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘It was Jack,’ whined Princess La-La. ‘He screamed.’

  ‘Are you all right, Jack? Was it your leg?’

  ‘No. I thought I saw…’ I paused. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to say I’d just seen an orange space creature hovering at the side of my bed. So I told them I’d had a dream. Maybe I had.

  ‘Don’t have it again,’ sniffed Princess La-La. ‘You woke me up.’

  ‘I don’t know what dreams I’m going to have,’ I said.

  ‘You are such a pain,’ she groaned, turning on her side again. She does that on purpose – turning on her side. She knows I’d love, love to be able to do that, but I’m not allowed. So when she does it, she looks straight at me, all ha-ha-ha-like, and flounces over with a big display of bedcovers and everything. Then she snuggles down with a big sigh of satisfaction. Huh! I’d like to see her fly across the ceiling. On the other hand, I’m glad I’m not allergic to food and have to eat the slop she’s given.

  Acne-Man switched off the lights and went back to his desk.

  I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even close my eyes. I thought the alien might come back. I kept my face turned towards where she’d appeared before. Liam started his hamster impression. He often does when he’s asleep. You can always tell when Liam’s dreaming because he starts quietly squeaking like a hamster. I’m surrounded by weirdos, I’m telling you.

  I must have shut my eyes because something touched my ear and I almost screamed again. There was the alien, only this time I could see that it was actually a girl’s head. Obviously the head hadn’t come on its own. Presumably there was a body attached, but the rest of her was out of sight. And the reason I’d thought she was orange was because she had a mass of ginger curls flaming all over her head like some Hollywood disaster movie. She grinned at me and put a finger to her lips.

  ‘Who are you?’ I whispered. She waggled her eyebrows. Great – another weirdo. ‘Where did you come from?’ She slowly turned her face upwards and stared towards the ceiling.

  ‘Up there?’ She nodded. ‘The next floor up?’ She shook her head. ‘Higher?’ She nodded again. ‘Top floor?’ Shake, shake. ‘Above that?’ Nod, nod. ‘Above the Earth?’ Nod, nod. I grinned. ‘Er, beyond the moon?’ Nod, nod,

  nod. ‘From another planet?’ Now she nodded like mad. Then her eyes went all squiffy like a cross-eyed twit and her tongue came out of her mouth, more and more of it, and then, and then… her ears waggled.

  ‘OK, now tell me really. Which ward are you on?’ The alien looked horrified, and cross too. ‘Have I upset you? Because I don’t believe you?’ She nodded.

  ‘OK, I believe you, you’re from another planet, but why don’t you speak to me? Why don’t you say something?’

  She frowned, keeping her eyes on mine, but she wouldn’t say anything and her lips were pressed tightly together. She simply carried on staring at me, like her eyes were trying to bore into my brain to see what I was thinking. (What I was thinking was: This girl’s off this planet!)I gave up.

  ‘OK,’ I shrugged. ‘Don’t speak to me. See if I care.’ I gazed around the gloomy ward to show her how much I didn’t care. I must
have lasted at least five seconds. ‘For heaven’s sake, say something!’ I hissed. But the alien slowly shook her head. ‘OK, have it your own way. I’m

  going to guess your name and you nod if I get it right. Sarah.’

  Shake.

  ‘Jasmine?’

  Shake.

  ‘Montana?’

  Shake. I was already getting fed up. There must be thousands of girls’ names. I could still be doing this next year. Time to speed things up.

  ‘Fartface – ow!’

  I’d been punched by an alien. I was about to complain when her eyes suddenly widened and she darted down out of sight. I heard Acne-Man’s chair scrape back, the lights went up a bit and he was coming quickly towards my bed, followed by a young nurse I hadn’t seen before.

  ‘That’s where you’ve got to, you monster!’ he muttered, trying not to disturb the others. ‘Cathy’s been searching for you everywhere.’

  ‘She’s not a monster,’ whispered the nurse, smiling. ‘Hiya, Maisie. What are you doing down here?’ The nurse looked at me, raised her eyebrows and made a kind of ‘whatever-will-Maisie-do-next?’ face. I shrugged back at her and she smiled again. ‘I’m Cathy, one of Maisie’s nurses from upstairs. We’re supposed to keep an eye on her but sometimes she manages to give us the slip.’

  I nodded. She seemed nice, Cathy. She had twinkly eyes and a crinkly smile. Acne-Man stood there with his arms folded, watching.

  ‘She didn’t bother you, I hope?’ Cathy asked, and I shook my head.

  ‘She gave me a surprise.’

  ‘Yes, she’s good at that,’ said Cathy.

  ‘We’ll never get her out,’ complained Acne-Man. ‘She’s right under the bed.’

  Cathy knelt down beside the bed and called softly, ‘Come on, Maisie.’ The nurse stretched out a hand.

  The orange head reappeared almost at once. Maisie’s eyes pinpointed Acne-Man and burned. She slipped a hand into Cathy’s.

  ‘Night,’ laughed Cathy, while Maisie threw a glance back at me, eyes crossed, tongue flapping, and they went padding off.

  ‘Night,’ I smiled, while Acne-Man grunted and gazed after them, sighed again and turned his evil eye on me.

  ‘It would be a good idea if you didn’t encourage her,’ he suggested.

  Urh?! How come it was my fault?

  ‘I’ve never seen her before in my life. I didn’t ask her to come here. She just arrived.’

  ‘Yeah, right, of course she did,’ he sneered.

  ‘Who is she, anyway? What’s wrong with her?’

  Acne-Man stared over towards the door as if the alien was still there. ‘Maisie’s on the ward above,’ he said crossly. ‘She’s in for observation.’

  ‘Observing what?’

  ‘Just… in for observation,’ he repeated. ‘None of your business. It’s doctors’ business and you’re not a doctor. Go back to sleep.’ He turned down the lights and returned to his desk. I made grumpy ‘nur-nur-nur’ faces at his back. Honestly, some people. Pardon me for breathing.

  I let my head sink back into the pillow. In the darkness I felt a smile creep over my face. It slid down on to my shoulders and chest and carried on trickling down my body, right to my toes, until it felt like my whole body was smiling. What a little mystery! Something odd is going on, and whatever it is I’m sure it won’t be too long before I see Maisie again. She’s definitely a weirdo.

  4 How to Demolish a Pyramid

  Been awake forever. That’s what it feels like. I must have slept at some point because it’s morning but I don’t feel as if I have. It is now half past five. Half past five! What sort of stupid time is that? I was OK at first, after Maisie’s visit. I went to sleep all right but something woke me about four a.m. and my brain started thinking and once that happened I was wide awake.

  I’ve never liked horror films. I don’t like scary things. But my head kept on replaying this horror film: Death in the Supermarket. I went through it

  again and again. There was me, shopping. There was the tomato pyramid. There was the man. Then – disaster. Thunderous banging, a red explosion, like magma from a volcano, relentless.

  He didn’t have a chance. Helpless horror. I simply stood there aghast and, at the end, buried beneath it all was the body. Everything freezes for a second. A woman screams. People shout and begin to move. Someone rushes forward. I move backward, slowly at first, then a bit faster. Then I’m running. Running away.

  Then ZZZZIIIPPPP! Play again: There was me shopping. There was the tomato pyramid. There was the man. The man who was going to die…

  On and on it went. I fought my brain, trying to think of something else, trying to force my mind on to something cheerful and ordinary. Something simple and everyday, like eating supper and plates and knives and forks and ping! Do you know what came into my mind? A fork stuck in a bottom.

  Why does your mind do things like that? Maybe yours doesn’t, but mine does. I just wanted to think of something everyday and what do I get? A fork in my bottom. I’m rather embarrassed to admit that this is something that really happened. I sat on a fork. I did. Not a garden fork – a dinner fork. What an idiot! I mean, what kind of person goes around sticking forks in his bum?

  To cut a long story short, the fork was on a chair and I didn’t see it and I sat down and then got up again – very, VERY quickly, and with an awful lot of noise, because there was a fork sticking in my backside – my Jackside! Definitely a Jackcident.

  It really, really hurt. I tell you, forks are no joke. So, back to the hospital. The nurses were really nice. They didn’t laugh because they could see how painful it was. There was blood and everything. And do you know what the nurses said? They said they get lots of injuries like that.

  Lots of injuries like forks in bottoms? How stupid can people be? (As stupid as me?!) The prong marks stayed there for weeks. Not that I showed anyone, although I think Mum must have told Mrs Fetlock what had happened because for some while after that, every time I was annoying her she’d fix me with a stare, raise one eyebrow and pat her backside a couple of times. Oh yes, it was pure blackmail – and it worked for a few weeks too.

  See what I mean? In the middle of the night, if you’re awake, you end up thinking a load of old rubbish. At least it got my mind off that Death in the Supermarket horror film and I must have fallen asleep eventually. The tea lady, Mrs Noseworthy woke me with a drink and the news that my parents were coming in to see me so the nurse would be in soon to give me a bed bath. That made my day. Lucky me.

  I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you to wonder how you do things when you have to lie in bed twenty-four hours a day. You still have to go to the loo and everything. Even Ben worked that one out and he asked all about it when he came in with Mum and Dad on his first visit. Mum and Dad left him with me while they went to get a cup of coffee.

  ‘You have to stay in bed all day?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you go to the toilet then?’ I pointed at the special plastic jug on my bedside table.

  ‘How does that work then?’

  ‘I’m not going to show you!’

  ‘No, but how do you… you know?’

  ‘I put it under the covers and pee into it. OK?’

  ‘Wow! Cool! Can I have a go?’

  ‘No.’

  Ben picked up the jug and peered into it, frowning. ‘What about the other stuff? How do you get that in?’ he asked. Ben always liked to get straight to the bottom of things. (I’m going to kill myself in a minute!)

  ‘The nurse brings a bedpan and slips it under me.’

  ‘What does that look like?’

  I had to think for a moment. ‘The closest I can think of is an unidentified flying object, but smaller, obviously, small enough to fit beneath me.’

  ‘Wow! Cool!’

  I gazed at my brother in disbelief. Bedpans were cool? ‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever had to use one,’ I answered acidly. At that point Mum and Dad returned from the cafeteria
and Ben jumped up excitedly.

  ‘Jack has to use an unidentified flying poobowl,’ he exclaimed. ‘I wish I had one!’

  Dad rolled his eyes, groaned and gave me a sad look. ‘Honestly, Jack, did you have to tell him things like that?’

  Urh? My fault again! Well, SORREEE.

  So you can see from that how much fun we have in hospital, and today it was my turn for a bed bath, and all because Mum and Dad were coming in.

  ‘You want to smell nice for your parents, don’t you?’ asked Tricia, slipping the waterproof sheet between me and the bed. (Tricia’s a nurse – come on, keep up! Hospitals are busy places with loads of staff.)

  ‘Why? Are they taking me out to a fancy restaurant?’

  ‘You! You’re such a clown.’

  ‘Do I have to have a bath?’

  ‘Yes, you do. Suppose your girlfriend turns up. She won’t like you to be all whiffy, will she?’

  ‘I haven’t got a girlfriend,’ I answered.

  ‘What about Maisie? She’s taken a shine to you.’

  That was news to me. ‘How do you know?’ I asked. ‘I thought she didn’t speak to anyone.’

  ‘That’s right, but she writes things down and shows them to Cathy or me.’

  ‘I don’t know why she likes me,’ I murmured.

  ‘Neither do I,’ laughed Tricia. ‘Anyhow, Cathy’s bringing her down later. She wants to see you. There, all done. My, you do smell sweet!’

  ‘Yuk,’ I said.

  Sure enough, an hour later Cathy and Maisie turned up. Cathy left Maisie with Tricia and came across to have a word. She explained that Maisie didn’t speak and they didn’t know why, but for some reason she seemed to have taken a liking to me.

  ‘So I thought it might be a good idea if I brought her down so she didn’t have to sneak off and I knew where she was. She’d just like to sit near you. Is that OK?’