"Cut him," said Massin. "Cut him, I'm going to stand here and watch. I'm going to see the blood come out. Come on, don't make me say it a second time." —George Stark: The Massin Way Men's real lives began at different times, as opposed to their primitive bodies. Ted Beaumont was a boy born in Ridgeway, Bergenfield, New Jersey, and his real life began in 1960.That year, two things happened to him.The first event defined his life, while the second almost ended it.Ted Beaumont was eleven years old that year. That January, American Junior magazine held a writing contest, and he sent in a short story.In June, he received a letter from the magazine's editors saying he had received an honorable mention in the fiction category of the competition.The letter also stated that the judges were going to give him a second prize, but found from his application that he was not old enough, two years behind, to be considered a true "American boy".However, the editors congratulated him on the success of his short story "Outside Mattie's" which was a very successful piece.

Two weeks later, "American Teen" magazine mailed the award certificate.To be on the safe side, it was sent by registered mail.His name was on the award certificate, but in such a garish font that he could barely make it out.At the bottom of the certificate, there was a gold stamp with the raised American Teen logo—a silhouette of a boy with a crew cut and a girl with ponytails dancing wildly. His mother took Tad in her arms and kissed him.Ted was usually a quiet, honest boy who never seemed particularly interested in anything, and besides, he often tripped over himself when he walked.

His father was unmoved. "If it's so fucking good, why don't they give him a little money?" he complained, leaning back in his easy chair. "Glenn—" "Don't take it to heart. When you don't bother him, maybe this great writer can run around and buy some beer for me." His mother said nothing more... but she paid for the letter and certificate to be framed and tacked to the wall above his bed.When relatives and others visit, she takes them to see it.She told them that Ted would one day be a great writer.She had always believed that he was destined for greatness, and these credentials were the first proof.These words embarrassed Tad, but he loved his mother too much to tell her the truth.

Embarrassed or not, Tad didn't think his mother was entirely wrong.He didn't know if he would be a great writer, but he was going to be, that's for sure.why not?He is good at writing.What's more, he's already started writing.When he won the award, he had been writing for a long time.They don't always deny him money because of his young age.He won't be eleven forever. In 1960, the second thing that happened to him began in August.At that time, he started to have a headache.It wasn't severe at first, just a dull ache in the temples and behind the forehead, but when school started in early September, it became a constant pain.When the headache hit, he could do nothing but lie in the dark room and wait to die.By the end of September, he wished he could die.By mid-October, the headaches had intensified to such an extent that he began to fear that he would not die.

The terrible headache always started with a phantom sound that only he could hear--it sounded like the chirping of a thousand little birds.Sometimes he fancied he could almost see the birds, and decided they were house sparrows, which gathered in flocks of a dozen on telephone lines and roofs, as they often did in spring and fall. His mother took him to see Dr. Sewat. Dr. Sewat peered into his eyes with an ophthalmoscope, then shook his head.Then he drew the shades, turned off the overhead lights, and told Tad to look at the white walls.He flicked a flashlight on and off against the wall in circles, and Tad watched without moving.

"Do you think it's fun, kid?" Ted shook his head. "Do you feel dizzy? Do you feel like you're going to pass out?" Ted shook his head. "Do you smell something? Like rotting fruit or burnt cloth?" "No." "How are your birds? Did you hear them chirp when you looked at the flash?" "No," Ted said, feeling mystified. "It's neurotic," his father said when Ted came into the waiting room outside. "The kid's got a fucking neurotic." "I think it's a migraine," Dr. Sewat told them. "It's rare in such a young child, and it's not unheard of. Also, he seems to be very... emotional."

"Indeed." Saila Beaumont said a little proudly. "Maybe someday there will be a cure. As for now, I'm afraid he'll have to suffer." "Yes. We'll have to suffer with him too," said Glenn Beaumont. But, it's not a neurological problem, it's not a migraine, it's not over. Four days before Halloween, Shayla Beaumont heard a boy yelling, with whom Ted waited for the school bus every morning.She looked out the kitchen window and saw her son lying in the family driveway, convulsing.His lunch box was thrown aside, and the fruit and sandwiches in it rolled out and fell on the road.She ran out, sent the boy away, and then stood there with no mistakes, not daring to touch him.

If Mr. Reed's big yellow bus had been late, Tad would have died on the side of the driveway.However, Mr. Reed had worked as a doctor in South Korea.He turned the boy's head back to allow air to circulate so Tad wouldn't choke on his tongue.He was taken by ambulance to Olgenfeld City Hospital when Dr. Hoof Brichard was chatting over coffee in the emergency room when the boy was wheeled in.Dr. Hoof Brichard happened to be the best neurologist in New Jersey. Brichard ordered X-rays, which he studied carefully.He showed the Beaumonts the photo and asked them to look closely at the area he had circled with the yellow crayon, where there was a vague shadow.

"Look here," he said, "what's this?" "How the hell do we know?" Glenn Beaumont asked. "You're a fucking doctor." "Yes." Britchard said coldly. "My wife said he looked like he was sick again," Glenn said. Dr. Britchard said, "If you mean he's epileptic, you're right. But you mean he's epileptic, then I'm sure it's not. If Ted is epileptic, you don't know." It takes a doctor to point out that fact. If he had epilepsy, he'd be rolling around on the living room rug as soon as your TV started scrolling."

"So, what is he?" Shayla asked cautiously. An X-ray of Brichard's turn signal box. "What's that?" he replied, tapping the circled area lightly. "A sudden headache, without any warning, which indicates that your son has a brain tumor, which may be small, perhaps Still benign." Glenn Beaumont stared blankly at the doctor, and his wife, standing next to him, put her handkerchief to her mouth and began to cry.There was no sound when she cried.This silent crying is the result of many years of married life.Glenn's fists were fast, hard, and accurate, and after twelve years of silent grief she probably couldn't cry if she wanted to.

"Does that mean you're going to chop off his head?" Glenn asked with his usual bluntness. "I hate to say it, Mr. Beaumont, but I believe an operation is needed." He thought: If there is a God, and He really made us in His own image, then I don't know why there is a God in the world. So many bastards like this guy who hold other people's fates in their hands. Glenn lowered his head, frowned, and fell into deep thought. He was silent for a long time.Finally, he raised his head and asked the question that bothered him most. "Tell me the truth, doctor, how much did it cost?" The nurse assistant was the first to see it. Her screams were piercing and terrifying.In the operating room, for fifteen minutes, the only sounds were Dr. Brichard's murmur, the hiss of the huge life preserver, and the whine of the saw. She stumbled back and knocked over a round plate on which dozens of surgical tools were neatly placed.The plate hit the floor with a loud jingle, followed by a smaller jingle. "Hilary!" the head nurse yelled.Her voice was full of shock and anger.She was so mad that she took half a step as if to chase the fleeing nurse. Dr. Albertson kicked the matron with his slippered foot. "Remember where you are." "Yes, doctor." She turned around immediately, without looking at the door of the operating room, which was slammed open by Hilary, and she rushed out screaming all the way, like a runaway train. "Take these tools and sterilize them," Albertson said. "Quick, quick." "Yes, doctor." She started picking up tools.Her breathing was rapid and she was visibly nervous, but Shan was still able to control herself. Dr. Britchard seemed to be completely oblivious to these matters.He was looking intently through the incision in Ted Beaumont's skull. "It's unbelievable," he whispered, "it's unbelievable. I've only seen this kind of thing in textbooks. If I didn't see it with my own eyes—" The hiss of the sterilizer seemed to wake him up, and he looked up at Dr. Albertson. "I want a pump," he snapped, glancing at the matron. "What the hell are you doing? Sunday Times word puzzle? Get those tools here!" She brought the tools over on a new plate. "Give me the aspirator, Lester," Brichard said to Albertson, "come on. I'm going to show you something new that you'll never see at a freak show. of." Albertson pushed past the liquid pump. He didn't care that the head nurse was in the way. The nurse quickly jumped aside to make way for him, and at the same time kept her balance nimbly so that the tools wouldn't fall to the ground. Britchard looked at the anesthesiologist. "Keep your blood pressure steady, my friend. I need it steady." "Well, his mother says he has the potential to be a second William Shakespeare, so keep your blood pressure steady. Lester, pump him up—don't tickle him with that.!" Albertson used a liquid pump to remove the blood.The monitor beeps in a steady, monotonous, soothing beep.Then he gasped and felt as if someone had punched him hard in the stomach. "Oh my God, my God." He flinched back, then leaned forward again.Above his visor and behind his glasses, his eyes widened in wonder, "What is it?" "I think you've seen what it is," Brichard said. "It takes time to get used to it. I'd read about it, but never thought I'd actually see it." Ted Beaumont's brain was the color of the rim of a shell—a slightly rosy gray. A deformed blind eye protruded from the smooth surface of the dura mater.The brain was beating slightly, and the eyes were beating with it, and it looked as if it was blinking hard at them.It was this blinking that scared the assistant nurse out of the operating room. "My God, what is this?" Albertson asked again. "It's nothing," Brichard said. "It used to be part of a living being. Now it's nothing but trouble. Well, we can deal with that." Dr. Lorraine, the anesthesiologist, said, "May I take a look, Dr. Brichard?" "Is he normal?" "right." "Come on, then. It's a rare thing to tell your grandson. But hurry up." While Lorraine watched, Brichard turned to Albertson. "I need the curium," he said. "I'm going to open his head a little more so we can probe. I don't know if I can get it all out." Les Albertson, now in charge of the nurse, placed the freshly sterilized probe in Britchard's gloved hand.While humming softly, Britchard performed the operation nimbly, occasionally looking at the mirror on top of the probe.He acts primarily by touch.Albertson will say in the future that he has never seen such a scary operation in his life. In addition to the eyes, they found part of a nostril, three fingernails, and two teeth.One of the teeth had a hole.It blinked until the last second as Brichard pierced and then amputated the eye with a needlepoint scalpel.From exploration to resection, the entire operation took only 27 minutes.Five bloody hunks of flesh were still placed in the stainless steel tray, which sat alongside the tray of surgical tools next to Tad's shaved head. "I think we've gutted it out," Brichard concluded. "All the foreign tissue seems to be connected to the underdeveloped nerve center. Even if there's something else, I think we've killed it. .” "But... how is that possible, if the child is still alive? I mean, it's all part of him, right?" Lorraine asked confused. Britchard pointed to the plate: "We found an eye in this kid's head, some teeth, and some nails, which you think are part of him? Did you see one of his nails missing? ? Do you want to check it?" "But even cancer is part of the patient himself—" "It's not cancer," Brichard told him patiently.He continued to work with both hands as he talked, "There are many such cases, when a mother gives birth to a child, the child exists at first as twins, my friend. It can be as high as two out of ten cases. Another Something happened to a fetus, the strong swallowed the weak." "Annexation? You mean it eats it?" Lorraine asked, looking blue. "Are we talking about cannibalism in the womb here?" "Call it what you want, it happens a lot anyway. At medical meetings they're always talking about sonar recording devices, and if they actually make one, we'll find out how often it happens. But, No matter how high the rate of this thing is, what we see today is very rare. The boy's twin was not fully absorbed. It happened to be lodged in his frontal lobe. It also easily lodged in his rectum , in his spleen, in his spinal cord, anywhere. The only ones who can see this are pathologists - they can see it at an autopsy. I've never heard of anyone dying from foreign tissue. " "What's going on here?" Albertson asked. "A year ago, this tissue was only visible under a submicroscope. Now, something has revived it. A month before Mrs. Beaumont gave birth, the biological clock of the annexed twins should have stopped. I don't know how. Yep, the biological clock is being wound up again...the damn thing is moving again. There's nothing mysterious about what's going on, the pressure inside the skull alone is enough to cause the child to have headaches and convulsions. " "Yes," said Lorraine, "but why did it happen?" Britchard shook his head. "If I'm still studying golf instead of golf in another thirty years, ask me then. I might have an answer then. All I know now is that I've found And removed a very unique, very rare tumor. A benign tumor. To avoid trouble, I believe that is all the father needs to know. The father of the child is a big fool. I can't explain to him that I gave him eleven 20-year-old son had a miscarriage. Lester, let's sew it up." Then, he happily added to the head nurse: "I'm going to get rid of that stupid woman who ran away from here. Please write this down." "Yes, doctor." Nine days after surgery, Ted Beaumont was discharged from the hospital.The left side of his body was very weak, which lasted for six months.Occasionally, when he was very tired, a very odd flash of light would appear before his eyes. His mother bought him a typewriter as a gift for his recovery.Every night before bed, when he was sitting at his typewriter hammering out words or plotting plots, strange flashes of light often appeared at this time.Eventually, those sparkles faded too. After the operation, that weird chirping sound like a flock of sparrows flying high never happened again. He continued to write, growing more confident and his essays getting better and better.Six years after his real life began, he sold his first novel to American Boy.Since then, he has never looked back. All Ted's parents and he knew was that a benign tumor had been removed from his brain the fall of his eleventh year.When he thinks about it (he thinks about it less and less as the years go by), he just considers himself very lucky to have survived. Many people who had brain surgery early in life did not survive.