Tales from Tumorville. Chapter 2

6 min readJan 3, 2021

Tumorville’s name derived from the fact that it was the sole location for a unique geological phenomenon, namely that there were throughout the town little tumor-like bumps on the ground. They were sort of mini-volcanoes that would periodically erupt violently, spewing a grey, pus-like substance all over the place. It just so happened that one of these pus volcanoes lay underneath the shark tank above which Johannus Eldermountain was dangling. As Eldermountain was dangling there the volcano erupted and a massive explosion of pus blew apart all of the sharks. Fragments from the cement pool shot up like shrapnel, killing both Eldermountain and Mayor Titus.

The entire town hall was inundated by streams of pus, mixed in with cement shards, pieces of exploded shark, and pieces of both Eldermountain and Mayor Titus. The mixture oozed down the front steps and out onto Main Street. The people of Tumorville were of course used to this so they really paid it no mind.

The town government was thrown into chaos with the sudden death of the mayor. Yet the real power in Tumorville lay with the local chamber of commerce. Chair of the chamber was Ed Otter, who owned Tumorville Hardware. Otter was also a secret arms dealer to Tumorville’s primary vigilante militia, which had a nearly identical membership with the Tumorville Police Department (TPD).

The TPD used the pus volcano explosion political crisis to storm Money Mountain, throwing all of the residents out of their homes and into a refugee camp set up in the town dump. Over several weeks the residents of Money Mountain secretly used trash to build up an arsenal of homemade weaponry — bats with nails sticking out of them and so forth. After they had been in the refugee camp for exactly one month, the Money Mountain refugees attacked in the middle of the night, sneaking into the homes of TPD officers and beating all of them to death.

It was a successful coup and now Tumorville was even more of a shithole than it had been before. The only nice neighborhood had been decimated, its residents turned into refugees and murderers. There were no police and no civilian government and occasional pus volcano explosions. Packs of feral dogs started running around. The water system stopped working.

It seemed like the town was over. But then a young child, Seamus Figglebut, got up on top of a dormant pus volcano and made an inspirational speech about how Tumorville was the only place he knew, he loved it and would not abandon it, and he started to mention specific people, very similar to the way Jimmy Stewart did it in It’s A Wonderful Life. This little performance impressed a small group who formed a new coalition, to build back Tumorville better than it had ever been before. They started by stealing a cache of weapons from the abandoned TPD headquarters and demanding “taxes” from various people who had set up little businesses in the rubble of the town. Eventually they declared themselves the official government and even engaged in a few impressive public works projects to build up public support.

But the key question among the few remaining residents of Tumorville was whether the members of the Tumorville Reconstruction Authority, which is what the new town government called itself, would ever want to hold new elections — and what would happen if some of them lost those elections. Would they attempt to crush any opposition parties?

Tales from Tumorville. Chapter 2

Written by Jonsoncountrymia