Jack

I often don’t read short stories; this would be my first in years. I am was not disappointed.  Jack, by CHINA MIÉVILLE a strange story about a remake named Jack half a prayer. The story doesn’t reveal the weird at first. It keeps you guessing. It took until the end of the story to really understand what the weird was. In this world the government punishes people by cutting off body parts and adding new ones from different creatures. This breaks the person. Makes them a freak. But not Jack, Jack was made through the remaking.

The one telling the story doesn’t reveal all that much about him as will. All we know is that he knew Jack.  Jack’s right hand was cut off and replaced with an oversized mantis claw. Which in ironic due to the fact that he used it to kill the militia that worked for the government. The people loved Jack. That is what we are told through the one telling us the story. That his name was toasted to, even when he was caught and hang out to die in the common nobody threw anything at him. They just stood in supporting silence. The narrative took revenge for jack. Took revenge on the guy who snitched on him.  He never called jack by his name, which was weird, since he explained that he worked with him before.  In the last two sentences of the short story, he finally tells us how he knew Jack. He made jack. He worked for the government. He called him prisoner and Jack called him Sir.