by Amy Lilwall
The scarf would have been nice, though.
But then maybe if she got really cold, they would take her away to the same place that Bonbon went to.
The Dead Bird lay inside her head and she let herself look at it. Probably with the other eye. That’s what eyes did, when they were closed. She got closer to it, put her arms around its neck, like she had really done, and put her mouth on its head.
‘A kiss,’ said her real mouth, on the outside of her head.
A piece of something licked at the edge of the glass doors. What was that? Bonbon!
She sat up. There it was again! It was the colour of humcoat! The She-one had given Bonbon her humcoat! Bonbon! She climbed off the chair and ran to the window. ‘BONBON!’ she shouted and banged on the glass.
The humcoat moved towards the window. At the top of it was Chips’s head.
‘Chips!’ yelled Jinx. She turned and ran across the carpet, the hall tiles, the kitchen tiles and through the vacuum hatch. ‘Chips!’ she said.
‘Jinx!’ said Chips, his head whizzing around to face her. ‘What happened to your legs?’
Jinx glanced down at her legs. ‘The chair did it,’ she said. ‘Where’s Bonbon?’
Chips put his mouth on upside down and shook his head.
‘She’s not inside.’
‘Oh.’ Chips glanced around at Outside. ‘She’s not here either.’
‘I’ve lost… Bonbon,’ Jinx sniffed.
‘Why?’ said Chips.
Jinx wrinkled her eyes. They looked at each other for a moment.
‘Well, she was very cold; very very cold. Then the big She-one came and put a scarf around her…’
‘A what?’
‘A thing to keep her warm.’
‘Oh.’
‘She put one around me too… and… it was so nice that I went to sleep and when I woke up Bonbon was gone.’
‘Oh,’ said Chips. ‘Is she in the kitchen?’
Jinx shook her head.
‘What about in there?’ Chips poked the glass door.
‘No.’
‘Oh,’ he said again. He stared at Jinx, then looked towards the green box. ‘What about behind the green box? I haven’t been over there.’
Jinx raised her eyebrows at the green box, then made her way towards it with long careful strides across the prickly AstroTurf. ‘Come on, Chips!’ she called. She circled the green box; no Bonbon this side, no Bonbon that side… But then…
Chips heard Jinx scream just as he cornered the green box. He stopped right next to her, right in front of the pile of feathers. The Dead Bird lay staring at them with its now empty eye socket, its face blackened and oily; its beak lay open in the shape of a cry and little wormy creatures crawled into its mouth and out of its eye.
Jinx turned to Chips. She was shivering and naked and her bottom lip stuck out. What a horrible, horrible day this had been. Chips turned too. They both faced the same way. ‘I don’t know why, but I don’t want to look at that,’ he said.
Jinx let her mouth open wide and go all wobbly. Chips, now in front of her, reached behind him for her arm and led her to a different side of the green box.
‘You’re all shaky,’ he said, turning to face her and her wobbly mouth.
‘—.’
Jinx held her own hand and pushed the fingers back. One of her feet covered up the other. Chips’s own lip started to jut out and wobble. He took off his humcoat, pulled it around her, and started to button it up at the front even though she hadn’t put her arms through the holes. The cold tickled and pinched his back. ‘How do they let you walk around like that?’
Jinx watched as the tiny thin-lipped mouths opened and spat out their buttons, the cold bits of her all happy and tingly as all the warm he’d left inside the coat rubbed over them. Chips was so nice. He was one of the nicest littlers ever. Except for Bonbon. But then… Bonbon would never button her into a coat like this – would she?
Yes, yes. Of course she would.
Was Chips even nicer than Bonbon?
Bonbon… Her stomach bubbled. The Dead Bird lay inside her head again. She didn’t feel like kissing it, like she did last time… Not now that it had changed.
Chips did up the last button, just under Jinx’s chin; his teeth clacked and his fingers wobbled. He was so nice… She wanted to do something nice like put her arms around him; that would warm him up. But she was trapped inside the coat.
‘You’re cold like Bonbon was,’ she said.
He nodded.
She opened her mouth to say something, then noticed the pointed things sticking out of his chest. What were they? She looked down his body. Bluish skin stretched over thick lines with dents between them that grew around his chest. She had them too, those liney things. But she could only feel them when she lay down; she’d never seen them like that, like that sleeping spider she once saw, with all its legs bent towards its body. ‘Not sleeping,’ said the inside of her head, ‘dead.’ She screwed up her mouth. His tummy was so empty that she could have put her whole head inside it and tucked it under his… his… ‘Ribs,’ said the inside of her head.
‘What are you looking at?’ Chips tucked his thing between his legs and crossed them.
‘You look weird,’ said Jinx. Chips’s cheeks went pink and he looked at the floor. Oops. ‘I mean,’ she tried, ‘you look cold, like Bonbon did.’ It was true, but she had said it to cover up the ‘weird’ thing. Oh she’d ruined it now… He would go and she would be alone. She bent to look up into his eyes.
He looked back, but kept changing the foot he was standing on and glancing towards the hole in the fence.
Jinx had an idea: ‘Will you come into my house?’
Chips widened his eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘Come on then!’ she grinned, and started to walk towards the house, twisting at the waist as she did, twist, twist, twist, making the empty arms of the coat flap around her. Chips scampered after her, hugging himself.
Once through the vacuum hatch, Chips stopped scampering and gazed about him. It had always been dark before, now it was daylight and different. He’d been invited in. He was allowed this time…
Jinx made him sit down on the edge of the basket. This was a bit strange; what would Bonbon say? Bonbon… Her stomach felt bubbly and floaty – maybe Bonbon would get cross. Or maybe… Maybe Jinx would be really naughty and not even tell Bonbon. The idea made her feel smiley. She watched Chips watching the fridge, his head tilting as his eyes climbed to the top of it. Chips was in her house!
What could she do with him? ‘Would you like some flakes?’
‘Flakes?’ Chips stood up.
‘Undo these buttons and I’ll bring you some.’
He did. She shook off the humcoat and went to fetch him her bowlful of flakes.
He fell into the bowl with his mouth open and made loud munching noises, his hands pushing small piles towards his face.
Jinx watched with her hands on her hips; it wasn’t nice to eat like that, she thought as he licked at the empty bowl. She brought him Bonbon’s flakes and he ate them too. She bent to sit next to him; it would have been nice to stroke his back or his leg or something… He looked up at her with eyes squished into black lines by full cheeks, his arms cuddled around the edge part of the bowl.
Jinx backed away and sat on the tiles, fiddling with things that had got stuck between the basket and the floor. A feather, a comb, a crystal from the toilet box…
‘Why were you so hungry?’ she asked when he’d finished eating.
He wiped his mouth.
She looked at the top of his head and thought about that for a minute.
‘Can I comb your hair?’
He nodded.
She knelt behind him, catching and combing the orange glints that grew at the back of his head. Brown water rose behind her eyes with big orange flashes that turned inside it. What was that, head? She combed the hair in all different directions, glint, flash, glint, flash, until Chips slept in his hands, elbows on k
nees. ‘Stay here with me, will you, Chips?’ she said, twirling the curls on his forehead around the teeth of the comb.
‘Alright,’ he said, eyes closed.
In the middle of the night, Jinx woke up. A rumbly noise blew through the hair on top of her head. It sounded like that nasty vacuum bot – stopping and starting and stopping and starting… Yes, exactly like the vacuum bot but when it would get stuck in a corner; or between two things. Something was pressed against her cheek. It was warm and skinny – that’s to say, it had skin. And spider-ribs. Of course it was skinny, ha! It was Chips! Although… she mustn’t say that to him. He didn’t like it when she said things like that. She felt the dum, dum, dum of whoever that littler was that knocked at the inside of his chest. ‘Do you want to come out?’ she whispered to the knocking littler as she peeked out into a room of dark shapes over the bend of a shoulder that grew into a neck.
‘Heart,’ said her head. No… That was wrong! A heart was the thing that one of the cushions was shaped into. That couldn’t be right…
Jinx closed her eyes. It was nice to be with Chips like this – with Chips this way round. She was so used to cuddling Bonbon’s back. That was nice too. But there weren’t as many noises in someone’s back. There was no stuck vacuum bot, or dum, dum, dum, or the sound of lips separating and a mouth swallowing and then there was the filling up and emptying of a chest and belly and the heat that got trapped between two tummies and two chests and a cheek and a shoulder. All that warmth and noise just for her.
Chips was so nice.
‘Heart,’ insisted her head. Hmmm… Her head could sometimes get things wrong.
Chips swallowed and the vacuum bot noise stopped. Then it started again, quietly. Jinx giggled and hushed herself, listening to see if she’d woken him up. She hoped that Chips would stay tomorrow too, if Bonbon wasn’t back. Oh but… What if Bonbon came back in the morning? She would find them like this. What if the biggerers found them together like this? What if they brought Bonbon back and all three of them found her with Chips? Jinx’s tongue prickled and dried. They would stand around the basket, looking at her crossly; picking Chips up and throwing him outside.
She thought.
Chips carried on making strange noises, whatever they were – the word didn’t come.
She thought again.
She would get up early and make him go home. Yes! She would wake up before everybody else and he would be gone before anybody could know. Ha! Easy-peasy!
She pressed her nose into Chips’s neck, yawned and her eyes closed.
What time was it? Susan peered at the wall, at the big blue projection of numbers; 03:50. That noise! God, it was deafening! Her head felt, kind of, scrunched up, as if her neck had been pressed in like a snooze button under a sleeping hand. She tried to stretch it out but there was something blocking her. Had she been properly awake, she might have known what it was… But she was still asleep. She should have been asleep, she thought. Hamish’s arm cut through the bottom half of her pillow. Again. He knew he shouldn’t sleep on his back. How many times had she asked him either to sleep on his side or to get one of those funny sticker things that would hold open his nostrils? He was so selfish. There was no way that he would accept this kind of behaviour from her. He would grump and huff when she used the SuckAway on the toilet, or accidentally set the clock figures to disco mode so that they’d flash and twirl about the bedroom at 2 a.m. Noiselessly, though. And she only knocked the buttons because her pillow was occupied by the arm. She pushed the arm further upwards, but it sprang back down again. This was so unfair. It was because she was little and he was big. If she had been on her back making noises like some kind of dying, pig-monster thing, then he would have rolled her over…
Oh fucking shut up!
She blinked in the blue and considered the processes that the air had to go through to make that kind of noise. It would dislodge, perhaps, from its rippled mould like a rocket shuddering out of its launch… For a moment, all around her twinkled with hundreds of mini rocket-snores, all the same blue as the clock light. Hmm. She had such a charming imagination.
She closed her eyes.
It never made the same noise twice. It peaked and faded and exploded and her brain would try to predict the tone of the next explosion. Was it going to crescendo here? Would it be long or short this time? And then he would swallow, or twitch, or something and her brain would think: is it going to stop now? And for a few seconds he would stop breathing altogether and she’d say good. He’s dead. But gently, gently, it would start again.
For fuck’s sake.
She winched herself up on her elbows and flopped back down again.
The noise stopped. Ha!
But the arm was still there.
She heaved the arm up into the air and threw it towards him. He caught it before it could fall back down on her. Good! He snatched his arm away, and twisted himself onto his side. The whole bed made spring noises.
Now they both lay awake and angry.
It was his fault. He bred all the negative energy in this house.
She swung her legs out of bed and got up.
‘Where…’ he said.
‘Toilet,’ she whispered back.
She went downstairs. There was that documentary that she’d recorded on – what was it called again? AISD? No. It was like ‘said’ but with the ‘s’ at the end. AIDS.That was the only way she could remember it, ever since she had learned about it at school… There was also that other documentary. The Mini Human Phenomenon. That would be easy watching, and more relevant to her life than bizarre historic diseases. A sleeping pile of Jinx and scarf swelled and shrank inside her mind. She went over to the kitchen door. Poor little Jinx, all on her own. She’d forgotten to see how she was, having left her all wrapped up in the living room. But what was that noise? Was it… Was it coming from inside? Yes, yes, it was! It sounded like… snoring. She ran her thumb across the skin on her wrist and it lit up. Shining it over towards the basket, she could just about make out Jinx’s loopy dark curls, even darker against her white back and… There was another back. Who the hell was that? She crept closer. A boy; it was a boy! Ha! The little floozy. The boy screwed up his closed eyes, slid out of Jinx’s hug and climbed over the side of the basket.
‘Oh no!’ said Susan. ‘Sorry. Please don’t go. I didn’t want to…’
Short grey eye-slits prised themselves apart. He glinted at her, turned and bolted towards the vacuum hatch.
Susan covered her mouth and grinned through her fingers at Jinx, who shivered for a moment before putting her arms around her own knees; eyes closed, apparently still sleeping.
Susan turned back to the door. Bless little Jinx. She could have let her sleep in the bedroom just this once, but instead she’d left her to go and pick up some stray for company. Pasty little thing, he did look very skinny. And Susan had scared him away from a warm bed. She flopped onto the sofa and looked at the angora cushion on the floor. What if Jinx had caught something from him? Could they even catch infections from one another? She was only hugging him – that was all she could do really. They weren’t programmed to have sexual feelings, were they? No. No, they weren’t because they were supposed to be for children. And anyway, they certainly couldn’t reproduce. She leaned towards the coffee table and tapped it twice. It made a noise that Susan spelled out in her head: Z-J-WE-E-M, as she imagined a pathway of letters curving upwards like music notes released from their noise. She tapped the icon that read ‘TV’, then ‘Playback’, then ‘The Mini Human Phenomenon’. The mirror above the fireplace shimmered: activate holographics? No. No, that would freak her out too much.
‘Customize programme narrative?’
No, thank you.
‘This programme has been classed as unsuitable for children under twelve; customize programme contents?’
Nope. Just ‘play’.
‘This documentary has been sponsored by Billbridge & Minxus.’
Good.
‘
Ten years ago, Billbridge & Minxus stunned consumers with what was considered to be a perfect prototype of the “Littler”, so called after the failure of its predecessor’s pocket-sized model, “Teeny”, twenty years before. Billbridge & Minxus bought the rights to the idea in 2103, and has been making happy additions to happier families, ever since.’
This wasn’t really a documentary. This was some company-sponsored advertising shit. Oh, she would tell Hamish about this. He would love this. She reached over and pressed the steaming cup icon on the coffee table. ‘Chocolate,’ she said. At the end of the sofa the coffee machine buzzed, frothed and told her that she had recycled seventy-eight beakers that month.
She took the cup that appeared next to her on a long glass tongue. In a month? Wow. And she’d been away for one whole week of that…
‘We believed that the fall of our predecessors, whose company name has since been discontinued, identified what could potentially be a fatal failure in the effort for re-humanization. Its idea of breeding empathy back into what was becoming a dangerously individualist society was just too important to give up on. So, ex-adoption agency Billbridge & Minxus picked those reins straight back up and by 2104, the “Little Love” programme was kick-started with the Batch Eight model. Batch Eight was an instant hit. Of course, we were fairly limited with its functions at the time – there were certain genetic settings we were unable to change: like the anti-ageing, difference of appearance… As well as the fact that they were all female.’
Jesus, 2104? It only seemed like three or four years ago that the old company was all over the news. She licked the chocolatey foam from her drink and watched as images labelled from Batch Eight to Batch Twenty-One slid across the screen. ‘What a wonderful journey,’ spouted the narrator, ‘culminating in a love-balance that is allowed to prevail in every home.’ A tag appeared in the bottom right corner. ‘Tag!’ she warbled over a tongueful of chocolate.
The image froze. ‘Tag selected,’ replied the TV. The image changed. A man appeared in an interview room with a microphone. Another man sat opposite him with one leg crossed over the other, his index finger playing with his top lip.