The Biggerers

by Amy Lilwall

  ‘He’s not bad to me. He would never be bad to me.’

  She walked over to him and held both his hands, then kissed him on the chin like she had in her dream. This house was horrid. And her lovely Chips was living here. ‘Come and live with me.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘He’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jinx let go of his hands. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Why did you drop my hands? Don’t do that.’ He picked up her hands in his own. She beamed. ‘He’ll be gone again tonight. He’ll be gone and he’ll be sad. And I’ll know he’s sad because I’ll be sad too…’

  ‘Why will you?’

  Chips shrugged and looked at their four hands all knobbly and joined up. ‘Will you come back tonight?’

  Jinx let her head flop right backwards and laughed. ‘Yes, Chips. Yes, I will!’

  Right. Best take his humcoat… Oh, she could probably wear it on the way. That would be the easiest way to carry it and it would keep her warm. What else? Hmm… Some flakes. She would take a bowlful of flakes. Jinx stood with her hands on her hips and gazed about the kitchen. Ooo, what was that thing? It was sticking out between the fridge and the cupboard. She had seen one many times but she’d never touched one. She dragged it out and tried to pick it up. It was quite light! With its fat end, she scooped up a big helping of flakes, then put them back again as she realized she couldn’t hold the thing full of flakes and put on the humcoat at the same time.

  It wasn’t the easiest way to carry flakes, but if she was careful, she was sure that she would be able to get it all the way to Chips’s house without dropping any. Jinx took large strides across the garden. It made her think of the way that Blankey walked in her new shoes. She giggled. A few of the flakes shuddered off, dissolving into the AstroTurf. She shut her mouth, tight. Stupid thing…

  ‘Spoon,’ said the inside of her head.

  ‘Spoon,’ she said out loud. ‘Stupid spoon.’

  By the time she’d reached the tunnel, she’d already lost quite a few of her flakes. The wind hadn’t helped. Bloody wind. It puffed the flakes up into her face and they floated about her like little yellow flies. She blew at them so that they wouldn’t get into her eyes and carried on through the tunnel. ‘Nearly there, Chips,’ she said to the tunnel. Wait a minute… What was that? Over on the right, a plastic tube lay on its side. She hadn’t noticed it when she had come through earlier. It was right at the end of the tunnel near the opening into Chips’s garden. The tunnel seemed lighter now, even though it was evening… That was weird. Jinx stuck her head out. Chips’s garden had a light in it. But this one was really, really bright. She ducked back into the tunnel and tried to blink away the white blobs that swam about in front of her. The tube thing had a, sort of, lid, as if it were a little box of some type. That would be much better for carrying flakes. She laid down the spoon and another sprinkling of flakes fell onto the floor. Oh bugger! What a stupid idea it was bringing that silly spoon. She pulled off the top of the tube, yanked out a rolled-up plastic thing that was inside and started to stuff the tube full of flakes. She started with the flakes from the spoon, then around the spoon, then realizing that there was still loads of room in the tube, retraced her steps, picking up flakes where she could see properly and adding them to her little harvest. She imagined that the tube was Chips’s dead-spider belly and that each flake was helping to make it full and better and this thought pushed her back along the tunnel and to her Outside, her fingers picking through the dirt then the AstroTurf. She got closer and closer to the green box, the light getting better as she continued, picking and putting, picking and putting, when…

  ‘I asked her where you were and she said she didn’t know.’

  Blankey.

  Jinx stood up straight and looked around the side of the green box.

  Blankey, backlit by the outside light bulb, stood with another littler who wore the same humcoat as she did. She looked at the other littler’s hair, curly blonde with a pink flower, no! That one was Blankey!

  So, who was the other one? Jinx started to walk towards both of them. The other one spoke.

  ‘Where is she now, though?’

  Bonbon! Was it? No… Jinx froze; then shook her head and looked at the ground. Then looked back up again, yes, Bonbon was definitely there, but… she… she couldn’t really be here, could she? She shut her eyes and shook her head again, then reopened her eyes. Bonbon was still there. It was her Bonbon.

  ‘At Chips’s, I suppose,’ said Blankey.

  ‘Bonbon!’ Jinx’s tummy filled up with bubbles and her legs wobbled as she ran towards the two humcoated shadows. Bonbon was here! ‘Bonbon, oh Bonbon!’

  ‘Jinx!’ Bonbon spun around, the skirt of her coat swinging like the thing that covered the light bulb on the ceiling in the big room. ‘Where have you been?’

  Jinx stopped. Bonbon’s voice was a little bit nasty… All of her little belly bubbles turned to pebbles and dropped down through her legs to her feet. Oh no, why did she have to be like that? What did it matter where she had been? They hadn’t seen each other for two whole days! That had never ever happened before. Why did she have to be so mean and nasty all the time? ‘Oh dear…’ Jinx managed, looking at her feet.

  Bonbon stared at her with still eyes and a mouth that looked like a short straight line; her hands were scrunched into fists at the side of her coat.

  ‘Aren’t you happy to see me?’ Jinx said more angrily than she had wanted to, and surprised herself with her new, angry voice.

  They stared at each other. Bonbon’s eyes widened and her fists got tighter. Her short straight line was wobbling a bit. That wasn’t like Bonbon, thought Jinx, Bonbon never had a wobbly mouth.

  ‘I…’ started Bonbon, but couldn’t finish because she was too wobbly.

  Jinx didn’t like that mouth, not one bit; it was making her ears feel hot… She flicked her eyes downwards at the downy bits of fur that waved at her like millions of tiny fingers. Oh she looked so nice in that new coat with her white-blonde hair spread out all around it. ‘You look so lovely, Bonbon,’ she couldn’t help.

  Bonbon swished across the three steps that separated them and put her arms around Jinx.

  Jinx squawked and let her mouth hang in that shape while Bonbon held on to her. ‘I was worried about you, Jinx.’

  Jinx laughed again. ‘I’m fine, Bonbon.’ Then: ‘I was worried about you too! Where did they take you?’

  Bonbon thought for a moment. Why was that important? She was home now. That was all that mattered. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Oh, alright,’ Jinx replied. Then: ‘Yes, yes, it does matter, Bonbon. I want to know.’

  Bonbon blinked as she looked at the buttons on Jinx’s humcoat. She hadn’t been wearing it when Bonbon last saw her… And it smelled funny. Oh… Everything had changed! Everything. It would take ages to change it all back to the way it was.

  Jinx opened her mouth. Then closed it again. Then reopened it. ‘Don’t you want to know about Chips’s house?’

  No. No! Of course, now that Bonbon was back, Jinx would never ever go there again. Bonbon frowned and shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re back now.’

  ‘But I have to go to Chips’s house. Tonight. I promised him.’

  Bonbon’s mouth fell open. ‘No!’ What was she talking about? Nobody had to go anywhere!

  Jinx pulled her shoulders up around her ears and blinked at Bonbon from the side of her head.

  Bonbon pressed her lips together and looked at the floor. ‘No,’ she said, really quietly. ‘Please don’t go.’

  Jinx’s head rose out of her shoulders. Where was all the nastiness?

  Bonbon danced her eyes backwards and forwards at the ground; what could she say to make Jinx stay? Jinx wanted to know where she had been… But it was all so unimportant now that she was back. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought really hard; what could she tell Jinx? What could she tell her? An image flashed up in
her mind of her own fingertips at the end of her own arms held out towards the green eye and the brown eye in their crumples of skin. And all that white hair. White and crumpled with funny eyes, how did it get like that? Because Bonbon was sure it hadn’t always been like that. Thinking about it again made her want to go back, to the tile-smelling place. She must go back and find out who the white and crumpled one was. ‘There was a…’ she began, then took a deep breath… Oh, it was no good! She sniffed. So many things happened on the inside of her head that her mouth wouldn’t tell.

  It was like that time she made a nice pile of feathers in their Outside and the wind picked them up and threw them around the sky and every time she put them back into a nice neat pile, they would blow away again, all in different directions. Just like her words were now. She tried again. ‘There was a…’ and again they scattered like feathers in the air.

  Blankey started stroking the side of Bonbon’s coat and making funny noises the way she had done when Jinx had cried. Surely Bonbon wasn’t going to… Not her Bonbon; angry, strong Bonbon. ‘It’s alright, I’ll stay, Bonbon. Don’t get sad. I’ll stay.’

  Bonbon dragged a finger under her nose. ‘Will you really, Jinx?’

  ‘What were you trying to say, Bonbon? There was a… what? What was there?’

  Bonbon put her arms around Jinx again, her mouth trying to make words over Jinx’s shoulder.

  ‘Do you believe in the soul?’

  ‘It’s a, sort of, trend these days, isn’t it? Linked to this prevailing fear of death that characterizes, to some extent, our generation.’

  ‘Yes, but do you believe in it?’

  Hamish inhaled as he thought about this. ‘I like that there are still ideas we can choose to believe in, or not.’

  ‘It was never a choice for me. It’s always been as real as… my own face.’ She smiled and placed her fingers on her brow bone. ‘And to some extent, I’ve allowed myself to be driven by it.’

  ‘You never know, we might be the last ones… with this fear.’

  ‘Yes.’ She twinkled her eyes at him. ‘Death might die with our generation.’ Jinx twirled around, then stretched her arms out to the sides and pointed one foot. If she balanced her hand just over the very tips of the millions of fingers that made up the cat tails, it felt like, well, like the way air would feel if it could tickle her. ‘You’re so lucky, Bonbon.’ The inside was silky and slidy. Jinx twirled again. ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘Mini-Me’s.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jinx, seeming very impressed. Then looking up to the left and screwing up her face; what was Mini-Me’s? ‘Did the She-one get it for you?’ she asked, finally.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, it’s a shop then?’

  Bonbon frowned.

  ‘Mini-Me’s; is it a shop?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a shop.’

  Jinx held the end of a tail in each hand. ‘I’ve never been to a shop…’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous; we came from a shop.’

  Jinx dropped the tails. ‘What?’

  ‘Remember, where we were before we met the She-one? That was a shop.’

  ‘But… No… No, Bonbon. We’ve never lived anywhere other than here.’ Jinx squeezed her eyes shut just to ask the inside of her head about all of this. Images flared and faded; glass boxes and funny woolly stuff on the ground, bowls of water and the smell of a toilet box. A pile of littlers huddled over each other, sleeping, in one corner. ‘No…’ Jinx shook her head. ‘Why would we come from a shop, Bonbon? You’re being quite weird, you know. You’ve never ever talked about that before. Fancy saying such silly things about living in shops…’ Jinx held her shoulders with her own hands and took a step back; oh dear, she’d been a bit nasty there. She’d said that Bonbon was weird and silly; that would definitely make her cross. She would say something like: ‘Leave me alone, Jinx; you’re making me tired.’ Or: ‘Me? Weird? You’re the weirdo, Jinx. No one is as weird as you.’

  Jinx held her breath.

  Bonbon said nothing.

  ‘Why do you think that we came from a shop, Bonbon?’ she said in a nice voice. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The white and crumpled one appeared inside Bonbon’s head with her hands held behind her back. She smiled at Jinx and bowed a little. ‘I’m trying to know but, but I… I just don’t.’

  ‘We come from here. We’ve always been here. What’s happened to you?’ As she said it, she felt the heat coming from the bodies piled up in the corner of the glass box and the smell of flakes and toilet box grew thicker inside her nose. It couldn’t… Could it?

  Bonbon looked at Jinx. ‘Can we go to bed now?’

  ‘Why are you asking me? You always decide when we go to bed.’

  ‘I – I just want to go to sleep.’

  Jinx bent to look up into Bonbon’s eyes. Maybe Bonbon was still ill. ‘Do you feel weird?’ she asked. ‘Do you feel bad in your stomach? Does it feel funny?’

  Bonbon jolted. Champ had said that to her. With his little Jinx-face and his legs all… all… poorly. Looking up at her just like Jinx was doing now… Bonbon’s eyes started to feel hot like they would overflow, and then, perhaps they did overflow, they felt all blurry. ‘No, Jinx,’ she croaked through lips that had gone all weird and bendy, ‘my stomach is fine.’

  Jinx’s mouth fell open. She looked to her left, then to the right, then back at Bonbon. Bonbon had never cried before. Never ever. ‘I’ll get the She-one.’

  ‘No!’ Bonbon thought of the car, the road, the super-rise, the horrid place where she’d seen all those horrid things. The horrid shoe-coat and that weird shop-woman. If the She-one thought there was something wrong, she might take her back again… ‘No, Jinx. Please can we just go to bed?’

  ‘Alright, Bonbon,’ replied Jinx, moving a string of blonde hair out of the wet eyes and tucking it behind Bonbon’s ear… A big, white pillow-thing was attached to Bonbon’s ear. It had a brown spot in the middle of it. Jinx stared. ‘Bonbon, you’ve got…’

  ‘I don’t know what that thing is,’ Bonbon sobbed.

  ‘Don’t worry, Bonbon,’ still staring at the thing. ‘Let’s have a nice sleep. A nice cuddly sleep.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sniff. ‘Yes, let’s do that.’

  She’d promised him. She’d promised him.

  Maybe when she’d let go of his hands it meant that… Well, it meant something. It was a thing. He hadn’t liked that. It was like when she put her hands on her hips while she talked to Bonbon sometimes. It was that kind of thing.

  Although, he liked it when she told Bonbon off. She needed to do that more.

  Bonbon. Bonbon who was back. Maybe that was why Jinx had broken her promise. It had to be that. They had both discussed The Big Cuddle. They had both agreed it had been really, really nice…

  Chips looked at Jinx’s nipples. Her arm lay above her head so one nipple was pulled up nearer to her chin than the other. The chin nipple was right in the middle of its breast like a star in the sky. The other one hung off the end of its breast like a bag with a knot at the bottom.

  He couldn’t decide which one he wanted to lick the most. Oh! He put his hands over his face; what a terrible thought! Had he really just thought about putting her nipple in his mouth? Lowering his hands, he looked back at Jinx from under his eyelids. His Jinx, who he wanted to cuddle so much. ‘Sorry,’ he mouthed, bowing his head. ‘Sorry,’ he mouthed again.

  It must’ve been because Bonbon was there. That’s why she hadn’t come to his house. She’d been so worried last night when they went looking for her behind the box… When they found the Dead Bird again.

  Jinx was always so nice to Bonbon. Too nice.

  Chips felt every part of his face droop towards the floor. Never mind. He would come and see her in the morning. Never mind…

  He rocked back onto his heels and stood up, putting on his very old humcoat that the He-one had found in a box somewhere. The sleeves of it swallowed up his hands. The hum didn’t work any more a
nd it smelled like… Well… Bad. He would have to take it off again before he saw Jinx. Now that his He-one was gone away, he could come and see her whenever he liked.

  He looked back at her, sleeping on her own arm with her mouth pressed up against it as if she were kissing it. ‘Bye,’ he mouthed, thinking about her arm.

  Lucky old arm.

  ‘Oh!’ he heard and froze. Where had that come from? It didn’t sound like anywhere near.

  Maybe it was Blankey. Could it have been Blankey following him about again?

  Laughter.

  His eyes shot a look at the hall door. It was coming from further inside the house. Was she laughing at him now? He glanced at Jinx, still unconscious and kissing her own arm. If she wasn’t careful, she’d wake everybody up! Silly Blankey, he thought as he made big careful steps towards the hall door.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he whispered into the black.

  Nothing.

  He stuck his head further into the darkness. Then snapped it back again as the ceiling thumped above his head.

  What was that?

  It thumped again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And now it was getting quicker. So quick that the inside of his head no longer had time to say ‘and again’.

  ‘Stop. No. Let me turn around now, let me… Let me turn around…’

  It was Jinx’s she-one. The voice was breathless and quivery, but not in a frightened way… In a way that made Chips feel warm and shaky in his legs.

  But not in a frightened way.

  Chips licked his lips and crept closer to where he thought he would find the stairs. Yes! Just as he had thought – they were in the same place as his house. But instead of being sticky and rough, they felt soft and strokey. He put his cheek against the top of the first step and closed his eyes.

  ‘Oh!’

  His eyes pinged open and he pulled himself onto the second step, and the third and… ‘Uh!’ And the fourth and the fifth and… ‘Mmm!’ And the sixth and the seventh and the eighth. That voice pulled his achy arms upwards, not by his arms but a hot patch at the bottom of his stomach. With every step the strokey softness brushed his body and made him want to climb the next one and feel it all over again, why was that? ‘Uh! Mmm!’ The ninth step, the tenth step, the eleventh step. The ‘oh’s’ had turned into a funny sound now, like when he smacked his own leg; but over and over again really quickly. As he heaved himself over the final step, he saw into another room. Some sort of night-time lamp was spying through a window. Spying on what? What exactly was that thing? All breathy and bumping up and down. It was so weird that he couldn’t look away from it; he crept closer, his eyes getting used to its shape, he saw three legs, two heads, two arms, no, three arms… Four legs and… ‘Let me roll over…’ Chips ducked back as two arms pushed one head and one back up above another back that rolled over to reveal two breasts, one tummy and two legs wide open, and… What was that thing? That was a, a thing but why was it like that?