The Biggerers

by Amy Lilwall

  Chips put his hand over his own thing. His thing wasn’t like that…

  The big he-one lowered himself gently onto the breasts and after a second or two, the she-one ‘mmmmed’ again. The two-headed, four-armed, two-tummied thing started to rock, getting faster and faster, the ‘mmmms’ turned into ‘oh’s’ then ‘OH’s’ then ‘AHH’s’. Chips watched, mouth open. His hand was still on his thing, but it didn’t feel like his thing any more. He squeezed once, twice, his other hand flying to his mouth. What on Earth had happened to it? The same thing as… as… Jinx’s big he-one. But why? Chips turned and ran across the landing, his thing boing-boinging against his belly. He scrambled down the stairs, aware that he could crush it at any moment… Or even trip over it… What if it got so big that it turned into a leg? It wouldn’t do that, would it? And if it did, everyone might know what he’d seen, that he’d been spying.

  As his foot inched down from the bottom step to the hall floor, he put his hand on his thing to hold it out of the way and… it was back to normal. Little and squidgy.

  Phew!

  He stood and listened for a moment. The noises had stopped. He cupped his ear just to make sure.

  Yep. Silence.

  Oh! Phew. Everything seemed normal again. He would just stand here, against the bottom stair, just for a minute until he was sure that everything was normal again. A leg, huh, of course it wouldn’t turn into a leg… At that moment, the middle of his leg, just above his knee, started to tingle so much that it pushed up an ‘Ow!’ from his belly. He shut his mouth and looked around him, then, holding the middle of his leg, he crept across the hall and through the kitchen. Jinx lay on her back with both arms stretched above her head; both nipples like stars in the sky. Her big she-one appeared on the inside of his head, as she had been just a moment ago, with her legs wide apart. The tingling had stopped. Chips crouched in front of Jinx, imagining that she was the big she-one, and he the big he-one, and that he would lower himself onto her and she would say ‘mmmm’.

  As he thought this, his thing felt weird against his humcoat. His hand swooped to grab it and… Oh no! It had happened again! Oh no!

  He got up and ran to the vacuum hatch.

  What if it didn’t go down this time? What if he’d been lucky last time? Oops! He tripped as he ran across Jinx and Bonbon’s Outside but kept on running. Dear oh dear! What if this happened to him all the time? He should never have spied on the biggerers… Stupid Chips… He should never have gone up those stairs… Where could he go, could he go home? But everything seemed so weird. He didn’t want to take all of that weirdness back home. It would wake him up in the night and make him frightened. It needed to be gone!

  He went over to the green box and hid himself behind it, sitting with his back up against it and his hands over his ears. That was better; he would just sit here for a few minutes. Everything would be normal soon. He would just wait here, with his hands over his ears, and listen to his own breathing. In and out… In and out… Until everything was normal.

  Blankey looked lovely. Much nicer than those other two…

  She gazed into the glass door and turned all of her body around except for her head until it really had to catch up with her body. Then she whipped it around to look back into the door.

  She had managed to do something funny with her hair. She’d twisted it up the back of her head, then stuck the green bit of her flower through it so that it stayed up. All her blonde curls made a, sort of, cloud on top of her head.

  She shook her head really hard to see if it would all fall down again.

  It did. Oh bugger… She’d just have to put it back up, but this time she’d be really, really careful to properly stick in the green bit of the flower.

  She’d put Chips’s humcoat in a grey bag that her biggerers had given her and slipped a rose petal inside to make it smell nice. She’d kicked the dirty blue thing right under one of the kitchen cupboards. Dirty thing! But then she realized that she had nothing better to carry the flakes in, so she took off her humcoat and her shoes, and scrambled underneath the cupboard to fetch it back again.

  What was it she had to say? Word for word, Jinx had said. You must remember this, word for word. ‘Word for word,’ Blankey repeated aloud. ‘Word for word.’ Maybe she would stop at her house to get some nice new flakes. This wasn’t something that she would give to anyone, even Chips, who had told her that he had once tasted his own poo because he had been hungry. He was so funny after that, he kept shaking his head and saying: ‘I didn’t mean to say that. That wasn’t a good thing to say to you.’ Blankey had thought that this was disgusting until she saw Chips at the end of the summer, without his humcoat. No wonder he was always hungry.

  The underneath of the cupboard pulled the flower out of her hair, bugger, bugger, bugger, so she had to put it up all over again then wash the blue thing then dry it and fill it with flakes.

  She often thought about how the other three never seemed to mention washing. Not even themselves, let alone their things. Blankey had got used to having a nice-smelling bath twice a week, while they were sneaking about collecting stones and feathers and other dirty things…

  She turned sideways to look at herself in the glass door again. Well, it was actually a good thing that the cupboard had pulled her hair out because it seemed to look even lovelier the way she’d done it this time.

  She slid into her humcoat. ‘Word for word,’ she said again.

  She liked that word ‘sneak’. She couldn’t remember where she had learned it. But she liked it. She liked the way that Chips sneaked about. Once she had caught him sneaking into Jinx’s house. It was quite late at night, she had also been sneaking. ‘What are you doing?’ she had called to him from across her Outside.

  ‘Don’t know,’ he had replied. Then he sneaked off and was gone! Just like that.

  ‘Word for word.’

  How could they live with themselves knowing that they never washed?

  Then she put on her shoes.

  They weren’t animals. Her She-one always told her that she was a little lady and ladies should have baths.

  She picked up the bag with Chips’s humcoat inside. Yes. Chips could be excused, but Jinx and Bonbon weren’t very ladyish. Ah flakes, mustn’t forget them, she thought as she bundled the blue box under one arm. Flakes for her favourite sneaker. She had brushed up his humcoat a bit, with that lovely soft brush in her bedroom. She used it to make all of her little grey cat tails really shiny. It had worked very well on Chips’s coat to get rid of the bits of fluff and AstroTurf. Yes, she had made it nice for him again. And got him more flakes. And maybe she would tell him that she had done all of this, before giving him the message. ‘Word for word. Word for word.’

  She pressed a pink gem-like button that sat inside a chrome ring on the wall and her glass door slid back to let her out. She crossed the garden and disappeared into the tunnel.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was very late. Jinx closed one eye and opened the other. Then did the same thing but the other way around. She did this again. And again. Until a big puff of air ffffed out of her mouth and her fingers started to drum on the floor of the basket.

  ‘Just go,’ she whispered to herself. ‘You could get up and go and be back again before Bonbon even realizes that you’ve gone.’ She whipped her head to the side to watch Bonbon for a moment.

  Bonbon slept with her back to Jinx. They weren’t touching even the tiniest little bit; it would have been so easy to get up and sneak out.

  Poor Chips. He’d probably been waiting for ages… Jinx’s heart started bouncing, what if his big he-one hadn’t let him out of his cupboard? She sat up. And, what if Blankey hadn’t gone?

  Her shoulders relaxed slightly. Of course she had.

  But what if she hadn’t?

  She’d said she would. She had promised.

  Jinx looked back at Bonbon. What if Blankey couldn’t keep her promise?

  Hmmm… She got up, slowly, slowly, and ran on tipt
oes to the vacuum hatch, stooped and climbed through it.

  Everything seemed all right again, he thought as he wandered back through the tunnel. Tomorrow, in the daylight, and after a long sleep he might even feel silly about panicking so much.

  Squinting through the outside light, he crossed his Outside and went into his house. That horrid smell hit him straight away. Gosh, this house was so different to Jinx’s. He felt it a little bit more every time he came back from hers. It hadn’t been this bad when he first moved here, had it? He stopped and leaned in to sniff the grey and black specks that spattered the bottom of a bowl. It looked like someone had turned his chin inside out. He rubbed his chin. That poor He-one. Some other biggerer would come and help him sometimes, to clear all this mess… His eyes jumped to the vacuum bot, the green bread, the cupboard and, oh! A foot! A foot was poking out of his cupboard!

  Whose foot was that? It couldn’t have been… He’d just left her sleeping with her… starry breasts… It, it couldn’t have been… ‘Hello?’ he yelled at the foot.

  ‘Chips!’ Jinx stuck her head out of the cupboard and threw the rest of herself out afterwards. Running towards Chips she repeated his name, ‘Chips, Chips, Chips!’, and she was in his arms, pressed right up into his humcoat and kissing his face. Then she put her arms around his neck and leaned her head on the bit where his chest became his shoulder. ‘Bonbon came back today.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, thinking that he was so happy he was shaking.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, then, ‘Your humcoat is smelly.’

  Bugger. His humcoat. He pushed Jinx gently away from him. ‘I’m going to take it off.’ Then in one movement, he let his coat fall off and let Jinx flop back onto his shoulder. ‘It’s old… I got my old one back because the other one is still at your house,’ he said. ‘But the hum doesn’t work.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jinx. It didn’t matter if his humcoat didn’t work. They were all warm in this cuddle. Toasty warm. Mmm… It had been the best thing to do, to leave Bonbon sleeping so that she could come and see Chips. She breathed in the smell of his shoulder; it smelled lovely and cuddly, like last night when she had woken up breathing in shoulder. Yes, yes, it had been the best thing to do… But… wait… hang on… She lifted her head. ‘Blankey gave you your humcoat today.’

  Chips scrunched up his eyebrows. ‘Why?’

  They looked at each other for a moment.

  ‘Because I told her to. And I gave her a message for you. And I sent flakes… Didn’t she come to your house tonight?’

  Chips wrinkled his face. Then his eyebrows pinged back up again, and he was about to say that she may have come over while he was at Jinx’s house but… Whoops! He re-scrunched his face; he couldn’t tell her that, could he? His cheeks got hot and weird as he thought about what had happened to, to his thing and, and what he had thought about doing with Jinx and… Oh… He shut his eyes tight. Oh, it was all just funny feelings inside his head, and now that she was really here, in front of him, those thoughts just couldn’t stay! He felt all horrible, no, disgusted… He didn’t know where that word had come from but that was exactly how he felt: disgusted with himself. ‘Oooh…’ he groaned, eyes still shut.

  ‘What? What is it? Why have you gone all weird?’

  He made slits with his eyelids and peeked out weirdly. Jinx had crouched down so that she could really look up at him and it felt like she was looking up his nose.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. She hasn’t been here,’ he said to her nose.

  ‘Really?’ said Jinx, standing up straight and putting her hands on her hips. ‘She promised me she would.’

  Chips folded his lips inwards and looked at his feet. He should have said that he hadn’t seen her, not that she hadn’t been here. But anyway, it didn’t matter; it was only a little thing. And at least Jinx would be cross with Blankey instead of knowing about… the thing. That was funny – he could just say something, just like that, and Jinx would stop asking questions, because, well, because she didn’t know that it could be any other way.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Jinx, putting her arms back around Chips. ‘We can get your humcoat back from her tomorrow.’

  Chips nodded, then his eyebrows shot up again; they couldn’t see her. Then she’d tell them that she’d been here and couldn’t find Chips. ‘No!’ he said.

  Jinx giggled at him. ‘Why?’

  He flicked his eyes all over the kitchen. ‘Perhaps she came and, and left it here somewhere.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ said Jinx, also looking around. ‘But wouldn’t you have seen her?’

  ‘I was… erm… asleep, for, for quite a long time… erm… this evening,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, maybe she did just leave it somewhere then.’ Jinx started to prowl about the room, squatting to see underneath things then stretching upwards on tiptoes to see on top of them.

  Chips watched, disgusted, really disgusted. She was doing all of that for no reason. No reason at all.

  But then again… Maybe Blankey had left it here. Everything could be all right, this hunting high and low for his humcoat. Maybe she did come and leave it somewhere. Yes! He started looking as well, under cupboards and inside bowls; yes! Then he could just say that he had been hidden away somewhere sleeping for that whole time. If Blankey had come: he’d been sleeping. If Blankey hadn’t come: he’d been sleeping. Had he been to Jinx’s house? No! Because he’d been sleeping. It worked for everything! It would all be okay. He looked around behind the fridge and promised himself he’d never say something that wasn’t okay, never ever again.

  ‘A lie,’ said the voice inside his head. ‘Liar,’ it said, rather nastily, making the middle of his leg tingle.

  He kicked the tingle out of his leg. Everything would be okay this time, he thought as he looked underneath another cupboard, and froze. Next to a blue tube, the collar of his humcoat poked out from a grey bag. A pink flower lay on the floor. He covered his mouth with one hand but it was shaking so much that he brought it down again. He opened his mouth into the shape of Jinx’s name…

  ‘I don’t think it’s here.’ Jinx spoke just before he could. ‘Let’s stop looking, shall we?’

  Chips tried to reply but his mouth closed up. His body was doing so many strange things, shaking and getting really hot, and thinking about what would happen after he did tell her, and… He would have to say that he had been sleeping. He would have to tell the lie again and then tell it again in front of Blankey tomorrow. Jinx’s big she-one appeared on the inside of his head. She was lying with her legs wide open like before. She closed one eye at him. He jammed his eyes shut and backed out from underneath the cupboard.

  ‘Chips? Chips? Where—’

  ‘Let’s stop now,’ he said, emerging from under the cupboard and standing up. ‘We might as well stop.’

  Jinx bounded over to him and grabbed his hand and swung it, hard. ‘Come on!’ she sang. ‘Where can we…’ She stopped swinging his hand and put one foot over the other. ‘Where can we do The Big Cuddle?’

  Chips scratched the back of his head, then looked at the fridge, the ceiling, the cupboard, the floor; everywhere except for Jinx’s face, until it was the only place he could look. She stood, blinking at him, sticking her breasts out while she twisted her arms behind her back.

  The Big Cuddle could never be the way it had been the night before. Now that… Now that he had told her a lie and, and especially now that he had imagined himself over her like that and that thing had happened to his thing… Oh no! He scrunched his eyes shut again, so tightly that his head juddered.

  ‘Why do you keep shutting your eyes like that?’

  He peeped out at her through one eye. Maybe he should just tell her. He had told her that he had done a poo… Surely he could tell her this.

  ‘Are you cross because I broke my promise?’ Jinx wrapped her arms over her belly.

  Chips opened both eyes wide. ‘No!’ Not at all, he couldn’t imagine ever being cross with Jinx. ‘No, Jinx, I’m not cross, it’s
just… it’s a bit dirty here,’ he said. ‘It was better at your house.’ The words ‘your house’ felt lumpy in his mouth. He folded his tongue and held it between his teeth.

  Jinx grinned. ‘Doesn’t matter! Cuddles can happen anywhere.’ She looked around. ‘How about right here?’

  Chips swallowed. ‘Alright then.’

  They looked at each other.

  Jinx scratched her head. ‘So… should we lie down first and then cuddle or…’

  ‘Yes. Let’s do that.’

  They both lay down on their backs with their arms straight by their sides. After a while, Jinx rolled onto her side to face Chips. Chips copied. Jinx giggled and pulled herself closer to Chips, putting her head under his chin and squashing herself against him, at the same time picking up his arm and flopping it over her shoulder and behind her back. ‘Mmmm,’ she said, ‘this is nice.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Chips. It was nice.

  He heard the door creaking open behind them and his head popped up. The door shouldn’t creak open, that only happened when the He-one was at home. Why would the… Blankey! He sat up. It had to be Blankey! She’d obviously been looking around the house for him.