The Biggerers

by Amy Lilwall

  ‘Chips!’

  Chips stopped pushing and cocked an ear. Jinx. That was Jinx’s voice! ‘Jinx!’ he yelled, jumping through the legs of the stool and running to look through the bannisters where he could see the top of Jinx’s head. She was halfway up the stairs. A grey shape clung to the side of the second stair – Bonbon! ‘I’m up here! Come and help me!’

  Jinx looked up and waved, her mouth wide open. ‘We heard you shouting. You’ve found her, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes!’ he shouted over his shoulder as he ran back towards the stool. ‘Hurry! I don’t know when he… I don’t know when he…’ but he ran out of breath. Instead of finishing his sentence, he pushed at the legs of the stool. Then the seat. Then the legs. Jinx appeared, panting, at the top of the stairs. She shook off her humcoat and ran towards him, tripping on one of her feet. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In there!’ Chips nodded towards the closed door.

  Jinx looked at the door, then up at the handle, then spun around and eyed the stool. She wrapped her arms around the nearest leg to her and heaved the thing backwards. Chips grasped the seat and did the same. Their feet made quick steps as they managed little bursts of dragging it for a few inches, then stopping.

  ‘Where is she?’ Bonbon’s voice called from the end of the landing.

  ‘Behind the first door.’

  Bonbon staggered up the landing, stopping halfway to put her hands on her knees and catch her breath. Then she ran towards the door and pressed her face up against it. ‘Blankey? Blankey? Can you hear me?’ Then: ‘She’s not answering. Are you sure she’s in there?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ strained Chips as he pulled the stool a little further forward.

  ‘Right,’ said Bonbon, running towards them before throwing off her humcoat and running back to put it on top of Jinx’s.

  With Bonbon now in the middle, the three of them heaved the stool until it was right under the door handle.

  ‘Push your end up,’ panted Jinx. ‘Help him, Bonbon.’

  Bonbon and Chips pushed at their end of the stool while Jinx pulled on the legs. The thing plopped onto its feet and rocked back the other way again before steadying itself.

  ‘You go up, Chips. You’re the tallest,’ said Jinx.

  ‘I’ll give you a push,’ said Bonbon, her opened hands hovering around Chips’s bottom, ready to push it up or catch it if it fell.

  Chips grunted and pulled himself up the leg of the stool, but his foot slipped, once, twice and a third time. ‘We’re coming, Blankey!’ he screamed, so loudly that Bonbon used her outstretched hands to cover her ears.

  ‘Here, let me help.’ Jinx ran to Bonbon and, taking one buttock each, they pushed together. The whole thing wobbled and fell backwards.

  Chips let out another scream.

  ‘Chips!’

  ‘I’m alright!’ He got to his feet. ‘Bonbon, you should go up. You’re the littlest.’

  Bonbon frowned. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘But I’ll go up this side so that I can use the door to help me.’

  Jinx pushed Bonbon while Chips held the non-door side of the stool. Bonbon’s feet pushed against the leg of the stool while her bottom shimmied up the door. ‘I’m up, Jinx. I can pull myself up from here.’

  Jinx exhaled through pursed lips. ‘Can you reach the handle?’ she asked, striding backwards to get a better view.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re coming, Blankey!’ yelled Chips.

  The door unclicked. Bonbon shoved it and let go of the handle. The other two rushed through the gap in the door towards a white heap of littler tangled up in a dirty rug with red stains around her mouth. Her eyes were open but they looked at nothing.

  ‘Blankey!’ Chips ran to her feet, then to her head, then to her feet again, holding his cheeks in his hands. Jinx knelt in front of her head and shook her shoulder. The eyes rolled upwards to look into Jinx’s. ‘Get up, Blankey, what’s wrong with you?’

  Bonbon watched Blankey’s red mouth from the top of the stool. Champ and Sweetheart looked up at her from their trolley in the tile-smelling place. ‘She’s very poorly,’ said Bonbon. ‘We’ll need to carry her back.’

  ‘Carry her?’ Jinx’s eyebrows spread up into her forehead. How on Earth would they get her down the stairs? And then all the way across the garden.

  ‘No,’ Blankey husked and the other three stared at her. ‘War…’ she said. ‘War… ta.’

  ‘Water?’

  ‘She’s thirsty,’ said Chips. ‘We’d better…’ His voice disappeared inside his throat.

  ‘We’d better what?’ mouthed Jinx as they stopped and listened to the footsteps coming from the stairs. Dum. Dum. Dum…

  ‘Get under the bed,’ mouthed Chips, grabbing Blankey’s feet.

  Jinx looked from Blankey to the bed and took hold of her shoulders. Together they pulled her until she was just under the bed. Bonbon hung by her hands from the edge of the stool, her feet dangling towards the dirty carpet. She let herself drop, then disappeared behind the wall. ‘Bonbon!’ Jinx mouthed, peeping from under the bedspread.

  Fingertips, like dirty half-moons, curled around the edge of the door. An eye, glinting through grey tangles, appeared at the same height as the hand. Jinx yanked the bedspread back down in front of her and closed her eyes. Had he seen her? No… No, he couldn’t have seen her. Heavy feet drummed across the floor and stopped just before the bed. She looked at Chips. He watched the shadows of the drumming feet with eyes that twitched and squeezed out blinks. He glanced around at her.

  ‘Bonbon?’ she mouthed.

  He shook his head and shrugged.

  Jinx turned back to Blankey who twisted a strand of Jinx’s hair around her fingers and sucked on her own cheeks. Chips shifted position and Jinx looked up as smelly, hot breath surrounded her. ‘I think I just found your coat,’ said the breath as two pink-liney eyes peeped out at her under grey AstroTurf eyebrows.

  Far from the high-backed-chair circle that she had imagined, the meeting took place in the basement of an old house to the west of the city. Rubber skid marks criss-crossed the laminate flooring that spread from one end of the room to the other; a mirror covered the entire wall, a long bar horizoned through its centre. Beanbags made a mountain in one corner and people seemed to be taking them to sit on. Susan fished out a boring khaki one for her and a velour one for her companion. ‘Hmm,’ she said, frowning between the elderly lady and the beanbag; she was around one hundred and thirty years old, after all.

  ‘It’s alright, Susan. I’ll manage.’

  ‘Would you like my spare chair?’ A voice wafted over Susan’s shoulder towards Mrs Lucas. They turned to a smiley lady with a conical mole on her chin that pointed towards her cleavage. She wore a grey paisley-print dress and carried a folding chair under each arm. A long necklace with thick wooden beads lay almost horizontally on her chest and dangled over her belly button like the legs of a sleeping child, its arms clasped about its mother’s neck. ‘I usually bring a spare just in case mine breaks.’

  ‘Well… That’s very kind.’

  The paisley lady unfolded her chair and clicked the seat into place with a smack. Beyond her, more elderly people were also unfolding chairs. Susan noticed the shoe-customer blowing up a neck support in the far corner. She waited for a moment for him to turn and recognize her but his eyes were fixed on the swelling cushion. The beanbaggers arranged themselves on the floor in front of the chairs. Susan dropped her beanbag in front of Mrs Lucas and plopped down onto it.

  ‘Wish I could still do that,’ Mrs Lucas chuckled, her knuckles rippling as they curled over the head of her walking stick.

  ‘Bet you still can.’ Susan winked.

  ‘No… I just like to be comfortable these days.’

  ‘If you could all take your seats, we’ll get started,’ a voice called over the rumblings of the gathering and the room fell silent. The voice had sounded small and Susan looked behind her to see how many people were absorbing it. Wow! At least fifty, maybe eve
n sixty people. As she looked, her eyes were drawn to another pair of eyes looking back at her. The person, a woman, looked away, reaching behind her to pull her fox tail of hair through a loop she’d made with her finger and thumb. A nervous gesture, Susan thought; the woman had felt awkward about staring.

  ‘Shall we get going then?’ said the voice. The audience lowed yeses. ‘For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Meredith and I am elected president of the LOG. Erm… I think that quite a few of you don’t know me.’ She cupped a hand over her eyes and peered towards the back of the room to emphasize her point. ‘Membership seems to have doubled in about a week!’ The hand came down and rested on her hip. ‘And from what’s been going on recently, this is with good reason.’ Murmurs rippled across the room. Susan flicked her gaze over one shoulder, then the other. The woman was still looking at her. Again, she looked down as soon as Susan had seen her, then glanced up and smiled. Susan smiled back.

  ‘I think some of you might have some questions regarding recent events, but before we try to answer them, let me just go over the main problems that you, as owners, may be experiencing of late. It seems that the latest batch, Batch Twenty, has demonstrated a capacity for communication. Now, I think you’ll all agree that this is rather lovely.’ Susan felt the noses around her snort out little smiles. She was smiling too; yes, it was lovely. ‘We are obviously very keen to understand just how intelligent these little beings are. Unfortunately, Billbridge & Minxus, as you know, would prefer to keep all of that under wraps. It’s been suggested that the centre, where all littlers start their existence, may not be the most desirable of places or, indeed, may have very specific methods for bringing littlers into the world.’ Meredith curled her fingers into inverted commas as she said ‘specific methods’. ‘What is obvious is that the company does not wish, or even allow, for communication to take place. This leads me to a warning, which I will repeat at the end of this session: do not under any circumstances let your littler be seen to communicate in public. You should tell your littler this and, of course, explain to them why.’ Meredith glanced at a little table to the left of her and Susan realized she was reading prompts from its glass-top screen.

  She went on: ‘Now; what happens if they are seen communicating in public? From what I’ve heard, over the last week, a total of thirty littlers have been “recalled” by Billbridge & Minxus. That’s to say, that they have been taken away by so-called technicians and their return assured once the problem has been resolved. I have just had news from the very first owners to have encountered such a worrying scenario, two families who had their littlers taken away last Monday… Yes, there’s Mrs Osbourne at the back there: thank you for coming.’ Mrs Osbourne nodded, her eyes sparkly and mouth quivery. ‘Both families have received official word from the company stating that the product will not be returned to them as the damage is too extensive and therefore considered by them to be irremediable.’ She paused to give her audience a moment to gasp. ‘I have a copy of the email here – thank you, Mrs Osbourne, for sending this to me today. Let me read their exact words: “Your littler will live out their days peacefully and luxuriously in our retirement centre at the Billbridge & Minxus headquarters. We appreciate the distress that this may cause but, as experts, we ask you to trust us with regard to the severity of this issue.” Now, Mrs Osbourne, are you able to tell us what happened to you?’

  ‘Yes.’ The lady coughed into the back of her hand. ‘Yes. I was buying an exercise ball at LittleKit, and Nanou, my…’ She swallowed, her chin dipping as she did so. ‘My littler, clapped because she wanted a red one.’ Susan craned to see Mrs Osbourne; this was almost exactly what had happened with Bonbon that first time. ‘I pointed this out to the assistant, the clapping I mean, and, well, she called a team of people who came and took Nanou away.’

  ‘Tell us what was said, exactly.’

  ‘Well, the assistant was baffled when I first told her that Nanou could clap once for “yes” and twice for “no”. She said that was impossible.’ Mrs Osbourne paused to fold her lips inwards and flap her hand next to her eyes. Meredith tilted her head to one side and nodded. The woman pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can…’ She looked about her ankles, then ducked down and came back up jamming a sheet of Fibre-Web into the corner of one eye. ‘I… I sh-should have just left.’ Sniff. ‘Nobody was legally holding me there.’

  ‘Yes,’ Susan felt herself say. She looked around but nobody noticed; other people were nodding and saying ‘yes’ out loud or ‘no’ out loud: yes, she could have just left; no, she didn’t have to stay.

  ‘You weren’t to know what was going to happen.’ Meredith shook her head. ‘And since these first incidents, the way of dealing with these cases of “communication” has become somewhat slicker, as I’m sure many of you will agree.’ A few mmms rumbled around the room. ‘I will go into that in just a minute. There is, however, one thing I would like to point out that has to do with the end of Mrs Osbourne’s email. That is: “We understand that this will come as a considerable loss to you and wish to offer you a replacement product or a full refund of the purchase price. We are prepared to immediately reimburse all accessory expenses and medical bills subject to receipt of adequate evidence of payment.” Obviously, the more statements of this kind we can gather, the more clout we’ll have when it comes to our legal battle. It probably goes without saying, but do not accept any “exchange” or “refund” that the company might offer you. Your acceptance will be interpreted as a settlement.’ She dipped her chin and let her irises bob to the top of her eyes; ‘you have been warned’, they said. ‘It seems that now the company is aware of this situation, reaction times between reporting an incident and a team arriving to deal with it have shortened considerably. And these incidents are no longer limited to retail outlets such as Batch Mode and Mini-Me’s; it seems that the medical centres are also reporting incidents of communication through clapping, finger clicking and blinking.’

  ‘When can we go after them?’ someone called from the back of the room.

  ‘Well,’ began Meredith, ‘timing is critical. As you can imagine, the company has everything legally bulletproof. What we need is people. It’s quite easy to silence an individual or even offer them a settlement that they can’t refuse, or even threaten them. We need to stick together if we are going to take this further. If you come across anyone having similar difficulties, you must bleep them the details of these twice-weekly meetings.’

  ‘If they have everything covered, how are we ever going to beat them?’

  ‘In all honesty, we’re not quite sure. At the moment we have retired lawyers combing through the old Billbridge & Minxus advertisements to see if they are in breach of anything. This is quite unlikely, so we either need to wait for the company to slip up, or we cause a big enough row that its top-secret “retirement centre” will be investigated.’

  ‘But it must get inspected all the time.’

  ‘Perhaps. But the worry is that all Batch Twenty littlers have the capacity to communicate and as soon as Billbridge & Minxus realizes this, it will recall all of them immediately.’ A gasp fizzed over the room. ‘So we need to do something fast, even if it is only to scare the company.’

  ‘Have there been any reports of littlers being stolen?’

  Susan looked behind her to where the voice had come from. Mrs Lucas sat with one hand in the air, the other still on her walking stick.

  ‘Stolen?’

  ‘My Blankey’s gone missing. I know it’s unlikely but I just thought I’d ask as I’m here.’

  ‘When did she disappear?’

  ‘The day before yesterday… It’s most unlike her.’

  ‘We mustn’t rule it out entirely. Come and see me at the end so that I can record your case. You never know, more people like you may come forward and this is exactly the kind of slip-up we’re looking for. It would be totally illegal… Totally.’

&nbs
p; Mrs Lucas put her hand back down to its walking stick, her clear eyes twitchy and her mouth all sad. Susan reached up and gave her knee a little pat. The old lady, surprised at the contact, smiled. Susan smiled back, noticing over Mrs Lucas’s shoulder the red-haired woman staring at the old lady.

  ‘How do we know that they’re not here, spying on us?’ someone from the back yelled rather slowly.

  Meredith shrugged her shoulders. ‘We don’t. We can’t know that for sure. All I can tell you is that these meetings aren’t breaking any laws.’

  ‘But what we’re saying is slanderous.’

  ‘It’s speculative.’

  ‘About the retirement homes and the factory…’

  ‘It’s speculative! If they keep their address a secret then how could anyone really know what it’s like there?’ Even though her question was rhetorical, Meredith seemed to spend a moment waiting for an answer, then: ‘Mr Willis, would you mind telling us about your experience with Nemo?’

  An elderly gentleman with dyed black hair climbed through the camping chairs saying ‘excuse me, excuse me,’ to every person he passed. When he got to the front, he did up the button on his jacket and nodded at the room. Then he undid the button and stood with his arms behind his back.

  ‘I can say what I like here as Nemo has gone now… Sadly. We were careful not to be seen by the technicians, but our relationship was special. I had a code word that I would use, very silly really as it wasn’t overly coded. I would say “silence” whenever we were out in public to remind Nemo not to code anything to me. We were so used to talking to each other; I saw Nemo as an equal. We had his communication techniques so refined that we could have great long conversations about everything.’ Mr Willis’s gaze oozed over the space in front of his eyes. He jolted himself back to his speech with a sharp breath. ‘Sorry, I just… miss him.’