The Biggerers

by Amy Lilwall

  ‘So… There’s some hope then?’ Mrs Lucas held her own cheeks with the fingertips of each hand.

  ‘I’ll call them every day, twice a day, to see how things are progressing.’ Susan held crossed fingers up to her face and gave them a little shake. Then winced at herself for that too. ‘When is your daughter getting here?’

  ‘Anytime now.’ The old lady looked up the driveway to where her daughter’s car would surely appear. ‘She’s only coming from the hospital… Do you know about Jerry?’

  Susan scrunched her lips together and nodded. She’d been wondering how to bring that up.

  ‘I won’t have it. He can’t go without me.’

  ‘He’s probably feeling a bit low… Do you go and see him very often?’

  ‘Well, yes… We’re going now, actually. I’ve been trying to go every other day, but what with Little Madam going missing and, well, I had no idea what he had in mind and then when I got the letter…’

  Susan wanted to ask ‘What letter?’ but tilted her head to one side and nodded instead.

  ‘He wrote me a letter; telling me goodbye and…’ she chuckled, ‘reminiscing about old times… I won’t have it, you know; I scrunched it into a ball and threw it up the garden.’

  ‘Do you think you can talk him out of it?’

  ‘I have to try!’ She shrugged her shoulders and kept them up around her ears while she went on, her eyes wide open. ‘What I find surprising is that he’s in better shape than I am!’

  The driveway crunched under car tyres. ‘That’s your daughter.’

  ‘Yes! And my granddaughter. Won’t you stay to meet them?’

  Susan hesitated. ‘No, if you don’t mind. Another time when…’ she thought for a moment, ‘when Mr Lucas is back.’

  Mrs Lucas smiled. ‘I’ll tell him that. Maybe that will motivate him a bit.’

  Susan felt herself blush. She was hardly motivation for someone to stay alive. Mrs Lucas squeezed her hand. ‘You’re a lovely girl.’

  ‘So are you.’

  The two women smiled at each other.

  ‘I’ll see you soon,’ said Susan, giving the cold hand one last goodbye squeeze.

  ‘Alright, dear.’

  Susan turned to walk back to the house, nodding at the carful of grey heads as she hoisted one leg over the fence, wondering who they could be. She realized that she’d imagined Mrs Lucas’s daughter to look, well, a bit like a daughter. In reality, Susan could have been her great-great-granddaughter. Gosh… She’d never get her head around such an age difference. She thought about the part of the conversation with Meredith that she didn’t pass on to Mrs Lucas: Meredith suggested that they may have taken Blankey because of Mrs Lucas’s age. ‘Do they have a right to do that?’ Susan had asked. ‘Not unless negligence can be proved,’ said Meredith. ‘And letting your littler be kidnapped by a neighbour is something they will surely use against her.’

  ‘Letting her be kidnapped?’

  ‘I’m afraid they’re very good at twisting things. We’ll try our best not to go down that road. We suspect that they are on a mission to collect up all the Batch Twentys indiscriminately, which they have no right to do. It’s just a matter of collecting enough evidence together; like the story you told me today.’ She paused. ‘We’re very determined.’

  Susan had put the phone down imagining a tableful of retired lawyers typing up reports, squinting at their screens, calling up younger colleagues for advice, only to be told they were busy… She puffed out her cheeks, the picture of what was most likely to happen engulfing the picture of what should happen like a snake eating a vole… In six days she’d receive an email telling her that her littlers would not be returned to her.

  As she walked back into the house, she realized she’d bitten her thumbnail so much that it was bleeding. Heading for the kitchen, she noticed one of Hamish’s legs growing out of the sofa and wondered if he had Jinx on his lap as he often did in the evenings.

  Oh no, of course he didn’t.

  She crept around the kitchen door so as not to bang it into anyone who might be standing behind it and shuffled her feet along the floor so as not to crush a little hand or foot.

  But no… She didn’t have to do that now.

  She glanced at the flake bowls as she rinsed her thumb, looking for the box of flakes up on the fridge and telling herself not to forget to top their bowls up.

  Oh dear, Susan, get a grip.

  Hamish found her twenty minutes later sitting on the tiles. He stood with an empty wine glass in his hand and watched her for a minute to see if she was crying.

  ‘Do you think they’re frightened?’ asked Susan.

  Hamish topped up his glass, gave it to her, then sat down on the floor.

  ‘No. It’ll probably seem strange but… they won’t be frightened as long as they’re together.’

  Susan put her head on his shoulder as he took the glass out of her hand, sipped from it and put it back again. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘To see Mrs Lucas.’

  He nodded. ‘She gone?’

  ‘Just leaving.’

  ‘Did you… Did you phone the company?’

  ‘No. I phoned the LOG.’

  ‘The?’

  ‘Littlers’ Owners Group.’

  ‘And what did they say?’

  His cheek was inclined towards her forehead as she rested on his shoulder. He was really talking to her; not just at the space in front of his face; he wasn’t just making conversation, he wanted to know what was going on. But then… But then he had been quite involved with the situation today. Susan studied his cheek; she should really stop thinking that he didn’t give a shit.

  ‘Suzie?’ he prompted.

  ‘Did Mrs Lucas fill you in on everything that happened before I arrived?’

  ‘No. She couldn’t really talk…’

  ‘Shall we go in the living room? I’ll start right from the beginning.’ Hamish jumped up then turned and held out his hand to her. ‘Yes, let’s do that. Hold on… I’ll get my Jotta.’

  Susan pulled herself up and smiled after him as he dashed into the hall. Why was it necessary for something bad to happen for her to see the real Hamish? She took a sip from the wine glass he’d left in her hand and dragged her feet across the hallway to the living room. Maybe they would get through this. They were young enough to be taken seriously – as horrible as that sounded – and clever enough and outspoken enough to kick up the right kind of fuss. She sat on the sofa and shivered, sure that she would feel cold until he came and sat next to her.

  ‘Right,’ said Hamish, striding back from the hall and unravelling the clear sheet of plastic. ‘Tell me everything.’

  CHAPTER 16

  ‘Level minus twelve. Doors opening.’

  Bonbon covered her face with her hand. She looked at Jinx; Jinx had done the same thing.

  ‘Jeez it stinks,’ said the person who was carrying the box. They were taken towards a wall where, again, they heard the soft tap-tap of fingers on a screen. ‘Last cleaned eight a.m.? That’s too long.’ The box turned and travelled the length of a very narrow corridor. ‘I’m gonna have to say something.’

  With her hand still over her mouth and nose, Bonbon sat right at the back of the cage, squashed against Jinx. Through the bars at the end she noticed a face; but not a nasty face; not even a big face. Her mouth dropped open. Was that… a littler? Wriggling out of Jinx’s arms and onto her hands and knees she crawled to the front of the cage. Yes! Yes, it was and… Wow! As she looked from left to right at the many-more-than twenty cages that filled the walls of the corridor, loads of littlers came forward, cage by cage, to press their faces up against their bars and look at Bonbon. She strained her head to get a better view of the ones on her left. Some of them smiled… Bonbon tried to smile back but couldn’t. How could they smile with a biggerer in the room? Bonbon looked to the right. Jinx stared with spread open nostrils at the littlers on that side. She turned and grinned at Bonbon.

  �
�How do you…’ Her mouth made the shapes but her voice was switched off inside her throat.

  The cage swooped into the air past more cages, more faces, more smiles and waves. They were slotted into a space between a blonde, curly littler who reminded Bonbon of Blankey and what looked like an empty cage. Bonbon strained to see the Blankey-one as the box was turned and backed into a slot. The biggerer unclipped a flat black square from a strap of many black squares that hung over his shoulder and clipped it to the door of their cage, before turning and walking away.

  ‘Hey, Rosy? Yeah, it’s Lewis. Hi there. I’ve just dropped the last two off for the day. Do you know if any of the cleaners are still knocking around? No? It’s just it stinks so badly down here… I don’t know how many times a day this place gets cleaned but it’s definitely not five.’

  The lift doors swooshed open then closed again, trapping the biggerer and his voice inside before humming back up to where it had come from.

  Bonbon and Jinx looked at each other, then at the black clippy thing that had started to beep before two glowy red stripes came shooting out of it. Jinx ran towards the back of the cage and Bonbon fell stomach-down on the floor; but the stripes chased them, beaming along the walls and across the floor until one found Jinx’s stomach. She squashed her side up against the wall of the cage as skinnier beams reached out of the main one, making a net over her body before disappearing back into the clippy thing.

  ‘It’s alright, Bonbon, it doesn’t hurt; look, it’s doing it to you!’

  Bonbon covered her eyes. ‘Is it gone? Is it gone?’ She felt Jinx’s hand on her back.

  ‘Yes, Bonbon. It’s gone.’

  ‘It does that twice a day.’ A voice came from the cage on the left; the cage that Bonbon had thought was empty. ‘It’s checking to see if you are hungry or thirsty. Or if you’re ill. Sometimes it thinks you’re ill and the biggerers come down to check on you.’

  ‘Who’s talking?’ said Jinx.

  ‘Oh! Well, there’s a curious question. You must be a Batch Twenty to ask such a question.’

  There was a clunking noise and a hatch in the back of the cage opened. Yellow hissed out of it and made a neat pile. The hatch closed again.

  Bonbon squinted. ‘Jinx, they’re flakes!’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ said Jinx.

  ‘The machine thinks you are,’ said the voice. ‘Your body is even though your mind isn’t.’

  Bonbon sat up and put her face to the bars of the cage. ‘You mean… the littler inside my head?’

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘Hello?’ asked Bonbon.

  ‘You could call it that, yes.’

  ‘Where are we?’ Jinx appeared next to Bonbon, holding a bar in each hand and pushing her cheeks between them. A row of littlers looked back at her from the fronts of their cages.

  ‘You’re inside the centre,’ called one of them.

  ‘They told us that we couldn’t go home… That’s not true, is it?’ Bonbon called back.

  ‘Yes; when can we go home?’ added Jinx.

  A voice boomed from far away, at least ten cages along the corridor. ‘You won’t want to!’ it cried. ‘Not when you know everything…’

  ‘But… We can’t stay in here forever!’ shouted Jinx.

  ‘Ha! Neither can we!’ said the voice from next door. ‘And we’re not going to… Is it five o’clock yet?’

  Someone called up from down below: ‘Yes. Four minutes past.’

  ‘Well, come up then, what are you waiting for?’

  ‘Not tonight, Ed, it’s Tuesday.’

  ‘It’s not Tuesday, it’s Monday. And anyway, Moira’s not back from Athens until Friday. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that’s why the place stinks like shit…’

  ‘Moira came back last Friday, Ed. And today is definitely Tuesday.’

  ‘It’s Tuesday, Ed.’

  ‘One hundred per cent sure.’

  ‘It really is, Ed.’

  ‘No doubt about it.’

  Bonbon and Jinx sat at the cage door, moving their heads in the direction of each voice as if watching a fly landing on furniture.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ed. ‘Then why does it stink so much?’

  There was silence for a few seconds. Bonbon noticed that the faces opposite, which had been all excited, were now looking sadly up towards Ed’s cage.

  ‘Because Valentine and Tony have gone away to Bruges,’ called a squeaky, faraway voice. ‘Which means that Karin, Lee and Michael are the only ones here at the weekend.’

  ‘And if each one comes once a day… that’s not enough.’

  ‘No! That’s not enough.’

  ‘I think Lewis should do it.’

  ‘Lewis isn’t a cleaner!’

  ‘Yeah, but he complains so much about the smell, why doesn’t he just do something about it?’

  Bonbon and Jinx continued to watch the furniture-fly. It was weird, thought Bonbon, everyone had something to say but it was never said all at once. It was like, like, everyone had their turn… The deep voice called out to Ed again. Once, twice then…

  ‘What is it, Mop?’

  ‘Ed, are you listening to what we are saying?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then tell us what we have just said!’

  Silence blanketed the corridor.

  Ed sighed. ‘Today is Tuesday. Moira is coming to clean because she got back from her holiday in Athens on Friday—’

  ‘Which Friday?’ interrupted Mop.

  ‘Last Friday!’ Ed sighed again. ‘The smell is due to the fact that Valentine and Tony are in Bruges, together, which means that Karin, Lee and Michael have been the only cleaners here this weekend.’

  ‘And Lewis?’

  ‘Lewis is not a cleaner.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But maybe he should stop complaining and start cleaning.’

  The faces opposite tilted towards Mop’s voice, waiting for him to answer. Finally he said: ‘Excellent. I will test you again tomorrow.’ Then: ‘Be strong, Ed.’

  ‘Be strong!’ chanted the others, making Bonbon and Jinx flinch at the same time, then look at each other with big eyes. The others started to clap. Jinx stood with a clap between her hands, her mouth stuck in the shape of a bite. ‘Jinx?’ said Bonbon. ‘Why have you got that face on?’

  The clapping stopped and everyone listened to Bonbon. The faces opposite turned to Jinx. ‘Jinx? Is that your name?’ said a pale littler with short black hair.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jinx.

  ‘Why did you have that face on?’ said another.

  ‘I was going…’ Jinx’s voice was all dry. She coughed and started again. ‘I was going to say something.’

  ‘She doesn’t understand,’ said Ed. ‘She’s only just arrived, how can she understand what’s going on? Can’t you remember?’ He said the word ‘remember’ in a weird voice as if it were a stone and he was trying to see how far he could throw it. ‘Can’t you remember what it was like on your first day?’

  The others started to mumble, this time all at once. Could they remember? Could they think back that far? Yes, yes, they could. But, hang on… Were they sure?

  ‘Scared!’ shouted one.

  ‘Scared!’ shouted at least five others.

  ‘Sick!’ shouted another.

  ‘Funny in my belly!’

  ‘Worried!’

  ‘Sad!’

  ‘Unhappy!’

  ‘Unsure!’

  ‘Angry!’

  ‘They can remember!’ said Mop, and everyone was silent. ‘But Ed is right. We must work to preserve our memories. We should, all of us, talk about how we felt when we first came here. We will begin when Moira is gone.’

  ‘Jinx,’ said Ed, ‘and Jinx’s friend; soon you will understand everything.’

  More clapping. It seemed that everyone agreed with this idea.

  Another voice, which sounded like it was full of bubbles, suggested that they ask Piddle, Loop and Osmo why they had been tak
en away for two whole hours during the afternoon.

  ‘It is very serious,’ said Loop. ‘They have started to give us two pills.’

  A gasp fizzed across the corridor.

  ‘And did they tell you why?’ asked the bubbles.

  Loop sucked air hissily through his nostrils. ‘The result from the most recent clinical trial has shown that two pills will not be toxic for our bodies, but will be doubly effective.’

  ‘Did you keep them under your tongue?’

  ‘I couldn’t! They checked inside my mouth! But luckily for me, they checked Piddle and Osmo’s mouth first. I had time to snort one of the pills into my nose. And good job too because Piddle and Osmo have been sleeping ever since we were brought back down.’

  The corridor simmered.

  ‘This is a terrible, terrible…’ started Mop, before his voice died inside his throat.

  The lift door rumbled open, and almost straight away a whirring noise started up, along with the voice of a she-one. The whirr quickened into a hissy scream.

  ‘Yeah, so anyway; I told him that I should be entitled to take the Friday as well but he said he couldn’t approve that because Tony and Valentine booked the Friday off months ago to go to Bruges, which meant that I had to re-book my flight to get me back here a day early. Yeah, Carol knows about this but she’s a bitch too. Ha! Don’t worry, I’m underground now. There’s no recording device underground. Yeah, there is one room that’s been set up like that on purpose; it’s the one they go into after this one… Poor loves. They’re so… What’s that word? You know, that word that you use to describe someone whose whole body seems to, well, flop, because they are so miserable… Haven’t you noticed that I call you at the same time every day? It’s because I can only do it in this room; I think it was set up in a bit of a hurry to cope with all the stuff that’s been going on… I can call Carol a bitch and Len a wanker as much as I like! Dejected… Maybe. No! Forlorn! Forlorn is the word I was looking for… Yeah, they’re all so forlorn.’