by Amy Lilwall
Bonbon’s eyes widened and she thought of something that she hadn’t thought in a long time. Fuck, she could be weird. Why did she have to be so weird? ‘Jinx,’ she mouthed. Jinx didn’t notice. She leaned forward and put her arms around Windy, who let out a ‘huh!’ and a smile, before leaning her head against Jinx’s and closing her eyes. Bonbon looked away. How embarrassing, she thought. But then Bonbon had felt like doing that. She hadn’t dared to do it, though. Funny old Jinx, never frightened to give cuddles or kisses; Bonbon looked back at them and saw that Jinx was crying, her head still tucked under Windy’s, big silent sobs making her body jump. Windy’s hand had made its way up to Jinx’s hair so that she could stroke it while Jinx cried.
‘Were you given the memory pill, Bonbon?’ Shit, they had asked her a question! Bonbon flicked her head around towards the speaker, but there was no speaker; Fola had taken her place among the crowd.
‘Erm… Yes!’ replied Bonbon. ‘And I snorted it into my nose, like Loop.’
‘What questions did they ask you?’
She told them about the clippy thing and the questions. Some of them were quite weird and she didn’t know why she’d been asked them, but she answered as honestly as she could. In fact, she was sure that Len could see when her brain was trying to lie, so she tried not to think about anything except for the answers to the questions. ‘Did I give too much away?’
‘No,’ called Loop. ‘In my opinion, you can’t remember as much as we can.’
‘I agree,’ called someone else. ‘I don’t know why I have those memories, but I definitely have them.’
‘Oh.’ Bonbon dropped her head and fingered the arch of her foot.
A hand rested on her arm.
‘It won’t take much for you to remember,’ whispered Windy. ‘I’ll help you.’
‘Jinx!’ called Fola. ‘Tell us what happened to you today.’
Jinx lifted her head from Windy’s shoulder. Glistening lines joined the corners of her eyes, her nostrils and her top lip. She sniffed loudly and opened her mouth to speak, but Mop’s voice cut in.
‘Did they give you any memory pills?’
‘Yes,’ croaked Jinx. ‘Three pills.’ The crowd gasped. ‘They tried three times to make me swallow a pill. I tried to snort them into my nose, but that hurt so much I spat each pill onto the floor.’
‘You spat them onto the floor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Weren’t you punished?’
Jinx told of how she’d been bitten by the metal insect so many times that it almost made her sick. It wasn’t just because she wouldn’t swallow the pills that they had punished her, but also because she wouldn’t speak. What they didn’t seem to understand was she couldn’t speak, she could only make noises, and she didn’t really know how she did that. They had made her so angry! She didn’t want to answer their stupid questions…
‘Why do you keep saying “they”?’
There were two of them. There had only been one to start with, but when he asked the first question three times and she wouldn’t answer, even after he’d stabbed her with the metal insect, he called another he-one. ‘Do you think she understands?’ he said. ‘I’ve never met one like this before, she looks kinda stupid.’ The new one replied that she’d clapped for Len eventually; they just had to be patient and try everything they could to make her talk.
‘Weren’t you frightened of what they would do to you?’
As the two biggerers talked together, it became obvious that they thought she couldn’t understand. ‘Is faking stupidity a characteristic of Batch Twenty?’ one had laughed.
‘I’m pretty sure it’s not,’ the other replied.
Jinx quickly learned that the metal insect was the only form of punishment that they were allowed to give her. And even that was limited. The second biggerer counted the amount of times she was stabbed, each time saying: ‘You only have six punches left. You only have five punches left.’ As soon as she realized he was talking about the insect bites, she let them stab her until there were none left. By the end, the first biggerer was so cross with her that he had wanted to stab her again, but the second stopped him. ‘Can you imagine?’ he had said. ‘Can you imagine stabbing a full-human with a six-needle gun in order to make them talk? In my book that’s called “torture”. Yet we are using these techniques every day on beings who are protected by the same laws.’
‘So, what do we do with her?’ asked the first.
They stared at her for a while as they thought about this. Jinx lay on the floor, hugging her legs to her; her eyes were crying but inside her head she felt good about herself, about how strong she’d been. Until, that was, the first one spoke again.
‘We’ll just have to separate her from the group,’ he said.
The other shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Once the rest of them see her legs, they’ll abandon any ideas they might have had about not co-operating.’
The other had smirked. ‘I do feel sorry for her, though. I’m pretty sure she’s stupid.’
‘Her brain patterns would suggest that there’s a light on somewhere.’
‘Her brain patterns would suggest that she’s in pain.’
‘Give her a sedative,’ said the second. ‘Go heavy on the dose. In fact, make it a tranquillizer. She can sleep it off.’
‘Are you sure?’ said the first.
‘Absolutely… Just be sure to move her session to lunchtime tomorrow. It should be out of her system by then.’
The others listened, mouths open. Was that all? How much did the metal insect hurt? Could they be as brave as Jinx and take all that pain? And they really didn’t force her to take the pills? How would they kill her memory if they couldn’t force her to take the pills? They could all do this! They could all behave the way that Jinx had behaved and then they’d get to keep their memories! And then, as their brains got stronger, they’d figure out a way to leave!
Jinx pressed her lips together and scratched at a gap in the tiles.
‘Tell us how much it really hurt, Jinx. Would we be able to stand the pain?’ asked Mop.
‘The thing is,’ Jinx replied, ‘before they gave me the drug to make me sleep, they told me that, as of tomorrow, I’ll be living in the next room.’ She looked at the tile crack again. ‘They’re going to take me away to punish me for not speaking.’
Silence. Eyes darkened and rolled their gaze towards the floor.
Bonbon’s mouth stretched and shrunk into shapes that couldn’t turn into words. Jinx was going to the next room? To the next room? Her head slumped onto Jinx’s thigh, silently squeezing all the tears out of it before taking a long, shuddery breath.
‘Don’t worry, Bonbon,’ said Jinx. ‘We will either see each other in a few days or…’
Her voice sounded like it was coming from the kitchen, while Bonbon was buried under the cushions in the big room. Bonbon stared up at Windy from Jinx’s lap. They’d only just found each other, and now they would all be separated again.
‘You’re looking better, fella!’
A wire mouth. How could it speak if it couldn’t make shapes? Chips pushed himself onto his knees and shuffled towards the front of the cage. Flake shapes swelled and shrivelled inside a cloudy frame that curled around his eyes. Flakes… Not more flakes. He stopped to lean forward and let out a puddle of yellow vomit.
‘Oh dear, buddy. I guess you’re not used to this, huh?’
He looked up at the wire mouth and dragged the back of his hand across his face. The clippy thing buzzed and his gaze leapt on it. The ribbon shot out and started to dance over his belly. Not again, please… He held his hand over his mouth.
‘Okay, enough of that.’
A large, white finger touched the clippy thing and the ribbon disappeared.
‘He’s had enough.’
Chips gazed at the wire mouth, his knees shuffling forward through the vomit towards it. He would kiss it. He would hold on to it and cuddle it. He was safe now, it would keep him safe…
>
He stopped. Something bit his buttock and the flake shapes started to dance about again in front of him.
‘We need you to sleep for a little while, fella. Just so we can show you off to your lady friend.’ The wire mouth laughed. ‘We’ll clean you up first, don’t worry.’
Moira came again at five. Everyone squatted at the edge of their cages, straining their eyes to see her. She would be the only person to come in and out of the room tomorrow. Tomorrow, the day that Jinx would leave… They watched to see if she really looked in the cages. They listened to the conversation she was having about her son who didn’t want to be an accountant any more; he wanted to be a baker. They fell on their cage floors after she’d cleaned them, smelling the slippery chemical that was left, dabbing it up and rubbing their fingertips together. The ones at ground level eyed the huge vacuum bot, and its long nose that could easily suck up a littler or two and carry them back to Outside. They shuddered at its great, red belly and wondered why it screamed and wheezed as much as it did.
Once Moira had gone, Lewis came. Lewis! Of course! His head didn’t even come as high as the fourth cage… He was much smaller than Moira. And thinner. Stares glinted over him, then back towards the opened lift. Smiles started to stretch out under noses.
Lewis slotted in a cage where Note and Hester’s cage had been. A new littler peered out through the bars. As his cage swung into Jinx’s view, she noticed that he had brown hair that curled over his eyebrows.
That night they welcomed the new littler, Tuff, and Jinx loved watching his eyes swell as everyone hugged him and kissed him the same way that they had been hugged and kissed on their first day. They sat him down and explained everything to him, going through their exercises, then adding everything that had been added since. They started to talk about a plan; scratching heads, puffing out cheeks and flopping chins onto hands.
‘We’re just too small,’ said one.
‘But nothing will work,’ said Piddle. ‘There’s just no point.’
‘There’s always a point!’ said a scratchy voice at the back of the crowd. ‘Could I take my turn to talk now?’ Windy asked. ‘Because I’m sure that when I’ve told you everything, you’ll all be ready to think up another plan,’ she said, winking at Bonbon. ‘A better plan.’
* * *
Thirty candles glowed on the arctic roll that leaked its milky innards onto a long Madras-print platter.
‘It’s too hot for arctic roll,’ said Watty. ‘It’s going all runny. Quick, Isabel, blow out your candles.’
‘Hang on. I’m thinking of a wish.’
Watty let the tart-slice flop with his hand and sighed.
Isabel blew out her candles and the two men clapped.
‘Honestly,’ said Watty, picking out the pink plastic holders, ‘it’s gone to mush.’
They sat out in their garden, as they always did when it was a nice evening; each holding champagne in a shallow glass, the kind that 1940s movie stars, dressed in long silky dressing gowns, would hold while swishing around their bedrooms. They toasted old Jasper, as they always did, who was buried under wild flowers in one of his favourite spots in the garden.
‘Poor old Jas,’ Drew sighed.
‘He was just a very old boy,’ said Watty. Isabel gazed at him, remembering that Watty had locked himself in his room for hours after they’d found Jas. He was just a very old boy, she’d tried to tell him at the time.
‘One of the best-loved dogs in the world, ever.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’ Watty clinked his glass against Drew’s.
‘I don’t know how you two can be so relaxed about something like that.’
‘He was our dog too, Quail,’ said Watty, hoarsely, as champagne bubbles stuck in his throat.
‘One of Watty’s first presents to me.’
‘Really?’
‘Mmm-hmm,’ Drew nodded.
‘I’d rather drink to the year ahead and… well… say a little prayer for Jasper. After all, he wasn’t a great drinker, was he?’
Drew and Watty took a minute to think about this.
‘Quail’s probably right,’ said Watty. ‘To the year ahead!’
‘To the year ahead!’ chimed the other two.
‘Let’s hope I won’t get called into the lab too often. I’ve been rather lucky so far.’
Drew and Watty looked at each other over their champagne glasses.
* * *
Windy got up early in the morning. Way before the first clean was due. As she prepared to wake the others, she noticed that a few were already awake, waiting beside the black clippy boxes for the ribbon of light to weave out and find their hungry bellies. Yesterday evening, they had gone back to their cages and eaten every single flake, much earlier than they normally would. They wanted to be sure that the ribbon would find their bellies empty, and that each littler would have the maximum amount of flakes for the task that followed. Then they had returned to the floor and talked about the plan over and over and over… The ones who were due to be taken to the next room, including Loop and Osmo, pushed the others to repeat the plan long after it had been learned; everyone had their part and each part had to be synchronized.
‘We are lucky that there are so many of us,’ Windy had said. ‘Or the plan would never have worked.’
The others clapped. They were lucky that there were so many of them. The plan would work.
Windy looked up at the clock. 07:28. The ribbons would come in two minutes. Moira would arrive in twelve minutes. She always came while they were eating as they were already at the backs of their cages and the black shutter wouldn’t ram into them. They’d heard her explain this to whoever she talked to while she was cleaning. Windy got the feeling that everybody quite liked Moira; although nobody had said it.
Nobody liked Lewis.
As she thought this, the ribbon came out of its clippy box and snaked its way towards her. She never got many flakes. She understood that her old body didn’t need as much food as the younger ones who spent their time climbing up and down cages. The only time she’d received a proper pile of flakes was on the first day when the others had helped her move from her cage up on the fifth row down to the ground where she would be able to go in and out more easily. Afterwards, she sat panting in her new cage while they swapped over the clippy squares.
‘Are you sure nobody will notice?’
‘Of course not,’ they’d said. ‘Don’t you remember, we did exactly the same with you last week?’
They’d confused her with one of her sisters who’d been moved on to the next room. The flakes tumbled into the back of the cage. Her belly felt empty, but she couldn’t manage a single mouthful.
Now, she waited as the ribbon zipped back into the black box, listening for the flakes to fall onto the floor of her cage. One at a time the cages were given their dose of flakes, but instead of the munching and rustling sounds that would usually fill the corridor, the air became still enough to hear the lift stopping at each floor above them. Moira was on her way.
The air hung still for the next nine minutes; not being pushed around by breath and movement, it wove around bellies, pressing them in, and bored into cheek hollows to open the mouths and dry them out. It refused to swoop under armpits, letting the drops of sweat build up, and it jumped into ears, bouncing off eardrums, making them thump inside the rows of waiting heads, all squashed between cage bars. New hands held on to the bars, new eyes looked towards the lift-end of the corridor, and new energy filled up the space inside the heads that had once been doubtful about carrying out plans. This plan would work! This plan would work because they were no longer littlers battling the biggerers, but, as Windy had told them last night, they were humans battling humans.
‘Ready?’ called Windy as she heard the lift rumbling downwards.
Feet swished and slid to the backs of cages where flakes were scooped into handfuls as the shutters came down and Moira started on the first cage, letting her vacuum bot scoot ahead of her like an owner
lets his dog off its lead in the park.
As the first shutter came up, Windy heard the scattering of flakes being thrown on the floor, then scratched back up again. They would then be rolled into soft, damp balls that were hurried back to the other end of the cage so that Moira wouldn’t notice what a mess they had made on her clean floors. Not that Moira would have noticed.
‘It’s seven thirty here, what time is it over there? I know, I know I ask you every time. You should stop answering, by the way. You’re supposed to be taking a break from this place. How is Valentine, is she gonna bring you up some breakfast? Still asleep? Alright for some! I started at six. Yeah, six. I’m on split shifts now that certain people have abandoned me. Oh she heard that, did she? Pass her over so I can say good morning. Lazybones.’
Windy knew that her cage would be one of the last, as Moira’s habit was to start on the opposite side and come back along hers. Thank goodness she was on the other side; Moira would have already left the corridor by the time she was scrabbling about on the floor then struggling to get up again.
Not that Moira would have caught her.
Windy stood waiting with her two small handfuls. As the shutter came back up, she lowered herself to the floor and rolled her handfuls into balls. By the time she got up again, the rest of the chemical had dried up.
‘I could only manage two,’ she called, long after Moira and her vacuum bot had gone back up in the lift.
‘It’s alright, Windy,’ called Fola. ‘Do you think they’ll work?’
‘We should taste one!’ called Osmo.
‘No! It’s poison!’
But Osmo had already bitten into one of the sticky balls and replied through a mouthful: ‘Yuk! They’re horrible!’
Clapping crackled along the corridor then faded out as everyone repeated the next part of the plan, over and over, while they waited for Lewis.