Rayon and Knickers get bossed about by Stour and Twill

as Rayon and Knickers looked around to get their bearings, a stern voice called to them from the general direction of a chair leg.

‘Attention, dust bunnies in target zone. Vacate the area immediately. Compliance imperative.’

‘That sounded very important,’ said Rayon to Knickers. ‘I wonder what it means?’

‘It came from over there,’ said Knickers waving a thread towards the chair, ‘but I can’t see anybunny.’

‘Message repeats. Evacuate local vicinity immediately. Impending jeopardy levels high.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Rayon, ‘it’s definitely coming from over there. It sounds bossy, but I don’t understand what it wants us to do.’

An angry voice drifted over to them.

‘Oh, for crying out loud. Stour, you talk to them and get those civilians under cover.’

‘Yes, sir. Oi, you two dizzy pellets! Stop gawping and get yourselves over here.’

Rayon had never been called a pellet of any kind before, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t being complimented. Knickers obviously understood the sentiment more thoroughly.

‘Who are you calling a pellet, you granny knot?’ Knickers shouted back towards the chair.

‘Contact established, sir,’ came the voice from near the chair leg.

‘Good work, Stour. Now get the parties in question to re-deploy to a secure area.’

‘Oi, pellets. Get over here,’ called out Stour.

‘Why? This is the only place I’ve been so far that hasn’t been actively hostile towards me. I like it here,’ shouted Rayon in reply.

‘They decline to comply, sir.’

‘Directive denial. Hmm.’ There was brief pause, then the bossy voice gave another instruction.

‘Stour, rapid R&E mission protocols enabled. Go.’

Rayon and Knickers watched as a scruffy, unkempt dust bunny rolled out from the gloom of the chair leg shadow towards them. Fibres, obviously snagged from all kinds of different fabrics, all lengths, some straight, some curly, jutted out all over the place. It was drab, too. Mostly brown and green, old tree colours. Rayon wondered if it was just jumped-up pocket lint. When it got up close, Rayon noticed it smelt funny, too. A folded-when-damp smell – not quite unpleasant, but there was quite of lot of it.

Rayon wondered if it was just jumped-up pocket lint

‘Hello, I’m Stour, mostly army surplus gear and bits of the great outdoors. Bits of me have seen action, you know.’

Not any washing and rinsing action, thought Rayon to himself, catching another whiff of Essence de Stour.

‘Rayon, ex-hat of the blobby one,’ said Rayon waving a thread hello. ‘This is Knickers. From over there.’

‘How do.’ Knickers bobbed a curtsey in greeting and moved slowly upwind.

‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ said Stour. ‘Come on, you two. I’m on an R&E mission. We have to make ourselves scarce.’

‘Wait, what’s an arrandee mission?’ asked Rayon.

‘Recovery and extraction.’

‘That sounds nothing like arrandee,’ replied a baffled Rayon.

‘It’s the initials – the letter R for recovery and the letter E for extraction. R and E. It’s an acronym. We’re very fond of acronyms in our line of work. So much quicker than lengthy explanations. So can we R&E now, please?’

‘Recovery and extraction of what?’ asked Rayon moving on to the next large, blank space in his understanding.

‘You two,’ replied Stour. ‘We have to get you two out of sight and somewhere safe. You heard, The Andrew will be back with apparatus soon.’ The scruffy one held out a thread to Knickers.

‘Grab hold?’

‘He’s right,’ said Knickers to Rayon. ‘We should go with him.’

Rayon couldn’t think of any sensible reason to stay where he was so he snagged on to the thread offered by Knickers and all three started rolling back to the chair leg.

‘Come on, put some puff into it,’ Stour told them. ‘We’ll have to find a spot for you before any tidying starts.’

‘Who was that shouting at us?’ asked Rayon as Stour steered them towards the shadowy hollows and carpet craters around the chair legs.

‘That would be Twill. He’s officer material. Keeps us regular dust bunnies out of harm’s way around here. He wants you two out of sight before you attract any more attention.’

‘So why didn’t the bossy one say that in the first place?’

‘He thought he did,’ said Stour. ‘He’s almost opaque, you know. Picked up a lot of useful matter on his tours. He’s been outdoors. Seen weather, he has. I’ve been around the house a while and I haven’t met many dust bunnies that can say that.’

Rayon was about to mention his years on the perimeter of The Andrew’s winter hat, but Stour kept on going.

‘There’s even gold braid somewhere.’

Arriving under the cover of the chair, Stour stopped tugging at Rayon’s fibres and all three rolled to a halt. A large, densely-tangled and very well-groomed dust bunny with hints of gold braid, navy blues and khaki rolled forward to meet them. Not a fibre was out of place. Stour turned around and snapped up a thread in a tidy salute, the effect only slightly diluted by clusters of wayward threads springing up on his head.

‘Stour reporting with said pellet, sir. Technically plural pellets, sir.’

‘Stop calling us plural pellets,’ snapped Knickers.

‘All right, all right. Don’t get frayed and knotted. Sir, presenting Rayon and Knickers. Previously known as the aforementioned plural pellets, sir.’

‘A1 work, Stour. Another mission accomplished.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Twill rolled over to Rayon, looked him up and down and side to side, then rolled once all the way around him. ‘You, dust bunny Rayon, de-brief me ASAP on your pre-mission tactical deployment parameters.’

Rayon had to think about that for a moment before replying. ‘Sorry, I only got the “You, dust bunny Rayon” bit. The rest of it…’ Rayon could only shrug.

‘He wants to know who you are and how you got here and when,’ said Stour.

‘Couldn’t he just say that?’

‘Well then, it wouldn’t be proper form. So…’ prompted Stour, ‘when, who, how?’

‘I just got here, minutes ago. I fell off a hat, got zapped by Knickers’ loose electrons. The Mum threw us both about then The Wind dumped us here. I didn’t know I was in the wrong place. There weren’t any signs. And who are you, anyway?’

‘Yes,’ joined in Knickers, ‘I’ve been about a bit and I haven’t seen you around before.’ She put a funny emphasis on the ‘you’ that made Rayon think she was a bit disappointed by the lack of previous acquaintance.

‘Name is Twill, senior dust bunny of this locale. You haven’t seen us before because we’ve adopted a permanent low profile recognition avoidance posture.’

Twill waved a thread. Rayon and Knickers watched where the carpet met the wall and a long, thin, horizontal line, no thicker than smoke, seemed to rise, thicken, and then come to life. Quiet ranks of dust bunnies manifested all along the wall, from behind the shoe boxes stuffed under the chair, around the chair legs and mostly behind the door and all the way back to the hinges. Although densely packed, the dust bunnies were silent and the junior bits of fuzz who tried to wave at Knickers were made to behave quite severely. Twill waved a thread again and the tribe near the door sank back down out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind.

‘We keep our heads down low,’ translated Stour.

‘A low profile is our primary tactic for long-term viability.’ Twill explained. ‘You see, unlike those dense clustering biddies under the bed, we believe in discretion; no clumping or rolling in daylight hours. I’ve assumed operational command for maintaining untidiness around here and I don’t want you getting us swept up. We’ve established a salient of entrenched untidiness here in the last few weeks and I intend to keep it that way.’

‘How? By tidying us away into a darkened corner?’ asked an indignant Rayon.

‘Well, you haven’t been here five minutes and you’ve already invoked the wrath of The Mum and the threat of a cleaning,’ said Knickers. ‘He does have a point. And he is so dense and smart-sounding.’

Rayon slumped and sighed. ‘I’m just freshly entangled. This is all so new to me.’

Stour put a friendly fibre round Rayon.

‘It’s nothing personal, it’s your colour. You’re just a bit obvious, mate. Motes like you set off the compulsive tidiers no end. They’ll be about you with all manner of vile instruments – brushes, dusters, mops, damp cloths, anti-static cloths, aerosols and sprays, 1500-watt vacuum cleaners. They want you gone and they have the technology to do it. I’ve seen whole rooms sucked clean of dust bunnies in minutes and the air smelling fresher than a citrus-scented, pine-fresh sea breeze blowing across summer meadow flowers. Horrible, horrible. All that barren neatness.’

‘And so well-groomed. I can barely see a misplaced thread.’

Twill directed Rayon and Knickers towards the dent in the carpet made by the chair leg.

‘Let’s get you two billeted down.’ He looked over at Rayon. ‘Somewhere dim would be optimal. Stour, keep them on the dark side of the chair leg. In the event of turbulence, stay low and snag on tight to whatever carpet you can grab. Loops are best.’

‘Ooh, he is good though, isn’t he?’ said Knickers admiringly. ‘And so well-groomed. I can barely see a misplaced thread.’

Her threads went all a-flutter and, with Rayon explaining to Stour about Knickers’ loose electrons, they rolled into the comforting dimness. Knickers looked back, reluctantly leaving Twill keeping watch from the base of the chair leg nearest the door.

In the carpet trenches around the chair leg, clusters of dust bunnies shimmied over obligingly, without any snarky colourist comments, to let Rayon, Knickers and Stour squeeze in and settle down low. Murmured introductions were made left and right, then silence settled over them.