Rayon and Knickers meet the Biddies

and Rayon came to a stop right in front of the unwelcoming committee of the dust bunny tribe from under the bed.

‘What rarely-inspected chemical factory do you think he spilt from then?’ said one.

‘Oh, he’s synthesised or I’m not real wool,’ said another.

‘Is that colour allowed? My eyes, my eyes.’

‘And what’s he doing with our Knickers? The proximity!’

The bedroom dust bunnies were lined up, staring at Rayon like curious cows and laughing. Nice to meet you too, thought Rayon.

‘Just ignore them,’ tutted Knickers. ‘They’re a bit snagged and twisted in these parts.’

Rayon could see the bedroom tribe were a drab lot. Browns of every shade of mud, yesterday’s salad greens, cheerless greys of rainy days, weary pastels, blotchy blues, mottled whites. After his time on the hat, Rayon couldn’t believe how unexciting and dismal their colours were.

Another voice piped up from under a nearby shoe.

‘One hundred per cent unnatural fibres, guaranteed. Do you think he’s a fire risk?’

‘One hundred per cent unnatural fibres, guaranteed. Do you think he’s a fire risk?’

‘Fresh from an oil refinery. Smell the hydrocarbons; he may spontaneously combust.’

Rayon had a hard job shouting back furiously over the laughter.

‘I am not a synthetic oil-based by-product,’ he replied. ‘Just because my molecules have been dissolved, immersed, squeezed flat, dried, shredded, oxygenated, carbon-disulfided, crumbled, ripened, filtered, de-gassed, extruded, dyed and woven before I got here, I’m still cellulose at heart. And so are any of you with cotton in your threads.’

‘But we don’t glow in the dark, mate.’

Rayon began to say, in a stern way, that he did not glow in the dark, but he knew he’d never be heard over the laughter now.

‘See? I told you they were like that,’ said Knickers. ‘Don’t get knotted, they’re not worth the loops. The designer label crowd are worse, though, but they don’t mix with us common-or-garden types. Ssh! What’s that?’

The laughter had stopped abruptly and so had the abuse.

‘Why’s everyone gone quiet?’ piped up Rayon.

Knickers shushed Rayon again.

‘Quick, look like inanimate matter.’

Glancing around, Rayon noticed that all the dust bunnies under the bed now looked just like random bits of fuzz and threads.

‘How’d they do that?’ asked Rayon, who was still a very fresh dust bunny and not fully versed in the ways of the world.

‘Shut up and go floppy,’ hissed Knickers. ‘And listen.’

Rayon went floppy and felt the floor shaking before he heard or saw anything.  Rayon could tell from the slow bumping and heaving noises that something was hauling itself up the stairs.. The door was thrown open and The Wind rushed in first, sending the Biddies scuttling for the low-pressure areas, but leaving Rayon and Knickers alone and highly visible at the edge of the bed. Behind The Wind came The Mum. Furry green slippers appeared at the door and stopped. Towering above was a gigantic blimp of pink dressing gown, a cumulonimbus of shining folds and shadowy billows filling the room with its satiny loveliness.

‘That’s The Mum,’ Knickers whispered to Rayon. ‘She hasn’t been in here in a while. Her new human is almost ripe, apparently. They grow from the inside out, you know.’

‘You, creature,’ squawked The Mum pointing at The Josh. ‘Get downstairs with those wet shoes. Now! Off that bed, off those clean sheets, off this floor, off your feet. No, don’t march back downstairs again; take your wet boots off right here and then carry them downstairs. You’ll find the way, just go in the opposite direction to the wet muddy footprints you left on the way up.’

The Josh turned his slow, blinking gaze to the floor, only now noticing the last of the slush disappearing into the carpet and the darker patch of damp around his boots.

‘Oh.’

‘Yes, oh. Now go-oh. Before there’s a hideous slaughter-oh.’

The Josh lumbered off the bed, boots in hand.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs C. I’ll tidy it up.’

‘Paper towels are under the sink in the kitchen. Bring the whole roll and start at the bottom and work upwards.’

As The Mum stepped into the room and The Josh went out, he had just enough time to look back and catch The Andrew’s eye and pull his best ogre face at him. Buckling under the strain of suppressed agony, The Andrew tried very hard not to die laughing as The Mum went on.

‘Look at this place! It’s barely fit for human habitation and it smells like something vultures would turn their noses up at.’

‘Vultures have beaks, Mum.’

It was the ensuing silent treatment that made The Andrew crack.

‘All right, I submit, I submit. I’ll tidy up.’

‘Your aunt arrives soon and I don’t want her thinking this branch of the family tree lives in a horse’s nest. And get that aromatic laundry downstairs and your clean clothes back up here and put away. Game off. Go.’

‘But I’ve just got to Level Four,’ replied The Andrew.

‘Well, if it’s a game you want, I’ll give you a game. You get food, clothing and lodging when you obliterate these.’

The Mum looked down to the carpet, scanning for something to use as an example.

‘Ha!’

And with that, Rayon looked up in mounting horror as The Mum started to lean towards him and Knickers. The Mum loomed over them, obliterating all light except for a vague pinky glow. Just when he thought he was going to be crushed, gigantic fleshy pincers with bright red talons popped out of the dressing gown sleeve and plucked Rayon and Knickers up from the floor.

Rayon had only a rough idea of what the words ‘brandished aloft’ meant, but having it done to him soon cleared up any ambiguity. It was like being pinched hard all over, whizzed up to an impossible height, spun around and waved about from side to side by something you knew did not feel well-disposed towards you at all.

With Rayon and Knickers firmly pinched between thumb and forefinger, The Mum was waving them within inches of The Andrew’s face. Rayon didn’t have the words or ideas to make sense of what he saw, but the words potato and dough came to mind. The Mum was explaining the rules of the new game.

‘Your planet is infested with invaders, just like this one,’ continued The Mum still waving Rayon and Knickers about, their threads bending this way and that with the speed of it. ‘Millions are waiting to be dispatched by the ultimate weapon, the central vacuum cleaner.’

‘That is so tragic,’ grumbled The Andrew.

The waving stopped, but Knickers and Rayon were still pinched tightly between gigantic finger and thumb

‘Too bad,’ replied The Mum, ‘participation is mandatory. It’s tidy-up time. Acquire skill, deploy central vacuum cleaner.

‘Aww, Mum.’

‘No “aww Mum”. Go. Do. Now. Or no eat.’

‘I’d never seen a whole people before now. They’re so thick and dense you can’t see through them at all,’ said Rayon.

‘Oh, all right,’ said The Andrew in his best sullen voice and he rolled off the bed with the pace and mass of a geological event.

As The Mum turned to follow, she gave a flick of the wrist and a snap of her fingers and Rayon and Knickers were cast with extreme prejudice onto the vagaries of The Wind.

Despite the bustling departure of The Mum and The Andrew, and the subsequent massive displacement of air from the closing door, The Wind wasn’t too capricious and merely stirred Rayon and Knickers around the room a few dozen times, making them dizzy, before dumping them back on the floor, this time closer to a chair near the door. With the static electricity between them finally spent, Knickers peeled herself away, thread by thread, from Rayon’s lingering clinginess. It was very much quieter with the people gone, with only The Josh’s game beeping forlornly on the bed.

‘I’d never seen a whole people before now. They’re so thick and dense you can’t see through them at all,’ said Rayon.

‘They all look the same to me,’ said Knickers. ‘Although they do smell different from time to time, I can tell you. Now, where did The Wind dump us this time?’