Unfair-Chapter 134: Riddles in the (Gas)Light (Patreon)

Chapter 134: Riddles in the (Gas)Light

The toy monorail smoothly glided along the ornate and incredibly complex path.  Ivy and Jessica- literally a miniature Amazon and metaphorically a giant kid respectively- had created in minutes on the fly what would have taken hours of inventory, planning, and careful construction for almost anyone else.  That wasn’t the most impressive part.

“What has for wheels and fl-?”

“A garbage truck!”

“Correct! What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never tal-?”

“A river!”

“Correct! What has four legs in the mor-?”

“A person’s natural lifespan as unaffected by Maturosis or other life altering condition!”

“Correct! Feed me and I live. Give me to drink and I di-”

“Fire! All the fire! Get to the hard stuff!”

A tiny mechanized voice was spouting out riddles and Amy was answering them before it could even finish a single scripted thought. Her arms were rigid propping her up on all fours and her head unmoving. Her eyes tracked and bore into the toy monorail the way a cat eyes a mouse. I’d never seen Amy so singularly focused before.

“Correct! What is the difference between a grandmother and a granary?”

Amy tongued the gap in her teeth, finally being forced to think.  “I know this one…I know this one…”  A tiny whir from Michael the Monorail. Its eyes shifted faster and the train sped up on its track.  “Something something…born kin versus corn bin!”

“Correct!” The little voice sounded disappointed and the train slowed back down to its initial cruising speed.

“Oh yeah,” Amy purred. “That’s the stuff!”

“I pass before the sun, but make no sha-”

“Wind! Air! Breath! Farts! All of the above! Moving air!”

“Correct!”
“Wow,” I said. “She’s good.”

Jessica was still seated on the floor.  “Very good,” she said, obviously impressed.

“I like riddles,” Amy said; statue still with the exception of her face. Then, “Most people’s breath but I can hold mine for a very long time I tried!”

“Correct!”

“Clark? Ivy? Do you want a turn?” Jessica asked, beckoning us forward.

Still squeezing Lion, I toddled over to Jessica, almost mesmerized by Amy’s unexpected talent.  “Yeah, no. I’m not following that act.”

Ivy looked similarly impressed and intimidated. “I don’t think I’m as good at words as her.”

“Correct!” The train chanted. “If you break me, I’ll not stop working. If you touch me, my work is don-”

“A heart!”

“Correct!”

Laying on her side, Jessica wrapped an arm around me and pulled me closer to her. “Come here, lemme check ya.”  She proceeded to grope, pat, and sniff me every which way, and not just in my diaper.

In another life I would have had to pay for this kind of attention. “What are you doing?” I yelped.

“An umbrella!”

“Correct!  We are very little creatures, all of us have different features.”

Jessica spun me around. “Say ‘ha’ as hard as you can!”

I grimaced “Ha?”

Jessica sniffed.  “I need to clean your teeth extra good tonight, but other than that…” she tore Lion from my grasp and crushed him into a ball. “You’re good.”

“This is a word trick,” Amy mused. “Vowels! It’s vowels!”

“Correct!”

She let me snatch my poor Lion out of her titan’s grasp. “What was that for?” I asked, indignant.

“You were in your room for a long time,” Jessica said. “Needed to make sure you weren’t poopy, drunk, or smuggling something.”  She eyeballed Ivy and I bit my tongue lest I whimper. “Ivy?”

The Little Yamatoan folded her hands in front of her. “Clark couldn’t find his lion,” she said. “I helped.”  If it wouldn’t have been immediately suspicious, I would have hugged Ivy then and there and not cared if she squeezed the life out of me in her excitement.  Jessica neither patted, nor checked, nor further interrogated Ivy.  Oh, to have that kind of freedom from suspicion, (not that I’d earned it)!

Meanwhile, Amy was busy outsmarting a riddling railroad. Answering Michael the Mono’s latest query with a sing-song “It’s-a-map, it’s-a map,it’s-a-map!”

“Correct! I have a hundred legs, but cannot sta-”

“A broom!’

“Correct!”

With Ivy vouching for me I was in the clear, so Jessica returned her focus to our resident gap toothed crawler.   “She’s really on a roll,” Jessica said.

“I like riddles,” Amy repeated herself. Then she blurted out, “The dark!”

“Correct!” The monorail said.  It seemed to be going slower and slower, as if every non-stumper it told drained a bit of life from it.. Either that or its batteries were in dire need of replacement.  “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came something sweet.”

“A dead lion with bees in its skull!”

“Correct!”

My free hand gesticulated wildly. My other hand tucked Lion protectively under my arm. “How does that one even make sense?!” I demanded.

“No clue,” Amy admitted. “I just know that one. I like riddles.”

The doorbell rang. Jessica climbed to her feet. “Dinner!” She trotted out of the living room towards the front door.  I looked back over my shoulder. My conversation with ‘Socko’ hadn’t properly concluded yet, and I still felt the clock ticking against me.

Amy was still mesmerized, answering riddles.

“A clock!”

“Your age!”

“An icicle! If it were summer it would be a popsicle!”

This was my perfect opportunity to slip away and-  “Come on, Clark!” Ivy called. “Let’s go help!”  Never mind.  It was merely my perfect chance to continue to be monitored by Ivy.  Just because she wasn’t snitching on me didn’t mean she was going to let me sneak off again to ‘play video games’.

Hiding my dejection, I played catch-up, hoping that ‘Socko’ would be patient with me, or worse, wasn’t just a random troll stringing me along.

Jessica closed the front door and turned around, enormous delivery bags in hand.  “Okay, let’s get this meat off the bone, munchkin and chow down.” she said and stepped around me and Ivy.

Ivy followed close behind with me bringing up the rear.  How could I get away without either of them noticing? If I kept dipping into my room, they’d notice. I couldn’t have this be a repeat of my last playdate and lose my tablet privileges but I couldn’t pass this opportunity up!  Just how could I pull it off?

Ivy had other questions.“Can we help, Miss Starke?”

“That’s very sweet, Ivy, but I don’t need help.”

We passed back into the kitchen. Amy was now pacing like a caged tiger, following the monorail around its track.

“Man walks over, man walks under, in time of war he burns asunder.”

“A bridge!”

“Correct!”

“But I want to help,” Ivy insisted. “I like it!” She craned her neck and stood on tip oes, trying to see our babysitter unpack the fast food on top of the counter.  “I’ll wash my hands!”

Jessica shook her head and clicked her tongue, but she still smiled. “Fiiiiine.”  She grabbed a chair and slid it up to the kitchen sink.  “Climb on up.”  She turned on the sink and squirted dish soap into Ivy’s hands, then forced them together as if the girl didn’t know how to do it herself.  Whether she did or not, Ivy was clearly basking in all of the attention.  

And neither one of them was paying attention to me!  Of course!  Ivy was the perfect Little for most Amazons and Jessica was cosseting hard! They could occupy each other!

I took a few slow steps back and across the kitchen threshold. No cry for me to come back or offer to include me came. I was invisible to both of them while Jessica instructed Ivy on ripping tremendous chunks of chicken meat off the bone .  “Make sure to roll up your sleeves.  Don’t want to get sauce on your jammies.”  

“Can I have a bib?”

“Yes! No!  Let’s use a tablecloth!”

“Okay!”

I played it casual and faux meandered back to the living room.  Amy had already managed to.strip her nightie off. It lay in a puddle while she kept harassing the toy train. “Hey Clark!  Whatcha doin’, sneaky stuff? Chicken ready? Dewdrops!”

“Correct! What is the difference between a cat and a complex sentence?”

“I hate this one…” Amy scoffed.

“You don’t know it?”  I said, feeling oddly uneasy.  Amy wasn’t as absorbed in her chosen activity as I’d hoped.

“No. I know it,” she said. The train whirred ahead and Michael the Mono’s eyes shifted faster. “I just want to see how fast this thing can go before I stop it from crashing.” A few more seconds and the train shifted into a faster gear. “This one’s a long answer, though.”

“You don’t know it,” I said, wishing that I could extricate myself.

“Rude,” Amy snorted. “One has claws at the end of its paws and the other has a pause near the end of its clause.”

The train slowed back down to its default setting. “Correct! When is a door not a door?”

“Okay,” I sighed. “You got me. You knew it.”

“Yup” Amy said.  “When it’s a jar. So whatcha doin’, sneaky stuff?”

“Correct!”

Amy reached forward and tapped the top of the toy’s head.  “That’s enough for now. So? Sneaky sneaky?”

“No,” I replied. (Though not for lack of trying.)  I turned my head sideways and shielded my eyes, suddenly realizing that she was topless.  

“Want to?” she asked. “I understand if you don’t. Your Auntie and Mommy aren’t as well trained as mine.”

I frowned, if only to stop myself from laughing. “What’d you have in mind?”

“Riddles,” Amy said simply. “Challenging ones.”

“What makes them challenging?”

“You gotta find them to answer them.  Like a scavenger hunt!”

Synapses were sparking.  Was Amy suggesting what I think she was suggesting? “I don’t think I know that many good riddles.”

“That’s fine,” Amy said. “I just need you to distract the others so I can do it.”

Ever since my Adoption, I’d learned that Amy was the greatest Little terror Oakshire Elementary had yet seen.  Everything that I’d managed to do, Amy had done it first and better. Even my greatest accomplishment to date may have been indirectly influenced by her suggestions. Instead of resenting her for it, maybe I could use it.  Just in case Ivy and my so-called Auntie couldn’t distract each other…

There was a general bumping around in the kitchen. Heavy wood skidded back across linoleum and Ivy’s delighted tittering.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “Yeah. After dinner.”

“Good,” Amy said. “I need the sauce.”

“Okaaaaay!” Jessica called, her voice sounding strained for some reason. “Time for dinner!”  The reason for her straining soon became obvious: In what must have been equal parts naivete, stubbornness, cosseting, and just outright not thinking things through, Jessica carried Ivy, my highchair, and several bowls of chicken into the living room all at once.

Ivy sat in my highchair, steadying the bowls of food on the feeding tray. The tablecloth-made-bib was still tied around her neck and dragged underneath the hoisted highchair threatening to trip up the babysitter’s feet.  

Jessica was making things way harder on herself by simultaneously trying to lift and balance the chair so that Ivy and our dinner didn’t tumble out of it.  In that, there was a kind of proof that Jessica wasn’t a Little made large.  She’d clearly never had to physically adapt to anything overmuch.

“Again!” Ivy cheered. “That was fun!”  

“Yeah,” Jessica panted. “It was. Really didn’t think that through.”  She quickly passed out the deboned chicken wings to us.  “Barbecue for Clark.  Naked wings for Amy with sweet chili on the side and plenty of ranch.  And for me and Ivy…are you sure you want these reaper wings? They’re kind of spicy.”

I’d already taken my first bite and was licking the sweet brown sauce from my fingers. “Trust me,” I said. “Whatever taste there is to acquire, Ivy’s acquired it.”

With the giant table cloth tied round her neck, Ivy was completely engulfed, unable to get her hands free. “Feed me, please!” Ivy said. “I’m a baby bird!”  She opened up her mouth and tilted her head back. My world went sideways for a second. Was prim and proper Ivy actually being silly?  

The Amazon picked up a dripping reddish orange chunk of wing with the tips of her fingers. “I’m not going to feed you that way,” she chuckled, “but we can pretend!”  Ivy kept her mouth open and Jessica experimentally dropped the smallest bit onto the Little’s tongue, eyeing her wearily lest she cause harm.

Ivy swallowed the piece she’d been offered without flinching and opened her mouth wide.  “Eep-eep-eep, please!”

“You like it?” Jessica asked, astonished.

“Yes ma’am!” Ivy replied. “Eep-eep-eep?!”

After that, Jessica got more and more into it.  Including providing vomiting sound effects as her bird fingers fed piece after piece of the spicy stuff directly into Ivy’s pretend beak. “Blaaaaaaargh!  Next time I need to paint a rubber glove or something!  Blaaaaaaargh!”

I wolfed down my own food, not taking the time to appreciate the sweet honeyed flavor with the savory fowl.  The sooner I was done, the sooner I could create proper mischief and make my opening.  By contrast, Amy was positively dainty with her food. She dabbled with the meat, dipping it ever so gently into a tiny bowl of sauce and then taking a single bite using the side of her mouth and discarding the rest. Besides being naked and basting in her own pee, she looked incredibly dignified.

Jessica took a moment to look away from her playtime with Ivy. “Clark? Amy?” How are you two doing?  Does anyone want a bottle?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

Amy licked at her fingers. “My compliments to the chef.”
Jessica stepped away from the highchair.  “Good! I’m glad you liked it. I’m thinking after dinner we can do diaper changes, then some more playtime, then bed.”  The reached down and checked both of us. “Oh yeah. We’re getting there.”

Amy and I made eye contact. Neither of us wanted our diapers changed. Any sort of one on one attention from Jessica was bad attention where we were concerned.

“Ivy? What about-?” Jessica stopped and jerked her knee straight up in the air. “Whoah! Almost stepped on a nightie!”

An opening!  I surged forward on all fours and snatched the lacy garment up from underneath the giant’s sneaker.  “I’ve got it, Auntie Jessica!”

The Amazon’s expression became pleasantly dazed, a quick shot of liquor after several beers. “Thanks, buddy.  Can you put it in Amy’s diaper bag?”

Oh could I!  I shuffled over to Amy’s bag by the couch, already unzipped. I plunged both hands deep down inside, as if I thought to climb in, just waiting for some mix of laughter or gentle admonition.

“BLAAAAARGH!”

“EEEP-EEEP-EEEP!”

Jessica and Ivy had already gone back to their own version of playing house where Jessica had a perfect Little and Ivy had a ‘fun Mommy’.  They had their games. Amy had hers ready to go. Now it was time for mine.

With deftness that surprised even me, I dug Amy’s two pink diapers up out of the bag. I lifted my head to confirm that the giantess’s back was to me and that Ivy was engaged.  Wet, the hippobottomuses would have dropped straight down to the floor with an audible plop.  Dry and folded they were practically leaves wafting speedily but silently down.

The irony of me stealing diapers was lost on me at the time. Even if it hadn’t been, it probably wouldn’t have stopped me from quietly sliding them underneath the gap beneath the couch.

My arms plunged back into the diaper bag, I called out. “Auntie Jessica? Where’d you put Amy’s diapers?”

My Mommy’s best friend turned around.  “What do you mean?”

I removed my hands and hoisted the open bag up over my head. “They’re not in there, see?”

The bag was taken from me. Jessica dumped it out.  “Where could they have…?”
“Did you set them in the kitchen?” I said. “Or maybe you put them all in the same bag?”

Jessica snatched up Ivy’s bag and tore through it. “It’s not in Ivy’s bag.” She bent over. “Did they somehow end up in one of the bins?”  Just having her eyes that much closer to the ground made me clench.  She stood back up and back towards the kitchen. “Maybe I set them down over…”

I breathed slowly out my nose, trying not to shiver with guilt. I turned my head and looked past the toy monorail to where Amy had been sitting, ready to confidently smirk and give her the silent go ahead.  Amy was already gone!  So was one of the bowls of sauce.

Genuinely bewildered, I walked around and looked down.  Finger-painted in sweet chili sauce on the far too comfortable playmat were the words,  “What is broken as soon as you say its name?”

“Miss Starke?” Ivy called out from her highchair. “I don’t see Amy anymore!”

Rapid thunderous footsteps from the kitchen heralded Jessica’s arrival  “What?!” Her head practically swiveled off her shoulders. “Not again!”

I tossed my hands in the air above my head, feigning innocence. “I didn’t do it!” I lied.

My favorite Auntie looked like she was going to blow a gasket.  “Amy!” she called. “Where are you, baby?”

No answer came.  If her movement caused any crinkling, my own nervous shifting in place more than covered it up.  “Clark, you and Ivy stay here.  Call if you see her.”  I nodded obediently, in no way actually intending to obey the order.  

The Amazon made a bee-line for Janet’s bedroom. Ivy was still trapped in the highchair. I now had full plausible deniability.  “Lion,” I pointed to my stuffie, authoritatively. “You and Ivy stand guard. I’m going to make sure Amy’s not messing with my stuff!”

“But your Auntie said-!”

“Why does she need both of us?” I cut her off. “I’m gonna go find her.”  I didn’t give her a chance to argue back and charged into the back hallway towards my room.  I was relieved to hear no crying or screaming.  

I ran back to my tablet and dug it out from beneath my crib. “Come on,” I muttered. “Don’t have fucked off yet.”  Nothing had been switched off or exited, so the soft light from my screen immediately broadcast the messages I’d been exchanging

“Aaaaaamy!” Jessica bellowed.  “Hide and seek isn’t allowed right now!”

I bit my tongue and scrolled down to the bottom.

Nothing.

The last reply had been mine: ““Yes please dont go.”

Silence was somehow worse.

My fingers pecked away at the digital keyboard in a panic.  “I’m here. I’m not mindfucked. I need help. But tonight sucks. Talk tomorrow night? After eight?”  I hit send. Then I typed in. “Please. I’m desperate.”

Before I hit send a second time, I heard Jessica’s voice, much closer than before.  “What smells like white paint, tastes like yellow paint, and looks like green paint?” A pause. “Amy!”

Jessica was in the guest bathroom!  I dropped my tablet and ran to the changing table.  I ran into the hallway with a Monkeez under each arm.  “Auntie Jessica!” I said. “You didn’t put Amy’s stuff in my room! I checked!”

The Amazon was in the bathroom, on her hands and knees, scrubbing freshly finger painted chili riddles off of the bathroom cabinet with a washcloth.  “That’s nice, Clark.  Any idea where she might be?”

I turned my head and looked down at the end of the hall.  The door to the guest room where Janet’s parents had bunked now had the words “The dead eat me always. If the living eat me, they die. What am I?”  

“No.”

Jessica climbed back to a standing position and looked down at me, carrying my own diapers. “What are you doing?”

“Oh,” I blushed. “I thought if you couldn’t find Amy’s, she could use some of mine.”  It wasn’t the greatest alibi, but it was better than nothing.

Jessica sighed. “I think one of Ivy’s will fit her better, but I’m sure she’d appreciate the gesture.”  “But as long as I’ve got you here…”  She scooped me up, pivoted, and laid me down on the cold bathroom counter.  “Let’s get you changed before you leak.”

I laid there and endured the change, holding my silence even as she re-used the washcloth as a baby wipe.  Getting the deed done to me here kept her out of my room and finding my tablet.

The first tape was barely over the landing zone, when a high pitched squeal sounded. “YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T BE NAUGHTY!” Ivy shouted.

“I’M NOT!” Came Amy’s defiant retort.  “I’M! AN! ARTIST!”

“Crudcrudcrudcrud!”  Jessica sealed me back into the fresh Monkeez, but didn’t reinsert my feet into the sewn-in booties or close the legs back up.  I was set down barefoot, left in a fleecy jacket that zipped in the back and the world’s ugliest tails trailing behind it.  “Aaaaamy! Playtime’s over, honey!”

“She went into the kitchen!”  Ivy pointed accusingly.

Jessica ran to the kitchen.  I followed, leaving poor Ivy stuck in the highchair.

“What is she doing?” Jessica said, her voice cracking.  

Something caught my eye. I walked under the kitchen table and looked up. As I’d hoped, I found.  “Step on the dead ones they all grumble. Step on the live ones they don’t even mumble.”

“Riddles,” I said.  “The girl likes riddles.”

“Why is she doing this? What did I do wrong?”  Jessica looked close to tears.

I walked out from underneath the table. “This is just how Amy plays,” I said.

“But she wasn’t playing that way before!  Why is she acting out?”

Something resembling empathy found its way inside of me.  It sucked not having the whole picture, to be left waiting on the hook or to not understand why people you thought you understood acting so strangely.  I was totally projecting. Didn’t matter.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s say she’s acting out.  Why?  What if it was one of your students? What would you do?”

The woman who’d taken my place wiggled her nose and brushed some straight hairs out of her face. “Ask what the antecedent was. What happened that led up to the undesirable behavior?”  

“Yup.” I said. “You were playing with Ivy and-”

“Not just Ivy,” Jessica said, too quickly to be comfortable.

Something stuck in my craw. “Were you?” I asked. “Or were you setting up a playset with Ivy and then sitting and talking to me and us while she answered riddles by herself?”

“Well yeah,” Jessica said. “But then the chicken came and…and…oh.  You’re right.”  Her head hung down in shame.  “Amy, if you can hear me, I’m sorry, baby girl! I didn’t mean to ignore you!  Grown-Ups make mistakes sometimes honey, but we can learn if you tell us!”

I snorted. “Don’t apologize. Just play.”  I took her by the hand and made her crawl to look at the message Amy had left under the kitchen table.

“Leaves…” Jessica said. “The answer is leaves.”

I thought of the one on the closed door.  “Nothing.”  And the one on the mat.  “Silence.”  

Jessica sat down in the middle of the kitchen and crossed her legs. “And paint? What looks like white paint, tastes like yellow paint and looks like green paint?”  She thought.  Paint?!  Is it paint, Amy?”

A cabinet door with a defective latch swung open. “Ta-da!”  Amy said. “I knew you could do it.”  Topless and with her diaper swollen and sagging behind her, Amy crawled out and snuggled right into Jessica’s lap.  “Good job, Auntie Jessica!”

The Amazon’s eyes looked like they were about to roll into her skull from ecstasy. “Leave? Silence? Nothing? You were trying to tell us we were ignoring you, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

I toddled, closer, my pajama bottoms trailing behind me. “Why paint though?”

Eyes closed and her whole body curled up on the cosseting giantess, Amy gave a half hearted bob of her shoulders. “I just like paint.”

Jessica cradled Amy and rose up, groaning all the way. “Come on. Let’s get Ivy out of the highchair.”

“If we must,” Amy sighed.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Jessica kissed Amy on top of the head. “I mean it.”

“Of course,” Amy said simply. “I almost never give a repeat performance.  Though I couldn’t have done it without Clark.  Clark, be a dear and get my diapers.”

Jessica looked down at me and rolled her eyes, smiling relief. “I should have known.”

It looked like the night was ending with a whimper instead of a bang. I gave back Amy’s diapers, and Jessica started changing both the girls on the floor, lest they leak.  That was fine by me. That left at least one more attempt to neurotically check to see if my bottled message had been salvaged.

The tablet was right where I left it.  I picked up and swiped up.  That’s when I read the message.

I should have been pumped. For two seconds I was.  Down at the bottom came a message from MistuhSocko9583158.  “Sounds good. Message me tomorrow when ready. I’ll be waiting.”

My excitement disappeared in a puff of smoke. My hands were sticky. I rubbed my fingers together and sniffed. Sweet chili sauce. I turned the tablet over.  Glazed over, sticky and smeared on the back side was a big question mark.

Amy knew.

“Fuck.”