The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep. Juliet Butler

Tomorrow. The Administrator will sort some clothes out.’

      We go on the Outside for the first time ever

      ‘Mwaah! It’s hitting me! It’s hitting me!’

      We’ve walked down the steps into the Outside and the wind is all slapping us, trying to knock us over, and Masha’s shouting like anything and waving her arm around because we can’t balance. My head’s spinning like it does when we do loads of somersaults. The grass is mushy, not hard like the floor, and there are no walls anywhere to keep us upright. Plookh! We sit down with a bang that makes me hiccup.

      ‘Get up this instant!’ shouts Lydia Mikhailovna, turning around. She was walking off down the path, thinking we were behind her. ‘I’ve taken you outside to exercise, and exercise you shall!’

      ‘Caaaaan’t,’ goes Masha in a high voice, the one she has when she’s really scared. ‘It’s all moving!’

      ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. Nothing’s moving.’

      But she’s wrong. It is. All the trees are waving and the grass and the bushes and leaves are jumping about like crazy so we can’t stand up in case the ground comes up right in our faces too. We hardly know which way is up with the clouds all moving too.

      ‘It’s too big, there’s too much space, there’s nothing keeping us in! Caaaaan’t!’ goes Masha again. I can’t even breathe because the air’s colder than me, not the same as me like it is inside, and it keeps trying to whoosh in my mouth when I don’t want it to. Lydia Mikhailovna stands over us for ages, trying to get us up, and stamping her foot, getting crosser and crosser until Stepan Yakovlich, the groundsman, comes over and picks us up, laughing like anything, and carries us back inside.

      We go out with Lucia to play

      ‘I can throw a pine cone so high it never comes back down and gets burnt up by the sun,’ claims Lucia.

      ‘Bet I can throw it high enough to kill a dirty old crow,’ says Masha. ‘Watch!’ She picks one up off the grass, and throws it at Lucia. I laugh when it bounces off her head.

      We kept trying, every day, for weeks and weeks to stay standing outside, because Aunty Nadya (who was cross she wasn’t even told we were going out for the first time) said we could learn easy-peasy to walk on squishy ground in the wind, just like we learnt on firm floors with no wind before.

      Now we’re so good at balancing that we’ve been let out to play with Lucia for a bit. Just us. We even get to wear the trousers and red shirts they keep for when the Academy of Sciences come in to film us because they don’t want us in the pyjamas we wear all the time. Proper clothes for proper playing, not just for show!

      ‘Aiii! That hurt! I’ll show you where this one’s fucking well going!’ Lucia picks the cone up and grabs us, pushing us down into a tumble on the ground, and then stuffs it into Masha’s mouth. I’m laughing like anything.

      ‘Stop, stop! Let’s play tag,’ says Masha, pushing her off and spitting out bits of cone. ‘You’re it, count to five.’

      We go running off across the grass like mad things, zigzagging and then running straight on and on and on because the grounds are so big you can run forever and not even hit anything except a tree. I look round and see Lucia’s cutting us off to tag us from the side, so we both stop in our tracks to run back the way we came. She’s even faster than us though, and pushes me instead of tagging me, so we all go down in a tumble again, hardly able to breathe for running so much.

      ‘Hide and seek!’ shouts Masha, tickling Lucia off her. ‘You’re it.’

      ‘Get lost! I was it last time.’

      ‘Well, now you’re it again. Shut your eyes and count to twenty.’ Masha pushes Lucia’s face in the grass, and we run off to the bushes because the tree trunks wouldn’t hide us both. There’s a big bush by the gates with purple berries that Lucia says shrivel your insides up, turn them black and tie them into knots if you eat them, but we run towards that faster than anything. We’re not going to eat them. Just hide in them.

      Then I hear someone screaming, really screaming, like when Boris broke his leg. We both stop and stare. It’s coming from the gate. There’s loads of Healthies from the street standing there, holding on to the bars and they’re shouting and yelling, Monster, it’s a monster!

      Monster? Where?! We look back, but there’s only Lucia, who’s got up and is running towards us, but we’re so scared we don’t move to run and hide from her in the bushes any more, we just keep standing there, thinking we’re going to be eaten up by a monster which we can’t see but everyone else can.

      ‘Fuck off, you lot! Fuck off!’ Lucia’s caught up with us and she’s waving at the crowd, which is getting bigger all the time as more people run over and start screaming too, saying things like Help! Help me, God! One of them’s fainted, but for real, not pretend like Lucia does, and all her apples spill out of her bag and run under the gate. I’m shaking all over for fear. I can’t see anything, I keep looking all around me.

      Lucia’s not scared. She’s angry, and starts yelling and swearing at the Healthies. Then she grabs a hosepipe and turns it on them full blast. ‘You’re the fucking monsters! Have this to wash your fucking mouths out with!’

      ‘Comrades! Comrades!’ Stepan Yakovlich the groundsman has run up and starts shouting at them all too. ‘For the love of God, comrades!’ His dog, Booyan, jumps up at the gate barking and snarling like he wants to eat them and Lucia’s still spraying them, then Stepan Yakovlich turns and picks us up because we can’t move from being scared stiff of the monster and runs with us both clinging round his neck. I hear a woman wailing, ‘How could they let that live?’ And then we’re back inside.

      We’re told not to traumatize the Healthies

      It was us.

      Us that’s the monster.

      But why? How? Monsters are ugly and evil and scaly and breathe fire. Monsters are Imperialists, or leeches, they’re green and slimy and mean. Monsters aren’t us! I can’t stop crying, however much Masha swears at me and punches me. She’s just angry. Not hurt like me.

      ‘For goodness’ sake!’ Lydia Mikhailovna has been called in because I’m so upset that the nurse thought I was going to have a fit. She’s standing over me with her hands on her hips. ‘You’re going to run out of tears at this rate!’

      ‘She’s using all mine too. I’m getting all dried out. I’ll drop off of her like a prune, soon.’

      ‘Do be quiet, Masha. You could show a little sympathy.’

      ‘They were screaming at me too. The pigs—’

      ‘And how many times did I tell you both to stay close to the building? Eh? And not to go traumatizing the Healthies? Not to draw attention to your condition? Now we’ll never see the back of them. SNIP is virtually surrounded by baying crowds looking for a two-headed mutant.’

      ‘B-But, but, but, why?’ I say through all my snotty tears. ‘What’s wrong with us? Why are we a m-mutant?’ I can hardly get the words out, I’m crying so much.

      ‘Have a handkerchief, for goodness’ sake,’ she says, getting one out of her pocket and snapping it in front of my face. ‘You’re not monsters. As such. You’re different. Deformed. And healthy people are not used to deformity of any kind. It is our duty to protect them from you, but sometimes, especially when orders are disobeyed, this proves impossible. However,’ she sniffs and looks out of the window, ‘this attention from them is something you must accustom yourself to in life.’ I go to hand her back the hanky. ‘Keep it,’ she says with another sniff, ‘as well as that word of advice.’ Then she goes out and bangs the door.

      After a bit, Masha looks up at the ceiling. ‘Stop whimpering,’ she says, ‘we’re only monsters to those pigs. If they don’t need us, we don’t