Tick Tits Boom

Tick Tits Boom

by

Bobby Derie

There was a note on the doorstep, wrapped around a dog turd. Jamila didn’t have to read it. “PAKI” was scrawled in shit on the little window of her door, a half-dried lump of crap laid up on the handle. She took it in her left hand and forced her key in anyway, dirt crumbling away from her fingers. This whole row of flats had been a garage—and, before that, a stable. Jamila crossed to the sink in three strides, past the pictures of a family that never answered her calls, and the framed degree she’d earned from the University of Bradford that didn’t get her a job. She, washed her hands, wetted a rag that used to be a pair of panties or a t-shirt, and went back to the door to clean the rest.

Jamila stood under the showerhead, letting it wash the grime of the day away, washing her skin with dish soap. She refused to look at her mismatched breasts, brushed her hands over them quickly, roughly. The hot water ran out too soon, and Jamila was shivering by the time she had rinsed off. Her laptop chirped at her as got dressed for bed, and she nearly dove for it. Jamila had found them over the internet, and they had found her—through them she had found the praise and recognition London had refused her. An email, from Omar. The content was meaningless, the babble of a long day, but she counted the words carefully, according to the number he had given her, and spelled out the true message. They had a mission for her. It would begin soon. Jamila threw herself down and prayed her thanks straight to heaven.

The clinic was clean, middle-class, decidedly Western, but the doctor was from Afghanistan and a believer, and he spoke Farsi. Omar was there, and looked away as the doctor uncovered her, examined her. Dr. Bushra explained the procedure. He would need to cut, to reshape and install the implants. Let them heal. Then, they would place fill them over a period of weeks, give her skin time to stretch to accommodate. The final size was monstrous, comical. Omar praised her courage, but his compliments were tinged with acid—Jamila blushed and looked away from her ugly breasts, which lessened her in the eyes of her fellow believers. She almost looked on the surgery as a blessing.

The weeks passed, and she stayed in Dr. Bushra’s guest room. So Jamila slept and ate, studied and prayed, healed and grew. Her once-imperfect breasts now matched, perfect half-cups, larger than before…and after every session, she grew more. There was a deep ache in her muscles, running from her chest down to her belly button where Dr. Bushra snaked in the line to fill the sacs in her breasts. Sometimes she would awake at night, and just lie there, feeling the weight of them, imagining that they pinned her to the mattress. She could see them, out of the bottoms of her eyes, and as the work continued she could see more and more, the rest of her body disappearing before the overfilled mounds.

She rarely saw Omar, he was busy on his part of the work. When he did show, he would talk mostly with Dr. Bushra—the chemical nature of the explosive gel, its stability, and always, always, the time and amount. Jamila grew restless, waiting for the the day when she would be complete, perfected for her mission. 10,000 ccs, her bust terrible and magnificent, skin straining against the sacks, filled to the brim with liquid fire. To prove Omar wrong for his snide undercuts, to prove to him her courage and faith. To be honored in death was better than to live a life forgotten.

The burqa was uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and she was sweating under it. Jamila had not worn one in years, not since she had left home…no, even before then. Omar and Dr. Bushra had said their goodbyes at the clinic, after the final procedure. This time, she had been awake, lucid…Jamila had seen her breasts inflate, shivered as the chill liquid filled them. Her breasts were like two great monstrous things, too big to be real, sucking the life and heat from her. The breasts did not sag, but the heavy sacks pulled her skin forward, and Dr. Bushra had to add a support mesh to keep the bags from forming a visible crease. The bra was a cartoonish thing, cups bigger than the babies she would never have, heavy straps digging into her shoulders as they sought to lift and support. Sweat pooled on the underside, rubbing her raw near where Dr. Bushra had made the incision, the first time. Covered head to toe, breasts somewhat hidden by the burqa, Jamila walked through the gates at Heathrow.

Nine hours in purgatory, above the clouds, had weighed on Jamila more than nine years in London and Bradford. Children screamed, men and women wept over the straits and struggles of their lives. Some prayed, and others slept; beside her a mother nursed her infant daughter, both blissfully unaware. Jamila was quiet with her burden…the weight she carried with her, both the spiritual and the physical. The skin of her breasts itched and hurt. The doctor had filled them too full, too soon. Or perhaps the bags were leaking, poisoning her from the inside. She had thought she was strong enough to go through with this, but nine hours had turned a minor agitation into agony. Jamila imagined the sores that could be developing under her breasts, where she couldn’t see, where the bra had rubbed her raw.

The airplane bathroom was cramped, but there was a mirror—a tiny thing, set into the wall. Disrobing was difficult. There was little room for her to raise the burqa above her head, difficult to get her arms up that high with the great masses stuck to her chest. There was nowhere to put her clothes and underclothes, so she set them in the sink. Jamila unhooked her bra, and looked at herself in the mirror, to see once more, before she died, what she had become. She did not scream as she forced herself to continue looking, to poke and prod at the thing she had become, more object than woman. With steadfast resolution, she reclothed herself, and reclaimed her seat. The child burped a milk bubble as the mother patted her on the back.

Jamila stood before the loose circle of women, in the church of a god she did not believe in. For most of the women there, shirts hung poorly, the cloth hanging slack over the empty space where a breast had once been. Some of the women compensated—with padded bras, implants, falsies. Jamila’s own shirt hung almost flat and straight, barely cresting a rise over the ruined stumps. She stood up, her turn to address the group.

“Hello…my name is Jamila. And I am a survivor.”

###

10,000cc