by

Maybellene

Axolotl

This story is a fantasy based not too loosely on fact. Like the lives of most of its readers, it contains no sexual acts. When the story stops, you are allowed to carry on thinking. If you are incapable of thought, go and find some pictures of women with computer-aided tits.

It was late afternoon when I rang the doorbell of Naismith's period cottage in Sussex. His battered and dusty four-wheel drive vehicle was outside, negligently parked with one wheel run up on to the rockery. For a long while there was no reply, although the bell jangled loudly enough to rouse the dead. I was preparing to scribble a note and shove it through the letterbox when a door slammed somewhere in the house. A few seconds later the front door opened and a rumpled Naismith stood there, blinking at me. It seemed to take several seconds before recognition dawned.

"Vincent! I'm so sorry. I wasn't expecting ... I was asleep. Just flew in this morning..."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realise..." I made as if to leave but he stepped back, holding the door open, and I walked through, stumbling through a clutter of junk mail and newspapers just inside the doorway. "Been away long?"

"Couple of months." Naismith was striding down the hallway into the room he used as his study. It had always been my favourite room, with its views across the rolling close-cropped lawn to where the yellowing sun had already dipped behind the South Downs. "Been down under. Australia. Coffee?"

His voice drifted through from the kitchen as I strolled over to the window. Someone had been looking after the garden all through the early part of the summer. "No Mrs Thing?" I asked. Naismith was more or less helpless without his housekeeper. To judge from the domesticated sounds reaching me, he seemed to have discovered the art of making instant coffee; or perhaps not, as he came in carrying one mug and one bone china cup and saucer, which he offered to me.

"Had a bit of an accident earlier, this is our last mug. Cheers!" He raised the mug in a toast. "What time is it?"

"About six. Maybe a bit later."

"I'm still operating on Aussie time. Just about ready for breakfast. Well, what brings you out to Darkest Sussex?"

"I was just passing really. Made a slight diversion when I saw the signpost." We both knew I was lying.

"It's great to see you, even if it is through bleary eyes. We'll have to get together one of these days when I'm up in town." It wasn't quite a dismissal, but it wasn't far off it.

I took a sip of coffee. Naismith seemed to have the uncanny knack of turning instant coffee into industrial slurry. "Two months down under? Anything interesting?"

"Half a dozen assignments. Officially I was covering the end of the Ashes Tour. Not just the cricket, more a bit of background. A different angle on things. But before I went out I had a word with my other Editor; you know, the weekend mag? He suggested I might like to do a spot of investigative journalism."

"Hardly your line, I shouldn't have thought...?"

"Not really, no. But this involved an Australian TV soap."

That sounded more like Naismith. "Earth-shattering stuff?"

"Fairly, yes. You know that soap, Visitors?" I knew it. Another of those indistinguishable Australian soaps beloved by school children and out of work ne'er-do-wells. It seemed to be broadcast five or six times a day. He droned on: "It's on our TV at lunchtimes and it's repeated again at four fifteen in the afternoons. Apparently at the moment we're running about two years behind the Australians with the episodes, but here it's on every day instead of three days a week, so we're gradually catching them up."

I could feel my eyes starting to glaze over. "And your assignment was to find out the alleged plot?"

Naismith looked puzzled. "Not really. The paper knows that, although it only leaks what's due to happen when it's absolutely necessary. No, the thing was, a couple of years ago, there was a bit of a disturbance down under when the show's ratings suddenly rocketed for no reason. A whole bunch of kids, hundreds of thousands of them, were rushing home from school specially to catch the show."

"Oh, really? Good news, surely?"

"There was a good reason, it seems. Not a very PC reason, unfortunately. It was a girl."

"A girl?"

"One of the cast. Dawn, her character's name, although she was played by a young actress called Maybellene McKendrick. She suddenly achieved remarkable popularity." He drained his mug and put it down. He seemed not to notice the appalling taste, although he did have a pained expression as he picked several scraps of grit off his tongue. "Apparently, this young lady — she was sixteen at the time, but her character was supposed to have been eleven — was a bit of a late developer. She..." He indicated what he meant with his hands in front of his chest. Now, being two years behind, we're just about to reach that point in the story over here, which is why the Ed sent me off to find her. His idea was that he would be able to whip up a bit of interest in this country; get people interested. If he could help turn Visitors into a cult thing in this country, he could get a few pictures of Maybellene on to his Page Three, wearing not very much."

"And your part was to find her as she is now, and get an interview and a picture."

"More or less. So that's what I did."

"You found her, of course? Not too difficult, I'd imagine?"

"Eventually. It wasn't easy. But I found her, all right! Oh, yes, I found Maybellene!"

I was interested despite myself. Perhaps it was because Naismith seemed suddenly so animated. He jumped up and opened his briefcase, producing a fat scrapbook or photo album. And there, among dozens of clippings from papers and magazines, were literally hundreds of photographs of an extraordinarily pretty young girl.

"These were taken before she joined the cast of Visitors. She was just sixteen when she got the part of Dawn, and as you can see, she fitted the role really well, as Dawn was supposed to be about eleven." He pointed to a shot of Maybellene standing next to a much taller girl. "Maybellene plays her younger sister in the show, you see, although actually she's a year older. Anyway, she got the part, and an excellent contract built-in. She was assured of a job for a number of years, personal appearances, a singing career, the lot. All she had to do was avoid doing anything outrageous."

"Outrageous?"

"You know the sort of thing — she was supposed to be eleven, in a fairly high profile TV soap, so she couldn't really be seen to have boyfriends in private life. For quite a few years, she wouldn't be able to go to nightclubs, drive a car, get married. In return, though, the rewards were quite substantial for a young actress at the start of her career. Unfortunately, nobody even thought to mention the most outrageous thing she could have done." He turned a page. "It happened quite quickly." Another page. "That was in August, this one was two months later."

"Let me see those," I said, studying the pictures closely. Without a word, Naismith handed me a large magnifying glass, a sort of Sherlock Holmes kind of thing. It helped. In those two months, the girl had developed a quite remarkable bust. "It must be the camera angle," I said.

"That's what I thought. It isn't." He flipped over a few pages. Every picture showed Maybellene as a extremely shapely young woman. "These were all taken during October. It was around this time that Australian males started to take an unhealthy interest in Visitors! And other males around the world, too. The producers managed to disguise things as well as they could, but it wasn't all that easy. They couldn't wrap her up like an Egyptian mummy, after all. Not that it would have made much difference if they had. She was still growing. Here she is in the Christmas Special."

"Hmmm. I see!"

"Exactly. She was supposed to be eleven, but suddenly she needed — apparently — an E-cup brassiere."

It was a meaningless code to me. "Is that big?"

"It's rather bigger than average, yes. You know about vital statistics?" I nodded dumbly. "She's less than five feet tall, and not really at all plump. Just well-built. She measured 41-24-35 by Christmas. That's quite chunky for such a short girl. Her 'sister' in Visitors wasn't at all happy about the situation, naturally. From being a flat-chested baby-face, in just four months, Maybellene had turned into a voluptuous and very attractive young woman. By the February, she looked like this!" He turned the last page with a flourish.

Clearly, Maybellene was by then wholly unsuitable for the role of an eleven-year-old. Although I am no expert, I'd guess her bosom wasn't forty-one inches any more. "What happened?"

"They wrote her out. Sent her off on a long holiday with her aunt Clara in the story. Of course, the punters went mad. Kids had been rushing home from school, dads were making an excuse to get home early from work, sales of blank videotape cassettes had doubled. The Japanese went barmy. Visitors was very popular there, and once Maybellene started developing, they loved it to bits. Then she was gone... Of course, this was all two years ago. My assignment was to find Maybellene. And as I say, I found her."

You know how it is when Naismith gets on to one of his hobby horses. He does tend to go on a bit. At first, I was beginning to wonder if it was me with the jet-lag, not him. I mean, the old eyes were really glazing over as he described all the places he travelled to in search of this Maybellene girl. Names like Wagga Wagga, Zigga Zagga, Bugga Bugga. I almost nodded off a few times, and each time when I came to with a start, he was still boring on. The fizz of two more newly-opened beer cans jerked me awake.

"Cairns. You know Cairns?"

"Who's he?"

"It's not a him, it's a place. Way up the right hand side of Australia, North Queensland. Imagine..." he looked around for something to demonstrate his point. "This beer-mat." He picked it up and flapped it in my face, then to my astonishment he took a bite out of it. "The Great Australian Bight," he said, ripping another jagged chunk out of the other side. "Gulf of Carp ... Carp-en-taria," he slurred carefully, laying the no longer circular mat on the table and stabbing it with a finger. "Australia. Up there, Indonesia, New Guinea, stuff like that." He dismissed the rest of the world with an airy wave. "Down here, all together, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney. Up here, Brisbane. And all the way up here, best part of a thousand miles further on — Cairns."

So he had come to the point at last. "And that's where she was? Cairns?"

His brow furrowed. "No. Don't rush me. Her family were up there, though. Remarkable people. All women. Remarkable." He took a long swig from his beer can. "Remarkable. Where was I?"

"Maybellene's family. Remarkable women."

"You know them?" he asked, startled.

"You were telling me about them." I hadn't had as many cans as Naismith had — he called them 'tinnies' — but I'd had too many to drive tonight. With deep gloom I realised I was going to have to bed down on Naismith's settee, or more likely, listen to him droning on until he finally fell asleep when the dawn came up like thunder.

"Tits like fucking watermelons," he said out of the blue, punctuating it with a hiccup. "Maybellene's mother. And her sisters. Sister. Eighteen."

She's got eighteen sisters?"

His expression clouded, and faint panic came into his eyes. "No, only five. Who said she had eighteen? Did I miss any?" He held up five fingers and laboriously ticked them off. "There was Kerralene — she's two years older than Maybellene — then Charmelene, then Maybellene herself, and her two kid sisters, Terylene and Valvolene." He didn't sound too sure of the names of the youngest two. "And the mother, of course. Madge. Did I say tits like watermelons?"

"You did."

"That's right. Tits like fucking watermelons."

He was quiet so long I wondered if he'd fallen asleep. I took the opportunity to stand up and head for the bathroom.

"Tits like fucking watermelons," he repeated as I left the room. He was still talking when I got back, talking to himself. "The mother was telling me," he said, seeming hardly to notice when I sat down opposite him again. "They're all huge, all the family. Madge, her name. The mother."

"Not Polly-Ethylene?"

"No. Madge McKendrick. Just as big as the rest of them. Even the youngest ones. Big tits. Anyway, she was saying she'd been getting worried when Maybellene had reached sixteen without growing the family tits. Not worried, really, 'cos the girl had got that great job with Visitors, but worried in case she missed out altogether. Little Maybellene still had a flat chest, but both her younger sisters had theirs already. They all lived in this kind of shack affair, a few clicks out of Cairns. Kays. Kilometres."

He pronounced it in the fashionable media way, with the accent on the second syllable. I was too weary to correct him.

"They don't have a father?"

"No. There's just Madge and the girls. Anyway, ol' Madge was worried in case the TV company found them and realised what they all looked like. She was saying that if they came along and found a house full of busty women, they'd have second thoughts about Maybellene's contract. You could see her point. Both her points, in fact. Wow! Should see them! Watermelons. All of them..."

This time he did fall asleep, suddenly sprawling across the table with his head on his arms, making a bubbly noise as he breathed. I wondered what he was dreaming about. Cursing the man, I lay back and tried to get comfortable on the settee, but I couldn't get off to sleep at all.

Why, I had no idea. I'm as partial as the next man to a pair of large and shapely breasts, but every time I was on the verge of going to sleep, I had an image of this family of busty women. Disturbing.

Damn it! It's all very well when your host falls asleep on you without getting round to offering you a bed for the night. Perhaps if Naismith hadn't been so jet-lagged, he'd have thought about it. If Mrs Thing had still been about the place, she'd certainly have poked her head round the door a couple of hours ago and asked if Mr Vincent would be staying the night.

I stood up and considered trying to make Naismith more comfortable, but decided he wouldn't thank me for it. He'd fall off the table at some time anyway, and end up on the floor. Once you're on the floor, you can't fall any further. The spare bedroom was at the top of the stairs, I knew, having slept in there a couple of times. I tiptoed out, feeling faintly ridiculous, and crept up the stairs.

I was asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

It was four in the morning. I knew that by the sound of the dawn chorus out in the back garden. How do the birds know when it's time to start singing their heads off? Not five minutes after I awoke and lay there wondering who and where I was and thinking 'never again', the church clock struck, and stopped striking after only four strokes. Obscenely early. I wrapped a pillow round my head and tried to shut out the birdsong. It didn't work. That was when I had an uneasy feeling that I was not alone. The bed was moving under the weight of a second occupant.

That's all I need, I thought, bloody Naismith climbing into bed with me at the crack of dawn. "Go away," I said charitably.

"Oh, Bobby!" whined a decidedly feminine voice from close behind. The hairs rose up on the back of my neck. Bobby? Who was Bobby? And somewhat more to the point; a girl, in bed with me? A second later, there was absolutely no doubt about it at all. "Mmmmm, Bobby's come to bed at last," the girl sighed, and crept closer. I could feel the billowy softness and warmth of her body. If this was a dream, it was in decidedly poor taste. The girl squeezed herself closer. It was at this time that I began to realise that it might be a good idea to find out more about this visitor before one or both of us did something we might regret. I rolled on to my back and pretended to be just waking up.

A tousled blonde head lay on the pillow next to me, with its eyes shut. It was a female head, and a deucedly attractive one, too. "Little Bobby's waking up," she pouted, "Leenie's waking up, too!" She opened her eyes and we stared at each other, registering lack of recognition. At least, she registered lack of recognition. My eyes opened wider.

"Maybellene?"

"Hello," she said, blinking. Actually, she said 'Hellay', after the manner of the antipodeans. "You're not my Little Bobby. Who are you?"

"Good morning," I said. "My name's Vincent. Henry Vincent." I offered her my hand. I suppose it would have been more correct to have stood up, but she seemed to understand that the situation was fairly informal. After all, we were in bed together. She took my hand and crinkled her face in a smile. I could see how she got the job of playing the part of an eleven year old. Then she sat up and the quilt slid down. That was when I saw how she lost the job of playing the part of an eleven year old. The last picture Naismith had showed me had been taken a couple of years earlier. It was sadly out of date. Maybellene was now larger. Considerably larger. She was wearing a sort of T-shirt thing, pale pink with elephants all over it, and it was wobblingly full of what I could only describe as breasts. Never mind watermelons. These were like no fruit I could imagine. If a girl had stuffed a couple of pillows up her T-shirt, it might have bulged as dangerously as it did Maybellene's.

"Where's Little Bobby?" she asked, after we had held hands for perhaps thirty seconds.

Little Bobby had to be Naismith, I reasoned. If the girl had come to England as Naismith's companion, she would probably use a more familiar form of address than 'Naismith'. "He fell asleep downstairs," I explained. "He'd had rather a lot to drink."

"You're English," she said wonderingly.

"Indeed, yes. There are quite a few of us here."

"Bloody hill!" she said, then added, "no shit!" She was silent for a while. "Hinry..."

"Yes?"

"Do you know how long it's been since I head it?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Since I head it? Since I head six?"

"Six?"

"You're not another of these poofters, mate, are you? Six! You knay...?"

I had worked out that she was trying to say the word 'sex'. It didn't help me answer her question. It wasn't the sort of question you could really answer without causing upset. "You came over with Naismith? With Bobby?"

"Yeah. He said I'd get loads of six over here."

"He said ... wait a minute. He said ... you mean ... you don't ... you're not...?"

"Lovers, mate? What, him and me? I've tried, but he can't get it up. I've tried most things. Little Bobby's not really into six at all. We've done it a couple of times, but I'm afraid I need it more than a couple of times in six weeks." She had taken my hand again during this speech, and now she pressed it negligently against her bosom. She rolled slightly towards me, engulfing my hand, my wrist and half my arm between what must have been just about the biggest pair of breasts no longer on Australian television. "Do it to me now, Hinry!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Come on! Bobby won't mind. He's let me have blokes before. You're not a poofter, are you?" she asked anxiously, her eyes wide. She seemed to have a lot of hands all of a sudden. "Wow!" she announced in jubilation. "You certainly ain't a poofter!"

"I'm sorry. I seem to have lost control of myself somewhat..."

"You don't hif to apologise for an iriction, Hinry. Not to Little Maybellene." In a remarkable burst of energy, she flung back the bed covers and dived between my legs. Her mischievous little face grinned up at me, then her mouth opened in a perfect O. All I could see was a pixie face and a pair of monumental breasts straining at her T-shirt. Her eyes never left mine, although they did get wider as I felt myself contact the back of her throat.

Naismith got his money for his story, although the thing fell rather flat when Channel Four gave Visitors the chop. Maybellene never appeared on Page Three. The Editor took one look at a Polaroid of her and politely declined. Too specialised, apparently. Not the sort of thing his readers would appreciate. Up to an F or a G cup, perhaps, but not this. God, no!

"Serve them right," said Maybellene. "If they can't appreciate a real woman." I had to agree with her.

In fact, I have to agree with everything Maybellene says, these days. I could handle her if it was just her, but her mother and her four sisters are a different proposition. When they gang up together they are a formidable combination. Besides, with Maybellene due in two or three weeks' time, I have to be especially nice to her. She's expecting a girl. It's a bit early yet to know about the others, although Valvolene wants a boy and Terylene hopes her twins are one of each. Kerralene's happy with whatever she gets, and Charmalene has only just caught, so she'll settle for anything. As for Madge, she wasn't really expecting to fall pregnant at her age, but she thinks a boy would make a nice change this time.

Me, I can now settle back with the satisfaction of a job well done. Several jobs well done, in fact. It's most restful just to sit here in the rocking chair on the porch and watch the tits grow. At the last count, on Saturday night, the total was a nice round thirty-two feet, but Maybellene is confident we can better that figure this week. It's a hard life. Sometimes I think of Little Bobby Naismith, but not very often.

The End