The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (14 page)

“Help,” she tried again. This time it was a little louder.
 

“Don’t worry yourself,” a voice said in the dark. “You’re safe.”
 

The voice was deep and carried with little effort. The plum accent was so thick it was almost fake.

“Where am I?” she wheezed.

“London. We had to take you from your home before you blew the damn place up. You see, little girl, you are quite dangerous. You even burned my son. I don’t blame you for that. But I can’t say it doesn’t make me angry.”

A match was struck and, for a brief second, she saw the hand holding it before the match went out again.
 

“Bloody thing,” the voice said before striking another.
 

This time it stayed lit and Hannah saw the floating hand again and could almost make out the face. It placed the match against a candle. This candle was then used to light several others, and as each one came alive, the faceless man came into view. A shock of grey hair amongst his long, black locks. A giant black horseshoe of a moustache strapped to his face. Wearing some sort of leisure gown.
 

He puckered his lips around his pipe and used one of the lit candles to light the tobacco.
 

“You see,” he said finally, “you are a particularly interesting girl.” Smoke fell from his mouth with every word.

“I’m not dangerous,” Hannah tried to say.

“You may not think you are,” the man said, pointing the pipe towards her, “but you certainly are, little girl. Like I said, you burnt one of our young ones today, and you almost killed a bankload of people yesterday.”

“What are you talking a …?” Hannah couldn’t finish her sentence.
 

The man sighed and sucked on his pipe some more.
 

“You see, miss, there’s something called the Many Worlds Interpretation’. Have you ever heard of it?” he said.

Hannah shook her head.

“Well, let me illuminate you … This world we’re in right now is one of many. The many worlds hypothesis states there is a very large — perhaps infinite — number of universes, and everything that could possibly have happened in our past, but did not, has occurred in the past of some other universe or universes. Understood?” he asked, spewing more smoke. “Good. Now, imagine, if you will, that this multitude of universes and worlds are connected by a single piece of fabric. Sometimes, the fabric becomes creased, or wrinkled, or even torn.”

Hannah was paying attention, but she wasn’t sure why. She was so tired she might fall asleep. She heard a door open in the darkness. Footsteps. Someone entering the room.

“Don’t mind what’s happening over there,” the man said. “I’m teaching you an important lesson.”

She heard what sounded like an elderly woman whispering under her breath, chanting something, her voice breathy and frail.
 

“What’s happening?” Hannah said.

“Well, Hannah, I have to tell you that you are one of those wrinkles in the fabric,” the man said, candle light flickering on his face.

“No, I’m not. You’re crazy. You did this to me. You burned me.”

The chanting woman was gradually becoming louder as if she was walking towards them. Hannah heard the footsteps. One by one.
 

“Now it’s our job to iron out these wrinkles — to straighten out the fabric.”

“Are you going to kill me?” Hannah whimpered. The whispering woman in the darkness was now only a few feet away.

“Unfortunately, if we don’t do something, you are going to hurt us. Because when there’s an inconsistency, bad things happen, and you are an inconsistency. You see, Miss Birkin, you’re in the wrong corner of our beautiful and sacred multiverse.”

Hannah shook her head in disbelief. It was all impossible. It was all nonsense. The whispering woman was now in her ear. She saw nothing, but could smell the woman’s breath, could hear the words in a language she didn’t recognise.

“I don’t know how you got here, Miss Birkin, and I’m sorry that this had to happen to you, but it’s our job to iron you out. For the safety of our own world, we have to send you back.”

Hannah heard a cranking noise. The whispering woman’s mouth was against her ear. She found herself dropped downwards into the icy cold water. Still strapped to the chair she was unable to wriggle herself free. She looked upwards towards the light and saw the square hole which she fell through. Standing above the open hole, looking down at her, she could make out the milky white eyes of the old lady who’d been whispering to her.

Her chest throbbed and her body was screaming at her to open her mouth and take a breath. She did her best to stop it, but it became too much. As the water filled her lungs she saw flashes of light and fire and felt her body lifted. She saw vast seas of infinite beauty filled with wonders, lights in the dark sky flying past her, and for the last couple of seconds of her life she realised she was back in her bed lying next to the person she’d almost forgotten about — Simon.
 

Have You Seen My Wife?

Markus Schmiebler

Hello there.
 

I hope you can help me.

Perhaps you’re seeing this as a post on Facebook. Or in one of the many newspapers I’ve reached out to. Or one of the hundreds of websites that I’ve signed up to. Or maybe even plastered to a lamp post or telephone pole or maybe even on the side of a shop window.

The point is, I’m desperate.

A couple of weeks ago my wife suddenly woke up and forgot everything — her name, her husband, her address, and even her planet. It was strange, I admit.
 

Having your wife forget who you are is quite distressing. At the young age of twenty-four I don’t think it would be anything Alzheimer’s related. Hopefully not.
 

Plus, the effects were sudden and she was quite panicked to be “stuck on planet Earth”, as she said.
 

I did my best to calm her down and make her tea and try to get her to remember who she was, but it only made things worse. Eventually as she calmed down enough to fall asleep I left her to it, but then next morning she was gone.

No note, no goodbye, nothing.

As you can probably tell I am a heartbroken husband looking for his lost love. She was hands down the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

She is 5 feet 4 inches tall, hair dyed pink and blue, shorn at the sides, blue eyes, and several piercings and tattoos. She currently doesn’t answer to any name other than Yayatoo (Yah-Yah-Too). This isn’t her name — her real name is Louise, but when she woke this is the name she kept referring to herself as.

If you find her please be kind, offer her some tea, explain that Earth isn’t all that bad and that it’s perfectly natural for the seasons to change so dramatically (she didn’t like that it was spring). You can contact me through a new website I’ve set up: www.findmylouise.co.uk.

Hopefully hear from you soon,

Regards,

Markus Schmiebler
 

The Outer Reaches

THERE’S A PLACE FAR OUT into space where the stars don’t look like stars anymore. The physics bend. Consciousness melts. Here lies the border and just a little further is where everything starts to repeat itself. Like the imperfect stitching between the squares of a patchwork quilt, it’s in the spaces between the fabric where things start to look a bit wrong.

Out there it’s like the deepest parts of the oceans — full of the amazing undiscovered, the unforeseen terrors and the things that have found a way to flourish where life has no right to exist.

In the Outer Reaches, you’ll find eggs the size of moons. Fish swimming through the vacuum. Lights that can think and talk. Existence is upturned. Realities are in constant flux.

And in one particular part of the Outer Reaches, floating out in the nothingness is a hole in the space-time continuum. A single tear in the fabric of existence. Like most things, the portal started small. It was unnoticeably small. And like the smallest drop of water in a desert, it attracted life — Outer Reaches kind of life — a parasite, holding onto the portal, waiting for something to come through it.

And something
did
come through the portal — skin, bone, blood — human flesh from a small blue planet light years away, teleported through the portal in less than a second. The flesh didn’t freeze. It didn’t burn. Chunks of hair and skull and sinew and muscle. All pre-chewed. Pre-digested. Like the portal itself was mother bird feeding its young. The flesh of a Thinker, all prepared for the parasite. And the more that was fed through the portal to the parasite, the bigger it grew. The hungrier it became.
 

As the remains floated, suspended in zero gravity, the fat-fingered hand of the parasite reached forward, grabbed as much of the stuff as it could, and pulled it towards its mouth. It gorged on the substance, but it was never full, never satisfied.

Once finished with its gift, it sent out a new call to its host.

There’s another one
, it said — not with words, but with thoughts.
I want another one.

Luna Gajos

The first thing Luna did when she unlocked the restaurant — the first thing she did every morning, without fail — was look out into King’s Cross train station, buzzing with early morning London life, and take a deep breath. In fact, she took two. In through the nose, and out through the mouth. Bracing herself. Another day. Holy shit.

She used to smoke. Not anymore. Apparently that’s bad for you. And it makes your breath stink. She still kept a pack in her pocket though, and a lighter. Just in case.

It was still amazing to her how she’d ended up in
that
particular part of the world, in that particular job, in that current situation. And it amazed her each and every day. It didn’t amaze her in the way a shooting star might do, or in the way NASA did, or even in how a car motor worked. It was amazing to her in a how-the-fuck-did-I-let-this-happen sort of way.
 

She was pretty. She’d always been pretty. That’s what everyone in Komorów in Poland had told her. All twenty of them had said so. Growing up she’d been given the impression that life would be something amazing, something special. That she’d travel the world, be a celebrity, marry a film star, live in a mansion, eat all the McDonalds she could ever dream of. But at the age of twenty, with big hopes and bigger expectations, she’d made her way to England and through several jobs that didn’t make sense to her. Competing against people who actually spoke the language, she’d found herself stuck, over and over, working harder and longer. Like an Orwellian horse. Like a flower constantly clipped before given the chance to grow and spread itself and become as glorious as it goddamn well was supposed to be.
 

But hey … she’d got somewhere at least. She was the manager of a café-restaurant inside King’s Cross Station. They filmed
Harry
Potter
there. That was kinda like marrying a film star, right?
 

The restaurant specialised in baked goods and hot beverages. She’d worked nose to the grindstone to get the job. She’d picked up the language over the years and was fluent. She had steady pay and a place of her own — as small as that was. At least she didn’t have to share. And she had a car. A crappy little Ford Fiesta that cried when you started her up.

But the years had not been kind to Luna. No one had called her pretty in a long time. Her eyes had lost their brilliance. Her skin had wrinkled and sagged. And her hair was copper red with the odd grey.
 

She saw thousands of commuters, tourists, and others like herself go in and out of that station every single day. And she saw a few of those travellers that looked like the person she thought she’d become. Pretty little bastards with their shiny rings and fresh tits, in the arms of men who looked like they’d climbed right off the front cover of a magazine.

That’s
what was amazing to her. She’d been the fool with the open mouth, saying “Yes, that
is
my card” and the universe, being a crafty illusionist, had duped her with misdirection and tricks. She’d been beguiled by the riches and swindled by the promises. Holy shit.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

She tied her dark copper curls up into a tight bun above her head, rubbed away the leftover makeup that had caked up in the corners of her eyes, and took another deep breath. Before placing a tray loaded with frozen Steak Bakes into the oven.

Carol Francis

A dog barked.

Carol’s eyes shot open and, for a second, she saw teeth.
 

Her heart pounded against the inside of her rib cage. Her breath was heavy and her chest was tight. In the dark she could just about make out the outline of the bedroom around her — the end of the bed, her husband to her side, the curvature of his nose, the bristles of his moustache. She pulled the covers down and sat up, placing her feet against the cold wood floor. Her eyes adjusted and she saw the starlight creeping in through the gaps in the curtains.