The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (15 page)

She reached over and found a dangling piece of cord. She pulled on it and the small bedside lamp clicked into life. She found her slippers at the side of the bed and slotted her feet into them. She then stood, put on her dressing gown, turned the lamp off, and quietly walked out of the bedroom, leaving Jim to his subtle grunting and snoring in the dark.
 

As she walked downstairs a cold draft came in from the patio door. She tightened her dressing gown belt and walked through the kitchen, and saw that the door was open.
 

“Indie,” she whispered. “Indie?”

She couldn’t see her dog anywhere. The dog bed was empty on the floor next to the half-eaten chewy bit of dried skin she’d given to occupy Indie through the night.
 

She walked to the open door and looked out down the long garden. She squinted her eyes, trying to focus in the darkness.

“Indie,” she said again, this time louder. Jim’ll sleep through it. “C’mon girl.”

She braced herself and stepped out onto the concrete slabs of the patio. The trees and the bushes and the animals of the night were whistling a song just for her. Her skin felt ice cold and she stepped onto the grass.
 

She called for Indie a few more times before seeing the movement at the bottom of the garden. The starlight reflecting in the two big eyes of her companion. Indie ran up to her and placed her cold nose in Carol’s palm and brushed her body against her side.
 

“You little bleeder,” she said as she saw the pile of dirt that Indie had dug up. A sizeable hole in the grass lay next to it. “What the fuck have you been doing?”
 

She grabbed Indie by the collar and resolved to sort it in the morning whilst Jim was at golf. As she shame-walked her dog, she felt her head go light and her skin go warm. Her brain rolled backwards in her skull, her eyes followed. Her balance left her and she fell onto her back. The cold grass tickled her neck above the collar of her dressing gown.

Her mind drifted somewhere else, above her own body. She saw Indie licking her head but she didn’t feel anything. She was too far away now, all the way out into space, and all she saw were teeth … blood and teeth.

Moomamu The Thinker

Moomamu lifted his hand as Richard smashed his wooden stick down onto it. He thought his human hand might offer some protection, but as the stick connected it sent spasms of pain through his hand, down his arm and up and out through his body, where it eventually popped out of his mouth as a scream — a piercing wail as high-pitched as any human Moomamu had heard, regardless of age or gender. It was shrill and higher-pitched than the squealing of the mechanical wheels of the snake-thing. It was high enough to even halt Richard as he was about to strike again.

“Was that you?” Richard asked, a smile curling the edges of his mouth. “Good God … it sounded like a little girl.”

“It wasn’t me,” Moomamu said — the palm of his hand bright red. “It was the snake-thing.”

“You can’t fool me, good sir,” Richard said as he lifted his stick almost to the light on the ceiling. “It was definitely you.” He slammed the stick down onto Moomamu’s shoulder, and then below his eye. Each strike made Moomamu cry. He’d never felt anything like it before. Out of everything he’d experienced as a human, this was without a doubt the worst.

With instincts he never knew he had, his right hand clenched into its fighting configuration and swung violently in Richard’s direction. The ends of his knuckles connected with something soft. Something mushy. Something vulnerable. He opened his eyes, just enough to see a tear running down Richard’s cheek. Without hesitation, Moomamu clenched his hand and launched it at Richard again. It connected with the same soft fleshy part of Richard as before. This time, with his eyes open, he realised he’d been attacking Richard’s reproductive underparts. Both of them. One after the other. Like it had been some sort of fighting tactic. It wasn’t his intention, but it was effective. Richard howled like a kicked dog and took a few steps backwards. Leaning on his stick, he bent over to catch his breath. His hat fell to the floor, revealing his thick black curls. Moomamu saw the genuine pain Richard was in — huffing and spitting up saliva, trying to catch his breath. He felt proud and somewhat even.

“I wasn’t lying,” Moomamu said, his eyeball spasming. “I have no idea how I got here.”
 

Moomamu heard a soft wheeze escaping Richard like he’d punctured an internal air pillow or something.
 

“I will hurt you,” Richard said. “I will hurt you again and again until you show me the way out.” Richard bent down and picked up his hat. He brushed it against a handrail and placed it back on his head. “Even if I have to open your head, pull out your insides, and see for myself, good sir, I will do just that.”

Moomamu squinted. He clenched his hands. He adjusted his feet for optimal fighting.

Richard reached into his jacket and pulled out a short, sharp object. It looked like a metal eating stick. But sharper, angrier. Like it could cut human flesh with ease. (Let’s be honest, what can’t?)

Moomamu took a step back. And then another. He thought about a third.

“Listen, aggressive lonely human. I am not here to die. I am going home. I don’t belong on a planet with bickering little lifeforms, caught in their dramas. I am a Thinker. And I don’t have time for …”

Richard leapt forward, giant eating stick first, with a burst of energy that came from nowhere. The snake-thing rattled and Moomamu squealed like a gas leak and jumped a few feet backwards. His back hit the door at the end of the carriage. He was stuck.

Realising this, Richard slowed down. He walked towards Moomamu. His wooden beating stick in one hand, metal eating stick in the other. Everything about Richard was battle-ready. His smile, his eyes, his hands. Even his ears seemed to prickle with quiet rage.
 

Moomamu tried to push his back against the door, but it didn’t budge. The thought of dying made him sad. The thought of him dying as a human made him feel even worse. Richard jumped forward with the metal eating stick pointing forwards.

“I’d rather be on Obonda than here,” Moomamu whispered.

Richard jumped. The lights flickered. Cold metal against his skin. The metal door. It opened and Moomamu tumbled backwards into the open black and there was nothing.

***

Moomamu opened his eyes and realised he could smell again. He looked to the ceiling and saw the inside of a dark pink dome and everything smelled of fruit. Not the kind of fruit you found on a planet in the human Solar System though. All around him he heard movements. Damp, slimy movements. Rhythmic slapping. Like the sound of squids slapping one another. Wet skin on skin. Sliding up and down.
 

The stone floor was cold against his back and he shivered. The stone floor felt smooth and firm like marble. The pink, domed ceiling curved all the way down to the floor in a perfect circle around him. And a warm draught of air blew through a single opening in the side of the dome.

He sat himself up. It was dark. The sun had gone down.

Light beamed in through the opening. Within the rays, he saw dust suspended in the air, floating upwards. He climbed to his feet and walked towards it, holding his swelling eye as he went. His human body felt lighter, like it could float upwards at any moment.

“You freed me?” a voice said from behind him. “Good sir, you’ve done it.”

Moomamu turned around to see Richard Okotolu in the darkness behind him and his hands automatically clenched.

“No, you don’t have to worry, good sir. You’ve jolly well done it. You’ve gotten us out of that forsaken pocket dimension.” Moomamu eased when he saw Richard’s eating stick on the floor by his feet. Richard clapped his hands together again and again and jumped and clicked his heels together. “Just where in the devil are we now? Is this what the future looks like?”

Richard walked to the walls and ran his finger over them with the curiosity of human spawn.

“I don’t think you should touch anything,” Moomamu said.

“Nonsense. I’ve not touched anything other than the inside of that train for so long. And I’ve not smelled anything either.” He started to suck air through his nose. Over and over. So loud you’d think his nose might collapse. “Wherever we are it smells fantastic. Rich and deep like a fine wine. A wonderful bouquet, if I do say so myself. Listen, you have to tell me where we are, good sir.”

Moomamu thought about it. He thought about the noise. The smell. He walked to the opening, squinting as he looked through it, and saw a giant mess of organisms in front of him. The opening led to an outside with three suns in the sky, and hundreds of domes of different sizes dotted across the horizon.

“Hmmm,” Moomamu said, as he scratched his beard. Moomamu counted hundreds of arms, fewer legs, a fair load of eyeballs attached to eyestalks, and there were too many penises to count. There were a hundred or so Babosians performing one of their ritualistic mass orgies that went on for days. Moomamu scratched his beard some more. He knew exactly where they were and he felt his human stomach churn. He had the feeling that he’d jumped out of a big metal cooking pot and into a different, bigger pot. But this second pot was full of penises.

Bexley Darlington-Whit

Bexley put the straw to his lips and sipped from the cup. The thick green liquid flowed upwards through the see-through plastic straw and into his mouth. He chewed some of the sweet gristle. It was a Green Dream. A blend of apples, avocado, celery, lemon and romaine lettuce. It was packed with vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B1 and vitamin B2, folic acid, manganese and chromium. He’d bought it from the juicing bar around the corner from the house. A guy named Sergio served him. A silky-smooth caramel-skinned man from Spain.

His hands were still sore, wrapped in white bandages. He hadn’t looked beneath the bandages yet. He didn’t need to. He wasn’t interested in how his hands looked. They were either healing or they weren’t. And he wasn’t an expert on the medicinal practices. Aunt Audrey was, however. If it wasn’t healing, or if it started to go septic, then she would help him.
 

It wasn’t his job to heal, it was his job to save the universe.

He tightened his tweed jacket and walked onto Compton Street and past The Admiral Duncan pub. The pub itself was well-kept and full of daytime drinkers. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t have guessed that only a couple of decades earlier, the place had been a scene of terror and confusion. Bexley was a child when he’d witnessed it. The bang was so loud he sometimes thought he could still hear it today. An explosion of smoke, debris and broken glass followed.

David Copeland was arrested for the bombing along with two others. Whilst in court he stated that he was a Nazi. He’d bombed the pub in London’s ‘Gay’ capital because of his own beliefs on life and death. He deemed that the people who went into that place deserved to die.
 

Bexley remembered the crying and the blood. He also remembered the people from the shops, the cafés, the pubs, and even the tourists, people who were gay, straight, black, Asian, all coming together to help the injured. They brought blankets and water and provided whatever aid they could.
 

Bexley wiped his eyes and walked onwards. The Family House was around the corner, tucked away like it didn’t want to be seen. Like it wasn’t even part of this universe. It was simply observing. Offering a helping hand where needed.

When Bexley went inside he found his father sitting in the library surrounded by piles of books covered in leather and thick enough to beat a man to death with. The tomes towered up with crusty pages sticking out and titles like
The Age Before Man, Stories Of Thoth
, and
The Works Of Copernicus
. An old telescope made of brass — the Family insignia engraved into the side of it — rested on the far wall, looking back on itself, towards Grant who was sitting in his reading chair. More leather on it than the books and studded with silver.

Bexley smelled lingering pipe smoke lining the walls, climbing upwards, staining the books and the walls and his father.

“Bexley,” Grant said, looking up from his stained, yellowed pages. “Your hands still giving you grief?”

“Yes sir,” he said. “But they’ll heal. I’ve no doubt about that.”

Grant looked at Bexley’s wrapped up hands.
 

“Yes, very good. Now, why don’t you take a seat for a second? I’d very much like to catch up on a few things.”

Bexley walked to the other side of the room and sat on another of the Winchester chairs. A variety of stuffed animals were next to his head, perched on the bookshelf. He looked at a weasel with fake eyes. It looked like it was trying to breathe.

“Rosie out still?” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Gym?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, good,” he said, leaning closer to Bexley. “And you? Have you been training?”

“The usual routines mixed in with some cardio work.”

His father nodded.
 

“Okay. You know, I hear that the gym is a fine lekking point. A good place to meet women and the like.”

“I’ve heard the same,” Bexley said, looking to his hands.

“And? Nothing suitable for my son?”

“No …” Bexley shook his head.
 

His father’s pot belly seemed more distended than ever. He’d been getting fatter every year. He’d never tell him that. However, he might tell Rosie to tell him.

A moment or so passed before Grant sat back in his chair and threw the book to his feet. Bexley saw it was called
The Tribes Of Elsewhere.
 

“You know that the Family will need to continue on after I die or … even after you die. It may seem like forever away now, but let me tell you it soon comes around.”

“Where is Miss Birkin?” Bexley said. The words were a shock to Grant. He scoffed.
 

“Where do you think?” he said. “She’s back where she belongs.”

“We sent her?”