The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (27 page)

There was silence. Everyone drank their tea. Moomamu grabbed a biscuit. Indie whined and rolled onto her back, exposing her pink belly, her tail still wagging.

“Aww,” the Eastern European woman said, reaching over and scratching her belly. “Cute little doggy.”

“So what does all this matter to me?” Moomamu said. “When do I get to go home?” He looked at Carol.

“I … don’t …” Carol began to say when Gary interrupted.

“Bearded Thinker is an inconsistency. If someone like him goes into hole it will seal up. It will stop parasite from entering Earth. Then Thinker will be sent home.” Gary licked his good paw.

The bearded man sat back in the chair. Indie rolled onto her feet and sat by Carol, her head resting on her knee. Carol looked at Gary, but he didn’t look over. She understood the play; she didn’t need to hear the rest. This was almost good news. She looked up at the mirror above the fireplace, and below it she saw a photo of herself and the family.

“No,” he said, his face like an angry toddler’s. “I don’t want to. I’m tired of getting caught up in this human drama. I don’t care if this parasite lives and eats a few humans, what bad could it really do?”

“It could break its way through the portal, devour everything — humans, cats, fucking lightbulb-headed fish. It will eat everything until there’s nothing left, and when it’s done it will lay its eggs within the surface of the planet. The fucking planet will hatch, unleashing a whole swarm into space to float around in stasis until they happen upon new holes, where the process will repeat itself,” Carol said.

“So?” He shook his head. “Life dies all the time. Whole planets of life. Who’s to say it’s not crueller to deny the parasite its meal and its spawn? Who determines what life is more deserving than the other? I’ve seen whole colonies of lifeforms die in the blink of a millennium, and it will continue to happen over and over and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
 

“What about me?” the Eastern European woman said. “I will die. I thought we were friends.”

“Woah,” he chuckled. “Friends? I let you tell me your name, I think we’re even.”

“What?” she said, her voice stern, her strong Baltic accent shining through. “I saved the talking cat’s life. I drove you to the vet. I drove you all the way to Nottingham. Not half way. All the way. And now I find out I will likely die if you don’t get in a hole? And all I get is the honour of you knowing my name?”

“What more do you want?” he said. “What more can the humans want? You were given the gift of life. Enjoy it while you have it and that will be that. You think all lifeforms get the chance to evolve past their tribal skin clothes and flesh on sticks on fire? You think you all get to experience the pleasure of cappuccino? You drove us here in a tiny moving machine. I was impressed by how it moved along on round objects. Very clever. I’d say your species has had a good run at it all and now it’s time for another species to try.”

“Look at me,” the woman said, now standing up. She pointed to her face. “If my life isn’t worth anything, then kill me.”

“What?” he said.

“Kill me,” she said. “If it doesn’t mean anything to you then kill me.”

“I’m not going to …” he scoffed. “I’m not going to kill you.”

“Well, it sounds to me like you pretty much are.” She turned to Carol, who could now see her eyes were watering. “Excuse me, may I please use your bathroom?”

“Sure dear, it’s at the top of the stairs,” Carol said.

The woman left the room, wiping her eyes as she went. They listened as she stomped her way up the stairs.

“You agree, right?” the bearded man said to them, blushing like a slapped arse-cheek.
 

“It doesn’t matter,” Gary said. “If Thinker wants to go home, he has to save them anyway. Thinker must go into hole.”

Silence. Nothing, but the sound of someone running the tap upstairs and Indie’s back paw scratching the rough of her neck.

“Well, I’ll make you some sandwiches to take with you,” Carol said as she climbed to her feet and walked back through to the kitchen. Indie jumped up and trailed behind.
 

Grant Darlington-Whit

Grant adjusted the bundle of books in his hands and closed the library door. The corridor was quiet. The usual noise and atmosphere of the house was missing. It was as though while stepping out of the library, he’d accidentally walked into a vacuum. He walked onwards — every step echoing through the hallway. He walked past a picture of his father in his hunting gear: his red coat, a black cane topped with brass. His butler to his side, holding a handful of dead foxes by the tail out in front of him, displaying the corpses as best he could. The butler’s face stern and always gentlemanly. Out of anyone in this family, he was the one who always held his manners. Kept his dignity, no matter what. Even during the experiments.
 

Grant remembered the days when the butler would serve him scones and tea in the mornings. He’d bow and place the tray on the table and say “Good morning young sir”. Grant shook his head — such a shame … such a shame.

He doffed his cap and ran his thumb and forefinger over his top lip, parting the moustache hair above his mouth.

“Good morning to you too, Richard,” he said before walking on, past more pictures of ghosts of The Family. People who died on the case. There was a lot of them. There was a time when Grant and his cousins would work the cases assigned to him by his father and their uncles, but the recent years hadn’t been kind to The Family. They were losing members.

He walked past a photograph of Bexley and Rosie, stony-faced and not a smile to be seen. They were dressed in fine dinner jackets, ready for a birthday celebration of some sort. It was from a while back, before Bexley’s face had filled out. Before Rosie’s beauty had shone through. The old … ugly duckling phase, as it were.
 

Grant walked on and opened the door on the left, a painted white wooden door. It led to another of the extraneous rooms of The Family House. The walls lined with ornaments and gifts and paintings and items from old cases. Mementos. Trinkets. He walked in, placed the books on the bureau and saw the thing he was looking for — a blue clay pot, with gold and silver trim, paintings and decorations in white detailing poems of love in old Gaelic. There was a time when Grant knew what the poem said, but that was a long time ago.
 

Next to the urn he saw an amethyst crystal the size of his head, shaped into a perfect sphere. And next to that he could see an elephant sculpted from ivory — the detail of the thing was so exquisite it would make a softer man cry. He wondered what he should put on eBay next.
 

There was a time when patrons would fund The Family business, but they’d since had to diversify and go into ecommerce. Grant had heard Rosie mention that London was now the most expensive city in which to live in the world. Whether or not that was true he had no idea, but when he was asked to pay eight pounds in a pub for a pint of ale, it certainly felt like it.

He walked over and ran his finger across the alabaster tusk, and then over the smooth finish of the crystal, feeling a zap of some unseen magic in both.
 

Of course, he didn’t know how to use eBay. They’d been giving the queer man Georgie across the street a small commission for each item he sold. Georgie worked in one of the many Soho bars and lived above a cheese and wine shop. He was pleasant. Trustworthy. Highly camp.

He looked at the urn again and took a deep breath.

“I do miss you, dear,” he said. “And I know the kids do too. They might not talk about it much anymore, but I know that they do.”

He picked up the ivory elephant and walked back along the walls lined with treasure and tat and picked up his books again: one about Egyptian gods, another about the super psychics of China, and a book about the work of the Indigo Parade Collective and their search for the Indigo Children. He struggled to twist the door knob, but once open, he hooked his foot in the door and swung it open. He took a step through and felt that the temperature in the place had dropped significantly. He could see his breath. He felt it on his skin.

He carefully stepped forward when he saw a man in the corridor, looking at him. A figure shrouded in leather with a wiry beard spilling out onto his chest. The eyes were bloodshot and old and the skin dried into scales. The man wasn't alive, not by Grant's standards. Sure, he was standing upright and looking at Grant with reddened pupils, but this man's flesh was held together by little more than will and sticky-tape. He looked like shit. Hell, he made the pale woman look like a babe.
 

“Who the devil are you?” he said. “How did you get in here?”
 

He thought about the old revolver back in the room, next to a small knife. He could run back in and grab it, or he could use the ivory elephant to bludgeon the intruder.

“Mr Darlington-Whit.” The man barely whispered, but the words echoed throughout the hallway. “I have travelled across time and space to find you.”

“Right,” Grant said, readjusting his grip on the ivory elephant. “And who the devil do you think you are?”

“Me?” the man said, a wry smile creasing his leather. “I’m here to help you save your child.” The man lifted his hand, took a step forward and extended his finger towards Grant’s face.

Moomamu The Thinker

Moomamu found himself alone. Luna and Carol were in a room with water points and eating sticks and little fires on tables that cooked food.

The cat was sleeping. His broken body was trying to pull itself together. There were tiny cells running riot around inside his little body right now. Some of which were gathering around his missing limb, creating new skin, rebuilding, rearranging. His frail body must be weak, Moomamu thought.
 

He’d wandered into an open part of the home where stairs led him to more doors. Wooden rails ran down the side of the stairs and there were pictures of the old Thinker and her human family — dogs, larvae, a man. Perhaps the man was Carol’s life partner? He was a strange-looking creature. He reminded Moomamu of the goblin-people of the planet Avitius. Grubby little eyes. Hunched over. Small arms. Moomamu remembered the first time he saw a tribe of them create fire. That was a happy day … for them.
 

He looked at the pictures of her spawn — all smiles and celebrations. The thing that surprised Moomamu, though, was that in some of the pictures the dog was different. Was the one downstairs, with the odd coloured eyes, not her permanent master? He perused the pictures and saw the different dogs that Carol had accompanied throughout the years. The strange thing was it looked like she was the master, and not the other way around.
 

“Huh,” he said, stroking his beard.

In a lot of the older pictures he could see pictures of bigger dogs, with more fur, in different shades of black and brown, and then there were other pictures of the dog they had now. Pictures of Carol running them through various obstacle courses and training regimens.
 

There were older pictures of the older dogs. He could see how quickly the dogs aged. He saw the slight discolouration of the eyes. The grey hairs in their fur. All of these dogs grew old and they probably died. And then …

At the top of the stairs he saw the current dog, looking at him, its tail wagging side to side, its head slanting over. Moomamu wondered how long this one would live for.

Luna Gajos

Luna grabbed a slice of wholemeal bread, expertly spread a layer of butter with one quick swipe of the knife, added the cheese, a couple of slices of tomato, and topped it off with another slice of bread. She grabbed a plastic bag, placed the sandwich inside and tied it off. She then added it to a pile of three other sandwiches. She licked her finger.

“So why doesn’t he talk like you?” she asked.

“Who, the Thinker?” Carol said as she poured the boiling water from the kettle into the Thermos. “Well, he should start to do a little more as time goes on. You see, there are neurons and pathways and whatnot in that human brain of his, etched in there for over however many years his vessel has been talking and thinking. He will soon pick up the words as he goes along. He probably should be talking more like a human by now anyway, but … it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Why’s that?” Luna wiped her damp fingers against her jeans pocket. She rested her hand on the packet of Marlboro’s hiding inside.

“No reason, dear,” Carol said as she screwed the lid shut. “It’s just … Moomamu won’t ever be happy here until he goes home.”

“And he does that by closing the portal before the parasite comes through?”

“That’s the bleeder! He has to go into the portal, closing it, at which point he will be sent home.”

Luna looked at Carol as she said those last few words. It reminded her of the time she last spoke to her mother in Poland. A lot of words, mostly bullshit and little truth. She ran her finger against the cigarette packet again.
 

Gary

Gary opened his eyes. He hadn’t realised the others had left the room. He yawned. The drugs were still heavy within him. He needed to wake up. Soon it would be time for battle. The white clay mixture still covered his injury. He’d lost a good weapon, but he still had the one paw left, and it didn’t matter. Sacrifices had to be made. There was more than his paw at stake.

Aidan Black

Aidan drove past the detritus and the crap littering the town of Alvaston. He passed the pub he’d frequented as a kid, stealing the leftovers, drinking from glasses with the finger and lip smudges of strangers. He drove past the shop he stole from and the bookies he’d lost his birthday money in on a horse called Excelsior. He drove past the bank where his mum went with him to start a savings account — money long since gone. He drove past his childhood without batting an eyelid. None of it mattered anymore. The engine of the van screamed and howled as he passed all of it. His youth was nothing but peripheral nonsense.
 

He was still laughing to himself every now and again. The pressure in his head still growing, and the inky black liquid dripping down from his head onto his shirt collar, staining it. He didn’t care. Something in his brain had become dislodged. He felt unclogged. Like a piece of food finally loosened from between your teeth — something that you never knew was there but feel so much better without.