The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (28 page)

“You can do this,” Terry Rowlings, Motivational Speaker, said through the tinny speakers of the van, his voice vibrating and rattling. “I want you to put all of that nonsense aside, all of the times you’ve been made to feel weak and unsure by everything, by your peers, your family, whatever else you’ve been affected by. I want you to remember that you’re better than that.”

Aidan wiped his nose with the back of his hand and looked down at the inky smudge.

“You have the power within you to overcome all of that stuff, that nonsense, that crap.”

Aidan leaned over and whipped open the glovebox. Inside were some tissues. He grabbed one and blew his nose.

“You are amazing. You can do this. You are …?” The voice trailed off, expecting …

“A FUCKING WINNER!” Aidan finished the sentence.
 

He saw an old man walking his dog and thought about getting out, maybe seizing the dog lead and wrapping it around the old man’s neck. He thought about ripping the dog open. Maybe in front of the old man. Imagine his face. He laughed but was too far gone. The old man and his dog disappeared into the distance in his rear-view mirror — vanished into safety.
 

Aidan pressed his foot so hard on the pedal he felt like it might snap. The engine roared, chugged, and when he went to change gear, smoke poured out the sides of the bonnet. After years of trusty use, the van was dying. The shit box was on its way out.

“Fuck it,” Aidan said, chuckling at first but then …

He bit down on his bottom lip as a drone-like whine shrieked in his ears — a lower frequency. Its resonance vibrated in his ears, and on his jawbone, up by his cheeks. It wasn’t the engine. He didn’t know what it was. Something was wrong with his mind. His fucking brain. At that moment, as he pulled onto the gravel road, onto White Log Farm, he knew that he was broken — like the target had said. But not in the bad way. He was only broken in the sense that he stood out and embraced his salient brilliance. He laughed again and screamed as the howling inside his mind became louder. He yanked the handbrake up and the smoke poured from the engine. No … not the engine. The admin cabin. It was cinders and charcoal and scattered pockets of fire, the rain pouring down on it only creating more smoke.

Aidan looked out through the windscreen. In front of him, his history was up in flames, obliterated, destroyed. Outside the window there was a beat-up red car, almost as old as the van. His brother was next to it, no shoes on, dragging blackened remains from the cabin. His skin was filthy with wet ash and his top was full of holes from embers. The burnt corpses left trails of black leading from the cabin to the car.
 

Noticing his brother, Sammy dropped the body and waved.
 

Aidan opened the van door and stepped outside.

“Sammy?” he said. “What happened?” He looked at the head of the body — patches of long hair and red scalp. Eyes cooked like dirty eggs.

“They were snooping,” Sammy said. “They were asking about the pig. They were going to catch something.”

Aidan walked towards his brother, feeling the fine rain soaking through his shirt. He noticed Sammy’s jaw go slack at his appearance. For a second he forgot he wasn’t his usual self.

“I’m fine,” he said, looking down at not one, but two bodies. The smaller one was gone for sure, but the bigger one, you could still make out his face and the upper half of his body. He was still a person, sort of. There was no hair left on him and his skin was as charred as the worst of them, but he was still alive, barely.

“We need to feed them to the pigs,” Sammy said.

“Yes,” Aidan said, kicking the dead one with the tip of his shoe. “I’m not sure how they’ll like the cooked stuff.”

I’m coming.

Suddenly he felt the tinnitus growl again in his ears, biting at the insides of his head.

Come to me. You’re so close. You need to succeed.

His skin grew hot and his head went light. He took a step forward but tripped. Sammy caught him and lowered him to the floor, asking if he was okay.

“I’m merh ooffm ff.” Aidan tried to talk, but he couldn’t bring himself to use words. He took deep breaths, in and out, and after a while his skin grew cold again. He stood.
 

“What’s wrong with you?” Sammy said, looking at Aidan’s banged-up head. “What’s wrong, Aidan?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t know anything anymore. All he saw was black. All he heard was the cry. He stood back up and walked towards the Pig-House. Somewhere, a million miles behind him, he heard the echoes of his brother.

“Your eyes,” his brother screamed. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

Carol Francis

Carol placed the plastic boxes of sandwiches and the Thermos of coffee in the trunk of Luna’s car, next to some old shoes, a plastic bag of, presumably, Luna’s clothes, and a road safety emergency kit. She noticed how little dog fur there was.

“Very clean car,” she said to Luna as she closed the boot. “Just don’t get a dog and you’ll be fine. They’re pleasant and all that but they moult like you wouldn’t believe.”

Luna smiled and pointed to the back seat of the car. Moomamu was inside scratching his beard with one hand and the back of his head with the other.

Packing the car up like this reminded Carol of the hundreds of early mornings she’d done the same on her way to dog shows. The smell of the morning air on her sensitive nostrils and her freshly-brushed minty teeth. The chill running throughout of what might happen later that day.

The skies opened up as a fine rain dampened her hair. Luna waved and climbed into the driver’s seat of the car. She turned to her open front door to see Indie and Gary sitting next to each other. Gary in his cone, his face still sour, but maybe a little more alert. She walked over to him and looked down.
 

“You okay, little buddy?”

He didn’t say anything.
 

She looked at Gary and saw the soldier, the warrior, the martyr … she saw so many things in Gary, a cat, that she could never openly talk to anyone about. The soldier who’d carry out his mission to the bitter end. The warrior who would fight an opposing force twenty times his size. The martyr who’d lose a limb, his family, his companion, in order to galvanise others — whether he intended it that way or not, the effect was the same.

“You know, you should probably sit this one out. You’ve taken a mighty beating and you don’t particularly look well.”

“Gary will go and make sure mission is complete. He doesn’t trust Thinker to go through with it.”

“He’ll do it. All that’s on his mind right now is going through that portal and going home. He doesn’t have any idea what will
actually
happen.”

Gary’s tail twitched and he looked towards the car where Moomamu and Luna were waiting.

“I can tell you like him, but you have to see this through. It’s either him or the seven billion people on this planet,” Carol said. She noticed a spider crawling out of a hole between two bricks. She placed her hand out and let it crawl onto her. She looked at the little black thing with matchstick legs and then back to Gary. “You want me to take that cone off? I can’t see you getting into any fights, but if you do you’ll fare better without it.”

“Gary wants plastic neck cage gone.”
 

Carol flicked the spider from her hand, sending it flying into nothing. She bent down and unclipped the latch of the cone and pulled it away from him. She noticed Indie looking on, concerned — perhaps a reminder of the time she was spayed. Indie stood and teetered into the house, her tail between her legs.

Once she’d removed the cone she noticed Gary looking at her. She remembered the first time she’d looked into his golden-green eyes. She’d always felt sorry for Gary. He’d had a tough time of it … life, that was. She ran her hand over his head and down his back and his tail puffed out. She looked at the cast over his paw.

“Do you ever think you’ll settle and retire from all this?” she said. “If anyone deserves it then I think it must be you. I retired as soon as I woke up on this planet. And … it’s been nice. I’ve come to like this life, maybe even love it. Right now I’ve got to head off to some dog training thing. It’s the kind of non-life threatening thing that retired people do.”

“Gary has no choice. After all this is over with, if he survives, he will go on to the next mission. If he survives that one, then he will do the next. Gary will not stop.”

Carol stopped stroking his back and sighed.
 

“I know you won’t, Gary, or should I say …”

“Don’t,” Gary said.

Carol nodded to say okay, and then picked him up, and carried him through the rain, which was coming down thicker with every passing minute. She opened the passenger seat of the car and placed him on it.
 

“It won’t take you too long to get there,” Carol said to Luna. “So eat up, drink up, and …” She stopped and looked at Moomamu. “Go close that hole before it’s too late.”

“Yeah, yeah sure, will do,” Moomamu said. “Let’s go and get me off of this planet.”

Carol smiled and tapped the door of the car before shutting it.

She waited, standing in the rain, as the little car coughed into life, and reversed off her driveway, and down the road.
 

She was now sopping wet but it didn’t matter. She waved at the car until she saw the taillights disappear into the rain.

Aidan Black

You’re almost there. You’ve almost won. You’ve made it happen. You’re a success. You can do this.

Aidan took a step forward. And then another. All he could think about was lifting his ten-ton shoe from the ground, placing it in front of the other, and then repeating the process. Each step was heavier than the last. It felt like he was stepping through tar — each step planting him deeper, rooting him down, sinking him into the inky black. He couldn’t see much of anything. He could make out the fence to his side. Maybe even the calls of his brother, but they were too distant. His voice talking to him from some other dimension, echoing through, barely reaching his ears.
 

Can you believe it? After all of this hard work, we’re finally — no, you’re finally going to finish it.

Aidan tried to look at his hand as he took another step, but he didn’t even recognise it. Dirt and dried blood and black had gathered beneath his fingernails. It could’ve been a tentacle for all he knew. It wasn’t his. He looked upwards. There was only one thing in focus. He was surrounded by pitch black and a single spotlight lit up the door to the Pig-House. There was nowhere else to go but to that door.
 

You’re nearly at the finish line. You’re nearly there. You’ve nearly done it.

Aidan saw a familiar face floating, bodiless, in front of him. A familiar moustache. A familiar scowl.
 

I’m ready. Come to me. Just a little more and you can consider yourself affluent, prosperous, triumphant. Find me. Come to me.

Aidan walked through the apparition and continued towards the door. He felt a hand on his shoulder, pulling at him. It turned him physically and, for a second, he saw his brother … No, not just a brother, a carer, a man who’d looked after him even when his parents died. But it didn’t matter now. He threw the hand off him and continued onwards.
 

Come to me. Find me. You’ve won. You’re special. You’re my special one.

Once he was at the door, he pushed it open and walked inside. The invisible hand reached out and pulled him towards Elsa’s dead body. He stepped over the fence, and stood in front of the … it wasn’t Elsa anymore. It was just something in the way. He fell to his knees, reached forward, and plunged his hands into the soft tissue of Elsa’s stomach, pulling it open, peeling it backwards. The inky black poured out, covering him, and, for the first time, the whispering voice became clear. There was nothing in the way … nothing obstructing him. He sat back and smiled.

You’ve done it. You’ve won. You’re a success.

Just before the black took over him completely, he saw the hole. A sphere of nothing. Only small, about the size of a clenched fist. But within it he could make out the source of the voice. He finally knew where the whispering had been coming from. His body shook. Not in the way it would do if he was cold, but he felt his whole self shake as if being flung through time and space and back, like his existence was glitching.

“Aidan!” He heard Sammy’s voice from behind him. “Aidan what’s happening?”
 

But his eyes closed as he became fully submerged in the black. He couldn’t hear, smell or taste anything anymore. All he could do was smile, because, after all these years, he’d finally won.

Luna Gajos

“What in the hell?” Luna said as she pulled up.

“Gary senses that we may be stepping into trouble.”
 

Outside there was a pile of smoking rubble with nothing but a defiant window standing tall, a steaming Transit van, a musty old Saab, and rain now pounding down on her car. She thumbed the cigarette packet in her pocket and tried to remember that at least she wouldn’t need to pay for a car wash. For the first time since leaving the vet she felt unsafe. She felt like reversing the car back to where it had come from; reversing all the way back down the country to London.
 

“You’ll get mugged,” her parents had said when she told them about moving to England. “You’ll get mugged and you’ll lose your money and you won’t be able to pay your rent.”

“And then what?” she’d said.

“You’ll come crying back to Komorów asking us for a place to stay and food to eat.”

“Tall One can stay here if Tall One prefers,” Gary said, pulling her back to the present.

“Luna, I appreciate all you have done but the cat is right. I will soon be going home so we have no need for you anymore. You have my greatest and sincerest thanks for taking us this far,” Moomamu said, genuinely smiling for the first time.

“I can’t … just leave you here,” she said. “You’ll get lost or something … and … I’ll never get to meet an actual alien again.”