The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (30 page)

She thumbed the pack of cigarettes in her pocket again.
 

“What do we do?” she said.

“Gary isn’t sure anymore. Unless the woman has a gun of some kind? Shotgun? Bazooka?” He looked up to her, hopeful.

“People don’t have weapons like that,” she said. She looked at the beast’s head — fur so black it was almost invisible. Eyes glowing deep indigo. Just above the beast’s head there was a hole in the ceiling. Through it she saw the night sky, the rain spilling through and landing on the beast's head.
 

“Come on,” she said and picked Gary up.
 

She quietly walked to the Pig-House door, yanked it open, and ran out into the rain, down the gravel path, back towards the car park and the smoking remains of the cabin. The rain soaked them through all over again. She slipped over a rock and stood in a puddle near the parked-up Transit van, but carried on to the burnt remains. It was still there — the red canister. She put Gary down for a second, unscrewed the black top, and put her nose to the nozzle. She winced at the smell as it filled her nostrils. Definitely petrol.

“I have an idea,” she shouted.

“Okay,” Gary said. He was soaked through. He looked defeated. Like a cat caught in the rain … literally.

Something moved behind them. They both turned to see the door of the Transit van slide open.

Moomamu The Thinker

Moomamu sat up. His human body began shaking to generate warmth, just like it did on that first night when the human called Marta had saved him with the key to the door. He could just make out her face in the dark. Her mouth was swollen and bloody. Her eyes were closed. That breath of hers that had lingered on his mind since she’d helped him tie the fabric around his neck was no more. Moomamu looked down at what was now nothing more than a cold lump of muscle and blood and bone. That lifeforce that had filled her up had been drained. She was just an empty vessel now. An empty sack of meat.

Moomamu had seen uncountable amounts of life come and go from afar, but never like this. He ran his human hand over her hair. Her skin was cold. He pressed his finger against her eyelid and pulled it open. Her eye — the magic and vibrancy that was once evident had vanished. To Moomamu, life had never been particularly special …but death, he thought, was something else.
 

The broken human. He was hunting Moomamu down. He must have gone to the flat. He must have done this. Moomamu felt something building up within him that he’d not felt as a human before, or even as a Thinker. His fists clenched into the same little balls he’d used against Richard Okotolu. He felt the need to swing them. He began to shake, not with cold, but with anger, rage, violence.

Moomamu sat back and leaned up against a cold metal wall of some sort when he heard a noise. A splash. A shouting. Luna, Gary. He heard their voices. He felt across the wall behind him, frantically searching in the dark for something. He found it. A handle. He yanked it open and the door slid open.

Rain poured in, hitting him on the face, splashing him. He saw Luna and the cat to his right. Luna was holding some sort of red box. They looked at him. Luna’s face reminded him of the first time she’d heard a cat talk — mouth agape, eyes open.

He screamed. Not the puny high-pitched wail he’d let out in the pocket dimension. A guttural growl erupted from his mouth that shocked even him. He looked up to the structure he’d just teleported from, got up, and sprinted towards it, screaming at the top of his lungs as he ran.

His legs moved quicker than they’d moved before. His human heart was pounding away. His human blood pumping oxygen around his body. He kicked the door open and ran inside and saw the beast, still chewing away. When it saw him, its ears perked up. It saw something in Moomamu. Something tasty. It continued to chew on its food. It didn’t matter. Moomamu saw the broken human, pointed at him and screamed “You!”

From his broken coma-like state, the human turned to look at Moomamu. He looked more broken than before. His eyes were black. His skin was white. His hair was no longer in the perfect wave.
 

“The target,” the broken human said. “Rip his tongue out. Skin him alive. Burn him. Kill him. I must succeed.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Moomamu shouted as they both ran towards each other. Moomamu’s hands clenched into fighting configuration and he leapt forward. His right fist connected with the broken human’s jaw. His left followed, connecting with the broken human’s ribs. The broken human reached forward anyway as if the pain meant nothing and wrapped his hands around Moomamu’s neck, just like at the King’s Cross Station. His strength was incredible for his size. The broken human pushed back and forced Moomamu onto the ground. He was now on top of Moomamu, crushing his air pipes with all of his weight. Moomamu wondered if this was how he’d killed Marta, and felt the familiar swelling of anger. He swung his fists again and again at the broken human’s face. He felt several of the human’s face-bones break, but he kept punching anyway. He must’ve hit something important because the grip around his neck loosened and he pushed upwards, forcing the broken human onto his back. Moomamu climbed on top of him and looked down at the stupid human.

“You killed her,” he said as he continued his onslaught of punching. “You killed her!”
 

His eyes watered and streamed down his face and off his chin. He battered his fists repeatedly against the human’s face until the pain caught up with him. His knuckles were screaming at him. The human leaked blood and black and Moomamu felt tired, like he couldn’t catch his breath. The tears fell from his eyes more and he felt confused. The adrenaline in his blood was filtering out. He tried to calm his heart but it was beating so hard he thought it might explode. He wondered if this would be the death of him, but then he felt arms wrap around him. One of the humans embracing him, to thank him perhaps. The warm arms of a human being to say thank you for the vengeance.
 

But Moomamu soon realised they weren’t arms at all. They were the fingers of a giant hand. He was lifted into the air and turned around to meet the gaze of the beast. Its eyes were deep indigo and Moomamu saw his face in the moist reflection. The smell of old rotten animal poured out of the parasite’s skin and breath. No, his human heart wouldn’t be the death of him, he thought. But this parasite damn sure would be.

Luna Gajos

Moomamu burst out of the open van door, screaming and swinging his fists. He ran straight past Gary and Luna back towards the Pig-House. They both watched as he ran, slipping on the occasional rock, lifting his knees to his chest like he’d only just discovered how to run. They watched as a little rectangle of light appeared in the distance as Moomamu opened the Pig-House door. It flickered out as Moomamu disappeared into it.
 

“Hurry,” Gary said. “If stupid Thinker gets eaten then world is definitely doomed.”

“Why is it that Moomamu going through will close it?” Luna asked as she lifted the red canister of petrol and ran towards the van. Gary followed.

“Thinker is different to others. Thinker is unnatural,” Gary said through the rain.

“You mean, more unnatural than an alien possessing a human body?”

“This Thinker is built on inconsistencies. Not a normal Thinker. If Thinker goes through dead, it will do nothing. If he goes through alive, it will close hole.” Gary sheltered himself under the van from the rain. Luna put the canister down, pulled out a set of step ladders from the van, tucked them under her arm, and picked up the canister again with her other hand. Gary was waiting for her out of the elements. Some have it easy, she thought as she turned, accidentally banging the back of the ladders against the white van. The canister was heavy. She hobbled, even slower, towards the Pig-House.
 

“Cummoncummoncummonearlynearlynearlycummoncummon,” she repeated under her breath as she hauled the canister and the step ladders over the gravel path.

She slipped, banging her knee on a rock as a mouthful of petrol jumped out of the canister. She cried a little and then stood back up. Her arms ached. A gash appeared on her knee as blood trickled down in strings.

“Open the door,” Gary said, pawing at the Pig-House door. She kicked it open with her foot, letting him in, and then propped the ladders against the barn wall and made her way up. One hand on the ladders, one on the canister. Her arms were on fire. With every step her grip loosened. She was a slip away from dropping the canister and spilling the petrol. As she climbed another step she looked through a gap in the barn and could see Moomamu on top of the madman. She saw Gary creeping across the floor towards them, readying to pounce, and she could see the beast looking at Moomamu. She picked up the pace and hauled the canister onto the roof. She lay there for a second, catching her breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. She jumped to her feet. She heard thunder. Her feet clanged against the metal roof as she walked. She tried to step quietly but her foot slipped again, spilling more petrol. She reached the hole — a gap where the metal sheets of the roof didn’t quite meet. She looked down through it. The beast was now holding Moomamu, looking at him the same way her customers looked at their pasties.

Even from above the beast instilled a fear in Luna that she’d never felt before. Looking at it from any angle made her feel like she was caught in the Aleph — where all dimensions in reality come together to co-exist in a single moment — and in each and every dimension, other than the present one, the beast was tearing her apart, ripping her flesh from her soul. It reminded her of that rollercoaster she’d refused to go on because of the vertical drop and the loop-the-loop.

She lifted the canister and the petrol poured outwards and through the hole like a fine rope, occasionally spitting as the rope knotted. It mixed with the rainwater and the beast knew no different.
 

Once empty, she threw the canister aside and thumbed the square box in her pocket. She reached in, pulled it out. It was crushed and wet but it didn’t matter. A box of twenty cigarettes. Inside was a single cigarette, not smokable, broken, wet, but next to it, a lighter. She pulled it out. She tried to spin the lighter. Nothing. She tried again. She took a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. She spun it again.

Aidan Black

Aidan choked up a lungful of blood. He could hardly breathe. He was full of pain. It crawled through him. He tried to sit up, but as he moved something sharp, needle-like, stabbed in his side. A broken rib sticking somewhere it shouldn’t be. At least he could see. He spat a mouthful of blood outwards and placed his hands by his side, using them to push himself backwards, and up against a fence.
 

All around him was awash with noise that didn’t make sense. Screaming. Pigs squealing. He could even hear the beast’s stomach — gurgling, digesting.
 

He looked over by his feet towards the beast and felt the whispering voice. The familiar swelling in his head. To his side was a spherical hole — ripples in the air, growing bigger and bigger. Elsa’s body was all around him and on his arms. He looked at the hole. It felt like he could see through it, into space, like all that was separating him from what was behind was a fine unseen membrane: a film of space-time.

He saw the beast holding the target, but down by the beast’s feet was his brother, lying on his side.

“Sammy,” he tried to say but the sharp pain in his ribs stopped him. His brother didn’t reply. “Sammy,” he tried again, but as he opened his eyes a little more, he could see that his brother was dead. He was talking to the chewed-up remains — the head, top half, some spine.
 

He looked at the only constant in his life — his brother — motionless, empty, like one of his many victims. No, not
his
victims, they belonged to the voice. He’d been the weapon, not the intent. He looked at his protector and his carer now asleep forever. The one who’d looked after him when everyone else had left or hurt him. Sammy had always been the true success. He’d made the farm work, all on his own, whilst Aidan had been out listening and working for the voice — which now had a body. The thing that had reached into his brain with its invisible tendrils, invaded his mind, rearranged his thoughts and memories, now manifested itself into a physical being.
 

He felt the two missing fingers on his hand and reminded himself of the first time he’d heard the voice. The sacrifices that Sammy had made for him. He’d killed for Aidan, fed bodies to pigs, cleaned him, washed his suits. He wiped the blood from his face and looked over at the hoe lying on the floor by his brother’s hand.
 

He sat up, forcing himself through the pain, making it worse. Something snapped. He planted his hands on the fence behind him and pulled himself to his feet. He stood up straight, spat more blood and black onto the floor and went for the hoe.

Moomamu The Thinker

Moomamu looked in the eyes of the beast and thought about teleporting. He thought about disappearing. Of course, he didn’t know how to do it on purpose. It just kind of happened. As the beast opened its mouth wider than the whole of Moomamu’s body — its breath strong enough to melt hair — Moomamu saw a twinkle of light, a spark above the beast’s head. The beast squeezed tight on Moomamu, pushing the air out of him, and licked his face. Moomamu felt the crater like ridges in the beast’s wet tongue. Everything went dark as it placed him in its mouth. He pushed up against the roof but he felt the power of the beast’s jaws as they closed on him.

Before he knew it, the beast pulled back, confused, its eyes like a human spawn who’d just been kicked in the gut. The grip loosened. Gary was on the beast’s back, his one good claw buried deep in its skin. And down below, the broken man had woken up. He was stabbing the beast in its side with a giant eating stick.
 

“Now,” he heard Gary shout. “Do it now.”
 

He saw the spark again. It was Luna. He saw her through the hole in the roof. She dropped something. It fell through the hole. A little angry yellow and red thing that fell and bounced as it hit the head of the beast, igniting its scalp within seconds. It dropped Moomamu and fell backwards. He saw Gary leap down and land on his back, hard. They both backed away from the beast who quickly became engulfed in the flames, its fur the perfect kindling.