The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (7 page)

“The sad thing is,” he said to himself, “if there is one of you guys up there looking down at me, watching and thinking, you wouldn’t help me. You would rather watch and see how it played out than intervene. I know this because it’s what I would’ve done.”

Once the Earth had turned its back to the sun completely, Moomamu vibrated with coldness.

“Hello,” a voice said.

He looked up and saw the woman from the flat.
 

It was Marta.

Aidan Black

Wake up.

Aidan smelled fire and copper. He opened his eyes and found himself sitting against the radiator.

He felt dazed. His vision was dotted with light and his head felt so full, swollen even, that it was difficult to move it, like it had been screwed on to his neck too tight.

He’s here.

The familiar whisper of the voice returned.
 

He heard the long-haired man before he could see him. Scuttling around in the hallway, talking to himself.
 

Aidan forced his head down to look at his own body. For a second it felt like the body wasn’t his — a torso and limbs that he'd borrowed and would soon have to give back, skin and all.
 

The room was a notch or two darker. Rain now hammered the windows and his sanity.

Tear the skin from his body.

He nodded. He picked his hands up and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t tied up. He looked around him. He felt the back of his head and felt a crusty patch of blood where he’d been struck. In front of him was a length of pipe.
 

“This guy is so stupid,” he whispered to himself and chuckled. “Definitely not winner material.”
 

He noticed an ice-cream wrapper stuck to his pinstripe trousers and he cringed. These were his best trousers.
 

He picked up the pipe and walked towards the voice.

As he rounded the corner he saw the long-haired man crouched in the darkness, his hands on his head.
 

When he saw Aidan he didn’t seem surprised or shocked.
 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I thought maybe I’d killed you.”

“Don’t worry,” Aidan said as he walked up to him and placed his hand on the long-haired man’s shoulder. He smiled.
 

The moonlight pouring in from the window lit up the long-haired man’s face. His skin was pale and bruised beneath the eyes and there were cracks in his lips so big it made Aidan feel sorry for the guy. “You’ve not had a good time of it, have you, mate?”

The long-haired man buried his head in his hands and started to sob. Quietly at first, but building into a snotty mess.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“It’s okay. I promise. I’m here to help,” He gripped the pipe in his free hand. “Don’t worry. I’m here to help you.”

“Really?” The long-haired man looked up and in the dark, through the sobs, he started to smile. “That’s so great. I need to go home.” His smile was—

Kill him.
 

“I know. Don’t worry. We’ll have a cup of tea and you can tell me all about it.”

The long-haired man reached out and placed his hands on Aidan’s hand, catching the nubs of his missing fingers.

Burn him. Tear his skin.

“Yes, that sounds good,” the long-haired man said.

When the pipe connected with his jaw it sounded like metal on metal. Aidan saw the jaw dislocate as the man fell backwards against the stair bannister.
 

The man’s crying stopped and he went dead quiet. He was still awake.

“I doyens undderstaannnd,” the long-haired man tried to talk.
 

“It’s okay mate, it’s okay,” Aidan said. “It will be quick.”

“Whyyy?” he said as Aidan raised the pipe and walked towards him. It seemed like he was trying to say “Sorry”, but Aidan hit him again. This time it connected with the man’s temple and the consciousness fizzled out of him. He dropped to the floor and would have fallen down the stairs if Aidan hadn’t grabbed him by the coat collar.

He pulled him back onto the hallway landing and laid him down. A small mist of blood sprayed out of the open wound on his head and dotted Aidan’s blue jacket.
 

“For fuck’s sake,” he said. “This is my favourite fucking suit.”
 

Out of annoyance he punched the unconscious man’s face so hard he felt his nose break. His hand throbbed. He blew on it and took a deep breath, before dragging the man into the bedroom. He laid him down and looked at him, waiting for his heart to stop pounding, for the sweat caught on his brow to dry.
 

“Right,” he said. “I better go get my tools.”

Moomamu The Thinker

Moomamu warmed up as soon as he entered the flat. He wrapped himself in some fabric left on the kitchen table. It was some sort of synthetic animal fur.

“You’re wearing my dirty towels,” Marta said as she made him tea.

“I take that to be a sign of high fashion?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said.

Once Moomamu had stopped shaking and his nipples softened, Marta began to talk about her day. She told him about some guy who’d been looking at her in a strange way because of her appearance, but Moomamu couldn’t understand. To him, Marta looked like most other humans. She had the regular amount of limbs and holes. Perhaps it was her short hair, which he’d associated more with the male warrior class.

She explained that she was from a country called Lithuania and had studied the science of plants. She explained that she felt that she was smart, and couldn’t understand why she’d ended up working as a barista.

“That sounds like a terrible job,” Moomamu said. “I’d never do that.”

She then told Moomamu that being a barista meant making coffee for people and Moomamu said he had that job too.
 

“Anyone can get that job,” he said and it became awkward.
 

Moomamu left Marta in the kitchen eating more of the Cheerios and went back to his small box living quarters. The cat was perched on the top of the desk, sleeping on the computing device. It opened its eyes and looked at him like he were an intruder.

“I will rest now, Earth cat. Please don’t attack me or I will be forced to end your life.”

It looked at Moomamu again. It’s tail fluttered and it sat up. The starlight reflected against its pupils.

“Gary will not attack Thinker,” the cat said.
 

The cat spoke with the voice of a mammal with a voice box much bigger than its own. It sounded like the voice of a matured human male.
 

“So Earth cats
can
talk?” Moomamu said.

“Some of us do,” it said, its tail now swaying softly side to side. “Maybe not some of us. Maybe not any of us, actually , but Gary does. Gary speaks words.”

“I can tell,” Moomamu said, pulling himself up on the mattress, his back pressed against the wall.

“Gary is here for you,” the cat said. “Gary is here to take stupid Thinker home.”

Moomamu looked at the little ginger Earth cat who was talking to him in human words. He laid down. Apart from the heavy scent of urine coming from his pillow, the whole thing was beginning to make sense to him again.

Aidan Black

There was one word ringing through Aidan’s mind: success. Like a closed feedback loop it grew louder on each pass.

Still, he couldn’t stop smiling. It had been a productive day.

“You can’t ask for much more than that,” he said as he climbed out of the van. He took his blue jacket off, folded it into a perfect square, and placed it on the passenger seat. He rolled his shirt sleeves up and loosened his tie.
 

He touched the back of his head. It was stinging like a bitch and only got worse after he rubbed some of his alcohol gel on it.

He went into the back of the van and grabbed a grey linoleum sheet, which he rolled up, and carried into the house.

Upstairs, the long-haired man was motionless on the floor. An empty sack of flesh. The pipe was still on the landing. He noticed a used needle on the floor.

Aidan rolled the limp body onto the sheet. He used that to slide the body along the carpet, down the stairs, and out to the van, where he managed to lift it into the back. By the time he was done he was covered in sweat. He was ready for a break. But as his granddad would say, “a job is only done when it’s done.”

He couldn’t see anyone on the street. The cul-de-sac was a no-man’s land. Perfect for him.

Aidan took the tin box from the dashboard and climbed into the back.
 

He looked at the bleeding mess that was the long-haired man’s face and shook his head. The jaw was forty-five degrees the wrong way.

“Pathetic,” he said, as he pulled the mouth open some more.

Rip his tongue out.

“Wait,” he said. “Let me do my thing.”

He grabbed his granddad’s old orange-handled pliers and started on the front teeth. One by one he yanked them out and placed them in the metal tin where they joined the others with a
tink tink tink.

The wet tongue glistened.
 

Rip it out.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think I can.”

Rip it out. You want to be a success. You want to be affluent.

Suddenly the tongue didn’t look like anything but a slab of loose meat, or a piece of gristle to him. He placed the pliers on the tongue, pressed down on the handle as hard as he could, almost piercing the tongue, and pulled on it. It was rooted deep.

Do it. Do it. Rip it.

He placed his foot on the head and yanked on the tongue as hard as he could. He almost fell backwards when it came loose. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and threw the tongue into a plastic bag. It slapped against the bottom like a dead fish. He quickly grabbed more plastic carrier bags from the back and began covering up the body. He started with the head, and then moved on to the hands, and then the arms, the torso, and then worked his way down the legs. He used black tape to seal everything together. The whole process was a twenty-minute job if done right.

Satisfied with the work, he got out of the van, slammed the door shut, and got back into the driver’s seat.

For ten minutes he didn’t do anything. He sat quietly, mouthing his mantra over and over.

“I’m sixty foot tall and made of diamond. I’m sixty foot tall and made of diamond. I’m sixty foot tall and made of diamond.”

He looked at the clock — twelve a.m.
 

Headlights turned into the cul-de-sac. People were coming. He started the van.

He leaned over, opened the glove box and withdrew a CD labelled ‘Awaken The Winner Within’. It had a picture of a handsome man with coiffed dark hair like his own. The name read ‘Terry Rowlings’. He placed it into the CD tray and the dashboard swallowed it up.

“Do
you
believe that
you
can be a success?” Terry Rowlings crackled through the old speakers. “I’m serious, do you believe that you can be a success?”

“Yes, I do,” Aidan nodded.

“Because I do. I’ve never even met you, but the simple fact that you were willing to buy this information product, and you found the confidence to play it, means you’re the kind of person who succeeds. You’re a winner. And I’m proud to teach you what I know.”

Aidan knew the CD so well he mouthed the words along to it. He pulled onto a main road and began to pick up speed. The tin box of teeth slid and hit the dashboard. He grabbed it and placed it on the passenger seat.

“We’re going to go over a few different topics today. Interior versus exterior success. Building your mastermind group. Focusing on execution. And developing your wealth mindset.”

He was now on the motorway. A road sign that read ‘Midlands’ passed over his head.
 

Aidan sat back into the seat and settled into the long drive back to the farm. He just hoped that Sammy would have the pigs ready.

Another one.

Aidan tried to ignore the voice at first.
 

There’s another one.

The more Aidan ignored it, the louder it clanged. He was tired, he wanted to go back, feed the pigs and go to bed. His head panged.

There’s another one for you.
 

The words hit his head like a pipe to the jaw. He winced with every word.

“Let’s talk about listening to your inner heart’s desire,” Terry Rowlings said.

His name is Moomamu.

“It’s important to listen to that little voice in your heart. It knows you more than you know yourself.”

His name is Moomamu and I want you to feed him to me.

Aidan rubbed the back of his head.

“Okay,” he said. “Where is he?”

I’ll show you.

The whispering voice became a din of screeching white noise. He tried to keep his eyes on the road but it was impossible. He kept the wheel straight as the invisible tendrils of consciousness reached into his skull, peeled back layers of his mind, and forced it to see things that it had no recollection of. The tendrils implanted memories — sights, smells, noises — that he’d never had. He saw the building, the row of doors, the number 154. The door opened. A man. Bearded. Moomamu.
 

Kill him. Burn him. Tear his skin. Feed me.

“Okay!” Aidan shouted through gritted teeth as the voice quietened, relaxed. “Okay,” he said again as he opened his eyes and caught his breath. “I’ll find him.” His head felt different, wrong even, heavier, like the uninvited surgeon who’d been operating on him had left something inside, something that had no right being there.

Open-Air Theatre Review

March 11
^th
, 2015, Untitled, written and performed by Anonymous.

Article written by Leslie Jessup, senior reviewer at
Ohmywhatalondondayitis.co.uk
.

Without advertisement of any kind. Without a script of any kind. Literally with nothing but his pants, the actor took the stage area of the East Bank Park in Shoreditch last Saturday afternoon. There were no props to hide behind. No excessive atmospheric music to conceal the mistakes. Not even an understudy. Just a man with a beard.