The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (10 page)

BOOK: The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1)
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“Sure,” Rosie said. “Faulty hairspray.”

Bexley took a step closer to the man too. They were now standing on either side of him. Flanking him.

“You don’t think it was static build-up on the carpet? Or maybe … In fact, when was the carpet last treated?” Bexley said, like he’d been pre-programmed.

“And on that note, why is your extinguisher so far away? Do you know how many feet you’re supposed to have the extinguisher away from a central customer area?” Rosie added, bullshitting her way through it.

“Wait … what? This wasn’t our fault,” Dean shook his head in disbelief. “You really think it might have been? No, no, it couldn’t be. You’d see from the tapes that it started from her hands and her hair. For all we know she could’ve been lighting up a cigarette. You can’t pin it on the branch.”

Rosie gestured to Bexley. With that signal, he took a step back and turned away. Rosie softened.
 

“Listen,” she said, “I’m not saying that you, or the branch, or anyone was at fault. It was a tragedy, for sure. But listen. We need to get to the bottom of this so that I can write something on a little report, save it as a PDF, which I still don’t know how to do, and email it back to our bosses so we can close the case. I’m pretty sure you’re telling us the truth. She probably could have been sparking up.” Dean nodded along. A bobble head toy tickled by Rosie’s words “How about you let us see those security tapes so I can get this thing done, confirm that it wasn’t the branch’s fault, and then we can get out of your hair, and you can get your insurance payout.” She stopped and smiled and squinted at a particularly glossy patch on his head.

Dean looked around to see who was watching and sucked the air through his bottom row of teeth.

“Sure,” he said. “You can come and have a look, but I promise you that we’re telling the truth.”

“Wait here, Bexley,” she said as she followed Dean through to the back.

Aidan Black

This headache was something else. Stemming from the back of his head, where the pipe had made contact, and reaching around to his forehead, his eyes and into his sinuses. Everything throbbed. Everything felt tight. Like his head was swelling too big for his own skin.

You’re nearly there.
 

“I know,” Aidan said as a road sign passed overhead that read ‘London’.
 

The sun was out and was glaring through the window and the tinnitus whispers of his friend were there, stronger than ever. Each word was a fresh pipe to the skull.
 

Aidan had a love/hate relationship with London. He loved the feeling of the bustle. The cream of the crop were in London, making their dreams realities and all that — the big pond where the people who truly wanted to compete went. He always knew that if he wanted to be as successful as he thought he could be, he should do it in London.

At the same time, he hated crowds. The thought of being caught in a crowd of average unsuccessful types made his skin crawl.

“You are the culmination of the five people you surround yourself with,” Terry Rowlings had said on his inspirational CD.

He didn’t want to sully his own character by spending his time with tourists or Americans.
 

Aidan was wearing a new suit — navy pinstripe jacket with trousers to match and a dark red tie. His hair was freshly coiffed. The blue suit was in the washing machine at the farm. He was pretty sure it was ruined. Blood is thicker than washing detergent.

A small car pulled out in front of Aidan’s van, forcing him to brake hard. Not enough to cause any real harm, but enough to piss him off.

He picked up speed, got into the right-hand lane, and managed to catch up with the offending vehicle. Enough for him to look in to see what the fuckers looked like. A family car. Dad in the driver’s seat and mum in the passenger seat. She was turned around, leaning into the back, talking and playing with her two kids. Maybe four or five years old. Difficult to tell.

Aidan chuckled at the ridiculous little quartet of failure.

He pictured the kids growing up to be telephone-sales people. Or maybe computer-repair people. Maybe they’d grow up to be depressed? The dad in the front had a sour face, like a man chewing Lego. He was bald, had a goatee beard, and was wearing a striped jumper.

Eyes forward. Eyes on the prize. You can do this.

He hadn’t noticed, but the children were looking at him. The whole family, in fact. The father was trying to make it look like he wasn’t looking, but Aidan saw his eyes glancing over. The mother and the children looked scared. Aidan couldn’t see what they were saying, but their expressions said it all.
 

Aidan slowed down and the car sped onward.
 

He smiled at himself. A wolf in spectacular clothing. A surefire success.

Quicker. Go quicker. Moomamu must die. I’m hungry.

With the voice came the sudden onslaught of noise. His brain pounded against the inside of his skull.
 

“Shut up,” he said.

Faster. I’m hungry. Bring me his tongue.

“Aaaagh.”

He struggled to keep the van straight. Seeing the lay-by, he pulled into it and stopped the van.

Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Find him. Kill him. Feed me.

His legs went weak as he climbed out of the van. His vision was peppered with flashes of light. He vomited on the floor and opened the back of the van. Inside he …

Don’t stop. You must kill him.

He screamed. His eyes felt like they were being pushed forwards, like they might erupt from their sockets. The pressure was too much.

He grabbed his granddad’s toolbox and pulled out a rusty old hammer and then fumbled around in the nail drawer, grabbing one an inch long.

If you fail you will die. Don’t stop. Kill him.

He lifted the nail and lined it up to the right-hand side of his skull. He lifted the hammer.

Reach your potential. Reach it. Reach it.

He took a deep breath and, with a single thud, slammed the hammer into the nail.

The pain was short and sharp. As the nail sunk into his skull he lost sight for a few seconds, seeing nothing but red.

When his vision came back he had to remind himself where he was. The inside of his granddad’s van. Somewhere he’d been many times before. Memories flashed back on times he’d spent riding in the back with his granddad to help him with the odd jobs.

His head still felt swollen. Like an elastic band stretched too far, going white at the points most stressed, readying to snap.
 

He turned the wooden handle of the hammer in his hand and hooked the claw around the nail. He screamed as he pulled on it. He pressed his foot against the side of the van for leverage and yanked it. The nail came flying out and hit the side of the van with a
clink
before landing by his shoe. It was bloodied up to the middle.

He listened and all he heard were the hundreds of cars passing by, unaware of what was going on inside the van. That, and the sound of something seeping. Like gas leaking. He felt his head and looked at his hand. It was blood, sort of. It was deep, dark black and inky. It was viscous and sticky in his hand.
 

The pressure was easing off and he felt like he could hear for the first time in years.
 

He noticed some of the inky black had dripped down the side of his head and landed on his shirt collar.

“Fuck,” he said. “Why? Why the shirt?”

Aidan sat up. Blew his nose into his hands and spat against the wooden floor of the van. He walked back into the front of the van, groaning as he went, but trying to whistle. Trying to remain chipper. He was trying to whistle the tune to ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’.

He grabbed a serviette from the glovebox and dabbed his head. The inky black stuff was still leaking. Slowly now, but enough to warrant keeping the serviette pressed against his open head.
 

Aidan started up the van, got going and smiled because in the distance, above the line of green, he could see the London cityscape.

Sammy Black

The screams were the worst thing. Sammy remembered the screams.

As he bent down to scoop up some of the remnants, one of the younger pigs pushed past his leg. On the floor was a tuft of hair, stuck to a bloodied fragment of skull. People always say that pigs eat everything, but there’s always enough left over for Sammy to clean up.

Elsa was fast asleep on her side. Her belly gently falling and rising. Her eyes always dozing. The poor old girl. She wasn’t looking too healthy these days. She was past her prime.

Sammy had been in the Pig-House for an hour or so at that point, cleaning up after Aidan.

When the farm was open to the public, the Pig-House was one of his favourite places. Kids only ever got to see pigs in cartoons — fat and round and bright pink — but in reality they were fatter, rounder, but not quite as pink. They were hairy too. And they stinked. Sammy liked it when the kids saw the real thing — the truth.

It was good for kids to understand how reality was different from what they saw on their TVs. It was good for them to go to a place like White Log and see animals in the flesh. Get to touch them. Play with their fur. See the reality of it all. It was
never
as pretty it seemed to be on the TV. Life was never as pretty.

At one point, they had had around five staff members. Kids themselves mostly. They’d helped feed and clean the animals and would help the customers too. It was a safe place, perfect for families. At midday, you could come down and see the baby goats being fed. And occasionally they’d had little events too — magicians, bouncy castles, face painting — that sort of thing.

Sammy had memories of the kids in butterfly faces with ice-cream-sticky hands running around and making a mess of everything, and he hadn’t minded. He’d liked it.

His granddad was always there to oversee everything. It was his granddad’s baby. The perfect leader with his big smile and ponytail. Helping families out, answering questions, and being the face of the place. He was up at five every morning and in bed by twelve at night, working the entire days through. He’d be in the admin office for huge stretches of time, working numbers, counting cash, ordering food — for the families
and
for the animals.
 

Their granddad lost a lot of his years in that office.

Aidan and Sammy spent their childhood helping out.

One of Sammy’s most familiar memories was of cleaning out one of the animal houses as the sun went down and seeing that light from the admin office still on. A single lantern in the darkness.
 

He remembered going to the house, cooking dinner for Aidan and himself — normally something simple … beans or soup or microwave dinners. He remembered baths and bedtime and remembered Aidan being too scared to go to sleep.

He remembered Aidan going into a zombie-like state as the lights went out. Like his mind was leaving his body. Like it was hiding out for the time being. Waiting for it to be safe to come back.

Sammy remembered the lights in the admin office going out and the sound of the front door opening. The sound of the keys crashing against the kitchen side. The footsteps of their granddad, hitting the floor, step by step — time slowing down as his steps echoed throughout the house, as he walked past their bedroom towards his own.

Most nights would be fine. Most nights were easy — all worrying for nothing — but it was the
other
nights that ruined the good ones. Every few months there would be a night that would ruin the year. Perhaps their granddad had been a little stressed — bad customers, low sales, whatever — and he would come home, late at night, and he would stop by their room first.

It was
those
nights that ruined it all for them.

By that point, Aidan had gone, jumped ship emotionally. But he still felt the physical pain. He still screamed when the belt, stick, whatever, hit him.

And it was the screams that were the worst thing.
 

Sammy remembered the screams.

Hannah Birkin

Hannah looked around her bedroom. Her head was heavy and groggy like somebody had beat her to sleep the night before. Her skin was hot flushed.

“Simon?” she said. The words disappeared into the house, but there was no response. She looked at the desk where Simon’s cologne and moisturises would normally be, but they weren’t there. Just an empty space.
 

She shook her head, tried to shake the daze.

She stood and wandered into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror.
 

Still pretty, she thought to herself, looking at her puffy eyes and sweat-soaked hair, and at her belly with the single roll of fat she’d been trying lose for the last six months. Not through exercise, but through the sheer power of thought.
 

She flicked the shower on and held her hand beneath it as it warmed up. She had to turn the faucet to cold because any warmer and it felt like it was burning her.

Suddenly the thought popped into her mind that Simon wasn’t there. And never was.
 

“Wait, but I thought …” As the bathroom mirror fogged up, she noticed a steaming red globule of blood fall from her nose and land on the porcelain bathroom tile. It sizzled against the tile and dried up within seconds.

She looked up at the mirror and saw a single red stream running from her nostrils and over her lip. As she wiped her nose with her hand, she thought she saw smoke rising from her fingers. She tried to tell herself that it was just the steam from the shower, but the smell of smoke followed, clawing at her eyes.
 

Panic rushed through her as her fingers set alight like candles, her finger skin melting right in front of her eyes. The pain was sudden and excruciating, and out of nowhere a hand met hers.

A man, hidden in steam and smoke, with a shadow so big it could swallow her. His hands reached hers, ignoring the flames and wrapping them in wet towels. He emerged from the veil of steam and smoke and grabbed her by her waist and threw her into the shower, banging her head and her shoulders against the tiles as she hit the side.

BOOK: The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1)
14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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