The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (11 page)

“Wait, don’t hurt me,” she screamed from the shower. “Please.”
 

The man bent down, dipping his head in the shower. Handsome, blonde. His face was cast from bronze. A statue. The handsome block with no emotion looked her up and down. His pale blue eyes focused on her hands. She couldn’t bring herself to look at her hand just yet. She was still in shock. The pain was still immense.

Suddenly the man jumped forward with a bag of some kind, covering her in darkness. She screamed and writhed as the man picked her up and carried her in the dark bag over his shoulder like a rolled up rug.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m here to help you.”

She didn’t feel like she was being helped. She continued to scream and wriggle as she felt herself taken down the stairs, out of the house. She heard a car door open and felt herself thrown into the back seat.
 

“We got her,” a female voice said. “Yeah, we got her in time … just. We may need some medical attention when we get back. No, for Bexley. His hands look pretty badly burned. Okay … we’re on our way to the home now.”

Hannah cried as the car started and carried her away from her house.

Moomamu The Thinker

Gary guided Moomamu on what items of clothing were meant for what body part. He wasn’t an expert.

In the fabric stash box in the sleeping room, the one with various fabrics hanging from metal wiring, Moomamu saw ‘shirts’ of all different colours and there was a stash of feet warmers — Gary called them socks — and clothing that even Gary had no name for.

With Gary’s guidance, he’d picked a white fabric shirt with tiny plastic circles that held the front together and hid his naked torso. Gary then told him to grab a single stretch of fabric and to tie it around his neck.

“Are you sure this is how the humans wear this?” he said.

“Look. Gary’s been on planet for longer than Thinker. This is how the other Tall Ones dress their skin.”

Moomamu couldn’t work out how to tie the fabric so he just left it hanging around his shoulders.

Gary directed him to some black leg cover-uppers which he called trousers and some sort of animal hide which looped around his middle.
 

“How do I look?” Moomamu asked Gary.
 

“Like every other human,” he said.
 

“And remind me why we’re trying to make me look like every other human?”

Gary looked up at Moomamu with a face that wanted to maul him.

“Trust Gary. It will be easier if Thinker fits in.”

Once dressed, Gary walked Moomamu into the bathroom. It was smaller than the sleeping room. You definitely couldn’t swing something in there. No room at all to swing … say, a cat.
 

“Humans come in here often to relieve themselves and clean up.”

“Yes, feline, I’m well aware. One of the factors of life itself is the need to excrete.”

He looked at the various water points. A smaller, chair-like one with a hole in the middle, filled with water, and brown stains reaching outwards from around the bend. That’s definitely the excretion machine, he thought. He then looked to a waist-high basin. Empty of water. A small cup sat on top of it with little brushes inside.

“Is this the cleaning one?” he said.

“Yeah, don’t excrete in that one. That got Gary into trouble many times in the past.” Gary sat by Moomamu’s feet, gently vibrating.
 

“And which brush do I use?”
 

“Gary isn’t sure. It doesn’t matter. Tall Ones swap all the time.”

The options available were a pink one or a blue one. He remembered that the other human living here, Marta, had worn pink sleeping clothes the day before. He doubted that she’d have more than one item of clothing that was pink. It would be too coincidental. He picked up the pink brush.

“Now start with your …”

“I think I know how to clean a human body,” Moomamu interjected. He turned the metal point on the basin and dipped the brush in the water. He then began to brush his hair.

Gary stopped vibrating and wandered back into the kitchen area.

About an hour later Moomamu walked out. His face was red raw from the brush. His clothes were a mess. He’d successfully excreted. He was ready to go home.

“Gary thinks that Thinker is ready.”

“Listen, feline, my name is Moomamu. And I think you should start calling me that. I am a higher being after all.”

“Mummy?” Gary said as the door opened and Marta walked in.

She had her bag on her back, pink, her outer coat, pink, and her feet protectors, also pink. He was starting to have second thoughts about the brush.

“Greetings, female human,” he said. “This cat has decided to show me how to get home. Although I appreciate your advice and your wisdom, what little of it there was, I must bid you farewell.”

Marta looked at Gary, and then at Moomamu. She seemed to be fixating on his red face, his clothes, his feet.
 

“I know that you know what you’re doing fashion-wise, but are you not going to wear any shoes? Or tie your tie?” She placed her bag on the kitchen table and walked over to him.

“I don’t see the need to be dressing formally,” he said.

“It’s okay. My brother didn’t know how to tie a tie either.” She reached forward and grabbed the length of fabric around his neck. She yanked it, looped it, and hooped it. Moomamu hadn’t been so close to a female human before. He caught some of her smell. He didn’t know what it was but it made him woozy. He tried to avoid eye contact but caught a glimpse of her dark brown irises which, for a second, were almost as beautiful and complex as one of the many galaxies he’d spent forever watching.
 

“Your face is sore too. Do you have eczema?”

He looked to Gary, who nodded.

“Yes. I suffer greatly.”

“Have you got any cream or something?” she said. Her breath touched his neck. Gary nodded again.

“Yes.”

She then ruffled his shirt and pulled on it to straighten it out and then asked him about shoes again.
 

“I don’t believe in them,” Moomamu said, but she went ahead and walked into his sleeping room, returning a second later with some feet-protectors like her own. But they weren’t pink. They were black with white bottom bits and a picture on the side. As he placed his feet into them, he asked Marta what that picture was of. It was a small shape with five points. She said it was a star and Moomamu laughed.
 

“Sure it is,” he said, assuming Marta was joking.

He didn’t tie the laces. Instead, he tucked them into the sides of the shoes.

“You’ll trip over yourself,” she said.

“Really, female human, I think you’ve done enough. Your words were pleasant and you certainly are an attractive potential human mate, ripe for impregnation, but I believe you’ve done enough.”

Marta sat on the kitchen table, her eyebrows raised.

“Ripe for impregnation?” she said.
 

“I don’t know humans quite as close as this cat, but he’ll explain reproduction to you if you’re unaware. Go on feline, tell her.”
 

He pointed to Gary, who didn’t say anything. He yawned and ignored Moomamu completely.

Whatever smile was on Marta’s face before had now vanished. Her face filled with the common micro-expressions of an angry configuration.
 

“Did you say you were going?” she said.

“Fine, if the cat has decided to hold his tongue and I am now fully humanised, then I must go.” The words even tasted bad in his mouth. The idea of being human made his gag reflex activate. The fact that he even had a human gag reflex only exacerbated his concerns.

“Goodbye Marta,” he said. “We probably won’t see each other again. Please don’t be saddened.”

He walked out of the flat and Gary followed at his feet. As they closed the door behind them, he could’ve sworn he heard Marta shout something along the words of “Did you piss in the sink?” but he couldn’t be sure.
 

They made their way down the street and Moomamu checked his nipples. They were nice and soft. The clothing was working.

***

“Why didn’t you talk earlier?” Moomamu said as they walked down the street.
 

“Gary can’t talk in front of Tall Ones. Not normal ones anyway.” He skipped along the floor, keeping up with Moomamu.
 

“You physically can’t do it?”

“Physically Gary can, but he knows it isn’t right. He knows it will be bad.”

As they walked past some humans, Gary quietened.
 

The Earth wind was painful against Moomamu’s ears and he kept rubbing them to put the warmth back into them. He’d sometimes blow into his hands and rub his whole face to put the warmth back in there too. He’d even noticed female and male human companions warm their bodies by wrapping their arms around each other’s backs. A peculiar thought popped into his head of Marta’s breath on his neck. It made his body feel weird and something stirred down below. He shook the thoughts from his head. He had to overcome the silly human hormonal system and get home.

He was amazed at how well Gary kept up with him — even with his pathetic tiny legs.
 

Humans seemed incapable of not mentioning Gary.

“Aww, what a sweet cat,” they’d say.

“He just follows his owner around like that.”

“That’s incredible.”

“Take a picture.”

They ignored most of the humans, but there were one or two that started pointing communication devices at them. Moomamu flicked his beard and spat at them. A successful deterrent.
 

Gary led Moomamu to a set of concrete stairs in the floor. A sign above them said ‘Underground’.

The hole was crawling with humans coming in and out. It reminded him of the Ant-People of the Forrfian Asteroid Belt in the Outer Reaches. They lived in holes and underground tunnel systems built into the asteroids themselves. Their colony started out on a single asteroid, and it only took them three hundred thousand years to populate the entire thing. Just as they were beginning to think about expanding their way into the universe and trying out a moon or two, the whole colony was wiped out by a single beam of light refracted from the nearest star. The light was magnified through a floating piece of space-glass. It focused the light to a pinpoint-like laser beam so strong it burnt the poor race into dust before they could say “What a glorious sunrise. It’s beautifu—“

The thoughts made him realise that he needed to get out of this human vessel as quickly as possible. Life was fragile. He took the first concrete step downwards into the underground. Around halfway down he realised that Gary wasn’t following. He turned back and saw him at the top of the stairway, looking down.
 

“Come on, feline,” he said. “Follow me.”

A human male dressed in a floral shirt glanced at him like he was strange.

“Move along, human,” Moomamu said and pointed at the man’s shirt. “There’s only one strange human here. Now come on, feline. We don’t have time!”

Gary didn’t move. He just looked down at Moomamu, his tail calmly swaying side to side.

Moomamu huffed and walked back up the stairs. He held his hands in the air like he’d seen some prepubescent humans do and said “Dude?” He wasn’t sure what the word meant, but it seemed appropriate.

Gary didn’t move. He looked at him like he was stupid. Moomamu got down on one knee and whispered to him.

“What’s wrong?”

Gary looked around him. When the place temporarily emptied of humans, he whispered back, “Carry me.”

“What? Carry you? Why?” he whispered.

“Animals are not allowed down in the underground unless a Tall One carries them.”

More humans emerged from the hole. It seemed to him that the humans were just as primal as the cat, if not more so. He reached his arms out and picked Gary up. He placed his right hand under his belly and his left hand beneath the front paws.

“Mind Gary’s genitals,” Gary said.
 

“I am doing,” Moomamu replied, readjusting his grip.

As they made their way downwards into the underground, more humans commented on him. Gary placed his head on Moomamu’s shoulder. Close enough to whisper into his ear without raising suspicion.

“You’re going to need to get a ticket from one of those men behind the glass.”

Careful not to drop Gary, he reached his left hand into his pocket and pulled out some of the sterling coins, leftover from the café. Which reminded him about work: he’d missed his first day. He struck the thought from his mind — more important things.

He walked over to a line of humans standing one behind the other. He walked straight past them to a rotund, balding human in a blue uniform, protected by a glass panel.

“I need to go home,” he said, holding out the coins.
 

“You can’t push in like that,” a female shouted behind him. He ignored her.

“And where exactly is home?” the rotund gatekeeper asked.

Moomamu realised he had no idea what the plan was. He’d just been following Gary.

“We need to go to King’s Cross,” Gary whispered.
 

The rotund man’s eyes widened.

“What did you say?” the gatekeeper said.

Moomamu coughed.
 

“We’re going to the King’s Cross,” he said to the gatekeeper. “Wow … is the king the one who will take me home?” he said to Gary, but loud enough for everyone in the line behind to hear.
 

“Shut up,” whispered Gary, and the gatekeepers eye’s widened again. He tapped something into his computing device, his eye routinely glancing at Gary.

“No, he doesn’t talk,” Moomamu said.
 

“Stop talking,” Gary muttered.

“Cat’s don’t talk on this planet,” he added.

“Okay,” the gatekeeper said. “That’s fine. I never said they did. It’s three pounds and forty, please.”

Moomamu dropped the coins on the counter and the man handed him back most of the coins and a single paper ticket.

“Follow my tail,” Gary said as he pointed his fluffy ginger appendage towards a set of gates.