The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

It was Sammy who answered. It was always Sammy. With his big stupid head and eyes that never made contact with anybody else’s. Sammy in his overalls, dirty, covered in shit. Sammy with his perfect hand. Aidan ran his fingers over the nubs where his missing little finger and ring finger were.

“Good to see you, big brother,” Aidan said.

The imperfect pale line of Sammy’s hair parting stirred the same old frustration. That goddamn lightning strike of pale scalp. He’d told Sammy many times to keep it straight. It was a sign of a professional to have a good solid parting.

Sammy nodded hello to Aidan, and Aidan put his hand on Sammy’s shoulder. With his free hand, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his comb and began straightening Sammy’s parting.

“You look disgusting,” he said. “You live with pigs, and you’re the filthiest one here.”

“Sorry,” Sammy said. “Sorry, Aidan.”

Aidan grabbed Sammy, holding his head in place while he finished up. He sighed and did his best to make Sammy’s eyes meet his own.

“We need to dress for the jobs we want, Sammy, not the jobs we have. I told you this. Remember, you need to think positive thoughts, and positive things will happen to you.”

“Yes, Aidan,” he said. “Yes.”

The whimper in Sammy’s tone grated against him.

“Have you recited you affirmations today?” he asked.
 

Sammy squirmed under Aidan’s hand.

“Your mantra, Sammy. Have you said it?”

“Not yet, Aidan. I haven’t had a chance. I’ve had a lot—“

“Well then,” he interrupted. “That’s why you look like a lost puppy isn’t it? Listen Sammy, when we’re done here, you need to go to the mirror, take out your words and read them over and over until they burrow themselves into your fucking skull. I read mine to myself in the mirror every morning as soon as I wake up. You know what I tell myself?”

“You’re sixty foot tall and made—”

“That’s right, I’m sixty foot and made of diamond. And it reminds me of who I am, who I want to be and who I will be.”

Sammy’s attention focused on Aidan’s hand.
 

“So come on,” Aidan said. “I need your help. Your little brother needs your help.”

Aidan patted Sammy on the shoulder, and Sammy nodded.

“Okay,” he said.

***

It was wrapped up in plastic bags. Not your average supermarket shopping bags but the kind you use on a farm to move big piles of shit and feed around. Big thick stuff that doesn’t pierce easily – doesn’t let the blood get through. A bag around each of the limbs, sealed off with black tape.
 

With the slight outline, you could tell that it was a female. Maybe in her thirties. Dried blood had pooled inside the bag on the body’s head and seeped out when they lifted the body. Blood that had pumped out of the poor girl’s mouth when Aidan removed her teeth with pliers. His granddad’s old pliers, in fact. More for the toof fairy.

Sammy and Aidan lifted the body from the back of the van and carried it into the Pig-House. The swine were snorting and squealing as they smelled the human blood in the air, knowing that a good meal was coming.

There were eight pigs in all.
 

Elsa was the big mother. Big fat Elsa, coming on eight years old now. She didn’t have too long left, so it was nice that she got to enjoy a big meal every now and again. She was slowing down. After giving birth so many times she’d fucked herself up. Like all mothers, really. Aidan remembered the day Elsa was born. It wasn’t long before his granddad passed away.

They’d wasted hours the first time they’d fed a body to the pigs. Thinking it might make it easier on them, they’d chopped the body up – the hands, the limbs, the guts, the head – and dropped the pieces in separate troughs, but they realised that it was waste of sweat and labour. The pigs didn’t care about all that. In fact, the only thing they had to do was remove the teeth. The pigs did the rest.

They stripped off the bags and then cut away the clothes before placing the whole naked body in the trough.
 

Sammy’s attention lingered on the beaten face. The blonde hair. The broken nose. The swollen lips and the open mouth full of congealed blood.

“Nearly there, Sammy,” Aidan said as they opened the gates and let the pigs at it.

Aidan yawned and a plume of mist billowed from his mouth. He rubbed his hands together. It was a cold March morning.
 

He noticed Elsa biting into the meaty calf of the girl and, for the first time in two weeks, his mind was quiet. Everything seemed to slow down. He looked at his suit and knew the first thing he needed to do was to get himself cleaned up and looking like himself again. The real him. The chosen one. His granddad’s old wardrobe was full of suits for him to use. He wasn’t going to need them anymore.

That crusty little teen. The one who used to sell you pellets. The one you’d rip into. The one you didn’t care about. He would be a success in this world. Through hard work, determination and the power of self-help, he would succeed.

Sammy turned away and made his way out of the barn door as the pigs ripped and munched into the body, nibbling away at the extremities first.

There’s more.

“What?” Aidan said, looking to Sammy, who was already closing the door.

There’s more.
 

Aidan sighed. The noise was returning just as quickly as it had left. A tinnitus-like whine that kept him from sleeping. Whispering sweet victims into his ear.

The sun was now all the way up, glaring through the wooden slats, bringing the mother of all headaches with it.

You want to be successful? You want to be a winner?

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his comb and drew it back through his hair.

“Of course I do,” he said.

Moomamu The Thinker

HIS NAME WAS MOOMAMU THE THINKER. Pronounced Moo-Mah-Moo Duh Fink-Ah.

He was an all-powerful being whose job was simple: to float around in the nebulae that surrounded him, in his own little corner of the universe, and to watch and think. That was it. That was why he was there.
 

Galaxies forming. Planets colliding. Black holes swallowing stars. Life growing and developing self-awareness, and consequently life dying. He’d seen it all.

Like all beings, he was born with a bang. The Big Bang, to be precise. And since then he’d watched it all unfold around him.

To watch and to think. He couldn’t see it all, and he didn’t know everything, but he’d been doing his best for as long as he could remember, and then some.

He remembered seeing the sweet little Babosi race grow up on the planet Obonda. They were an interesting cluster of limbs and penises. They were the first race he’d ever seen who had orgies with more than a hundred partners. They would last for days and would require an onsite medic. Moomamu saw that and he thought about it. That was his job.

He remembered seeing the majestic Novii of Taun discover time travel. They used the technology to say hello to their previous selves. The technology could only go back a single hour, so it was pretty useless … but still … Moomamu saw it, and he thought about it.

He also remembered the time a small ape-like creature from the planet Earth flew upwards from his home world and into the space surrounding it. Steve or Neil or something like that. Neil Stronghand. Moomamu thought it was okay. It was a bit of an anti-climax, if anything.

He’d seen inter-dimensional time travel. He’d seen a baby the size of a small star being born in the Outer Reaches. He even once saw a small furry mammal poo on its own head. Try to figure that one out.

Before that day, Moomamu was something unique, something great, something special. And he thought he’d seen it all.
 

But he’d just woken up. That was something he’d never done before.

He opened eyelids that he’d never opened before and yawned with breath he’d never tasted with lungs he’d never filled. He’d stretched muscles and flesh that was never his.

He sat up on the bed. Floral duvet.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
curtains. Gravity. All of it was peculiar to say the least.
 

The smell. What was that smell? It made Moomamu want to speak words he’d never heard before. Angry ones.
 

In the corner of the room was a small wooden desk with a computing device on it. Beneath the desk … a ginger mammal, burying its turds in a sandbox. It meowed and he suddenly knew where he was. This was one of the smaller Earth mammals — a cat.

He yawned and stretched like he’d seen many carbon-based lifeforms do before. The ginger cat climbed up on to the bed by his feet and curled up. Moomamu had never seen one so close up before. He looked at the subtle stripes in his fur, at the finer hairs coming out of its ears, at its little pink nose, scarred from battles for dominance.

“Well …” he said with a tongue and a set of vocal chords he’d never used before. “This is unexpected.”
 

***

Moomamu climbed out of the bed and stood. The room was small and dark. It was like he was trapped in a box.

He listened and heard crunching noises nearby. Crunching and clinking.
 

He walked over to the computing device and saw his own reflection on the blank screen. He was definitely a human. He was male, mid-life, an odd patch of grey on the side of his head, and a fluffy beard around his face and down past his … what was it called? The throat bit that stuck out? His Adam’s apple.

There was also a tattoo on his shoulder, in a language even
he
didn’t understand. Thick black lettering swirled around the top of his shoulder and on to his back, further round than his human eyes allowed.

He turned to the cat.

“Where are we, little feline? What part of Earth?” he asked.

It cocked its head and looked at him with its lime-slice eyes and made a soothing, vibrating sound.
 

“You can’t talk?” he said. “Something got your tongue?”

It rested its head on its front legs and closed its eyes.

“Fine … you’re very rude.”

Moomamu knew a lot about a lot of things. He could tell you that Earth had seasons because it was tilted on a 23.4 degree axis. He could tell you that a castle of sand on an Earth beach was held together by water surface tension. He could tell you that that the dinosaurs became extinct sixty-five million years ago. They became extinct because an ancient race of alien hunters teleported them back to their home planet for an exotic gaming season. But he couldn’t tell you who Michael Jackson was.

He was just a living thing. A stupid living thing with limited mental capabilities.

He walked to the door, pushed it open, and walked into a slightly larger room. This one had all sorts of noises and smells. It had some water points, a refrigeration device, and a human being in it. This particular human being was eating little bits of dried grain in a bowl of cow lactation. Milk was the name of it.

The human looked kind of pathetic. It had short brown hair, shaved at the sides, and was wearing pink sleeping clothes.

“Morning,” it said before wiping a drop of milk from its chin.

“Is that what it is?” Moomamu said, pointing at its face.

It shrugged. “Nine a.m. … ish,” it said.

“Nine … and there’s twenty-four hours in a day on this planet right?” He pointed harder. His hand was nearing the human’s nose.

“Sure,” it said.

“I have some questions,” he said. He’d always noticed that the most successful creatures of the universe were the dominant, authoritative types. “What type of human are you?”

It scooped up another spoonful of circular dried grain and stuffed it into its mouth. A small cardboard box was on the table in front of the human. It read ‘Cheerios’.

“Listen human … I don’t have time for mind games.”

It crunched.

Moomamu waited, pointing as hard as he could. His fingertip was shaking with effort until the human conceded and swallowed.

“What do you mean?” it asked.

“Well,” he scoffed. “Have you a plug or a socket? A penis or a vagina? Do you have any Y chromosomes in you?”

The human looked down at two lumps protruding from its chest.

“Well … I have boobs. Does that help?”

“Boobs?” Moomamu said.

“You know, like for feeding babies?” it said, not expressing any emotion at all.

“Ah,” Moomamu said, nodding and relaxing his finger. “Mammary glands … for spawn.”
 

He took a step towards the female human and rested his hand on the table. He saw patches of bacteria and mould growing in the corners of the room. He thought of the tiny insects crawling around in the carpet at his feet. And then he thought about the billions of microscopic creatures covering the surfaces, and probably his own body. He’d never been this close to life before. He shuddered.

“So,” the human said. “Are you new here?”

“Yes,” Moomamu said. “I am new here. I don’t know why I’m here, but I don’t want to be and I want to go home.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Everyone feels like that when they first come to London. Especially right at the beginning. It’s like buyer’s remorse or something.”