The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (20 page)

Five Reasons Yayatooism Is The Right Religion For You

Samwell Lloyd

Samwellllloydblogs.com

If I were to travel back in time ten years and speak to my younger self I would slap me. I would slap me right across the face. Because that younger me, the eighteen year old, smoking weed, drinking alcohol till the early hours of the morning. That version of me was asleep. He was dead to the world. A puppet. Not in control of his own strings. Now I know better. Now I’m in control.
 

Why?

Well that’s easy. Because now I’m a Yayatooist.
 

Okay, so I know what you’re thinking. Religion is stupid. Yayatooism isn’t a real thing. If you’re going to find religion, make it a traditional religion, or as we Yayatooists call them “Trad-Rels”.

Okay, so let me bend your ear for a few minutes. Let me give you 5 simple reasons why Yayatooism is the right religion for you.

1.) It’s founder is an actual space-being called Yayatoo.

Okay so imagine a girl, a very pretty one at that, with pink and blue hair, tattoos, and the bluest eyes you’d ever seen. That’s Yayatoo! No beard, no smiting, and exactly the kind of god a modern world needs — a female one. Yayatoo isn’t actually from Earth. She is an ancient sentient being called Yayatoo who has taken a host and, although initially wanted to go home, has seen that she can teach the humans of Earth a lot. She’d decided to stay. Lucky us!

2.) There’s no praying involved.

Yayatoo doesn’t require us to pray, or to read massive old books, or even to believe in things that you can’t see. She’s not into all that Trad-Rel stuff. The only thing that Yayatoo asks of us is that we give her any material possession she asks for. She might like some food, or some item of clothing, or one time she even asked for my Playstation 4. How kick ass is that? A god who requires nothing of you, other than your belongings.
 

3.) Yayatoo is alive.

The thing that always bothered me about Trad-Rels is that all of their deities are dead and have been for ages. How can I relate to a god who’s been dead for so long he doesn’t even know what a Flaming Sambuca is? Honestly, the Trad-Rel gods are all out of whack, over the hill, washed up. Whereas Yayatoo is very much alive today, and she has a tattoo on her shoulder of a freakin’ hawk! A FREAKING HAWK!

4.) There’s no such thing as church.

Okay, this might change. After all we may need somewhere to crash indefinitely. But right now, Yayatoo is staying at a friend of mine’s. She’s just sleeping on the sofa like a radical modern traveller. AirBnB style. Which is where I found out about her to be honest. So that means no church. Which I hate. It’s such a Trad-Rel thing to have massive old-school pointy buildings full of people chanting and lighting incense and shit. Right now, church is my friend Dave’s flat.
 

5.) It’s free to join.

Have you noticed that Trad-Rels are getting a little pricey? It seems like every religion right now has got its hand out. Asking for you to put your hard-earned cash money in its own to fund its wild parties and christenings and whatnot where they throw water at a baby’s head. Which is another point, why are people throwing water at babies’ heads? Let me just promise you one thing, there’s no water being thrown on babies’ heads in Yayatooism.

So there you have it. Five reasons why I think Yayatooism might not only be the religion for you, but the religion for our generation.

I’ve put together a free PDF document detailing everything that Yayatoo has taught us so far about life, the world, and the other worlds. Apparently there’s loads out there. All you need to do is go to SamwellLloydBlogs.com/yestoyayatoo and get your FREE PDF! All we ask for is your e-mail address, a contact phone number, and the best time to call you.

All the best,

Samwell Lloyd,

Yayatooist, Blogger, Food Enthusiast.

Aidan Black

White Log Farm, 2002

AIDAN PRESSED HIS FINGERS AGAINST his head. They were cold from the icy bottle of lager he’d been carrying. The summer heat was sizzling on the farm floor. He wanted it to stop. He wanted it to die. In nothing but his shorts and a white vest top of his brother’s, he walked past the goat pastures, past the car park, towards the admin cabin. He kicked a stone as he went and it bounced off the ground, upwards, hitting the metal fence with a clang that echoed throughout the empty farm.

Apart from him, his brother, his granddad and the animals, the farm was dead. No visitors to be seen. A month prior and Aidan had been up to his knees in crying children, faces painted like animals, ice cream sticking out of their mouths, asking for food pellets. Always more food pellets.
 

But today was empty, as it had been for a while. The whole place was quiet, like somebody had placed an upturned glass over the farm, separating them from the outside world, trapping them in a vacuum, like a spider being deprived of oxygen — something the world would deal with later.

His granddad was in the cabin, on the phone. He’d been on the phone for what seemed like days — talking to lawyers or newspaper people.
 

A goat cried as Aidan walked past and he replied with his middle finger and mouthed the words “Shut the fuck up”. It didn’t notice. It kept on chewing the floor. Aidan called it an “Ignorant fuck” as he skipped over a drain. The goat looked up.

He walked onwards, swinging the cold lager in his hand, all the way to the cabin. Before he even opened the door he heard his granddad inside. Something about “credit”. Something about “interest”. Aidan took a deep breath and placed his hand on the door handle, warm from the summer heat, and twisted it open.

“This is where you get to prove to me that you can be a success,” his granddad said. The handset tucked between his head and his shoulder. The spiralling cord anchoring him to the spot. His long grey hair tied into a ponytail. His charcoal dark eyebrows. His perfectly ironed shirt and tie. His thick moustache of grey, reaching over his top lip, towards his chin. Aidan looked at the deep wrinkles in his forehead. He tried to smile, but couldn’t. His head felt light. His granddad looked at him, saw the bottle in his hand, nodded and gestured for Aidan to take the drink to him. No smile. No thank you. Only lager.
 

The inside of the admin cabin had always been the boring part of the farm. The office desk. The boxes of paperwork — receipts, orders, etc — and the old computer whirring away, sounding like it was etching itself onto the internet every time they connected to it. The place was dark and dusty and the only light coming in was from a single window pane of security glass. The blinds were down, blocking out the headache-inducing sun, only letting fine slices of light cut their way through.

His granddad took the bottle without making eye contact.
 

“The thing is, Dean, the thing is, that we need you to put together a mortgaging option that makes sense for me and the farm. I need you to dig into your soul and pull out something special. I won’t take anything second tier. I won’t even consider anything that doesn’t include the options that I … yes, that’s correct … does that sound okay to you? Are you a winner? Are you a success?”
 

On the wall, behind his granddad’s head, was a small bookshelf, a single bottle of whisky on the side, and a selection of books with titles like
The Millionaire & Me
and
Six Habits Of Very Influential People
.

As he left the cabin he found himself wondering if he’d sleep that night. He looked over to his granddad’s van alone in the empty gravel carpark. Freshly cleaned and glimmering in the sun. The vinyl stickers on the side peeling a little, but still good, still fresh. He skipped over to it and tried the driver’s seat door. It was locked, but the side door swung open. Inside were ladders, buckets of paint and spirits, different scraps of wallpaper, and the big red toolbox that screamed to be opened. He looked to the cabin — the blinds were still closed. He climbed into the van and ran his hand across the cool metal surface of the toolbox.

He leaned his head out of the van, just enough to check that the admin cabin blinds were still closed. They were. He unlatched the lid, carefully lifted it open, and revealed a treasure chest of tools — hammers, spanners, wrenches, and a whole lot of stuff Aidan didn’t have a name for. He smelled the fizz of the metal tools mixed with oils and grease. It reminded him of his childhood, following his granddad to his odd jobs. The toolbox was so organised. Everything had its place. The screws had a little compartment, along with the nails. There was a little tray for scraps of sandpaper, and the larger bucket part of the toolbox was packed with clean, shiny, metal doodads.

He reached in and picked up a set of orange-handled pliers He looked at them closely. Squeezed them in his hand. He used the pliers to grab onto the side of the toolbox and attempted to lift the toolbox with the pliers alone. It didn’t move an inch. It was hopeless. But he heard the metal scratch … wait … he thought it was the metal. He stopped when he thought he heard the cabin door close. He held his breath.
 

Nothing.

He placed the pliers back into the toolbox and stopped at the sound again. This time it was closer.
 

He tried to turn, but before he could he was yanked backwards out of the van. The unseen hand pulled with such a force that he fell and smashed his head on the gravel.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” his granddad growled as he towered above him, blocking out the sunlight. “You little …”

His granddad saw the open toolbox in the van. He shook his head and slapped Aidan across the shoulders before reaching into the van and grabbing the hammer.
 

“I didn’t do anything,” Aidan cried. His head and shoulder throbbed as he tried to crawl away. “I promise.”

His granddad paced towards him, grabbed Aidan’s left hand and pulled it towards him. He pressed it against the floor with his right boot, the weight of it crushing his wrist, splaying his fingers outwards. His granddad placed the hammer against one of his fingertips, lining it up.

“Tools are dangerous,” he said, looking at Aidan with the calm of a simple man going about his day-job. “Listen to me, Aidan.”
 

Aidan shook his head, tears streaming down his face, trying his best to hide with his free arm.
 

“Please,” he said. “Please. Don’t.”

His granddad’s eyes were on his. They were the darkest brown. They were a night-time story. A fucking horror film.

“Should you, or should you not have been in the toolbox?” his granddad said.
 

“No, no, I shouldn’t,” Aidan said. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” he said, loosening his foothold a little. “I want you to be successful. And to do that, you have to learn your lessons. You must never make this mistake again.”

Aidan nodded. Past the van he saw his brother Sammy. He was up the gravel path, past the admin cabin. He was looking over at the commotion, being careful not to get caught.

“I won’t,” Aidan said. “I promise.”

“I know you won’t,” his granddad said. He pressed his boot onto Aidan’s wrist, lifted the hammer, and slammed it down onto the floor by Aidan’s finger … just missing it.
 

Aidan screamed as he lifted the hammer again.
 

“Do you promise you won’t go into my toolbox again?” he said, quietly, like he was offering him soup or something.

Aidan stifled his crying and nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I promise.”

His granddad nodded before slamming the hammer down again onto the tip of Aidan’s little finger.

He howled in pain — a noise that stopped every animal on the farm. It was like nothing he’d felt before. He looked over to his brother, still hiding behind the van. He wanted to call for Sammy’s help but knew that it would only make it worse for himself. A proud man doesn’t beg for help.

“Aidan,” his granddad said, keeping his eyes on his. A strange kindness to them. “I do this because I love you.”
 

He lifted the hammer.

Moomamu The Thinker

Moomamu sat down with his cappuccino drink. It wasn’t as delicious as the one he’d had the day before. He wondered if he had enough currency for another one. The caffeine man was expecting him to show up for slave-work that morning, and here he was in a different caffeine house altogether. The human will die someday, Moomamu thought to himself, like all other humans — they’ll get over it.
 

The woman with old and angry eyes, wrinklier than her age should’ve allowed for, was still looking over to them. She kept looking over at Gary with the eyes of a murderer. Moomamu wouldn’t let angry-eyed-female hurt the cat. She could have any cat other than this one. This one was Moomamu’s way home.
 

“I think I teleported,” Moomamu said as he dipped his nose into the frothy milk. “I thought about some place else, and then I appeared there.”

Gary didn’t say anything. He sat upright in the sitting place opposite him. His tail gently swaying side to side, looking at him like he wanted to claw out his eyeballs and chase them down a hallway.