The Hipster From Outer Space (The Hipster Trilogy Book 1) (4 page)

He walked over to her and smelled the pang of hot rotting animal flesh blowing out from inside the box.
 

His stomach was wobbling with hunger — It growled at him.

“Would you like to try a piece?” the female said. A small metal ringlet decorated her nostrils. It bounced against the top of her lip when she moved.

“You mean the food?” he said.

“Yeah, we’re trying a new blend of food styles. We’re combining the spicy Mexican salsa flavours with the exotic curry spices of India to create a new flavour explosion which is both wholesome, natural, and … erm … good.” She shook her head with that last word. Was it a sign of embarrassment, or a mating signal?

“What kind of animals have you killed and heated in this box?” he asked, his stomach now wobbling with more violence.
 

“What kind of meat?” she said.

“Sure.”

“Well, we have a bit of everything. Chicken, pork, beef, it depends on your preferences.” She looked down at Moomamu, at the beard. “Oh … we have vegan options too.”

“Interesting.” His stomach was growing angry.

“So would you like something to eat?”

“Yes, I would very much like that.”

She then picked up a small plate of tiny bite-sized portions of food. Meat and goo in wheat-based wraps.
 

“Try a sample,” she said.

His mouth salivated. He picked up one of the samples. It was warm in his hand. He placed it to his nose and smelled the glorious mixture of Mexican and Indian spices. His stomach wobbled more and he placed the sample on his tongue.
 

He involuntarily groaned. Loud enough to surprise the woman in the box.
 

“Yes yes yes yes,” Moomamu said. He opened his jaw, and clamped down on the food, and then released and repeated. Munching on the food until it became a tasty paste which glided down the back of his throat.
 

He rubbed his belly and nodded. His mouth perked up on the edges. He was doing the human smile thing.

“Would you like a full one?” the woman said.

His belly was still angry. The idea of another bite made his mouth salivate more.

“Yes, scary box female. I would like one of your Mexican Indian foods. A full one. The biggest one you have. I intend to gorge.”

She nodded and smiled and said, “Okay, that will be seven pounds.”

Moomamu was confused.

“Of flesh?” he said.

“Erm … sterling?” she said.

Moomamu looked at himself, still in his white pants, and explained that he had no sterling pounds for her.

“Oh, I thought you were a hipster … but … are you homeless?”

“Homeless?” Moomamu scoffed. “Look to the skies, human. My home is far greater than this dust pile of a planet. I am from somewhere incredible and beautiful and peaceful and quiet.”

“Do you have any money?”

“I have none of your currency.”

The sticky-haired human told Moomamu to leave so he continued his journey to the warm patch of grass where the group of cross-legged humans were sitting. They were still humming.

“You … group of humans. Activate your vision sensors. I mean … your, what are they called again? Your eyes. I need you to look at me.”

One by one the humans opened their eyes. Some were annoyed, some curious. Moomamu noticed who he thought was the alpha of the group. His beard was longer than Moomamu’s. This might be a challenge.

“You,” he shouted. “What are you?” He flicked his beard at the alpha as a sign of dominance and then pointed at him.

“Hey man. You should chill. Your bad energy is killing the vibe, dude. Look, it’s a nice warm day. We’re just doing our vegan meditation class and we’ll be on our way.” The alpha spoke with such soothing, calming vocal tones it was hard for Moomamu not to calm a little.

“No,” he shouted louder. “Tell me, what is vegan?”

“It means no animal products,” said a female from her cross-legged position.
 

“And why are you sleeping on this grass?”

They looked at Moomamu confused.
 

“We’re not sleeping,” the alpha said. “We’re finding our inner peace. We’re calming ourselves. Finding our centres.”

Moomamu thought about what they were saying. He’d seen many religious species before in his time as a Thinker. He’d known races to pray to make-believe things in the sky that didn’t exist. The Tangolonis of Spanzey XV were notorious for praying to death. As in, praying for so long they forgot to eat and drink and died of exhaustion.

“Would you like to join us?” the alpha said.

Moomamu found himself laughing. A chuckle at first, but it echoed around inside and, like a chain reaction, grew and grew until he was giggling uncontrollably.
 

The meditation group looked on as he struggled to breathe through the laughter. He dropped to his knees and guffawed to the sky. He found his eyes watering and his sides hurting. After several minutes of this he regained his composure, stood back up, and wiped his eyes.

“No,” he said.
 

And that was that. Now he knew the religious sleepers weren’t a threat, he ventured further into the park.
 

***

As he wandered around the green patch of grass he noticed all sorts of interesting human life. He saw a group of prepubescent humans smoking and pointing handheld communication devices at themselves. The females puckered their lips for the devices. Perhaps mimicking an anus? He wasn’t sure.

He saw several Earth dogs with their human subordinates wandering the park. Their human slaves were given all the lowly tasks of throwing the play toys and cleaning up the excrement. Some of the humans were lost; they tied themselves to their dog leaders with ropes to pull them along. Lazy humans.

He also saw a group of parents with their spawn in a sectioned-off area — full of metal training equipment. Bars to pull themselves up with, ropes to swing on, and slides for them to practice their sliding on. The parents looked on and cheered at their spawn, who were a little young to be doing the strenuous tasks they’d been given.
 

A few of the older humans looked cautiously at Moomamu’s pants, but he paid them no bother. He sat down on a clear patch of grass and looked up to the sky. He couldn’t see anything past the blue hue of Earth’s atmosphere. It was a veil, hiding the world he knew behind it.
 

He’d always assumed that there would be others like him. Other higher beings. Other Thinkers. Dotted around the universe in their various corners — watching and thinking. He’d never met any of them.
 

To the humans they must seem like … Not gods. He didn’t want to say the word gods, but maybe something similar.
 

He thought about the possibility of there being some other type of beings out there, maybe higher beings than himself. He didn’t know for sure. How could he?

He saw Earth’s moon in the daylight sky, poking through the veil.
 

He’d once seen the humans fly up to it and set foot on it.

For a second he thought that humans might not be as bad as he first …

With a sudden burst of energy, he jumped back to his feet and began screaming.

“Help me,” he screamed. “Help me. You fuckers, please help me. Please.”

He noticed the humans in the park stirring, but he carried on.

“I am the great Moomamu the Thinker. I have watched over this corner of the universe for all of time, and then some. Please … help me in my time of need,” he shouted and screamed.

A few of the cross-legged religious humans walked over and sat down in front of him. They watched him with the utmost interest. Their eyes open wide, watching him scream and shout to the skies. More humans joined and sat around him.
 

“Please … the human beings … they’re so stupid. They don’t understand anything,” he shouted. He waved his arms in the air. He even started to jump up and down. His recreational parts bounced against his thighs.
 

He stopped for a second and noticed even more humans from different tribes sitting down. More bearded ones, more bald ones, more females, and even a few of the parents. They sat around him and did nothing. Just watched.

“Look at them,” he said. “Tell me they’re not worthless. They dress so strangely. They eat with their mouth parts, they poo, and piss, and I have been trapped in one of their pathetic bodies. What torture is this?”
 

He began pacing around the circle, flicking his beard at each human as he passed.

“I can’t survive in space in this pathetic body. And my powers for rational thinking have gone. There was a time when I could simply observe and come to logical conclusions, but in this … fleshy form, packed with hormones and feelings, I’m …” and here he screamed again. The onlookers gasped. “… Losing my shit.”
 

With this he dropped to his knees. His eyes began to jettison water at an alarming rate. His nose cavities pulsed with phlegm.

And suddenly, the crowd of humans began to clap their hands together. One by one they stood and they all clapped. One of them whistled.

“Brilliant, absolutely fantastic,” one of them said.

“Never seen anything like it,” said another.

A few of them walked to him and placed shiny metal coins at his feet.

He looked at them, confused.

“You’ve got a real talent there,” said a female as she placed a small piece of paper on the floor. “Here, go buy yourself a coffee with this.”

He picked up the metal circles and the paper and he looked at them. Each of them had small portraits of an old sick female. Maybe it was their royalty? Or their currency?

He scooped it up. He wasn’t sure how to count it and he didn’t trust any of the humans to do it for him due to their primal urge to steal.
 

With his hand full of Earth currency, he left the park and wandered back to the tin-box. Back to the glorious scent of Mexican and Indian flavourings.

Aidan Black

Aidan sat down at the greasy-as-fuck table.
 

His skin crawled as he picked up the menu. It was laminated and covered in bits of food and finger smudges. He felt the bacteria trying to jump off the menu and onto his skin. He rubbed the stub where his ring finger used to be. The gentle tickle of it still felt peculiar. Like no other sensation. Like licking a battery with a phantom tongue that you never had. It sent a buzz of nothing into his hand. He massaged the nobbled bit of bony skin, took a deep breath, and looked around the café. It wasn’t a good one. It was a beans-on-toast place. A greasy spoon. A place for losers.

It smelled like damp and there was an iPod on the counter, churning out eighties pop classics through the tinny speaker system. The afternoon sun was glared through the windows, forcing everyone to squint.

He reminded himself that he’d showered that morning and took a deep breath. He remembered the burning water painfully cleaning him of the dirt from the previous week. He felt his skin sizzle with hot cleanliness.

A woman walked over to him.
 

“What can I get you, luv?” she said. Her red lipstick was so thick he heard her lips smacking together every time she talked. The wrinkles around her eyes were so deep he wondered what was hiding in their depths.

“Hello,” he said. “How are you today?”
 

She squinted. Her faux charm vanished.

“You’re looking very smart,” she said, looking at his teal blue suit, freshly pressed. “Off to a job interview?”

He sighed. He felt himself getting irate.

“Tea,” he said. “A cup of tea.”

She placed her hands on her hips and said “Sure” before turning around and walking back to the counter.

Aidan put the menu down, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a container of alcoholic gel. He squirted a globule into his hands and rubbed them together. He squirted a small amount into his mouth and tongued it around the back of his teeth and gums.

The café was small. The tiles were yellow-white like old teeth. Two builders were sitting at one end talking about someone on their site. One was Polish, and the other was a proper London Cockney. Aidan could see the dust and mud from the site still on them — their faces, their hands, their clothes.

He pictured himself grabbing their forks and … stabbing something. He wasn’t sure what. He didn’t want to plan it. He would freestyle it. He would feel it in the moment. Like the great Miles Davis. He would play the whole thing like a masterpiece. Something he could relive in his mind over and over.

He gritted his teeth and let the thoughts melt away.
 

A saying came into his head:
We cannot become what we need to be by remaining who we are.

He didn’t have to do anything. The fact that they were manual labourers made him feel like they’d already failed. They may as well have been dead. They were brick-shifters and that was that. They probably didn’t even have a mantra.

His tea arrived.
 

The woman planted it on the table in front of him. The tea bag was still in the mug. The milk looked like it had been spat in there from a foot away. It’d splashed the side of the mug. And the mug itself had brown stains around the handle.

“Excuse me,” he said, and the waitress stopped.

“Yes, luv? Did you want some sugar?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want any sugar.”

He looked up at her. Her ill-fitting skirt. Her nails painted in chipped red nail varnish.

“Yes,” she said. “How can I help you?”

“This cup of tea,” he said. “Are you happy with it?”
 

The waitress seemed to stop in her tracks. She’d never heard that before. She had to reset, change gears.

“Excuse me,” she said.
 

“This mug of English breakfast tea … are you happy with it?”

She looked at it, and then back to Aidan.
 

“Sure,” she said.
 

He gritted his teeth and he noticed the builders quietening and looking over.

“I would like you to up your game,” Aidan said. “I think you could do better than this.”