The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) (6 page)

“Well,” said the alpha, “it’s about time this day came. I was starting to get sick of smelling you.”

Moomamu looked to his left and saw the other prisoners shaking. Urine puddled in the dirt beneath the brown stripy moggy in the middle.
 

The human, though, on the far side, looked fine. He exuded a calm confidence that Moomamu hadn’t seen in a human for a long time.

“We’ve been feeding you this past few weeks, given you shelter from the harsh weather outside, kept you safe against intruders, and now it is time for you to pay your debts.”

Debts? Moomamu didn’t feel he owed them anything. The hospitality was appalling.
 

“When the sun rises and the Prince of Minu awakens, When the afternoon begins and the sun is at its hottest, you, and your prisonmates around you, will fight, tooth and claw, to the death.”

The energy changed in the room. The prisoners were no longer looking at each other like friends who’d landed in the same trouble, but as enemies they might have to kill. Moomamu noticed the human’s eyes firmly looking at him. His jaw clenched.

“You will either do yourself a great honour and kill the others around you on the sacred Scrapping Grounds above, or you will die, shame your name, your body, and your family, and you will be either burned or eaten, depending on what species you are.” Here the alpha’s eyes went to Moomamu and then the other human. His tongue darted in and out, dashing the tip of his nose.
 

“So sleep if you can. Escape to your dreams of tails and light. Lay with those you never could and never will, the females of dreams. Lick the young ones you never had clean. Give them the advice of a clawed father. Teach them all the lessons they need to know. Set them right for a life they’ll never have. Do this. Do all of this between the moment you close your eyes and the moment you open them, because a short while after waking, you will likely be dead.”

The alpha stepped away. His fluffy feather-brush-tail flicking dust as it swayed. Surely the most evil creature Moomamu had seen since the parasite on Earth.

Snuckems, he had said in the prison. His name was Snuckems.

JoEl The Engineer

JoEl opened his overcoat and grabbed a cylindrical device from his belt. The handle was a little longer than his hand. A ring of blue lights around the base and a line of ridges working up to a single metal point. He ran the edge of the device over the door until it beeped and the blue lights turned red. With a click of a button, the locking mechanism of the door fizzed and clicked. He put the device back in its appropriate pocket and pushed the door open.

It was quiet.

The family were asleep. Inside, pictures lined the walls — the family throughout the years. Ornaments of clocks and porcelain cats and knick-knacks dotted the shelves and the sides. A wooden chair, empty, sat in front of him. As if somebody was supposed to greet him.

The house was dark, restful. He walked with steps light enough to tread on air. He’d hate to wake someone. He’d hate to ruin the surprise.

From the sounds of their breathing and even their sleeping eye movements, JoEl could sense how many people were in the house. Two adults and a child. Also, outside in the back oxygen farm there was an animal, a pet, digging. Its claws pulling away at the earthy banks.

The child, the target, was just above him. He could smell the urine soaked into the bedding. Faint, after many washes, but still there. Just enough for JoEl’s senses.
 

He walked towards the stairs, glided up them, his finger running along the handrail, enjoying the texture of the newborn wood against his fingertips. Chills of excitement ran down his spine.
 

He started towards the sleeping parents first. He could hear the sleeping father most of all. His tight nasal cavities strangling the air. JoEl reached up and wiped away a build-up of dust from his red lenses.

With a simple push of his hand the white-painted door opened as if a breeze blew it. He followed the draft into the dark bedroom. Moonlight washed the room with shadows and highlights. JoEl stepped to the edge of the bed. The two lumps of flesh hidden beneath the white fabric like neighbouring mountains draped in snow. He went to the woman first and removed the glove from his right hand. Again, no noise. Impossibly quiet. His fingers twitched in the oxygen-air and, like a magician revealing a card, he wiped his twitching fingers over the woman’s face, bottom to top, as if wiping the air away from her, and within a second the chemical process began.

Quicker now, he paced around to the other side of the bed as the woman awoke. She tried to scream, but her mouth had already healed over. Her nostrils closed and her eyes sealed shut. All that came out of her were muffled screams as she tried to remove whatever was smothering her. She hadn’t realised it was her own flesh.

With the same hand, JoEl wiped the invisible air away from the male’s face. The disgusting snoring stopped as the flesh healed over. They were both moaning and squirming now. Two mountains of snow avalanching with confusion. The male fell off the bed, to the side, banging his head on the wooden furniture, leaving a mark of wet red.
 

JoEl looked at his handiwork — the woman now silent, the male shaking once, twice, and then no more. His body gave the breathing one final go. If it could just force the air out of the lungs hard enough, it would break through, but their faces, now smoothed over, closed shut and sealed, were too much.

Once the collateral was over with, JoEl turned around.
 

The child.

The job.

The target.

The innocence.
 

It was standing behind him, through the open door, rubbing its eyes. JoEl had been so interested in his work that he hadn’t heard the child wake up and open the door. He was in flow — a state of being he found himself falling into whilst working. A sign of passion and love for the job.

“Who are you?” the child said, the smell of urine coming from his trousers. The little half-sized human reminded him of his own son back home on Gamma Nebulous.
 

“I’m just here to fix something, son,” JoEl said. “Don’t worry.”

“What’re Mum and Dad doing?” the child said, its blond hair ruffled. It looked past JoEl into the bedroom behind.

“Sleeping. They’re sleeping.”

The child nodded, still sleepy. It yawned and looked like it might fall over.
 

“What’s broken?” it said.

“Don’t worry about that,” JoEl said. “Let’s get you back to sleep.”

JoEl took a step towards the child. His finger’s twitched in preparation — time for another magic trick.

Nisha Bhatia

“Neesh?” the voice said — male, eloquent, familiar. “Neesh, what are you doing?”

Nisha opened her eyes to the barrage of light. Her pupils ached as they dilated. The world came into focus as shapes emerged from nothing. A woman. Pretty. Dolled up in thick smacks of lipstick and fiery red hair tied back so tight her eyes might pop out. She was looking down at Nisha like she’d spat in her soup.

The other shape stood closer, hovering above — perfect chin, chocolate eyes. The familiar dusty grey hair brushed backwards in a perfect wave. Brown wingtip shoes she’d bought for him years back. It was Edward. Her husband. Still married, never divorced.

“Edward?” she said, still unsure what was happening. “Where am I?”

He bent down and helped her to sit up. There was a healthy dousing of wine on his breath.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“Yes, Edward, what
is
your estranged wife doing here?’ the woman behind said, her voice like fingers prying between them.

“It’s okay, I’m sure …” Edward began but didn’t know how to finish. He turned back to Nisha. “What
are
you doing here? Are you drunk?”

“No,” Nisha detested. “I’m not drunk at all, but …” Her head buzzed as she remembered arriving in the hallway. She saw the shopping bag by her side. The wine bottle inside had broken. “Wait, maybe … I don’t remember, but … maybe …”

The smell of wine all around her and a cold damp on her fingers. She looked down again and saw that she’d been lying down, her arm in the broken glass, in a puddle of the spilled wine.
 

Edward helped her to her feet. Her head was heavy and her legs didn’t feel like her own. She felt like Bambi on ice. She looked to Edward. A stag dressed up for his … oh God, his date.

“I called you, right?” she said. “I think I called you and then … I think I must have fallen over.”

“Sure you did,” the other woman interjected, looking at the puddle by Nisha’s feet.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Nisha said. “I better go. I shouldn’t be…”

“No wait, let me get a taxi for you, it’s late,” Edward said, not trusting Bambi to find her way home.
 

“No, no, it’s okay, I can do it,” she said. “I’m only around the corner anyway.”

“Are you?” the other woman said. “And how many times do you come round here?”

“It’s not, it’s not like that. I just …” Nisha climbed to her feet, scooped up the contents of her bag which were on show. “I’d better go before I embarrass myself further.”

Edward and his mistress looked at Nisha as she disappeared around the corner, stymying a hiccup.

***

The warm bubbles surrounded her. The steam danced upwards from the surface of the water and into the nothing above her head. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through the nostrils. She felt the weight of the world fall away from her shoulders like the fragrant bubbles around her.

Well, as much of the weight as possible. She’d kind of fucked it up a bit today. Somewhere lurking in the back of her mind was Edward her estranged, Tom her producer, and Alan the sweaty soldier. All of them looking down at her, through filters of light. All of them offering her a helping hand. A reassuring shoulder to cry on. What the fuck did they know?

A nice, warm bath. Nisha was sure that the path to world peace was in the bottom of a bubble bath. Some scented candles. The wine wasn’t compulsory, but it helped.

She opened her eyes, blew the bubbles from her fingers, and reached over the side of the bath, to pick up the glass of red she’d poured herself. She wasn’t supposed to drink red before a show-day. It made her blotchy and stained her teeth. Her perfect teeth.

She smiled out of habit and then drank a mouthful of the dark red. She tried to reach her teeth over the wine, biting the glass.
 

She held it on the back of her tongue. Let the wine simmer and sting her taste buds before swallowing. It worked its way down into the meat of her throat, but then, it went up. Where it should’ve found its way down into her stomach, it changed direction. It pushed up against the inside of her throat. It permeated her soft inner skin, traveled up behind her nostrils and into her sinuses. Up again like fish swimming up river, through to the backs of her eyes, and into the skull. She felt it attack the membranous sack around her brain, finding holes where none should exist.

She didn’t scream. She relaxed.
 

An inch above the surface of the bath water, droplets formed. They began to drip, upwards, splashing against the ceiling.
 

“What the—?”

The bath dripped towards the ceiling with increasing intensity and she felt her body become light. Did it rise in the water? Or did the bathtub fall away?
 

Either way, she was weightless now, her eyes and brain filled with red which darkened until she was back there again. Floating in space. The dark presence to her one side, and the lush galaxy to the other. But the lights of the stars were focused. No longer the burning of fires, but the glistening of eyes, thousands of eyes, and the noise. The crying. Oh God, the crying. Please no.

“Make it stop!”

The sound of millions of tears hitting a hard metal surface. The wailing of them all in pain, lost, alone. A sound to be heard across the universe.

“Please make it fucking stop!”

With a splash, she found herself back in the bath. The water, bathtub, her body, everything where it should be. She looked down and saw the wine glass was in the water. A small pool of blood red around it.
 

“Dammit. Again?” she said. “What the fuck’s wrong with me?”

She rubbed her eyes and splashed her face, but a sickening thought came to her. The tightness in her head fell away, and everything became clear. The red mist dissipated and she saw the children. Hundreds of them, screaming in pain: all of them, dying.

Luna Gajos

Luna pulled the Ford Fiesta up to the curb. A quiet suburb. The kind of place to which city-dwellers moved once they’d popped a child or two and were looking for somewhere quieter, safer. Winding roads that passed perfect, modern-built houses made of fresh red bricks with gardens trimmed, green and perfect, even in the night-time.
 

She could see the wind blowing through the beautifully sterile leaves of the tree in the front garden. It looked fake. Almost real, but not quite. It was
too
good to be real. And too expensive. The houses looked like they’d been set aside for a certain breed of human. Not the kind that Luna was. No, a different type.
 

“Which house is it?” she said as she pulled the handbrake up and let it click into place.
 

“Gary’s not sure.” The cat was in the passenger seat. His good paw was up on the car door beneath the window and his stub, now all healed, was tucked beneath his front. His head bobbed left and right, scanning the darkness outside. Stopping for a second on each window, a few lit up like lanterns.

“One day you’ll tell me how you even heard about this so-called kid in danger. I don’t understand how you would know about any of this?” she said, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel.
Duh-duh-drum. DUH-DUH-DRUM.

Gary turned to look at her, his eyes scrunched up. He looked pissed off.

“Sorry,” she said as she picked her hands up and placed them in the pockets of her chunky winter-coat.