by Luke Kondor
If you fail you will die. Don’t stop. Kill him.
He lifted the nail and lined it up to the right-hand side of his skull. He lifted the hammer.
Reach your potential. Reach it. Reach it.
He took a deep breath and, with a single thud, slammed the hammer into the nail.
The pain was short and sharp. As the nail sunk into his skull he lost sight for a few seconds, seeing nothing but red.
When his vision came back he had to remind himself where he was. The inside of his granddad’s van. Somewhere he’d been many times before. Memories flashed back on times he’d spent riding in the back with his granddad to help him with the odd jobs.
His head still felt swollen. Like an elastic band stretched too far, going white at the points most stressed, readying to snap.
He turned the wooden handle of the hammer in his hand and hooked the claw around the nail. He screamed as he pulled on it. He pressed his foot against the side of the van for leverage and yanked it. The nail came flying out and hit the side of the van with a clink before landing by his shoe. It was bloodied up to the middle.
He listened and all he heard were the hundreds of cars passing by, unaware of what was going on inside the van. That, and the sound of something seeping. Like gas leaking. He felt his head and looked at his hand. It was blood, sort of. It was deep, dark black and inky. It was viscous and sticky in his hand.
The pressure was easing off and he felt like he could hear for the first time in years.
He noticed some of the inky black had dripped down the side of his head and landed on his shirt collar.
“Fuck,” he said. “Why? Why the shirt?”
Aidan sat up. Blew his nose into his hands and spat against the wooden floor of the van. He walked back into the front of the van, groaning as he went, but trying to whistle. Trying to remain chipper. He was trying to whistle the tune to ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’.
He grabbed a serviette from the glovebox and dabbed his head. The inky black stuff was still leaking. Slowly now, but enough to warrant keeping the serviette pressed against his open head.
Aidan started up the van, got going and smiled because in the distance, above the line of green, he could see the London cityscape.
Sammy Black
The screams were the worst thing. Sammy remembered the screams.
As he bent down to scoop up some of the remnants, one of the younger pigs pushed past his leg. On the floor was a tuft of hair, stuck to a bloodied fragment of skull. People always say that pigs eat everything, but there’s always enough left over for Sammy to clean up.
Elsa was fast asleep on her side. Her belly gently falling and rising. Her eyes always dozing. The poor old girl. She wasn’t looking too healthy these days. She was past her prime.
Sammy had been in the Pig-House for an hour or so at that point, cleaning up after Aidan.
When the farm was open to the public, the Pig-House was one of his favourite places. Kids only ever got to see pigs in cartoons — fat and round and bright pink — but in reality they were fatter, rounder, but not quite as pink. They were hairy too. And they stinked. Sammy liked it when the kids saw the real thing — the truth.
It was good for kids to understand how reality was different from what they saw on their TVs. It was good for them to go to a place like White Log and see animals in the flesh. Get to touch them. Play with their fur. See the reality of it all. It was never as pretty it seemed to be on the TV. Life was never as pretty.
At one point, they had had around five staff members. Kids themselves mostly. They’d helped feed and clean the animals and would help the customers too. It was a safe place, perfect for families. At midday, you could come down and see the baby goats being fed. And occasionally they’d had little events too — magicians, bouncy castles, face painting — that sort of thing.
Sammy had memories of the kids in butterfly faces with ice-cream-sticky hands running around and making a mess of everything, and he hadn’t minded. He’d liked it.
His granddad was always there to oversee everything. It was his granddad’s baby. The perfect leader with his big smile and ponytail. Helping families out, answering questions, and being the face of the place. He was up at five every morning and in bed by twelve at night, working the entire days through. He’d be in the admin office for huge stretches of time, working numbers, counting cash, ordering food — for the families and for the animals.
Their granddad lost a lot of his years in that office.
Aidan and Sammy spent their childhood helping out.
One of Sammy’s most familiar memories was of cleaning out one of the animal houses as the sun went down and seeing that light from the admin office still on. A single lantern in the darkness.
He remembered going to the house, cooking dinner for Aidan and himself — normally something simple … beans or soup or microwave dinners. He remembered baths and bedtime and remembered Aidan being too scared to go to sleep.
He remembered Aidan going into a zombie-like state as the lights went out. Like his mind was leaving his body. Like it was hiding out for the time being. Waiting for it to be safe to come back.
Sammy remembered the lights in the admin office going out and the sound of the front door opening. The sound of the keys crashing against the kitchen side. The footsteps of their granddad, hitting the floor, step by step — time slowing down as his steps echoed throughout the house, as he walked past their bedroom towards his own.
Most nights would be fine. Most nights were easy — all worrying for nothing — but it was the other nights that ruined the good ones. Every few months there would be a night that would ruin the year. Perhaps their granddad had been a little stressed — bad customers, low sales, whatever — and he would come home, late at night, and he would stop by their room first.
It was those nights that ruined it all for them.
By that point, Aidan had gone, jumped ship emotionally. But he still felt the physical pain. He still screamed when the belt, stick, whatever, hit him.
And it was the screams that were the worst thing.
Sammy remembered the screams.
Hannah Birkin
Hannah looked around her bedroom. Her head was heavy and groggy like somebody had beat her to sleep the night before. Her skin was hot flushed.
“Simon?” she said. The words disappeared into the house, but there was no response. She looked at the desk where Simon’s cologne and moisturises would normally be, but they weren’t there. Just an empty space.
She shook her head, tried to shake the daze.
She stood and wandered into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror.
Still pretty, she thought to herself, looking at her puffy eyes and sweat-soaked hair, and at her belly with the single roll of fat she’d been trying lose for the last six months. Not through exercise, but through the sheer power of thought.
She flicked the shower on and held her hand beneath it as it warmed up. She had to turn the faucet to cold because any warmer and it felt like it was burning her.
Suddenly the thought popped into her mind that Simon wasn’t there. And never was.
“Wait, but I thought …” As the bathroom mirror fogged up, she noticed a steaming red globule of blood fall from her nose and land on the porcelain bathroom tile. It sizzled against the tile and dried up within seconds.
She looked up at the mirror and saw a single red stream running from her nostrils and over her lip. As she wiped her nose with her hand, she thought she saw smoke rising from her fingers. She tried to tell herself that it was just the steam from the shower, but the smell of smoke followed, clawing at her eyes.
Panic rushed through her as her fingers set alight like candles, her finger skin melting right in front of her eyes. The pain was sudden and excruciating, and out of nowhere a hand met hers.
A man, hidden in steam and smoke, with a shadow so big it could swallow her. His hands reached hers, ignoring the flames and wrapping them in wet
towels. He emerged from the veil of steam and smoke and grabbed her by her waist and threw her into the shower, banging her head and her shoulders against the tiles as she hit the side.
“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 hi
s 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—“
