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

by Luke Kondor

  “You know, you should probably sit this one out. You’ve taken a mighty beating and you don’t particularly look well.”

  “Gary will go and make sure mission is complete. He doesn’t trust Thinker to go through with it.”

  “He’ll do it. All that’s on his mind right now is going through that portal and going home. He doesn’t have any idea what will actually happen.”

  Gary’s tail twitched and he looked towards the car where Moomamu and Luna were waiting.

  “I can tell you like him, but you have to see this through. It’s either him or the seven billion people on this planet,” Carol said. She noticed a spider crawling out of a hole between two bricks. She placed her hand out and let it crawl onto her. She looked at the little black thing with matchstick legs and then back to Gary. “You want me to take that cone off? I can’t see you getting into any fights, but if you do you’ll fare better without it.”

  “Gary wants plastic neck cage gone.”

  Carol flicked the spider from her hand, sending it flying into nothing. She bent down and unclipped the latch of the cone and pulled it away from him. She noticed Indie looking on, concerned — perhaps a reminder of the time she was spayed. Indie stood and teetered into the house, her tail between her legs.

  Once she’d removed the cone she noticed Gary looking at her. She remembered the first time she’d looked into his golden-green eyes. She’d always felt sorry for Gary. He’d had a tough time of it … life, that was. She ran her hand over his head and down his back and his tail puffed out. She looked at the cast over his paw.

  “Do you ever think you’ll settle and retire from all this?” she said. “If anyone deserves it then I think it must be you. I retired as soon as I woke up on this planet. And … it’s been nice. I’ve come to like this life, maybe even love it. Right now I’ve got to head off to some dog training thing. It’s the kind of non-life threatening thing that retired people do.”

  “Gary has no choice. After all this is over with, if he survives, he will go on to the next mission. If he survives that one, then he will do the next. Gary will not stop.”

  Carol stopped stroking his back and sighed.

  “I know you won’t, Gary, or should I say …”

  “Don’t,” Gary said.

  Carol nodded to say okay, and then picked him up, and carried him through the rain, which was coming down thicker with every passing minute. She opened the passenger seat of the car and placed him on it.

  “It won’t take you too long to get there,” Carol said to Luna. “So eat up, drink up, and …” She stopped and looked at Moomamu. “Go close that hole before it’s too late.”

  “Yeah, yeah sure, will do,” Moomamu said. “Let’s go and get me off of this planet.”

  Carol smiled and tapped the door of the car before shutting it.

  She waited, standing in the rain, as the little car coughed into life, and reversed off her driveway, and down the road.

  She was now sopping wet but it didn’t matter. She waved at the car until she saw the taillights disappear into the rain.

  Aidan Black

  You’re almost there. You’ve almost won. You’ve made it happen. You’re a success. You can do this.

  Aidan took a step forward. And then another. All he could think about was lifting his ten-ton shoe from the ground, placing it in front of the other, and then repeating the process. Each step was heavier than the last. It felt like he was stepping through tar — each step planting him deeper, rooting him down, sinking him into the inky black. He couldn’t see much of anything. He could make out the fence to his side. Maybe even the calls of his brother, but they were too distant. His voice talking to him from some other dimension, echoing through, barely reaching his ears.

  Can you believe it? After all of this hard work, we’re finally — no, you’re finally going to finish it.

  Aidan tried to look at his hand as he took another step, but he didn’t even recognise it. Dirt and dried blood and black had gathered beneath his fingernails. It could’ve been a tentacle for all he knew. It wasn’t his. He looked upwards. There was only one thing in focus. He was surrounded by pitch black and a single spotlight lit up the door to the Pig-House. There was nowhere else to go but to that door.

  You’re nearly at the finish line. You’re nearly there. You’ve nearly done it.

  Aidan saw a familiar face floating, bodiless, in front of him. A familiar moustache. A familiar scowl.

  I’m ready. Come to me. Just a little more and you can consider yourself affluent, prosperous, triumphant. Find me. Come to me.

  Aidan walked through the apparition and continued towards the door. He felt a hand on his shoulder, pulling at him. It turned him physically and, for a second, he saw his brother … No, not just a brother, a carer, a man who’d looked after him even when his parents died. But it didn’t matter now. He threw the hand off him and continued onwards.

  Come to me. Find me. You’ve won. You’re special. You’re my special one.

  Once he was at the door, he pushed it open and walked inside. The invisible hand reached out and pulled him towards Elsa’s dead body. He stepped over the fence, and stood in front of the … it wasn’t Elsa anymore. It was just something in the way. He fell to his knees, reached forward, and plunged his hands into the soft tissue of Elsa’s stomach, pulling it open, peeling it backwards. The inky black poured out, covering him, and, for the first time, the whispering voice became clear. There was nothing in the way … nothing obstructing him. He sat back and smiled.

  You’ve done it. You’ve won. You’re a success.

  Just before the black took over him completely, he saw the hole. A sphere of nothing. Only small, about the size of a clenched fist. But within it he could make out the source of the voice. He finally knew where the whispering had been coming from. His body shook. Not in the way it would do if he was cold, but he felt his whole self shake as if being flung through time and space and back, like his existence was glitching.

  “Aidan!” He heard Sammy’s voice from behind him. “Aidan what’s happening?”

  But his eyes closed as he became fully submerged in the black. He couldn’t hear, smell or taste anything anymore. All he could do was smile, because, after all these years, he’d finally won.

  Luna Gajos

  “What in the hell?” Luna said as she pulled up.

  “Gary senses that we may be stepping into trouble.”

  Outside there was a pile of smoking rubble with nothing but a defiant window standing tall, a steaming Transit van, a musty old Saab, and rain now pounding down on her car. She thumbed the cigarette packet in her pocket and tried to remember that at least she wouldn’t need to pay for a car wash. For the first time since leaving the vet she felt unsafe. She felt like reversing the car back to where it had come from; reversing all the way back down the country to London.

  “You’ll get mugged,” her parents had said when she told them about moving to England. “You’ll get mugged and you’ll lose your money and you won’t be able to pay your rent.”

  “And then what?” she’d said.

  “You’ll come crying back to Komorów asking us for a place to stay and food to eat.”

  “Tall One can stay here if Tall One prefers,” Gary said, pulling her back to the present.

  “Luna, I appreciate all you have done but the cat is right. I will soon be going home so we have no need for you anymore. You have my greatest and sincerest thanks for taking us this far,” Moomamu said, genuinely smiling for the first time.

  “I can’t … just leave you here,” she said. “You’ll get lost or something … and … I’ll never get to meet an actual alien again.”

  “Very well,” Gary said, purring. His little scarred nose lifted a little. “Tall One will come with us to complete the mission, but you must promise Gary that, no matter what, you will not stop Thinker from entering portal. It is the only way Earth can be saved.”

  Luna nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Sav
e Earth. I’ll be honest, I was leaning in that direction anyway.”

  “Can we get a move on?” Moomamu said. “I do admit…” He leaned forward and placed one hand on Luna’s shoulder and another on Gary’s back. “… You two are my two favourite of all the Earth dwellers. You have both helped get me this far and I do appreciate it. I really do, but you’re also wearisome and I can only stand so much of you. It’s time for me to go back to my home in the stars. You won’t see it, but I’ll be watching you. I might even wave to you. Of course, when I get home I won’t be in this human vessel, so I won’t technically be able to wave, but I would imagine it. And I’d like you to know, somewhere in your Earth brains, that someone up there, me, is looking at you.”

  Luna made a mental note to change her shower curtain to a non-see-through one.

  “Let’s go,” Gary said and they opened their doors and climbed out of the car. “This way,” he said.

  They walked passed the smoking remains of the cabin, past the two lumps of … Luna couldn’t be sure, but it looked like two burned human corpses next to the Saab. She shook her head and carried on. They walked up a gravel path. Luna felt cold, her hair now soaked through, rain pouring on her face. Gary was hobbling along in front, and Moomamu was right next to her.

  They made their way to a barn of some sort. Light spilled out from beneath the door and through several holes in the walls. Luna and Gary stepped back as Moomamu pushed the door open. They piled in and shook themselves dry and looked around the barn. It smelled like shit. They heard the movement of pigs waddling and snorting away in their little enclosures. Gary hobbled ahead of them and stopped. He turned to Luna and Moomamu, his eyes wide. Once she caught up, she saw what he was looking at. The madman from the restaurant, on his knees, in front of a dead pig — its guts on the floor around him, black liquid everywhere.

  “He’s here?” she said. She looked at Moomamu and saw his unease. Gary’s fur was backing up. He raised his tail. She looked back over and saw another man next to the mad man. He was a smaller build, but the relation was obvious. He had that same heavy brow. The same brown hair. He was kneeling next to the mad man. His hands on his shoulders.

  “Please Aidan, wake up. You have to come back. What’s wrong with you?” he said, before noticing the three of them stood watching him. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded, tears in his eyes.

  “Where’s the portal?” Moomamu said, steeling himself.

  “It’s inside the pig body,” Gary said. “You won’t be able to see it. It will look completely invisible to your Tall One eyes, but it’s there.”

  “Are you listening to me?” the brother said. “Are you fucking listening to me? Who are you? Did you come looking for the others?”

  Luna could almost see what was going through Moomamu’s head — fight or flight. Gary took a step closer. She thought about running back to the car, but instead found a shovel and picked it up. The brother watched her with his beady pigeon eyes. He nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “If that’s how it’s going to be.” He stood, wiped his eyes, and picked up a hoe that was leaning on the wall behind him. “I guess I’m going to have to kill you as well.”

  As he spoke Luna saw something moving from within the pig’s stomach. It looked like the air inside it was rippling. The brother stepped forward, pointing the hoe towards them. He had pure anger in his eyes. Since moving to England, all those years ago, she never expected to find herself in a fight in some smelly little barn full of pigs, with a cat, a space alien and some Neanderthal of a man. She didn’t expect that one bit. But when she saw the hairy arm reach out of the ripple and touch the floor, she realised she hadn’t seen anything yet. The arm was followed by the dark body of damp, slimy fur, followed by a face full of teeth, with eyes glowing a deep indigo. Whatever the beast was, it climbed out of the pig’s stomach and stood behind the brother, who looked over his shoulder when he saw the shadow of it cover him. The same inky black liquid covering the floor was dripping out of its mouth and its fur. It was black like Luna had never seen — dark to the point of being non-existent — but on the edges, she could see through it, around it, into space. She could see all the colours of the spectrum trapped in the finer points of its individual hairs.

  They all looked at it. It had the face of a howling, rabid ape. It was big, no, gigantic. It extended itself upwards, its head almost reaching the ceiling. It looked down at the brother who wasn’t moving at all — trapped in his own fear. It reached over. Its giant furry hands picked the brother up, lifting him into the air.

  “Wait,” the brother said. “Wait, no, Aidan, help.”

  The beast placed its other hand on the bottom half of the brother and pulled him in two, showering the mad man in his brother’s guts and blood. Still, he didn’t move. He was catatonic.

  “Okay,” Luna said. “What do we do now?”

  “We can do nothing. We have failed,” Gary said. “The parasite has entered. We will now die.”

  “Okay, shit shit shit shit,” Luna said. “Moomamu, you should go through the …” She turned to look at him, but she couldn’t see him. He’d vanished into thin air. The parasite, the beast, the ape, placed the bottom half of the brother into its mouth and bit down on his legs with a crunch, and she thought of her parents in Poland. The smell reminded her of her father returning from work — the stink of the slaughterhouse clinging to him.

  “You shouldn’t go to England,” they’d said, all those years ago. “You’ll be sorry,” they’d said.

  “Sorry,” Luna said. “I’m sorry.”

  Moomamu The Thinker

  Moomamu couldn’t see anything. All around was black. But it wasn’t right. He wasn’t home. It certainly didn’t smell like it. In fact, why was it he could still smell? He still had human nostrils, and they were smelling … something rotten, something dead.

  He heard tapping, loud, all around him, like thousands of tiny feet slamming against metal. He lifted his human hand in front of him, but could barely see it. He pushed himself up from the cold metal floor he was lying on. It took him a second to realise he’d teleported again. He remembered seeing the parasite make its way through the portal. He saw Gary. He heard how the cat explained that this meant all of the humans would die, and then he’d vanished and the next thing he knew he was here, in the black. He was cold, but he reached forward and felt his human clothes. He was still in the shirt that the cat had helped him put on, and the trousers. He thought about the short-haired female from the flat where he’d awoken. He remembered the smell of her breath, her perfume. He felt a pang of sadness that she would perish at the hands of the parasite, and, from the looks of it, the mouth of the parasite. He held his hand out and felt his beard. It was wet. He moved his hand upward to where his eye had been hit by Richard Okotolu, the poor human who he’d left for a life of torment with the Babosi. He was surely dead now, or so close to it you’d be incapable of telling the difference.

  He remembered the cat defending him against the broken man. He lost his paw, nearly died, because of that stupid imbecile. He shook his head. His nostrils were on overdrive. The mix of smells in the air was almost too much for him. Smoke, metal, rust, and … was that the female from his flat? Her perfume was in the air, lingering, hiding behind a sea of other more potent smells. He reached into the dark and felt something soft in front of him. He moved his hands along the soft surface and felt something he recognised: a human head.

  His human pupils adjusted to the darkness around him and he could see. In front of him was a dead body. It was Marta — the girl from the flat.

  The Sesh Report

  March 12th, 2015.

  First of all. congratulations are in order. That was the most incredible night of my life. We made new friendships, no, brothers and sisters. We became more. We became family. I drank way too many shots of tequila. We ran two hours over schedule and had a noise complaint from the neighbours, and we performed the FIRST EVER SESH!

  Can you believe it?
/>
  I can still smell the blood. I felt like I was in some sort of Shakespearean play. I spoke to Yayatoo afterwards and she was her stoic self, overjoyed on the inside, thoughtful and wise on the outside. Exactly why we love her? #amiright

  Just this morning, as she was tucking into her bowl of Golden Grahams, she told me that the more Yayatooists she meets, the more the foundations are built, strengthened, the deeper down the well we go, the more she knows it to be true — we are creating something special. We will help people. We will save the world.

  Or shall I say she will?

  Something that I want to do … after every Sesh. Something that I think could become somewhat of a ritual is a detailed breakdown of what went well in the Sesh, what didn’t go so well, and what we generally think could be improved.

  Let’s start with the surprise. The moment when we found the Ex. What a moment. Did you see his face? I think this surprise and reveal should become a tradition in itself. In the same way we wrap up a present for Christmas, we should wrap up our presents in illusion and surprise. Which reminds me, we’re looking for future Ex’s for the next Sesh. If you have an ideal candidate, please send your reason, a name and a photo to the main contact address.

  Okay so…

  The tuck shop was a great success. We sold lots of merchandise, sweets, drinks, and even a few glow-sticks. I think in the future it would be nice to see a little more in the way of beverage choice. So please get in touch with suggestions of favourite drinks.

  The stage was an ideal setting for the Sesh. We took the Ex and basically crowd surfed the sucker to the stage where we introduced him to Yayatoo. It was from here where Yayatoo read aloud his crimes and gave her reasons for her need to remove his life from existence. This may seem cruel to some of you, and I can understand why, but in the same way it’s necessary for a family of Mongols to eat every piece of the cow (even the eyeballs and the bollocks) to survive and thrive, it’s necessary for us to let go of our past lovers. We need to let go of them emotionally and physically. And the only way to do that totally is through the full excision of their existence.