First published 2021
Text copyright © Gary Hindhaugh 2021
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
This is, to say the least, a work of fiction. Names, characters, singularities, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or elementary particles, living or dead, or to events or locations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the written permission of the copyright owner.
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Prologue 1
Prologue 2
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 13a
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Epilogue
Afterword
About the Author
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Albert Einstein
ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE
Right until the moment the world ended, I was feeling pretty happy about things. The irony of it didn’t hit me until later. Then again, if all life began with the Big Bang — which a reliable authority tells me it did — I guess it’s only fitting that’s exactly how my life should end: with the biggest bang of all.
But none of what happened is my fault. So if you had plans for the rest of your life, don’t look at me. I’m not taking the rap. I’m entirely blameless for any mayhem, death and destruction.
Until it all went a bit pear-shaped though, I was in control. And I was properly happy because my life was — finally — about to begin. Or, that’s to say, my love life at least seemed like it was. And then …
Well, they say go out with a bang, right?
HOW THE DEATH-DEALING MONSTER CAME TO EARTH
Somewhere above Planet Earth.
This morning.
There’s nothing. No sensation, awareness, or feeling.
Just it.
It is the merest hint of conscious matter. It is elemental — just primordial atoms of being that drift towards a place where it can coalesce, find form … and become.
It moves with languid speed through the vast, empty darkness. This is how it has been since the beginning. Since the dawn of what some call time.
Its aims are modest: it doesn’t actually crave death. Death is simply a by-product. When it finds the right conditions, it finds form.
It becomes.
These conditions are astonishingly, incomprehensibly rare. But they do exist. And throughout the ages it has happened upon them. And it has become. In some places, one form becomes. In some, there are tens, hundreds, millions … even billions. But all forms have limits. Eventually, they’re used up, worn out, broken down, empty — finished. That place ceases to become.
Ending thus, it reforms into mere atoms, adrift in search of the next becoming.
This is how it’s always been. How it will always be. Because it is unceasing, relentless, and entirely without emotion. It gets no kick from the ferrous tang of blood, the crunching of bones, or the screams for mercy.
Finally, after eons adrift, it finds a new place with favourable conditions. A place with billions of heartbeats that can bring it the briefest physical existence. Of course, even with the biological richness of this planet, the reaping will be swift. For it, this will be a brief pit-stop; a cosmic snack on the way to eternity.
So the death-dealing monster comes to the small, blue-green place …
And it finds Daisy Jacobs.
Chapter 1
MEANWHILE …
Love, anxiety and heartbreak — in one fell swoop I’m going for a hat-trick of teen angst!” Behind me I hear my best friend, Amy Porter, crack up at my assessment of the emotional mess I’ve landed myself in.
“This isn’t like you, Daisy,” she replies. “You shouldn’t do this, but don’t let the Satellite Simpletons be the reason. Just take a step back and think.”
‘Take it easy’, ‘don’t do it’, ‘be sensible’, ‘avoid situations that make you anxious’. It’s the same old message — but from Amy of all people.
Well, you know what? I may be sick of living in fear, but I’m really fed up of living life with the handbrake on in case I get the panics. Because that’s another thing about being a teenager: we can be unbearably, insufferably optimistic. So, yeah, I’ll probably end up in a tizzy again and my heart will most likely get broken, but a teeny, tiny bit of me thinks this may just be the day everything changes. And for once I don’t care! At least I’ll know — and pretty soon everyone else will too.
“No, Amy, this time, I’m gonna believe in myself, even if no-one else does. From being a super nerd, I may even end up as a fully fledged, swan-like member of the in-crowd!”
“Yeah, well, it’s either that or I’ll have to pick up the pieces. And I can’t see Icky Ellie Watson suddenly opening her heart just cos she sees you opening yours to Connor.”
“Huh, well,” I smile wickedly, “some of Ellie’s friends call her a wit, but I think they’re only half right …”
Amy laughs as I silently strive to control my breathing. I’ve tried to work on my ‘fight or flight’ reactions to stressful situations. So right now, though I feel like running, I know I need to fight the rising sense of dread. I must do this. I have to follow my suddenly crazy heart, which is about to launch itself in the general direction of Connor Wheeler. I mean, he’s tall (even by supercharged, hormone-powered Year 10 standards), he’s captain of the football team and he’s got that chiseled chin, floppy-haired thing going on — plus he’s just about the only one who comes close to matching my grades. And, although he’s on the fringes of the unsavoury group of boys and girls who orbit around Ellie, I can’t believe he’s just another one of her Satellite Simpletons. He likes poetry, for goodness’ sake!
“Hey, Daisy,” Ellie’s voice trills in my direction, “we’re having a discussion over here. Can you settle an argument for us? As an outsider, what’s your view of the huma
n race?” Even from the other side of the playground, I see that her, admittedly very pretty face (drat!), dimples into a grin as the Satellites break into peels of sycophantic laughter. But Connor, who in this analogy is the largest, outermost planet, appears to flush … and was that a shake of the head? By the group’s standards, that’s open dissent! No one seems to notice it but me, though; not that Ellie would say anything to rein Connor in. I’m sure her sharp-features, shiny-face and burgeoning chest (double drat!) would like to cuddle up to his flawlessness every bit as much as I would.
Amy glances at me, eyebrows raised, “sure you to want to rise to her petty taunts?”
I hide a grimace. Ignoring cheap insults has become second nature, but soon I may no longer be Scuttleford’s Number One Nerd (© Icky Ellie Watson).
“I think she’s only part of the problem. I love it here, but you’ve got to admit it’s pretty boring in our insignificant corner of the world. And I think this will just stir things up a bit.”
Look, I don’t live in a big city. Not London, New York, Moscow or Paris. I live in a tiny village you’ve never heard of — Scuttleford (see, told you) — on the outskirts of a small, sleepy town (Braedon) that won’t have ever registered on your consciousness. Because why would it? Scuttleford’s the sort of place you pass through without noticing. There’s a pub, a tiny general store and a few cottages dotted around. It’s probably basically unchanged since Domesday — which is, like, forever. So maybe my esteem issues are about living in a backwater part of nowhere and sharing a classroom with troglodytes like Ellie.
Nothing ever happens in my village. And literally nothing ever happens in my school. And although I’m a teenage girl in the middle of hormone Hades, with parents who are just so understanding, a little brother straight out of hell, a best friend who’s sometimes my worst enemy because she is one stubborn lady who thinks she always knows better than me (and sometimes actually does) and this Connor Wheeler, will he ever realise that I’m living and breathing on the same planet as him situation — despite all that, I know, deep down, that what all this amounts to is somewhat less than what Dad refers to as “a hill of beans”. He says this in an atrocious American accent that, for some reason, always has Mum in stitches. I’ll give him my full on teenage sigh, and sometimes wonder why he still does it: to get Mum giggling or to get a rise out of me. He always ends up smiling though. And the thought of his smile calms me a little now.
Unlike many of the reality-TV-following, social-media-swamped, computer-game-obsessed people of my age, I know there’s no easy way out of this. No earth-shattering event will happen to me, not in here in little Scuttleford. Unless I make it happen.
“How do you know it’s the right time to do this?” asks Amy.
“I can’t wait for the right time,” I reply, “because that will never come. There’ll always be something to put me off or hold me back. I have to do this now. For better or for worse.”
“For richer or for poorer,” Amy mutters under her breath. She gives me an innocent look. “Well, you never know, it might work out really well for you,” she adds doubtfully. She grins mischievously as she hums a few bars of the Wedding March.
“Yeah, right,” I sigh. So what if I’m about to walk into my brief moment of school-wide fame (or infamy, if it goes horribly wrong). Because one of the perks of being an adolescent is the freedom to believe you have control over your own life. Now’s the time to do crazy things without thinking through the consequences.
However, I really think this low self-esteem thing has gone on long enough. Wallowing in panicked self pity only gets you so far in life and, as far as I can tell, gets you nowhere at all in love. So I need to settle this once and for all.
I’ve dreamt about this moment often enough; it’s about time I actually do it. So what if his friends think I’m a geeky-weirdo? So what if Icky has her low opinion of me confirmed? I know I’ll be the talk of the school for at least a week, but I don’t care. I must do this: I must give Connor Wheeler the chance to express his undying devotion to me!
I’ve been pacing for ages, and while Amy’s tried to talk me down, I’ve been psyching myself up. “You’re bonkers, Dais. He’ll ignore you. And Ellie will laugh. You’ll never live it down. Never, ever, ever. This is the kind moment they’ll record with a plaque next to the ‘Playground Buddies’ spot on the wall over there, where all of the super saddos hang out. I think you’re gaga. Barmy.” She grins, trying to make light of it, “do this and we can officially class you as lots and lots of fries short of a Happy Meal!”
Her words of ‘encouragement’ go right over my head. I’m crafting the perfect phrases: the matchless words that will make him wonder how he could have been so unaware of my existence for so long. Finally, I’m ready. Now I stand tall, stretch to my full 5 foot one and three-quarters, take a deep breath, push out my pathetic excuse for a bosom, hug my bestie … and set off towards Connor.
“Some day we’ll look back at this moment and laugh and laugh and laugh,” Amy calls out after me.
Yet, even as I paste on a fixed, eternally hopeful grin and deep-down believe there’s a real chance it will all turn out okay, as I begin my walk across the suddenly acres-wide school playground, I have the unshakable feeling that something truly, mind-bogglingly awful is about to happen.
My progress seems so slow; it’s like I’m wading through wet sand. I will my heart to maintain a steady beat. Out of the corner of my eye I see other students look my way as I head towards Connor and all the Satellites, lined up next to him like ill omens.
There’s an electricity in the air; a tension that can only be ended by a ferocious lightning strike or a slender teenage girl being pummelled by public shaming. It seems inevitable now: the moment they’ll talk about (and laugh about) for days, weeks, generations to come (the time span increases with every step, and depends upon when the next schmuck does something similarly and outrageously ridiculous as holding themselves up to highly public humiliation). For truly this could hardly be more public — as more and more kids simply stand and gawp. This is ignominy as a spectator sport; and in the sudden, hushed and chilled silence, it’s clear that right now, I’m the only game in town.
I feel my face blossoming from delicate pink to the finest shade of pillar-box red as dozens of pairs of eyes bore into me, the crowd on the edge of their metaphorical seats, thrilled to be ringside at a genuinely historic event in the annals of Scuttleford Secondary School. They’ll be able to tell their grandchildren they were there at the actual moment when Daisy Jacobs — the Daisy Jacobs — shamelessly, nay wantonly sought lasting and outright humiliation.
I’m like the guy in a white hat going through the swing doors of a saloon in a Sunday afternoon Western on TV. The world stills. The sudden reduction from playground cacophony to pin-drop quiescence alerts the Satellites and they, too, turn to observe me. This makes my walk even more excruciating. Almost like a walk of shame, I think, as some tiny (sane?) part of my mind wonders if, perhaps, Amy is right: am I really, totally off my rocker?
Still, you never know: he might say yes …
And if not, it’s too late now: I’m here.
The crowd around Connor parts like the Red Sea as I approach. He turns and looks down at me, a glint in his gorgeous blue eyes and a faint smile quirking the corner of his generous mouth.
“Hang on,” I hear Ellie say, “Daisy’s mouth is open, words may be about to come out — this is never good!” I do, in fact, open my lips to speak but no actual words come out.
At that moment, the moment that will define the rest of my life, I see a blinding flash of light inside my head. I stand before Connor, rooted to the spot, unable to move, unable to find the strength or control to form a single coherent word. “Conur, I urv u,” I hear, as if from a great distance. Drool runs from the corner of my mouth. I babble and dribble before the boy of my dreams, the idiots from the football first eleven and the comeliest, drippiest girls in my year. Then my
eyes shut like roller blinds and I sink into merciful oblivion.
Chapter 2
HELLO WORLD
On a profoundly deep, mysterious level it senses the heartbeat. A force of life that’s alone, on the edge of a group of others. The life form is static, but its heartbeat has an energy that fizzes and fluctuates like electricity, with a vibrant charge that surely means it will make a fine becoming.
But then the form shifts to face a larger one a short distance away. Energy vibrates and pulses between them, their heartbeats uniting in the same rhythm. A tremor of the desirable form’s energy reaches it as the small form straightens itself, as if trying to make itself look bigger and stronger. The life form is about to move and join the others; in particular to join the tall, broad one with who’s heart it is in harmony.
That would not be optimum.
So, although its usual way is to patiently select exactly the right being in which to seed the becoming of a new place, it has been a long time since the last becoming, and so it acts impulsively.
It doesn’t really “move” in the way we understand it; after all, it is just matter. Nothing but atoms.
Yet it senses. And in less than a moment, in far, far less than a breath, it is not “outside” at all. There’s a single, bright, burning flash. And it is “inside”.
It starts to become.
“I am here, Daisy Jacobs! I have arrived!”
Chapter 3
THE INSIDE SCOOP
Wha—?
I see no light and except for a strangely distant, dull throb in my head, I feel no pain. This isn’t surprising as I’m sure banged my head when I crashed to the ground.
Apart from that throbbing, almost perceptible hum, I feel … nothing. Nothing at all. Perhaps I’m out cold? Or in a coma? Or dead?! I’d usually expect a racing pulse and a rush of panicked fear at this clearly ridiculous thought, as that’s something of a speciality of mine. But, weirdly, my heartbeat is a barely-sensed flutter. The uncomfortably distant pulse is enough to make me sure I’m alive, but I can’t shake the unease. It’s like I’m remembering how my heart beats in my chest in any anxiety-inducing situation, rather than actually feeling the rapid pulse for myself.
Daisy Jacobs Saves the World Page 1
