by Kondor, Luke
She reached the building. She looked up and could see his flat already. The place she used to call home. The balcony where she used to spend her evenings in the summer, practicing her yoga, and listening to Terry Rowling’s success tapes.
Without a second thought, she pushed in the code for the door and made her way in. Into the elevator, to the seventh floor. Flat number 709.
She puckered her lips before reaching the door, just in case he was looking through the peephole waiting for her. He probably wasn’t. But just in case.
She lifted her hand to knock on the door but she stopped herself. What was she doing? Was this another mind spasm? The second of the day? As she questioned her actions her hand felt heavy. An unseen force keeping her from knocking. If there was a time to back out, it was then.
A deep breath inwards and she said, “Fuck it.”
She tapped the door and quietly promised herself to let the Nisha of tomorrow worry about the mistakes of today. Plus, it was too late now anyway. The door had been knocked. The events that would follow were out of her hands. If Edward was in that wouldn’t be her fault. If he asked what that was in her plastic shopping bag she’d have to reply. It would be rude not to, and even ruder not to offer him a glass. If, after several glasses of the rosé, their tongues became loose and all the feelings they’d held under their breaths and whispered only to their pillows came out, it wouldn’t be her fault. It would be Destiny’s for forcing her knuckles to rap on the door. She’d merely found a train, stepped on it. Where the train was going wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t driving this thing. She was a passenger.
Pulling herself back and out of her daydream she realised she’d been standing in the corridor for a good while, and Edward hadn’t answered. She knocked again, this time louder. Nothing. She knocked one more time. Bang bang bang with her knuckles. Hard enough to feel the door bounce in its place.
“Shit,” she said as she rubbed the back of her hand.
Nisha reached into her pocket and grabbed her phone.
“Call Edward,” she said to it.
“Call Edmund,” the phone replied with a cocky beep.
“No no, cancel, cancel,” she said.
“Okay,” the phone said.
She dialled in the number from memory and pressed ‘call’.
“Nisha?” he said. “Nisha, is that you?”
He sounded busy. Clinking and laughing and whatnot. The background noise coming from the phone was like thunder to the quiet hallway. It was safe to say he wasn’t home.
“Hey Ed,” she said, giving him the all-smiles routine she used every morning between 8 and 11 am. “How are you?”
“Nisha? Sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m a little busy at the minute. Can I call you back?” he said
“I’m at the flat now,” she said. The all-smiles facade weakened. “When will you be back?”
“Well … I’m … sort of out with someone right now.”
“Someone?” she said, now all the way down into an all-frown.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice quieter, clearer. “Nisha, look, I’m on a date.”
Nisha didn’t answer. She felt her brain quieten. Her skin went numb. She felt—
“Nisha, are you still there?” he said, trying to interrupt her. “Nisha?”
Nisha dropped the phone. The bottle of rosé fell and the glass crashed against the wooden hallway floor. The world started to spin again. Just as it had done in the studio. Her feet came out from underneath her as she fell to her side. She didn’t scream. She didn’t fight. She lay there until the spinning around her turned to black and she was floating in space again.
Moomamu The Thinker
A sliver of light. A daily delivery of some unknown meat (no seasoning). Some rags to sleep on. And a man’s voice.
Moomamu’s only regulars.
Days spent lying on his back, staring at the dark ceiling, zoning out to the voice, imagining that he was seeing stars above him, planets, a cappuccino. What he’d give for a cappuccino right now.
The voice was still there, talking nonsense.
“I thought you wanted to go home?” the voice said, as it always did.
He continued to watch the ceiling, ignoring the voice, but then ….
“Don’t you want to go back to Earth?”
The words hung in the air, above Moomamu. They didn’t sit right. They didn’t make sense.
“Or does the Thinker want to go back to the stars?”
Moomamu sat up. If this voice wasn’t his own, if it was coming from somewhere in the walls, how would it know who he was? Or where he came from?
“Earth doesn’t want me,” he said as the eyes of his companion Gary flashed in his mind. “They wanted me to die.”
He kept his voice as quiet as he could. Any quieter and it would’ve been little more than a breath.
“No,” the voice said, louder now, angry at the idea. “They were simply doing what had to be done … and, for that matter, so did you.”
Moomamu scootered across the floor towards the wall, resting his back against the cold grit.
“I just want to go back to my Thinking point,” he said.
“The mind,” the voice said, so close Moomamu could almost smell his smoky tongue, “once stretched by a new idea never returns to its original dimensions.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
“A human said it.”
“Which one?” Moomamu said, appalled. “Was it Luna? The woman with the tired face?”
“No,” the voice replied. “It was a famous one. I don’t know which one. I’m not a goddam dictionary of humans.”
There was silence for a short while. The only movement came from the dust particles suspended in the air.
“Who are you?” Moomamu said. “Are you going to jab me with one of those thump-sticks?”
“No.” As the voice said this, Moomamu noticed a figure come into view in the dark, standing at the far corner of the box room. It could’ve been a trick in the shadows but Moomamu could almost see the outline of the feet draw the light from the door. “I’m here to help you.”
Moomamu sat up a little more. His fists clenched.
“Soon, you’ll be taken from here,” the voice said.
Moomamu thought himself to be losing his mind. The voice was surely a dream created by his human flaws. “You’ll be put through several tests. Physical and mental tests that will determine who you will become in the future. You’ll also be made to kill.”
Moomamu tried to reply, but his throat was too dry. No words came.
“Promise me that when the time and the opportunity comes, you will take it. You will kill.”
Moomamu coughed and forced out the words, “Who am I going to kill?”
“It matters not. When the time comes, you must take a life,” the voice said as the outline of the figure fell backwards into the dark, as if never there in the first place.
The second the figure vanished a guard walked to the door, his footsteps echoing throughout the cell. A series of crashing keys against the wood. The door opened, washing Moomamu in candlelight so bright it burned.
***
“The name is Snuckems,” the alpha growled.
Moomamu had cats in front of him and cats behind — big ones, standing on their hind legs. The tips of their ears reached his shoulders. They’d wrapped chains around his hands and legs and yanked him along, pulling him through the prison. The cats behind were all too ready with the thump-stick for laggers.
The walls were brick after brick with the occasional hole in the side, allowing the morning twilight to enter. There were candles, though, lining the walls too, offering their own luminance. Moomamu missed the electric lights of Earth. They were much easier to operate. A simple flick of a switch. Clever humans, he thought.
After walking through a corridor, the cat in front, the alpha, raised his monstrous right paw and shouted, “Halt,” and within a second the cats stopped. The alpha was a beast
of a cat. His fur was old and grey and scarred with lines of broken flesh. He’d taken a claw to one of his eyes at some point. The right one. It lay still in his skull. Milky, white, and useless.
The alpha used his keys to open another of the cell doors, where they wrapped up another prisoner in irons; another cat, ginger like Gary, but this one had both of its front paws. They connected the front of Moomamu’s chains with the back of the second prisoner’s and, with the signal of the alpha, they marched forward. Walking further and further through the dark prison.
After picking up a few more cats, they stopped and picked up another human — a skinny, olive-skinned one. Dirtied, yellow robes covered his reproductive parts and a darker, thicker material wrapped around his head, covering all but his eyes.
Moomamu wanted to shout out to the human, to ask how he got there, but he didn’t have the energy. Humans, or humanoids, were fairly common in the universe. Not as common as cats, but they got around. He felt the need to scream to the human, to ask him for help, but instead looked down at the chains around his wrists. Bloodied and sore around the rusty edges of the metal. He felt the nerves in his physical body screaming at him, but he didn’t have time to listen. Listening to his pain would only give it a platform to shout even louder.
The human was the last one they collected. They walked on further and found themselves taken outside into the cold dawn air. Moomamu’s eyes watered at the harsh wind. The planet in the sky was peeking its head, just around the corner. The stars and the moons were still present.
When he was first captured he was knocked on the head by a group of villagers. He had vague memories of being dragged through the town and into the stone walls. Now outside, he could see it was far more than a prison. The cells were merely a part of the whole. The giant blocks of stone piled up, peaking in two giant towers above him, with windows and guards and fiery torches for light. It was a place for royalty to oversee their land. He looked around himself and could see the hundreds more torches in the distance, lighting up parts of the town — brick and mortar establishments as far as he could see, and a great stone wall surrounding them all.
“Move,” said one of the cats as he slammed the thump-stick into the bottom of his back. Moomamu winced as he skipped forward to pick up the pace. Their collective chains and irons rattled throughout as they were taken across the field to another set of stone stairs going downwards.
It seemed he’d been allowed to breathe fresh air for only a minute before being taken back down into the ground.
The steps led them into another dungeon of sorts. Bigger, though, too big for one person. The smell of rot and damp and rust. Wooden benches lined the sides, and on the walls were weapons — eating sticks, but bigger, attached to the ends of thump-sticks. Spiked balls. Wooden shields. It was an armoury. The guards sat them down and locked their chains against the wall.
“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.
