The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  As the metal box worked its way towards the ground floor she did her best to calm her breathing, but it seemed like her world was collapsing around her. The elevator was getting smaller with each breath. The ceiling coming down. Metal scratching against metal. Screaming as it crushed itself into a small cube of wreckage. She cried “No” as the thing swallowed her up.

  “Ground floor,” said the elevator voice. Nisha blinked and the lift was back to its normal size. The ceiling was back to its normal height. A chime rang and the doors slid open.

  “Hiya,” a blonde in makeup with teeth bigger and whiter than hers appeared. She was a news reporter or maybe a weather reporter. Nisha couldn’t spare the energy to remember. She barged past her and walked on towards the giant glass doors leading to the city.

  “Bye Neesh,” Jean, the receptionist, said as she walked past. “Wait, Mrs Bhatia are you okay?”

  “I’m fine!” she shouted as the door opened and she made her way outside.

  The cold air hit her skin and she instantly felt better. Her nose had stopped bleeding, but her white cuff was spoiled with the red and was turning a dull brown. She gasped like she’d emerged from a pool of water. Like she’d never breathed before.

  Ahead of her were more people. Some tourists taking photos of the building. Various TV crews. A few guys in suits, one with glasses and a beard. Another man with a blond moustache in black clothing. A homeless man with a cardboard sign that read something about being thrown away by society. She saw a bottle of whisky by his side and thought that he was the smartest guy on the planet. She touched her jacket pocket and felt the shape of the vodka bottle in her pocket. Was this the emergency? The reason to break it open?

  Ahead, around the corner, not too far from where she stood, was The Old Rope Inn. The pub where the TV people met on Fridays. Nisha checked the time on her phone: 11.34am. It would be opening soon.

  She dropped her hand from the bottle and started walking.

  London was back to its usual grey. Clouds that were trying to rain but never did.

  She passed some other buildings. Some modern. Some a century old. All of them full of people. Until she reached The Old Rope Inn. A Victorian sore thumb of black and white amongst the modern buildings surrounding it, towering over it. It looked like this could’ve been where London began, and the rest of the city was built around it. The single birth point where the founders sat at old bow-legged wooden tables and drank ale from wooden beakers.

  Once inside, Nisha was reminded that if that were the case, things had certainly changed. The insides were brightly lit and decorated in white and gold. The menu served fine gourmet pub lunch food that came on tiny plates and cost as much as a small country’s GDP. And the ales of old were gone, the barrels shipped out and destroyed to make room for bottles upon bottles of wines from Europe and California.

  Nisha was right. It had just opened. Still mostly empty. There was only a single bartender hiding behind the bar polishing glasses. She gave Nisha the familiar smile. A young girl, fresh in a black pencil skirt and the promise of youth all around her.

  “Good afternoon,” the girl said. Technically it was still morning. “What can I get for you?”

  “What do you have?”

  An exhaustive list of wines later and Nisha cut in and asked for a large glass of the cheapest red and a glass of water to go with it.

  “Ice?”

  “For the wine?” Nisha was disgusted.

  “For the water, miss.”

  “Oh yes, sorry. Yes please,” Nisha nodded before retreating to a corner seat. It was an odd little niche where the building jutted outwards. Whatever function the recess had before had long been lost. A relic of some mad architect. It gave Nisha a corner to hide in. From there you couldn’t see the bartender, and the bartender couldn’t see you.

  No shame for Nisha. No shame at all. No shame at all. She repeated the phrase in her mind as she rubbed her stomach.

  She drank some of the water first. The ice stung her teeth. She tongued the water around the inside of her mouth to cleanse the palate. She lifted the wine and looked through it. In the dark red she could see her own reflection. And behind her were the faces of the children. She sniffed the wine and her eyes watered. The caustic bouquet burned her nostrils.

  “Lovely, fruit, berries, summer … drunk.”

  She gulped the first mouthful and ran it around her tongue. The taste was bittersweet. It ran down the back of her throat like a thick syrup and down into her insides. The warmth of it spread through her and she relaxed into the chair. Her shoulders dropped. Her head rested backwards in the cushion behind her. She felt comfortable. Cosy, even. She was on a beach of blood-orange sand and her troubles were being washed away in waves of red.

  Sleep quickly found her and bathed her in bubbles of nothing. She enjoyed, for the moment, not existing.

  And when it was time for her to return she forced her eyes open, but the lids were still heavy. The bar around her was spinning. She made out the faces though. The bar was now packed with people, gulping wine and talking about work. The lights around her were yellow and the world outside was night-time in the window. She was still hidden away in the niche. The wine on the table in front of her had gone.

  Just as she was piecing together her identity and her whereabouts, she felt a figure to her right, next to her in the cutaway corner. The figure had blond hair, a moustache, and a black uniform. A badge on his chest. Three letters. She tried to look at him. His eyes were dual moons to her. Looming overhead. He was holding her arm. He was pressing his finger into her skin. He pinched her. It made her sleepier.

  The figure to her right. She recognised him. Some long-ago dream. Maybe.

  She forced her head downwards and saw the slim metal finger pull away from her vein. A dot of blood appeared like magic where the needle had been.

  “Sleep, Miss Bhatia,” said the male voice. “Sleep now. Everything will be all right.”

  She fell back into darkness, back to not existing.

  Moomamu The Thinker

  Moomamu forced himself to his feet. The metal point of the stick was lodged in the door behind him, and the human was coming for him. Slowly. Surely. The human was confident in his imminent victory. The sunlight gleamed against his curved blade.

  Moomamu thought about crying and pleading for mercy, but he wasn’t so sure it would work. He grabbed a hold of the stick and pulled, but it didn’t move. He yanked as hard as he could and squealed when he got a splinter stuck in his palm.

  “Oh God, that hurts,” he said as he looked at the tiny wooden dagger lodged in his skin.

  He turned to the see the human who was now picking up the pace. The crowd around were cheering. They could smell the coming kill and they were thirsty for it. They’d drunk all this death so far and it only made them thirstier.

  Moomamu planted his foot against the giant door and pulled the stick again. He could hear the footsteps behind him getting closer. The bare feet hitting the sand and dirt. Moomamu tightened his grip on the stick. The splinter in his palm was joined by another in his other hand. He yelped again but continued. He heard the metal in the wood cracking and popping. He screamed and pulled. His muscles ached. He had no energy for such strenuous exercise.

  Tread. Tread. The man was now running. Not too far behind. Tread. Within slicing distance for sure. Tread. Tread. Tread, and then a leap. The human was in the air. Blade lifted upwards, ready to slash downwards.

  The stick loosened and Moomamu fell backwards and the human leapt right over Moomamu and rolled as he hit the floor. Moomamu backed up, kicking the sand. He picked up the stick and pointed it at the human. Sharp-point forward. It made sense.

  The human and Moomamu now sidestepped around each other, circling, waiting for the right time to strike.

  “I don’t want to fight,” Moomamu said.

  The human didn’t listen. He didn’t even take the words in. For all Moomamu knew he didn’t speak English. The fabric tied around t
he human’s head had loosened and a length of it dragged behind, floating in the wind like a flag, flitting with every gust.

  Moomamu could hear the individual audience members now. No longer a mass of sound. He heard one of them meowing with delight at the violence, another talking about a previous fight, and even a kitten crying about it being too much.

  “Kill him then, you soft nob,” shouted one of them.

  “Menkti menkti!” another one yelled

  As if commanded, the human leapt forward and lifted the curved blade into the air. A trail of dirt fell from his feet. The sun was burning Moomamu’s eyes as he looked up to the human’s silhouette. The crowd were alive with hate and as the human fell to Moomamu, he saw his deep, dark brown eyes. They weren’t eyes of anger, but of necessity. It was the same look a butcher gave his meat. One of routine. A means to an end.

  Moomamu saw his eyes and then he didn’t.

  He was in black again. Swimming. Weightless. And then he was back in the sand. Just like that. A click of the fingers.

  The crowd had quietened. Sunlight. Confusion. Breathing. Heavy. Panting.

  Moomamu looked down at his body. He was all there. He smiled at the realisation that he was still alive. He was still holding the stick. The panting was close by. He turned to see the human, standing behind him, facing the other way, stood still.

  Moomamu let go of the stick and it stayed in the air. It floated where his hands held it a second ago. He followed the stick along and saw it reach through the upper right part of the human’s shoulder. There were no signs of damage as the stick went in. The skin around it was sealed tight. Not a single drop of blood fell from where it entered. In fact, the metal point was on the other side altogether.

  Moomamu cautiously stepped around the human. His dark eyes were shaking in their sockets. His body was sweating and pulsing. The other end of the stick came out of the human’s chest as cleanly as it had entered. The human didn’t scream or cry, but the pain and confusion were evident in the way his eyes shook and the saliva ran from his mouth and down to the sand.

  The curved blade fell to the floor and, like the string holding him up had snapped, he fell to his knees and then onto his side. Still breathing, still shaking, but in no shape to fight. Moomamu had won.

  The idea of being alive for a little longer was bittersweet. He jumped in the air and swung his hands back and forth.

  “I won,” he shouted. “I bloody well won!”

  The hissing began. Quiet at first but then it built on top of itself and would’ve continued to do so if it hadn’t been for the shouting cat upon the balcony. He waved his paws and the crowd silenced.

  “You, human, tell us. You disappeared for a second. And then reappeared. Is that … is that normal?” The cat was genuinely curious.

  “I told you. I’m not a human. I’m a Thinker. And … I dunno. It just kind of happens sometimes.”

  “And … what do you call it? That thing you did, Thinker?” The cat spoke as if he wasn’t bellowing in front of a thousand cats. He spoke as if he were with Moomamu in a tiny room. Talking over cappuccino.

  “I think it’s called teleporting. Normally it takes me to other places. But this time … it … well … it didn’t,” he shouted.

  The silence in the stadium became awkward. Nobody knew what to do. Had Moomamu cheated? He’d merely fought in the only way he knew how. And he didn’t even do it on purpose. How could he be held accountable for cheating?

  Moomamu looked down at the human. He was still moving. Crawling away towards safety. Wherever that was. The movement had opened the skin and he was now leaking blood. A dried, red sandy trail led from Moomamu’s feet to the human and the crowd began to hiss again.

  Moomamu didn’t know what to do. So he stood and waited. He’d won the fight. Freedom would be his reward.

  “He cheated,” a lone voice from the crowd shouted.

  “Kill ‘em both,” another said.

  Moomamu looked up to the shouting cat. The prince had stood up from his blanket and wandered over to the shouting cat, who kneeled and put his ear to the prince’s mouth. He then rose and silenced the crowd again with a wave of his paws.

  “Okay,” the shouting cat began. “It was the prince’s promise that the winner of the fight would be granted his freedom.”

  Moomamu felt excited. First step, freedom. Second step, get back home.

  “But,” the cat continued. “You have not yet won. Not by a cat’s standards anyway. Your opponent is crawling away. If you kill him, you will have your freedom.”

  The words from the cell came to Moomamu’s mind. The whispering voice of the invisible man. He must take a life. He must kill.

  Moomamu didn’t know much of life. He’d not been alive, technically, for that long, but he did know one thing. When he’d seen Marta’s dead body, it had struck him like a lightning bolt to the groin. It awoke an anger in him. To see a miracle of cells and electricity and matter be made useless. To be rendered empty. It was something that hurt Moomamu more than any physical pain could. Perhaps being alone in the universe, in the stars for so long, made him appreciate life all the more. And now, he’d been asked to take it away.

  He bent down and picked up the curved blade. The metal was discoloured with the dried blood of its victims. The body parts and remains of the other cats littered the Scrapping Grounds. The blade was heavy. The handle wrapped in weathered skin. It was a small blade, about the length of a cat’s tail, but it was sharp. Moomamu could see that. He turned and walked towards the man who’d now slowed in his escape, the stick reaching upwards to the sky from the wound in his shoulder.

  Moomamu walked in front of the human and stopped. The human looked up at Moomamu. A fine line of blood marking the ends of his mouth and making its way down his chin. His eyes were bloodshot. The fabric around his head had fallen back, revealing a forest of thick black hair dusted with sand.

  You must kill.

  The words rang in Moomamu’s mind.

  You must kill.

  He lifted the blade towards the sky and the crowd erupted with cheers, pleased with the results of the day. As Moomamu readied himself to bring the blade down into the human’s skull he heard the word, “Please.”

  He stopped, looked down. The human was looking at him. His eyes screamed mercy.

  “Please,” he said, coughing up a mouthful of blood. “I just want to go home.”

  The blade felt heavier with every passing second.

  All he needed to do was let the blade fall. The weight would do the work. It would land in the human’s head. And then he could go home. Just let the blade do the work. His arms shook. They were tired. The blade grew heavier with every second.

  Moomamu sighed, lowered the blade and threw it to the floor.

  “I can’t do it,” Moomamu said, to himself at first but then louder to the crowd. “I can’t do it!”

  With a single wave of the prince’s paw, an arrow flew through the air and rooted itself in the human’s skull. His head dropped instantly. His body stopped shaking. His breathing no more. He was gone. The miracle of his life evaporated into nothing. The large doors next to him opened and a flood of soldiers entered, surrounding Moomamu within seconds.

  JoEl The Engineer

  JoEl didn’t sleep. It wasn’t in his genes to do so. Instead, Nebulans recovered by lying face down on the floor, zoning out, and disappearing into a dreamless meditative state.

  By the time he awoke the Earth had rotated, revealing the morning grey sky. The air around him was thick with a mist so dense he couldn’t see the edges of the field. The grass he’d been lying on was soaked with dew and moisture from the air. His skin was below optimum temperature.

  “Marvellous,” he said. “Amazing that Earth weather can go from such extremes in such a short space of time.”

  On Gamma Nebulous, there were seventy-two hours in a day, and summers and winters lasted for years, not months. To see the weather go from hot to cold in a single twenty-four
hour period was astounding to JoEl. What would his son have thought?

  JoEl climbed to his feet and looked around at the place he’d decided to settle down in the night before. He’d walked through the wooded area behind the target’s house. He’d walked through the trees and out into a group of squared-off patches of land. Some of the squares were littered with farming animals; the types with curly white fur, and some larger bovines with brown and white patches. They were simple creatures.

  Now in the morning he saw silhouettes of the animals in the fog. Shadow-puppets in the atmosphere.

  Fully rested, it was time to walk onwards. He needed to find himself new transport. He needed to find himself food and sustenance. Passing a herd of the patchy browns, he came upon a young one. Full of energy and youth. Its eyes were pinky-white with big brown pupils. A majestic specimen. It stood proudly a few feet from JoEl. He walked towards it and removed his glove. With a single swipe of his hand, he could end its life. He could close its breathing holes. It reminded him of the carven animals back on Gamma Nebulous.

  The creature took a step backwards and made a sweet gargling sound with the air.

  “It’s okay, little one,” JoEl said as he slowed his walk. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The proud little creature gargled again and took a step towards JoEl. It was smaller than the others on the field. JoEl reached his hand forward towards its white face. He reached over the wet nose and ran his hand over its snout. The short hairs were pleasant to his touch. He moved upwards and over the eyes of the creature to its head. He ran its ears between his finger and thumb.

  “Such a beauty,” he said. “Oh, if only my TeAl could meet you. He would love you.”

  The creature turned and scuttled away, back towards its family in the mist.

  JoEl continued on. Just over the next fence past the woods. That’s where the humans lived. That’s where he’d find his new transport.