by Luke Kondor
A man at peace.
Carol had been watching him from the kitchen. From where she was stood she could see through the glass kitchen door, through the glass living room door, all the way to the other side of the house. In this case she was looking at Jim’s part of the house.
Her part was the kitchen. It wasn’t a derogatory thing and it was never an official rule. It just ended up that way. Like moons to their planets, they’d settled and found themselves caught.
Carol preferred the kitchen anyway. Full of dog agility memorabilia, photos of Indie when she was a pup, and even the dogs before her.
It’d been a long time since Carol had awoken on Earth. She found herself trapped in a female human body. She woke to find herself lying next to a naked man called Jim. Apparently it was her husband. She didn’t like him at first, but eventually she got used to sack of meat and life.
And then she lived on. She aged, like the others. She had to get a job and pay the mortgage, like the others. And she even went through menopause, like the others. Females, at least. She also gave birth to two human children — Katie and Jake. One was now a veterinary nurse, and the other was Jake.
It had been a long time since they’d left this house in the middle of the countryside in England, but they visited every now and again. Christmas, odd birthdays, whenever there was alcohol.
Carol grabbed the kettle and filled it with water. She took two mugs, yellow and blue pottery given to her on her wedding anniversary, and put a tea bag in each one. She put a spoonful of sugar in Jim’s and half a sugar in hers. She was cutting down.
As the water boiled she stared out the window, at the garden where the children had grown up and played. The tree that Jake had fallen from and broken his arm. The hole in the fence where Katie had kicked a football. She looked at the grass, which the gardener regularly cut. The shed. The yellowing patch on the wood where Indie kept pissing on it.
She filled the cups with the boiling water, stirred in the milk, and took one of the mugs into the living room.
As she entered Jim awoke with a “Huh?” and a “What the…” and then he sat himself up. When he saw the mug of hot tea in Carol’s hand he relaxed and said “Thanks”.
He then grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.
“Cracking game on the course today, Caz,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Couple of birdies. Nothing major, but it was on eight where I normally struggle, but today … It just seemed to go right.”
Carol nodded and smiled at her husband.
She looked at the living room they’d decorated. The clay cat ornaments they’d brought back from their holiday in Turkey. The reclining chairs that cost them a bomb. The wooden floors that she’d insisted on Jim fitting, even though she didn’t care.
Jim changed the channel to some sports programme — reports on the Tour de France. That was her cue to leave and make her way back to the kitchen. She stroked the wallpaper as she went. It was the wallpaper that they had picked together.
“Love you, Jim,” she said.
“Huh?” he said as he sipped from his tea, his mind fixed on the men in Lycra riding bikes up hills.
She closed the living room door, and made her way back into the kitchen where her tea was waiting.
She drank from it. The first time she was given tea she thought it was the worst thing in the world. The bitterness of it. That was around thirty years ago, when she woke up in that body, in that life, and she’d been stuck there ever since.
She went along with it at first because she thought it would be advantageous. The whole family thing was giving her food and shelter and insight into a world she’d only seen from afar.
Of course there were questions. She didn’t know anyone’s name. She didn’t know her own address. She didn’t know who The Beatles were.
Her family thought she was ill. A condition or something. The doctors had a name for it.
But now here she was.
She drank her tea and watched her husband through the opening in the doors. She drank and watched and realised that she may well love the man, just like a real human, but it didn’t change the fact that he was about to die, along with everyone else. The planet, the people, the species. It was all coming to an end and there was nothing she could do but die with the people she loved.
Moomamu The Thinker
So …
First day on planet Earth. What a piece of shit.
The main thing Moomamu noticed was the clusters of human beings running around. They were acting like their lives meant something, like his. They didn’t realise that he’d seen so much life come and go on all manner of planets, even asteroids, in all manner of forms. Life comes and goes. There’s nothing special about it.
He didn’t care to guess, but he would estimate that there were around seven billion humans on the planet … give or take.
Well, that was nothing. It was no miracle.
Moomamu had seen countless life cycles of stars — even galaxies — never mind human beings. Having said that, Moomamu did feel a lot better now he knew he had a source of income. Currency was important.
It didn’t take him too long to find his way back to the box-room. An hour or so. It was easy for him. He worked it out a lot quicker than any humans would’ve done.
He walked back to the flat building — a big chunk of white with hundreds of doors side by side. Each little door was probably packed to the brim with humans. The thought made him sick.
Number 154 was the one he’d found himself in that morning. The one with the female human and the cat. He walked up to the white door and he pushed on it. It didn’t move. It was stuck. He tried pushing harder.
Nothing.
It was jammed. He tried banging his fist against it, and yelling. He tried to use the swear word he’d heard earlier that day.
“Fuck,” he said to the door. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck.”
It was non-responsive.
A man and a woman with their spawn in a wheel-cart of some sort walked past him. They avoided his eye contact as they walked to 156. The man pulled out a small metal finger and slotted into a hole in the door. When they pushed against it, the door opened.
“Huh,” Moomamu said.
His own door had a small metal circle with a hole in it. He looked at his own fingers. Far too big. But then he noticed a stick on the floor and he tried that, but it didn’t fit either.
“Fuck,” he said again. But the door remained stuck.
The skies were darkening as the Earth rotated away from the sun’s light and its warmth. His body felt cold. His nipples became firm again.
In quiet desperation he dropped to the floor and sat with his knees up to his chin. The floor was so cold against his skin that his buttocks clenched.
“Well, this is good isn’t it?” he said to the sky, hoping that somewhere up there a Thinker might be watching.
There must be one of them up there somewhere. A little blue orb of consciousness just like him, looking down.
“The sad thing is,” he said to himself, “if there is one of you guys up there looking down at me, watching and thinking, you wouldn’t help me. You would rather watch and see how it played out than intervene. I know this because it’s what I would’ve done.”
Once the Earth had turned its back to the sun completely, Moomamu vibrated with coldness.
“Hello,” a voice said.
He looked up and saw the woman from the flat.
It was Marta.
Aidan Black
Wake up.
Aidan smelled fire and copper. He opened his eyes and found himself sitting against the radiator.
He felt dazed. His vision was dotted with light and his head felt so full, swollen even, that it was difficult to move it, like it had been screwed on to his neck too tight.
He’s here.
The familiar whisper of the voice returned.
He heard the long-haired man before he could see him. Scuttling around in th
e hallway, talking to himself.
Aidan forced his head down to look at his own body. For a second it felt like the body wasn’t his — a torso and limbs that he'd borrowed and would soon have to give back, skin and all.
The room was a notch or two darker. Rain now hammered the windows and his sanity.
Tear the skin from his body.
He nodded. He picked his hands up and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t tied up. He looked around him. He felt the back of his head and felt a crusty patch of blood where he’d been struck. In front of him was a length of pipe.
“This guy is so stupid,” he whispered to himself and chuckled. “Definitely not winner material.”
He noticed an ice-cream wrapper stuck to his pinstripe trousers and he cringed. These were his best trousers.
He picked up the pipe and walked towards the voice.
As he rounded the corner he saw the long-haired man crouched in the darkness, his hands on his head.
When he saw Aidan he didn’t seem surprised or shocked.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I thought maybe I’d killed you.”
“Don’t worry,” Aidan said as he walked up to him and placed his hand on the long-haired man’s shoulder. He smiled.
The moonlight pouring in from the window lit up the long-haired man’s face. His skin was pale and bruised beneath the eyes and there were cracks in his lips so big it made Aidan feel sorry for the guy. “You’ve not had a good time of it, have you, mate?”
The long-haired man buried his head in his hands and started to sob. Quietly at first, but building into a snotty mess.
“I’m sorry,” the man said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It’s okay. I promise. I’m here to help,” He gripped the pipe in his free hand. “Don’t worry. I’m here to help you.”
“Really?” The long-haired man looked up and in the dark, through the sobs, he started to smile. “That’s so great. I need to go home.” His smile was—
Kill him.
“I know. Don’t worry. We’ll have a cup of tea and you can tell me all about it.”
The long-haired man reached out and placed his hands on Aidan’s hand, catching the nubs of his missing fingers.
Burn him. Tear his skin.
“Yes, that sounds good,” the long-haired man said.
When the pipe connected with his jaw it sounded like metal on metal. Aidan saw the jaw dislocate as the man fell backwards against the stair bannister.
The man’s crying stopped and he went dead quiet. He was still awake.
“I doyens undderstaannnd,” the long-haired man tried to talk.
“It’s okay mate, it’s okay,” Aidan said. “It will be quick.”
“Whyyy?” he said as Aidan raised the pipe and walked towards him. It seemed like he was trying to say “Sorry”, but Aidan hit him again. This time it connected with the man’s temple and the consciousness fizzled out of him. He dropped to the floor and would have fallen down the stairs if Aidan hadn’t grabbed him by the coat collar.
He pulled him back onto the hallway landing and laid him down. A small mist of blood sprayed out of the open wound on his head and dotted Aidan’s blue jacket.
“For fuck’s sake,” he said. “This is my favourite fucking suit.”
Out of annoyance he punched the unconscious man’s face so hard he felt his nose break. His hand throbbed. He blew on it and took a deep breath, before dragging the man into the bedroom. He laid him down and looked at him, waiting for his heart to stop pounding, for the sweat caught on his brow to dry.
“Right,” he said. “I better go get my tools.”
Moomamu The Thinker
Moomamu warmed up as soon as he entered the flat. He wrapped himself in some fabric left on the kitchen table. It was some sort of synthetic animal fur.
“You’re wearing my dirty towels,” Marta said as she made him tea.
“I take that to be a sign of high fashion?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
Once Moomamu had stopped shaking and his nipples softened, Marta began to talk about her day. She told him about some guy who’d been looking at her in a strange way because of her appearance, but Moomamu couldn’t understand. To him, Marta looked like most other humans. She had the regular amount of limbs and holes. Perhaps it was her short hair, which he’d associated more with the male warrior class.
She explained that she was from a country called Lithuania and had studied the science of plants. She explained that she felt that she was smart, and couldn’t understand why she’d ended up working as a barista.
“That sounds like a terrible job,” Moomamu said. “I’d never do that.”
She then told Moomamu that being a barista meant making coffee for people and Moomamu said he had that job too.
“Anyone can get that job,” he said and it became awkward.
Moomamu left Marta in the kitchen eating more of the Cheerios and went back to his small box living quarters. The cat was perched on the top of the desk, sleeping on the computing device. It opened its eyes and looked at him like he were an intruder.
“I will rest now, Earth cat. Please don’t attack me or I will be forced to end your life.”
It looked at Moomamu again. It’s tail fluttered and it sat up. The starlight reflected against its pupils.
“Gary will not attack Thinker,” the cat said.
The cat spoke with the voice of a mammal with a voice box much bigger than its own. It sounded like the voice of a matured human male.
“So Earth cats can talk?” Moomamu said.
“Some of us do,” it said, its tail now swaying softly side to side. “Maybe not some of us. Maybe not any of us, actually , but Gary does. Gary speaks words.”
“I can tell,” Moomamu said, pulling himself up on the mattress, his back pressed against the wall.
“Gary is here for you,” the cat said. “Gary is here to take stupid Thinker home.”
Moomamu looked at the little ginger Earth cat who was talking to him in human words. He laid down. Apart from the heavy scent of urine coming from his pillow, the whole thing was beginning to make sense to him again.
Aidan Black
There was one word ringing through Aidan’s mind: success. Like a closed feedback loop it grew louder on each pass.
Still, he couldn’t stop smiling. It had been a productive day.
“You can’t ask for much more than that,” he said as he climbed out of the van. He took his blue jacket off, folded it into a perfect square, and placed it on the passenger seat. He rolled his shirt sleeves up and loosened his tie.
He touched the back of his head. It was stinging like a bitch and only got worse after he rubbed some of his alcohol gel on it.
He went into the back of the van and grabbed a grey linoleum sheet, which he rolled up, and carried into the house.
Upstairs, the long-haired man was motionless on the floor. An empty sack of flesh. The pipe was still on the landing. He noticed a used needle on the floor.
Aidan rolled the limp body onto the sheet. He used that to slide the body along the carpet, down the stairs, and out to the van, where he managed to lift it into the back. By the time he was done he was covered in sweat. He was ready for a break. But as his granddad would say, “a job is only done when it’s done.”
He couldn’t see anyone on the street. The cul-de-sac was a no-man’s land. Perfect for him.
Aidan took the tin box from the dashboard and climbed into the back.
He looked at the bleeding mess that was the long-haired man’s face and shook his head. The jaw was forty-five degrees the wrong way.
“Pathetic,” he said, as he pulled the mouth open some more.
Rip his tongue out.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me do my thing.”
He grabbed his granddad’s old orange-handled pliers and started on the front teeth. One by one he yanked them out and placed them in the metal tin where they joined the others with a
tink tink tink.
The wet tongue glistened.
Rip it out.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think I can.”
Rip it out. You want to be a success. You want to be affluent.
Suddenly the tongue didn’t look like anything but a slab of loose meat, or a piece of gristle to him. He placed the pliers on the tongue, pressed down on the handle as hard as he could, almost piercing the tongue, and pulled on it. It was rooted deep.
Do it. Do it. Rip it.
He placed his foot on the head and yanked on the tongue as hard as he could. He almost fell backwards when it came loose. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and threw the tongue into a plastic bag. It slapped against the bottom like a dead fish. He quickly grabbed more plastic carrier bags from the back and began covering up the body. He started with the head, and then moved on to the hands, and then the arms, the torso, and then worked his way down the legs. He used black tape to seal everything together. The whole process was a twenty-minute job if done right.
Satisfied with the work, he got out of the van, slammed the door shut, and got back into the driver’s seat.
For ten minutes he didn’t do anything. He sat quietly, mouthing his mantra over and over.
“I’m sixty foot tall and made of diamond. I’m sixty foot tall and made of diamond. I’m sixty foot tall and made of diamond.”
He looked at the clock — twelve a.m.
Headlights turned into the cul-de-sac. People were coming. He started the van.
He leaned over, opened the glove box and withdrew a CD labelled ‘Awaken The Winner Within’. It had a picture of a handsome man with coiffed dark hair like his own. The name read ‘Terry Rowlings’. He placed it into the CD tray and the dashboard swallowed it up.
“Do you believe that you can be a success?” Terry Rowlings crackled through the old speakers. “I’m serious, do you believe that you can be a success?”