by Luke Kondor
“But you told me last night!” Moomamu pointed at Gary. “Listen feline, if you were lying to me I might just have to …”
“Gary might remember if he had some food,” he interrupted.
“Ah,” Moomamu smiled. He let his hand fall back to his side. “Well played, feline … well played.”
Moomamu got out of the bed. The little box room seemed smaller. It was a horrible little thing. It must be what the humans felt like when they were buried in their wooden boxes after they died.
He walked to the smaller box in the corner of the room and opened its doors. Inside were piles of neatly folded human clothing. A metal bar ran along the top where clothing hung from metal hooks. He found a brown fabric coat. It felt soft to the touch. He put it on. And felt a little warmer.
Walking over to the empty computing-device screen he looked at himself — the same pale doughy face with moist orifices, rolled in dark brown hair with its misplaced patch of grey on the side— still a human. Whether or not that was a good thing, he wasn’t sure.
“Thinker looks acceptable,” Gary said. “You look like a real Tall One. But we must dress you properly before we leave today.”
“It’s only temporary,” Moomamu said. “I have to find my way home. Back there, clothes don’t matter. Fabric don’t matter. Even bodies don’t matter.”
He opened the door and walked through to the kitchen — dirty dishes, a pile of dirty washing, full of microbial life. The thought made Moomamu feel uneasy. He did his best to cast it from his mind. It reminded him of the Zen Molluscs of Goorangu. On puberty, they would cast all negative thoughts from their mind for the rest of their adult lives. And positive thoughts too. All thoughts really. They didn’t do much.
Gary followed him in and jumped onto the side where the water point was. Gary licked at water droplets falling from the metal spout.
Moomamu sniffed the air. He smelled the pong of food cooked and eaten in days past. Remnants of old spices and burnt scraps. He opened all of the wood storage boxes lining the walls with their little doors. He found several metal canisters with pictures of food on them … but no actual food. It was only when he opened the refrigeration device did he find a wellspring of food.
His stomach wobbled.
With no clue what any of it was he grabbed handfuls and placed it on the kitchen table. Some white stuff in a jug. Some vegetables mixed together. Some sweet circular thing with the words ‘Happy Birthday’ written on it.
“Come, feline, let’s nourish our bodies for the journey ahead.”
Gary jumped on the table and went straight for a plastic packet of slices of pink. The label read ‘Cooked Ham’. Moomamu took a handful of the slices and placed them into his mouth.
“Oh yes yes,” he said.
They worked their way through most of the food before lethargy overtook them.
“My name is Gary,” the cat said, as it found a comfortable place to sit down on the table. “And Thinker is Gary’s companion.”
Moomamu laughed. “I don’t think so, Earth cat. I’m no one’s companion. Especially not on this planet. I won’t be here long enough.”
Gary tilted his head and looked at Moomamu with big eyes like he wanted to bite him on his extremities.
“Gary only does things he feels right about and he feels right about you being his companion.”
Moomamu held his tongue.
“Earth cat, I will be your companion up to the point where I go home. Which you will help me to do. As was part of the deal.”
“Gary did want to ask Thinker a question,” Gary said as he licked his paw.
“Of course you do.” Moomamu smiled. “You must have many questions for a being like me. It must not be often you meet a Thinker in the flesh, human flesh that is.” He sat back in the kitchen chair, his arms folded across his full stomach.
“Why don’t you know more?” Gary moved to the other paw.
“What?” Moomamu said.
“Well …” Gary stood and walked over to the brown circle. He sniffed the decorations on top. “You’ve been up there all this time, watching and thinking. You should know more of the Tall Ones’ words and history. I thought you would be smarter than you are … like Gary is.”
Moomamu thought about the cat’s words. At first they made him angry, but then he realised that the cat was merely making an observation. You shouldn’t react to observations with emotion, but with rational commentary.
“Listen, Earth cat,” he said … a little aggressively. “Let me ask you a question. If you’d read an entire book from beginning to end, in one sitting, would you remember every single detail?”
Gary lay down on the table, his front paws stretched out.
“Gary might.”
“Okay, maybe a simple Earth cat could remember most, but definitely not all the details. Now imagine at the same as reading that one book, you’re reading millions of others at the same time. Yes, there would be common themes in the books, but for the most part they have their individual nuances. Would you remember the details then?”
Gary yawned.
“Maybe not if there were other books,” he said. “Fair enough.”
“Now it’s your turn, little feline. You said that I could go home. How do I do that?”
Gary stood and stared motionlessly at Moomamu. His eyes widened like he was about to tell Moomamu a secret.
“Gary is sometimes spoken to by The Light. It told Gary about you … and other things. It told Gary that you will go home, and it told Gary that we would need to go see the Tall One With Insight.”
“Right,” Moomamu said, smiling at the progress made. “Okay. Take me to this Tall One With Insight.”
“That one is not here.”
“Okay …” he said. “Where is it?”
“Up north. Like, hundreds of miles away.”
The words hung there for a while. And then Moomamu laughed.
“Is that it?” he said. “That’s not far at all.”
Moomamu’s frame of reference had always been from such a great distance that miles didn’t compute.
“Wait,” Gary said. “The Light told Gary something that Thinker should know.”
“Go on,” he said.
“If Thinker doesn’t go home, then Thinker will die.”
“Easy,” Moomamu said. “I’ll go home. Problem solved. Nothing to think about.”
Gary stood, his tail now swaying left to right. It was time for them to move.
Rosie Darlington-Whit
“I think I can smell the smoke. What about you?” Rosie blew her snotty nose into her handkerchief, bunched it up and shoved it in her top jacket pocket.
“Yes,” Bexley said. “The air is thick with it.”
Bexley’s plum Oxford-boy accent always sounded over the top to Rosie. His voice was such a low monotone that the accent sounded forced. His voice was as low as he was tall. Six and a half feet of handsome. Just as many brain cells too.
Rosie turned to him and saw his shirt was untucked on the side. She reached over and tucked it in for him.
It wasn’t weird. They were family. Brother and sister. Carer and the Cared-For.
They were standing on the street where a taxi driver had dropped off a certain blonde woman the day before. They’d been tipped off by the inconsistency. The bank in front of them was large and installed within a century-old building in Harringay town centre.
“Shame for it to happen in such a beautiful old building though, right?” she said, squinting as she looked up at the fine stonemasonry along the top of the building. She wondered what was in the rooms behind the windows. Maybe the bank was utilising it for storage or something. Who knew? Maybe they hired them out to small businesses as offices.
“Sometimes I wish I was one of those people behind those windows. Hidden behind it all. Not knowing what the hell is going on. It all seems so much simpler. Don’t you think?” Bexley nodded. Simple as that.
Bexley was a cinderblock dressed in pal
e English skin. Rosie was sure that if you were to strike him with a nail it would bend before it broke the flesh.
“Well okay,” she said as she adjusted her tweed tie. She reached into her brown leather messenger bag and pulled out two small , L-shaped metal rods: her divining rods. Not her own. She’d borrowed them from the gun room. “Here we go.”
She held the shorter handles and let the divining rods do their thing. They flipped around in the wind, rotating and circulating until they settled on a small spot next to the pavement. She followed them to the spot — a drop-off point in the street for cars, maybe taxis.
“Doesn’t this remind you of the Northern Line Man?” she said, looking at Bexley’s plaid flat cap. A new one. Probably picked by their father.
“No,” Bexley said matter-of-factly. “That case was about the man in the tunnels. This one is about the spontaneously combusting person.”
“Yeah, I know,” Rosie chuckled. “But I mean the fact that it’s a true recurring space-time inconsistency.”
“Yes. I guess in that sense they are similar,” Bexley grunted.
“It is weird though. More and more popping up like this. Seems like it is almost as busy as it was back in Dad’s day.”
Bexley remained silent.
Rosie looked around. She saw the icy breath falling from Bexley’s nose as he breathed. She saw people going about their day. Unaware. And she saw a small camera on the second floor of the bank, looking down at the road. The little thing was scanning left to right. Maybe it had caught something? Maybe they could get the taxi’s license plate? She made a mental note.
“Let’s go and take a look inside,” she said and Bexley nodded.
They wandered up the concrete steps towards the entrance of the bank.
The place was still open. It needed to be — it was too busy to worry about exploding people.
When they got to the glass doors a man in a suit barged past Rosie.
“Sorry,” he said as she stumbled to the side.
Within a second Bexley grabbed the man by his shoulder.
“Hey,” he said, unsure what was happening. “What do you think you’re …?”
Bexley pulled the man back and spun him around, his hand still firmly on his shoulder in a vice-like grip. The man — dressed like a man who gets up an hour early for grooming — realised his mistake when he saw Bexley. His head lined up with Bexley’s lapels on his tweed jacket.
“Apologise,” Bexley grumbled.
“Sure, sure, yeah. I’m sorry,” the man said. “I’ve just had a stressful day and everything.”
“Bexley, leave the guy alone,” Rosie said as she rearranged her jacket.
Bexley released his grip and the man fled like a fly from a closed hand and ran into the bank.
They followed.
Inside the bank, it looked like a standard day. Business as usual. The room was huge and the ceilings were tall. The bank tellers were sitting behind a glass panel and the queues were long. There was a small coned off section circling the affected area. Like somebody had spilt something.
They walked over to it. The smell was thickest when they stood next to it. The carpet was blackened. Definitely needed to recarpet the entire thing. Sounded expensive.
Bexley got down on his knee and ran his finger across the carpet, leaving a blackened patch of burnt matter on his fingertip.
A few of the people in the queue were looking over and a member of the staff appeared concerned. A fat man in a purple blazer walked over to them.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I don’t think you should be doing that.”
“You don’t?” Rosie said. “This is all standard procedure. We’re investigating what happened yesterday.”
The man crossed his heart. Rosie noticed his golden name badge: Dean.
“The police have already been. The fire brigade have been. Who are you guys?”
“Insurance people,” Bexley said, standing back up.
“Right,” Dean said. Concern washed over him. “Is everything okay?”
“Sure,” Rosie said. “Did you see anything?”
“I’ve seen the security tapes. Such a tragedy, what happened to that woman,” Dean said. The hard lights on the ceiling reflected off his bald head.
“Yeah, but what did happen?” Rosie said, taking a step towards him.
“Well, she must have been wearing some faulty hairspray or something. It just went up and she burst into flames.”
“Sure,” Rosie said. “Faulty hairspray.”
Bexley took a step closer to the man too. They were now standing on either side of him. Flanking him.
“You don’t think it was static build-up on the carpet? Or maybe … In fact, when was the carpet last treated?” Bexley said, like he’d been pre-programmed.
“And on that note, why is your extinguisher so far away? Do you know how many feet you’re supposed to have the extinguisher away from a central customer area?” Rosie added, bullshitting her way through it.
“Wait … what? This wasn’t our fault,” Dean shook his head in disbelief. “You really think it might have been? No, no, it couldn’t be. You’d see from the tapes that it started from her hands and her hair. For all we know she could’ve been lighting up a cigarette. You can’t pin it on the branch.”
Rosie gestured to Bexley. With that signal, he took a step back and turned away. Rosie softened.
“Listen,” she said, “I’m not saying that you, or the branch, or anyone was at fault. It was a tragedy, for sure. But listen. We need to get to the bottom of this so that I can write something on a little report, save it as a PDF, which I still don’t know how to do, and email it back to our bosses so we can close the case. I’m pretty sure you’re telling us the truth. She probably could have been sparking up.” Dean nodded along. A bobble head toy tickled by Rosie’s words “How about you let us see those security tapes so I can get this thing done, confirm that it wasn’t the branch’s fault, and then we can get out of your hair, and you can get your insurance payout.” She stopped and smiled and squinted at a particularly glossy patch on his head.
Dean looked around to see who was watching and sucked the air through his bottom row of teeth.
“Sure,” he said. “You can come and have a look, but I promise you that we’re telling the truth.”
“Wait here, Bexley,” she said as she followed Dean through to the back.
Aidan Black
This headache was something else. Stemming from the back of his head, where the pipe had made contact, and reaching around to his forehead, his eyes and into his sinuses. Everything throbbed. Everything felt tight. Like his head was swelling too big for his own skin.
You’re nearly there.
“I know,” Aidan said as a road sign passed overhead that read ‘London’.
The sun was out and was glaring through the window and the tinnitus whispers of his friend were there, stronger than ever. Each word was a fresh pipe to the skull.
Aidan had a love/hate relationship with London. He loved the feeling of the bustle. The cream of the crop were in London, making their dreams realities and all that — the big pond where the people who truly wanted to compete went. He always knew that if he wanted to be as successful as he thought he could be, he should do it in London.
At the same time, he hated crowds. The thought of being caught in a crowd of average unsuccessful types made his skin crawl.
“You are the culmination of the five people you surround yourself with,” Terry Rowlings had said on his inspirational CD.
He didn’t want to sully his own character by spending his time with tourists or Americans.
Aidan was wearing a new suit — navy pinstripe jacket with trousers to match and a dark red tie. His hair was freshly coiffed. The blue suit was in the washing machine at the farm. He was pretty sure it was ruined. Blood is thicker than washing detergent.
A small car pulled out in front of Aidan’s van, forcing him to brake hard. Not enough to cause any
real harm, but enough to piss him off.
He picked up speed, got into the right-hand lane, and managed to catch up with the offending vehicle. Enough for him to look in to see what the fuckers looked like. A family car. Dad in the driver’s seat and mum in the passenger seat. She was turned around, leaning into the back, talking and playing with her two kids. Maybe four or five years old. Difficult to tell.
Aidan chuckled at the ridiculous little quartet of failure.
He pictured the kids growing up to be telephone-sales people. Or maybe computer-repair people. Maybe they’d grow up to be depressed? The dad in the front had a sour face, like a man chewing Lego. He was bald, had a goatee beard, and was wearing a striped jumper.
Eyes forward. Eyes on the prize. You can do this.
He hadn’t noticed, but the children were looking at him. The whole family, in fact. The father was trying to make it look like he wasn’t looking, but Aidan saw his eyes glancing over. The mother and the children looked scared. Aidan couldn’t see what they were saying, but their expressions said it all.
Aidan slowed down and the car sped onward.
He smiled at himself. A wolf in spectacular clothing. A surefire success.
Quicker. Go quicker. Moomamu must die. I’m hungry.
With the voice came the sudden onslaught of noise. His brain pounded against the inside of his skull.
“Shut up,” he said.
Faster. I’m hungry. Bring me his tongue.
“Aaaagh.”
He struggled to keep the van straight. Seeing the lay-by, he pulled into it and stopped the van.
Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Find him. Kill him. Feed me.
His legs went weak as he climbed out of the van. His vision was peppered with flashes of light. He vomited on the floor and opened the back of the van. Inside he …
Don’t stop. You must kill him.
He screamed. His eyes felt like they were being pushed forwards, like they might erupt from their sockets. The pressure was too much.
He grabbed his granddad’s toolbox and pulled out a rusty old hammer and then fumbled around in the nail drawer, grabbing one an inch long.