The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) by Luke Kondor Read Free Book Online Page B

hiccup.

    ***

    The warm bubbles surrounded her. The steam danced upwards from the surface of the water and into the nothing above her head. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through the nostrils. She felt the weight of the world fall away from her shoulders like the fragrant bubbles around her.
    Well, as much of the weight as possible. She’d kind of fucked it up a bit today. Somewhere lurking in the back of her mind was Edward her estranged, Tom her producer, and Alan the sweaty soldier. All of them looking down at her, through filters of light. All of them offering her a helping hand. A reassuring shoulder to cry on. What the fuck did they know?
    A nice, warm bath. Nisha was sure that the path to world peace was in the bottom of a bubble bath. Some scented candles. The wine wasn’t compulsory, but it helped.
    She opened her eyes, blew the bubbles from her fingers, and reached over the side of the bath, to pick up the glass of red she’d poured herself. She wasn’t supposed to drink red before a show-day. It made her blotchy and stained her teeth. Her perfect teeth.
    She smiled out of habit and then drank a mouthful of the dark red. She tried to reach her teeth over the wine, biting the glass.  
    She held it on the back of her tongue. Let the wine simmer and sting her taste buds before swallowing. It worked its way down into the meat of her throat, but then, it went up. Where it should’ve found its way down into her stomach, it changed direction. It pushed up against the inside of her throat. It permeated her soft inner skin, traveled up behind her nostrils and into her sinuses. Up again like fish swimming up river, through to the backs of her eyes, and into the skull. She felt it attack the membranous sack around her brain, finding holes where none should exist.
    She didn’t scream. She relaxed.  
    An inch above the surface of the bath water, droplets formed. They began to drip, upwards, splashing against the ceiling.  
    “What the—?”
    The bath dripped towards the ceiling with increasing intensity and she felt her body become light. Did it rise in the water? Or did the bathtub fall away?  
    Either way, she was weightless now, her eyes and brain filled with red which darkened until she was back there again. Floating in space. The dark presence to her one side, and the lush galaxy to the other. But the lights of the stars were focused. No longer the burning of fires, but the glistening of eyes, thousands of eyes, and the noise. The crying. Oh God, the crying. Please no.
    “Make it stop!”
    The sound of millions of tears hitting a hard metal surface. The wailing of them all in pain, lost, alone. A sound to be heard across the universe.
    “Please make it fucking stop!”
    With a splash, she found herself back in the bath. The water, bathtub, her body, everything where it should be. She looked down and saw the wine glass was in the water. A small pool of blood red around it.  
    “Dammit. Again?” she said. “What the fuck’s wrong with me?”
    She rubbed her eyes and splashed her face, but a sickening thought came to her. The tightness in her head fell away, and everything became clear. The red mist dissipated and she saw the children. Hundreds of them, screaming in pain: all of them, dying.

Luna Gajos

    Luna pulled the Ford Fiesta up to the curb. A quiet suburb. The kind of place to which city-dwellers moved once they’d popped a child or two and were looking for somewhere quieter, safer. Winding roads that passed perfect, modern-built houses made of fresh red bricks with gardens trimmed, green and perfect, even in the night-time.  
    She could see the wind blowing through the beautifully sterile leaves of the tree in the front garden. It looked fake. Almost real, but not quite. It was too good to be real. And too expensive. The houses looked like they’d been set aside for a certain breed of human. Not the kind that Luna was. No, a different type.  
    “Which house is it?” she said as