Read The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) for Free Online

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    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