A Journey Through Time and Space

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The Boosh is on the verge of breaking up for good, but an unexpected and impossible journey to the Zooniverse may teach Julian and Noel how to better appreciate their creations.

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Chapter 1

Contents

Chapter 1

The deejay was spinning Chicks on Speed, and Noel was just fine with that. The club was impossibly warm: a mess of smiling, drunken faces—some familiar and others not, but all of them seemed like friends tonight. A girl with purple fringe tried to pull him onto the dance floor, but he waved her away with an apologetic grin, miming a tossed back drink to indicate he was thirsty. He had to worm his way through a crush of moist bodies before he reached the bar, but once there he found a sweating glass of gin and tonic waiting for him. The barman knew this was their end-of-tour afterparty, and he’d kept the liquor flowing for them all night long. Noel briefly pressed the icy glass to his forehead, then took a long, slow drink that set his back teeth aching. He let out a shallow gasp, wiped his mouth, and squinted down at the end of the bar, where Julian was sitting.

Where Julian should have been sitting. Instead, there was a kid dressed as Electro Boy/Girl in his place, his half-mustache dotted with lager foam.

Noel frowned to himself, but only slightly. It wasn’t unusual for Julian to skip out on parties, especially when the music playing was of the variety that he loathed. It had nothing to do with the social disaster that was Howard T.J. Moon, Julian’s alter-ego. Julian was far from a social disaster; he was confident and at ease in a crowd, and he could even carry on genuine conversations with perfect strangers in a way that Noel himself couldn’t, preferring instead to give them hugs and make cheeky jokes. Julian just knew himself, through and through, and even though he enjoyed going on the razz as much as anyone else, he knew when he was finished with a party—unlike Noel, who stayed until he was too drunk to walk or verbally function. But still, this was the end of their tour. The cast and crew had been in high spirits when the final curtain fell, and Julian had cracked open a bottle of champers backstage while clad in nothing but the now-infamous pink pants, a sure sign that he was up for a night of celebratory antics.

Noel swirled the ice in his glass. The hotel was just across the way—couldn’t hurt to see what Ju was up to.

Getting out of the club was easier said than done, and Noel ended up sneaking out the back door, mouthing “be right back” to Dave as he did so. He slipped through the alley, deserted but for a couple who were snogging up against a rubbish bin, and walked briskly to the hotel. He passed a kebab vendor on the corner, whose radio was sputtering on about solar flares in a poncy newsman’s voice. Noel barely listened; he didn’t go out in the sun if he could help it.

The hotel was a posh one, and the lift paneled with gilt-edged mirrors. Noel ran a hand through his limp and sweaty locks, wincing. On tour, they had kept a mirror situated just off stage and Noel had fallen into the habit of checking over his hair and makeup before making his entrance. Rich had taken the mickey over it, making the expected budgie jokes and declaring that the line between Vince Noir and Noel Fielding grew thinner as the years went on. To this Noel had only nodded and grinned in vague agreement. Privately, he’d been a bit hacked. He and Vince might share the same hair, wardrobe, and taste in music, but as far as Noel was concerned, that’s where the similarity ended. Noel had days where he didn’t feel like telling fucking jokes. He had days when the thought of putting on that mirrorball suit, yet again, made him a bit sick. He could even remember, quite fondly, a time when people didn’t routinely approach him on the street by the name of Vince, but that time seemed far back.

The lift dinged and the mirrored doors parted, his reflection suddenly and starkly divided, and Noel padded his way across the thick hallway carpet. He paused in front of Julian’s door and listened for the sounds of telly or jazz, but there was nothing. He knocked twice. No answer. He fumbled out the keys to his own room, clearing his throat and thinking that he might like a drink of water before he returned to the club.

When he entered, he found that all the lights in his room were blazing, and that Julian was sat on the bed, thumbing through a thick sheaf of papers.

Noel froze to the spot, keys still a jumble in his hand.

“What are you doing?”

Julian didn’t look up, but continued to read in a way that seemed to suggest powerful concentration.

“How’d you get in here?” Noel asked, his tone much more defensive than he intended. He eyed the script in Julian’s hand, knowing full well what it was.

“Our rooms are ajoining.” Julian lifted a tumbler of scotch and took a long drink. Then he finally lifted his eyes to Noel’s, confirming that he wasn’t reading the script with powerful concentration, but with powerful anger.

“Look, you have no right…” Noel raised his hands. “Those are my private things!”

Julian stood up and slammed his glass down hard on top of the television set. “I came in here to fetch the notes we’d sketched out for series three. Come to discover you’ve got yourself a little side-project rat-holed away.”

“It’s just an idea.” Noel rushed to Julian’s side and reached out, not quite brave enough to snatch the script from Julian’s hand. “It’s not been approved yet.”

“Yet?”

Noel flinched at Julian’s cold tone. He was known to have a strop or two himself, in his day, but they were always the type of temper tantrum that made others—especially Julian—roll their eyes and click their tongues. But when Julian was angry, it wasn’t cute. And when he was drunk it was even worse. Most rational people backed away at once, but Noel wasn’t rational. His initial radar told him to take cover, but his profound irritation at being found out was threatening to over-ride that radar.

“Oh, don’t you fucking start,” he said. “All our plans for the next series are rubbish and you know it. You’re the one who hates them!”

“I don’t hate them.” Julian squeezed the script between his hands, inadvertently crumpling the pages. “I just know we can do better than plopping Vince and Howard back at the zoo, or in that stupid Shaman’s shop.”

Noel pointed an accusing finger. “You always say we can do better, but where’s the goods?”

“Where’s your goods? Wrapped up in a charming little spin-off about Vince Noir, the revolutionary rock n’ roll star.”

“Just because I wrote a spin-off doesn’t mean I don’t want to continue on writing with you!”

Julian snorted. “Don’t do me any favours.”

Noel reached out and touched Julian’s shoulder, tripped up in momentary surprise. “I’m not doing you a favour, we’re a double-act. Like always.”

Julian’s hand shook as he held the battered script up before Noel’s face. “This is not a double-act. This is Vince Noir’s Electro Experience.”

Feeling the beginnings of a headache, Noel sat down on the edge of the bed and massaged his temples. “Oh, come off it. You were lead in Nathan Barley. You’ve branched out from the double-act before. Why can’t I?”

“Because this is Vince, and Vince is one-half of what we created.”

“But he’s my half!”

“Yeah, really?” In a flurry of paper, Julian threw the script at Noel. It hit him hard on the side of the face, then fell to the ground with a rustle that seemed obscenely loud. “Vince Noir wouldn’t even exist if you hadn’t followed me about all those years back, desperate to attach your name to mine.”

Noel popped to his feet at once. “Howard Moon wouldn’t exist if he didn’t have Vince as his highlight. His… contrast. Whatever.”

Julian gave Noel a rough push, born more from instinct than intent, and Noel went bouncing back to the mattress. “Don’t argue with me. I know when I’m right.”

Noel scooted backwards on the bed, cautioning himself to stay down. They’d come to blows in the past, usually when he wouldn’t sit still and let Julian have his say. Staying down wasn’t easy right now, though; he sort of wanted to hit Julian—mostly because he knew Julian was right. Going behind his mate’s back on a new script was sneaky and low. “All right, all right,” he finally said, almost chanting. “I should have told you, but I knew you’d hate the idea. But look—all our attempts at series three aren’t workin’ out. The formula’s got too tight a grip on us. But if Vince sets out on his own—”

“What?” Julian took a step back, looking as if Noel had just hit him. Suckered him in the gut, maybe. “You actually want to do this.”

Noel swallowed, unsure of what to say. Maybe he could point out how they’d kept adding dates to the tour, as if fearing what would come when it finally ended. Maybe he could just rip the script to pieces, see if that’d settle things. Maybe he could just tell the truth.

But what that truth was, Noel wasn’t sure. It had to do with a fear that he hadn’t yet acknowledged, and even now was only dimly aware of as it gnawed away at his insides, burrowing itself a home. It was this same fear that kept him from looking Julian in the eyes these days. They had communicated to each other through glances, glimpses, and side-long looks for so long that Noel feared his eyes would say something that his mouth couldn’t yet pronounce..

And absurdly, the only thing that he could think to say with his mouth, at this moment, was maybe I just want to leave the party before I’m too drunk to walk.

“Yeah,” he said, instead. “I do want to do this.” The words fell like blunt stones from his lips, and Julian reeled back slightly.

“You fucking little cunt. Why?”

Noel didn’t answer, and instead glared at Julian through his fringe.

They both lunged at each other at the same time—in sync, despite everything—their hands balled into fists, incomprehensible swear words tumbling from their mouths.

Outside, the sun flared despite the fact the earth had turned its back.

Julian groaned. Why the fuck were hotel beds so much more uncomfortable than his own? Was it an unwritten rule somewhere? The mattress beneath him had about as much give as a plank of wood. He shifted onto his side, his eyes squeezed tight, and windmilled his legs around, trying to find a comfortable position. His feet collided with something soft, and he groaned again.

No… that wasn’t him that had groaned. It was someone else, lying next to him.

Julian sat upright at once, yanking blankets away from his face, slightly dizzy from the sudden movement. He glanced down at the person lying next to him—not on a bed, but flat on the ground.

What the fuck?

It was Noel. It… was Noel, wasn’t it? The hair was different. Blond bits peaking out through the brown and black—similar, but not exactly the same as what it had been a few years back.

Julian furrowed his brow. Hadn’t they just been fighting? He could vaguely remember grabbing a fistful of Noel’s hair (black only) and cocking his fist back to deliver him one hell of a punch. Just as he could vaguely remember Noel doing the exact same thing, his hand groping for purchase on Julian’s shoulder, his lip unattractively curled beneath his top teeth in an animal-like grimace. And then… then what? Things had gone sort of dark. And now he was awake. With Noel next to him.

Unable to fully face the line of logic that would lead to Noel sleeping next to him, Julian averted his eyes and used them to search out the rest of the room, which was all at once both completely familiar and entirely alien to him. Here were the sleeping bags, spread out on the floor in front of the small, beaten leather sofa. There was the typewriter, looking smug on the scrubbed oak table, and the little kitchenette over in the corner. A blender was sat out on the counter, streaked with the remains of some pink, cloying drink.

It was the series one set, and Julian had no fucking clue how he’d gotten here. To his knowledge, the set had been torn down long ago.

Coming to his feet, he walked slowly around the small space, his hands running over the knobby surface of the table and testing out the plush of the sofa. It was definitely the old set, but something was strange about it. Off. He heard a faint pattering sound overhead and looked up.

The skylight window overhead was streaked with rain, and through the glass he could make out a roil of dark clouds.

He sat down hard on the sofa, his foot coming down on the ends of Noel’s hair. Directly across from him was a wall that he’d never seen before. It was the spot where the set usually cut away, allowing ample room for cameras and lights to be moved in and out, but now it was just a wall with a tiny woodstove and a rickety book shelf. He stared at that spot hard, as if it were an optical illusion that would disappear, should he just concentrate.

“Ow, geroff,” Noel complained, using his balled fists to rub at his eyes and then swat at Julian’s foot. Then he yawned with his whole body, shuddering, and opened one eye, tilting his head back to look at Julian.

“Why are you dressed like that?”

The sound of the rain grew louder against the tin roof and Julian felt his eyelid twitch. Slowly, he dropped his head and stared down into his lap. Green polyester jacket, brown trousers, striped socks on his feet. Well, wasn’t that peculiar?

“Noel,” he said, then paused, fearing that the person lying on the floor would correct him. Say something like Hey, I’m Vince. Thankfully, no such correction came. “I think you should have a look around.”

Blankets and sleeping bag rustled as Noel twisted about, taking in the scene, but Julian continued to stare at the safe, everyday normalcy of his knees.

“Wot?” The word came from under Noel’s breath, like a soft squeak.

“You see it too, then.”

“How’d we get here?”

Julian finally met Noel’s eyes, which were wide below his sleep-tousled hair. He’d dragged the blankets up to his chin and looked quite as if he wanted to duck under them and hide away.

“I thought the set was gone,” Noel said, his fingers nervously plucking at the blanket.

“It is.”

“Then why are we here?”

An enormous thunderclap suddenly sounded, shaking the little hut down to its timbers, and they both jumped.

“Why is it thundering on set, Howard?” Noel asked, his voice high and plaintive, like a child’s.

“Howard? I’m not Howard, I’m Julian.” He watched Noel carefully, noting the expression of deep surprise and muted distress on his mate’s face. Calling him Howard had been nothing but an accident, an accident of the sort that Julian could understand. Here, in this place, he even felt a bit like Howard. His zooniform fit him as if it had been made for him, whereas the original costume had been a bit tight around the middle for his liking. Hell, it even smelled like him. Him being Howard, who Julian always imagined as smelling of ink and paper and something a little bit yeasty, like good bread or beer.

“I know that,” Noel said quickly. “It was a slip.”

Julian nodded. He really wanted to do nothing but sit there in silence, until perhaps some sensible answer presented itself like a neatly gift-wrapped package, but an odd feeling kept bubbling up inside his chest, prompting him to speak. “Think we’re having some kind of bad dream?” he finally asked. “Like, one of us is having a dream so bad that it’s grown to monstrous proportions and taken over the other’s dream, like a plague of locusts?”

“If anyone’s having that dream, it’s you. I only dream subservient, non-plagueish dreams.”

“What, are you saying my dreams are domineering? That, in the world of S&M, my dream would be the one with a whip in its hand, and yours would be the one with the safe word?”

“Leave your kinky fantasies out of it. I just think your dreams have a inferiority complex if they’ve got to go around bullying other peoples dreams into dreaming the same thing as you.”

“Bullying! You can—” Abruptly, Julian shut his mouth. He and Noel stared at each other, their eyes communicating wordless horror. This sort of banter… it wasn’t natural. It was part of the act. An act they sometimes practiced in real life, true enough, slipping into improvisational versions of Moon and Noir while having a leisurely pint somewhere. Julian would say something in the voice of Howard, the know-it-all who knew nothing, and Noel would fade into the arrogant ponce counterpart of Vince, easy as snapping his fingers.

It was easy here, too, was the problem. Too easy—it fit as well as Julian’s green jacket, and made the difference between him and Howard Moon seem so slight that it drove him a bit mental. Where was Julian?

“Ju…” Noel said, and he felt himself click back into place, back into the puzzle of himself and of the moment.

Julian opened his mouth to say something—he didn’t know what—but was abruptly drowned out by the crackle of an intercom.

“MOON! I WANT TO SEE YOUR PEDANTIC PUSS IN MY OFFICE, PRONTO!”

Julian scrambled to his feet, straightening out his jacket and looking wildly around the hut. No, the set. God… where was he? “Coming,” he mumbled.

A hand darted out and gripped him by the ankle. Noel’s hand. “Where are you going?”

“Fossil… he said to go to his office.”

Noel pursed his lips together in concern. “That’s not Fossil. That’s just Rich, having a lark.” He laughed nervously, ruining the illusion of certainty.

The sofa creaked as Julian slowly lowered himself down into it, and Noel loosened his grip on his ankle. “Good christ. What’s going on?”

“It’s just a joke.”

Julian shook his head, a numb sensation filling his chest. “Who would go to all this effort for a joke?”

Noel was quiet for several long minutes, then finally took a deep breath. “I think we’re trapped in the Zooniverse,” he said, so quickly that the ridiculous words ran together as a single utterance, but even as they came out of his mouth, they sounded instantly right.

Julian felt it, too. Everything was real: the rain overhead, the faint smell of wild animal shit in the air, the sound of the ocelots feeding, somewhere nearby. And while a deep, internal part of him was screaming this isn’t right! This isn’t happening!, for the moment it just seemed much easier to accept things at face value.

They had entered the Zooniverse.

“Did we take drugs last night, Ju?”

“No,” Julian said. “We had a fight.”

“A fight while on drugs?”

“No!” Julian felt the memory of his anger returning—fast, like a steaming bowl of hot bark.

No. No! Not like hot bark. God.

“You wrote yourself a spinoff, remember?” Julian said, unable to keep animosity from creeping into his tone. “Decided it was time the Boosh boys go their separate ways.”

Noel, to his credit, looked flabbergasted, as if he couldn’t have possibly done such a thing. But then realisation passed over his face, lifting the cluelessness away like a filmy veil, and he shrunk a little deeper into his blankets. “Oh, right,” he muttered.

Julian grimaced. “You know, just for once I’d like—”

“MOON! I SAID PRONTO! SURELY ONE AS WELL-READ AS YOURSELF KNOWS THE FREAKIN’ MEANING!”

They both covered their ears at the staticky squeal of the intercom, which was much more intrusive then either of them recalled.

“God, maybe you’d better go. He sounds like he’s about to have a stroke.”

“What? No! Who knows what’s”—Julian made wild gestures at the door—“out there.”

“Yeah, but we have to find out some time, don’t we?”

“Why don’t you go have a look then, eh?”

“I can’t!”

Julian hissed through his teeth in exasperation. “And why not? You’ve got two functioning legs. They can even function in platforms. Use them!”

“But he asked for you,” Noel said simply, drawing himself even further under the blankets.

“Noel, for god’s sake…”

“Look, I’m naked under here,” Noel said abruptly, sounding oddly like he might be on the verge of either crying or laughing. Maybe both.

“You’re… you…” Julian stammered. “Why?”

“I don’t know! I just woke up that way.” By now, only Noel’s eyes were peeping out from above the blankets.

“Well, so what? I’ve seen you naked before. The whole cast and crew has, practically.”

“It feels funky, I don’t like it.”

Julian ran his fingers through his wayward hair. “You know… what’s funky is why Vince Noir would sleep naked while Howard Moon sleeps next to him, fully clothed.”

“Killeroo,” Noel said, in a tiny voice.

“Huh?”

“Killeroo. The scene where Vince and Howard sack out in the sleeping bags… you asked me what sort of pyjamas Vince would have and I joked that he probably slept naked. And then you joked that Howard probably slept in full zooniform.”

It was nothing more than a dim clatter in the back of Julian’s memory, but what Noel said seemed right. “Yeah, but we didn’t end up filming it that way.”

“But that’s how it was written.”

Julian stood up, his knees popping in protest. “This all feels very weird.”

“Don’t tell me. I’m the one who’s naked.”

Julian nodded vaguely, then jerked decisively towards the door. Thunder rumbled once more, nearly stopping him in his tracks, but he forced himself forward, moving as if through wet sand, until—finally—the doorknob was in his hand. “Anything could be out there, you know,” he said, his voice harsh.

“Yeah,” Noel said, muffled by blanket.

Julian turned the doorknob.

Vince Noir was having one far-out dream. In it, he was splashed out to the nines in sequins and feathers, positively dazzling in the spotlight of a large, expansive stage. He was pulling shapes left and right: bottle of champagne… wheelbarrow… flying carpet. It was genius layered in a genius cake, and only when he felt a slight pain in his shoulder did he glance up and see the strings overhead. Strings thick as cables that were attached to his back, he realised, feeling them twist about and shape him into a slender coat rack. He tried to fight against the strings, giving them a hard yank with his glitter-gloved hands, but they only jerked him faster and faster, his thick-heeled boots clattering to keep up.

And then the strings were suddenly in his hands, their severed ends falling onto stage left with a smacking noise.

Weird, Vince’s mouth said, moving of its own accord.

Then everything began to fade out, and he began to wake up.

“Ahhh!” Vince stretched, his hand tangling in what felt like a pile of wild animal fur. He opened one eye. “Howard?”

Howard was sprawled out on the ground, the upper-half of his body collapsed awkwardly on top of Vince’s legs.

“Hey.” Vince jiggled his knees, and Howard let out a croak. “Open up your small eyes.”

“Ugh.” Howard reluctantly opened his eyes and smacked his lips together, as if the inside of his mouth tasted bad. “God, what time is it?”

“Time for hot cocoa and nutella sandwiches.” Vince scooted backwards and leaned against the object behind him, which was in fact a hotel bed. Not that he noticed.

“I’m not having nutella sandwiches for breakfast again. Or for dinner. They give me the weird dreamings.”

“Weird dreamings! I had some of them. I was someone’s crazy marionette, see, and I was dancing a treat all over the stage. The strings kept tuggin’ at me back, though, and I wanted to hack ‘em free.”

Howard looked a touch puzzled, but not entirely surprised. “You dreamt that too, eh?”

Vince grinned. “You bet. Locust dreams, locust dreams…

“… gonna eat your brain at the seams,” Howard finished. Then he coughed and looked around. “Hey, did you do the midnight interior designer thing last night?”

Vince examined his fingernails. “No way. I had myself an early sleepie.”

“What’s with the new drapery, then?” Howard asked, pointing at the subtly floral curtains that hung from the windows. “And… huh. There wasn’t wall to wall carpeting in here before, was there? Just that old defunct rug of Naboo’s.”

“Hm.” Vince finally tore his eyes away from his peeling varnish-job and had a look about the room. “Whoa! D’ya reckon I did some re-decorating in my sleep? Hey, I’m pretty good. We have a real bed!” He pulled himself on top of it, testing out the bounce.

“Yeahhhh.” Howard stood up uneasily. “Could you just… put the room back right again, please?”

“Why? This is genius.” Vince was now on his feet, jumping on the bed as if it were an acrobat’s trampoline.

“Because it feels weird.”

“You’re not jokin’,” Vince said, attempting to do a cheerleader’s splits. “Much bouncier than that old sofa.”

Howard sighed. “No, Vince, I’m not talking about the bed.” He slowly paced the small area, noting the almost-empty tumbler of scotch on top the television. The crumpled papers peeping out from beneath the dresser. The open suitcase that was filled with bright, soft fabrics reminiscent of Vince’s own wardrobe. “Is this our hut?” he finally asked, then, with his heart hammering in his chest, he took a step toward the closed curtains.

“It’s ours now,” Vince said blithely, flopping flat on his back and causing the mattress to squeak in protest.

“Yeah, but…” Howard toyed with the hem of the curtains, daring himself to draw them open. “What’s ours, is a better question.”

“What are you doing, Howard?” Vince asked suddenly, watching Howard with an uncharacteristic sense of foreboding. Somehow, he didn’t think those curtains ought to be touched.

“I’m a man of action,” Howard muttered. Then he repeated it, like a mantra. “A man of action.”

There was a whisking noise as the curtains were yanked open with a flourish.

Light flooded the room like a beacon from Old Gregg’s mangina.

In perfect harmony, Howard and Vince began to scream.

Noel thought the rain seemed much louder with Julian gone.

Julian wasn’t gone long, however. No sooner had the door closed behind his back than it opened again and he re-entered, his face leached of all colour, the rain framing his silhouette in a shimmering back-drop.

“What’s out there?” Noel asked, still huddled beneath his blanket.

“The Zooniverse,” Julian said, his voice strange and thin, like a man speaking from the far end of a tunnel.

Noel licked his lips, then rolled onto his knees and came upright, carefully swathing the blankets around his naked body. Julian was still standing in doorway stiffer than a tin soldier, and Noel shuffled towards him, peering around his mate’s shoulder and out into the rain.

It was so different. It was so the same.

Wind rustled the dripping tree branches and infused the air with the rich scent of wet soil. A few metres off, an extra—no, a grounds-keeper—was emptying a rubbish bin. Directly adjacent from the grounds-keeper was Jack the fox’s enclosure, and Jack himself stared back at Noel with suspicious, squinty eyes. Noel couldn’t pull his gaze away from the creature. It wasn’t the animatronic prop used in series two, but it wasn’t quite a real fox, either. It was more like a hybrid of the two, like a living caricature of a fox, more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than any real animal should be.

“Fucking hell,” Noel breathed.

“What are you looking at, busy britches?” Jack asked, his tail twitching angrily.

Noel made a small noise of alarm and slammed the door shut. “Oh god,” he chanted. “Oh god!” He clapped his hands over his ears, momentarily forgetting his blankets, and began to pace in a small circle, chanting “It can’t… no… I…” and other nonsense under his breath.

Then Julian had him by the shoulders, shaking him hard. “Calm down,” he said, forcing Noel to stop in his tracks. “Don’t think about it. Don’t think about how or why, or you’ll go mad.”

“Are we dead?” Noel asked, the question unexpected and dousing him like ice-water.

“No!” Julian said, then again, in a lower voice, “no. I promise.”

“Then why?… How?”

“I told you not to think about why or how,” Julian said.

“Sorry,” Noel sniffed.

“Look…” Julian kneaded his shoulders, and Noel thought, for once, that Julian’s greater stature was reassuring rather than irritating. “You’re real and alive, it doesn’t matter where.”

“And you’re here,” Noel added, relieved to find that his words were no longer edged with hysteria.

“Yeah, sure I am,” Julian said, then trotted his fingers back and forth before Noel’s eyes, making little clicking sounds with his tongue. “See the pony? See his gentle hooooves.”

Noel let out a small giggle in spite of himself. “That’s such crap psychotherapy.”

Julian shrugged. “Always worked on Bob Fossil,” he said, then gave Noel a more searching look. “You all right now?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Noel hugged his bare arms and shivered. “God, it’s really cold in here. Weird, ‘cos the set was always so hot. All them lights, remember? And now there’s wind, and rain, and draughts…” he trailed off, biting his lip in thought.

“I think there’s clothing around here as well, if his nudeness can be bothered to look,” Julian said, pointing at a corner cupboard that hadn’t been there before.

“Oh.” Noel stared down at his naked body and the blankets that were puddled around his feet, blushing slightly. He stepped gingerly over to the cupboard, and Julian gallantly turned his back and set about washing out the sticky blender—as if washing up were the normal thing to be doing. The cupboard itself was packed with bright clothing, tee-shirts and jeans, mostly, and Noel recognised all of them as being from his series one wardrobe. Even Vince’s green zooniform jacket, which Noel had customised himself, was in there, crammed between a leather studded jacket and a striped poncho. Noel pulled it from the hanger, fingering the rare Kiss Army badge he’d nicked off the jacket before they’d started filming series two. He’d lost that badge later while taking the train to his parents’, but now here it was, not even dirtied up like it had been in real life.

Between pulling on a pair of jeans and a fuchia-and-orange tee-shirt, Noel very briefly wondered if maybe this place wasn’t the hell he’d first thought it was.

But then came a fierce knocking at the hut door, and that brief thought disappeared like bad cologne in the wind.

“Open up you two! What are you doing? Cuddling in front of the fire like hibernating eels? OPEN UP!”

Julian and Noel quickly exchanged glances.

“Should we?” Julian asked.

“I think we’d better,” Noel said.

Julian cleared his throat, brushed his hands off on his trousers, and opened the door. Bob Fossil stumbled inside, thrown forward by the force of his knocking.

“Hullo there, Rich…” Julian began, his face twitching in alarm as he realised his mistake. “Rich.. rich. Rich man,” he concluded, swallowing visibly.

“Rich man? I’m wearing freakin’ polyester, Moon!”

“Yes, Mr Fossil, I know that. And might I say that you look very fine in your blue polyester this morning. With your little blue trousers and your… nicely-fitted shirt,” Julian stammered, tugging nervously on his own zooniform jacket.

Noel couldn’t help but roll his eyes. It was only Bob Fossil, Rich’s slightly more annoying alter-ego. What was there to be nervous about? “Oi, Fossil,” he drawled, setting a cowboy hat on his head and taking a step forward. “What d’ya want?”

Fossil looked at Noel through the calculating slits of his eyes. “You’re a vision in fuchia, Vincey,” he said, rather tartly. “And if Moon would have hauled his useless hump over to my office, I wouldn’t have had to come here just to tell you that today’s porpoise derby has been rained out.”

“Gee.” Julian clicked his tongue. “Shame, that.”

“And that doesn’t mean you two get a carefree day of distributing millet,” Fossil shouted, spattering Julian’s face with sour spittle. “We had an incident in the Moon World last night. All the night-time critters broke out of their cages and now they’re roamin’ all over the place. Bats are droppin’ guano in the chameleon boudoir. It’s nocturnal anarchy out there!”

“Yeah? What d’ya want us to do about it?” Noel asked, planting his hands on his hips.

“Only two things,” Fossil said, looking as if the top of his head might blow off in a burst of rage. “FIX! IT!”

Noel staggered backwards, literally blown away by the power of Fossil’s screams. “All right!” he squeaked, straightening his hat. “We’ll get right on it.”

Fossil’s only reply was the slam of the door.

“What was that?” Julian barked, lunging forward and swiping the hat from Noel’s head. “Since when is Vince Noir the second cousin of Dirty Harry?”

“Hey!” Noel grabbed for the hat, but Julian held it up high, out of reach. “You were the one schmoozing him like teacher’s pet. He’s not real, remember? Just some character that we wrote up.”

Julian plopped the hat back on Noel’s head. “See that?” he asked, wiping off his face and stretching out his hand, which was glistening and wet from Fossil’s spit-shower. “If the man can drench me with that much saliva, then he’s real enough to make us miserable. That much I can promise you.”

“Disgusting.” Noel backed well away, feeling tainted by the very sight. “Don’t remember Fossil being that irritating in real life.”

“What do you mean, ‘real life’?” Julian ducked over the kitchen sink and splashed water over his face.

“You know… the way we wrote him.”

“But this isn’t real life, this is what the Zooniverse would be if it were real.”

Noel dropped into a chair, his brain smarting from the metaphysical cartwheels implied in Julian’s words. “So in the real Zooniverse, Fossil’s an even bigger dick than the way Rich played him, and Howard and Vince are…?”

Julian pivoted around, drying his face and hands with a tea-towel. “How should I know?”

“You seem assured in your knowledge so far.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m not. I’m just entertaining guess-work ‘cos it’s the only thing that keeps me from screaming my bloody tits off.” Julian tossed the tea-towel on the counter with a scowl.

Noel couldn’t help but smirk. “Let’s just say it’s a dream, and we’ve got to follow it through to the end before we can wake up.”

Taking a seat across from Noel, Julian mulled this over. “What d’ya mean, follow it through?”

“Let’s go check out the chameleon boudoir, round up some stray bats for Fossil, and see where that takes us.”

“Oh no,” Julian said, shaking his head vigourously. “I’m not going to bend to the whims of that deranged American. Howard Moon might pony-up at the snap of Fossil’s fingers, but I’m not Howard Moon.”

Noel sighed and spread his fingers out on the table, momentarily thrown by the fact that his fingernails were clean and un-varnished, whereas when he’d last checked, they’d been a peeling-blue colour. “What other options do we have? I don’t fancy the idea of sittin’ round this hut, driving myself mental over the whole situation.”

Julian gave Noel a resentful look. “You know, you’d be surprised what a good session of introspection can achieve. Why do you have to chase every little shiny thing in your path? You’re like Ricky Racoon, washing crackers until they dissolve into nothing.”

“Yeah? Well Ricky Racoon’d be depressed if I didn’t give him crackers to wash. He’d go on the razz for weeks.”

“Razz… is there any scotch around here, you think?”

“No,” Noel said, sighing again. “I already looked. The only cupboard is filled with my—with Vince’s clothes.”

Julian lowered his head and slowly banged it on the table-top. “Maybe Naboo’s got that hookah?”

“Yeah, I guess he might…” Noel suddenly snapped his fingers, then reached across the table and grabbed Julian’s hair, lifting his head slightly. “Hey, Naboo!”

“First you call me Howard, then you call me Naboo?”

Noel let go of Julian’s hair, and his head hit the table with a muted thunk. “No! I mean that we should talk to Naboo. On the show, he’s the one who’s always gettin’ Howard and Vince out of scrapes.”

“Yeah, in the episodes where we’re too pissed to write proper endings.”

“Shut up. That cheesy formula is part of the show’s charm.”

“Fine.” Julian made a face that suggested he was fresh out of any better options. “Let’s go talk to the wee shaman.”

Noel pressed his lips into a thin line. “You go talk to him.”

“Me? Why just me?” Julian tapped his fingers against the table-top. “Because of Mike?”

Noel gave a stiff nod.

Julian’s hand snaked out and took hold of Noel’s wrist. “Look, wherever your brother is, he’s still your brother. And he’s… fine, I’m sure.”

“Yeah…” Noel trailed off and swallowed thickly. “But I don’t want to look at him and know that he doesn’t know me. It’d be too weird.”

“He knows you. And ‘he’ isn’t even Mike. He’s Naboo, who knows you as Vince. Just pretend we’re in a rehearsal.”

“But if it were a rehearsal, Mike would arse up his lines and we’d all start laughing and ruin the take. That’s not gonna happen this time.” Absurdly, Noel felt as if he might cry. He struggled the feeling back, for Julian’s sake.

“I don’t want to leave you here,” Julian said, squeezing Noel’s hand, then glancing at it and letting go. Noel could still feel the warm imprint of his fingers. But he let go,he thought unhappily. It’s one thing to grope about on stage for a laugh, but when we’re alone he goes out of his way not to… Noel shook the thoughts away. He didn’t want to think about what they might mean.

“What is it?” Julian prompted, searching Noel’s face over.

“Nothing. I’ll go with you.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. ‘Cos if this place is anything like the madhouse we invented, then you could be taken to Monkey Hell or vanish into the Tundra while I’m not lookin’.”

Julian grinned despite himself. “Don’t worry. I’ll do all the talking.”

Noel nodded and stood up. Julian had always been a much better actor than he was, but Noel could pretend to be unaffected if he tried. He pushed the cowboy hat down low, feeling oddly as if he were protected by the larger-than-life shadow of Vince Noir. But then again, this wasn’t the first time he’d felt safe in that particular shadow.

“Let’s go,” he said, snapping his fingers.

Howard pulled the wadded curtains away from his eyes and screamed again. As if on cue, Vince joined him.

“It’s so dirty! Oh god, it’s hideous. What kind of place have you brought me to, Howard?

“Wh.. what?” Howard squeaked, his voice gone thin from all that screaming. “I didn’t bring you here, you berk!”

Vince’s face was flattened against the window, his wide eyes peering out at the street full of mini-cabs, buses, and pedestrians below. “Good god, it’s enormous! How did we get all the way to Tokyo?”

“Tokyo?” Howard said, rather doubtfully. He looked out at the chimneys and rooftops stretched out before them, nearly dizzy at the never-ending sight of them.

“We should hit the shops,” Vince said, suddenly cheerful. “Have you got any money?”

“We can’t leave, we don’t know where we are!”

“Or who we are,” Vince added, suddenly pulling back and studying his reflection in the window. “Where’s my hair!?”

Howard furrowed his brow, noticing for the first time that Vince’s hair was different than he remembered. It was seemed darker, for one, and a bit longer and more back-combed than how he usually wore it. “It’s been replaced,” he said flatly, and Vince shrieked and ran for the bathroom.

Howard followed him at his own cautious pace, and by the time he joined Vince in front of the mirror, Vince was rubbing his locks with an expression of evident pleasure on his face.

“Wow, it’s really good. I must have done it in my sleep.”

“Do you ever sleep in your sleep?” Howard asked, disgruntled. “Can’t you see what’s going on here? It’s clear that some bad ju ju’s afoot.” He squinted in the bright lights surrounding the massive mirror. There was a large bag of toiletries spilling over the counter, including countless tubes of glitter and moisturiser, all of them tumbled together like a mess of children’s crayons and paint-pots. Without even bothering to look down, Vince managed to skip his fingers through the jumble and pull out a black eyeliner pencil. The ease at which Vince was able to find the exact product he was looking for was discomforting to Howard. It was as if the stuff belonged to him, but how could it? Howard had never been in a bathroom this extravagant in his whole life, and if he hadn’t, then Vince hadn’t, either. With some struggle, Howard threw the uncomfortable feeling off. So Vince was at ease with beauty products. That wasn’t entirely unusual, after all.

“Good lighting,” Vince murmured, giving himself a dramatic cat’s-eye.

“How long are you going to primp?”

“Don’t you want to join in?”

“No! I don’t mess about with that sort of thing.”

“Don’t you?” Vince backed away from the mirror and studied Howard’s reflection. “You look as if you’ve been moisturising.”

“What? I do not!” Howard squinted and examined his face in the mirror. Both it and the hair looked exactly as he remembered: disheveled and a slightly worse for wear.

“Yeah, you do. You look…” Vince bit his bottom lip. “… Good,” he finished, then added, rather hastily: “For you.”

Howard looked at himself again, noticing for the first time that he wasn’t dressed in one of his loudly-patterned jazz shirts, but in a subdued, olive-green button down. His hair, which he had taken on first glance to be merely disheveled, suddenly leaped out to him as “stylishly mussed.”

“You did this to me!” Howard cried out in accusation, pointing at Vince with a tube of glitter.

“Hey, I’m no magician!” Vince protested, backing away.

Howard opened his mouth to counter, but was interrupted by a fierce knocking at the door.

“What the fuck’s going on?” a sleepy, muffled voice called out. “Why’re you guys screaming at the crack of dawn?”

Both Vince and Howard backed up against the bathroom counter, staring at the door where the knocking had come from. “Who is that?” Vince whispered.

“How should I know?”

“Hey,” the voice said, sounding slightly more agitated and, as such, suddenly familiar. “You gonna open the door or what?”

“Fossil!” Vince yelped.

Howard nodded, privately relieved to hear the sound of their boss’s voice. Though he hated to admit it, it was the first sensible voice he’d heard all day. Straightening up, he slowly walked towards the door and twisted the knob, then peered through the cracked opening. It was Fossil, all right, sipping a hot beverage from a paper cup and outfitted, for the first time ever, in something other than that dreadful blue polyester outfit. Instead, he was wearing a cable-knit jumper and a pair of jeans. He looked, to Howard’s eyes, alarmingly normal. As such, Howard immediately narrowed his gaze and hissed “what do you want?”

Fossil lifted an eyebrow. “I thought we were having breakfast.”

“Where? When?” Howard asked, quickly looking from side to side and noting that Fossil was standing in what appeared to be a long, carpeted hallway, lined with identical doors, all of them shut fast.

“Whenever. I need to shower first, though. You assholes woke me up with all your noise.”

“What assholes?” Howard demanded. Fossil was behaving very strangely, he thought, sipping at that hot beverage as if he had nothing better to do than take showers and eat breakfast.

Now it was Fossil’s turn to give Howard a strange look. “You and Noel.”

“Noel?” Howard asked, utterly perplexed.

“Hey, can I come in? They didn’t leave any little baby shampoos in my shower, I wanna snag some of yours.”

Howard opened the door, rather reluctantly. “Fine, but I think you’ll find that there’s no little babies being shampooed in our shower.”

Fossil laughed—it was a strange, disarming sound—and brushed past Howard, chucking his cup into the rubbish bin in the corner. “Nice eyeliner, Mommy,” he said to Vince, popping into the bathroom long enough to fetch a few miniature bottles of shampoo from the ledge in the shower.

“Hey, I didn’t say you could have them!” Vince protested, still backed cautiously against the bathroom counter.

“Oh, come on, you don’t squeeze this common crap on your locks.”

Vince paused, then half-shrugged. Fossil did have a point.

Shoving the shampoos into his pocket, Fossil looked at Vince for a minute, then slowly shifted his gaze over to Howard. “You guys seem pretty jumpy. Did something happen last night?”

“Yes!” Vince burst out. He quickly shut his mouth, though, at the sight of Howard frantically gesturing for him to be quiet from behind Fossil’s back.

“Ooookay,” Fossil drawled out, slowly backing out of the bathroom. “Count me out of that.” He flumped down on the edge of the bed and turned the television on, flicking through the channels with the remote. “You really shouldn’t be fighting, you know. Tour’s over. You can sleep regular hours now.”

Vince and Howard exchanged looks of confusion. Howard gestured, and Vince eased out of the bathroom and joined him just outside the door, where they both stood and watched their boss idly scratch his belly and switch over to a news programme.

“Football, solar flares, teenagers drinking. Same thing they were talking about an hour ago. Man, I hate the British.” Fossil turned the television off and looked up at the boys expectantly. “You were fighting, right? I mean, that’s what the screams were about, right, because it didn’t sound like mating calls.” He chuckled at his own joke and tossed the remote aside.

Howard stood up straight. “What do you want, Mr Fossil?” he asked bluntly, steeling himself for… well, he didn’t know just what, but knowing Fossil, it wouldn’t be anything good.

“Mr Fossil?” Fossil said, raising an eyebrow.

“Look,” Vince piped up, taking a step forward. “We want to know what’s been done to our hut.”

“Your what?” Fossil stood up slowly.

“Like, why’ve we only got one bed?” Vince continued, pointing at the duvet he’d so recently rumpled with his acrobatic act. “I’m not Howard’s girlfriend, you know. Haven’t I explained that to you about twenty times by now?”

“Shut up, Vince,” Howard hissed, frowning.

“Umm…” Fossil blinked very rapidly and ran a hand through his hair. “Is this new material, or something?”

Vince sneered slightly. “Looks like the same hair you’ve always had,” he said, then added, under his breath, “awful.”

“Ooookay,” Fossil said, in that same long, drawn-out way. “I think I’d better go have that shower now. I’ll tell Mike that you two are coming down off something. Try to be yourselves again by three for that interview.”

“What interview?” Howard demanded, realising that he was now pointing the same tube of glitter at Fossil that he’d earlier pointed at Vince, this time brandishing it as if it were a very short sword. “Are you replacing us? Is that what this is about?”

“I bet he is,” Vince said eagerly, ducking a bit behind Howard’s protective height. “He’s going to leave us in a strange place without any shampoo, and will hire someone from the flea circus to replace us.”

“The flea circus!” Howard exclaimed, giving Fossil the full boon of his glare. “How dare you.”

Fossil clapped his hands against his chest and shook his head vigorously. “What the fuck are you two talking about?” he burst out. Then he backed off a few steps, eyeing the pair warily.

“I won’t let you replace us, Sir, or let you lead us through the gutters of this filthy metropolis,” Howard said grandly, again brandishing the glitter.

Vince sighed. “What he means is: you’re a blue twit, and we’re done with your tea-time puppet show.”

Howard looked over his shoulder, glaring. “That is not what I mean. Puppet show? What are you on about?”

Vince screwed his face up in frustration. “Aw, come on, Howard. Don’t you feel it? He’s been dictating our sorry lives for years. Now’s our chance to break free!”

Howard stopped short, startled by this sudden diversion. It was just like Vince to bounce around like a ping-pong ball, though, and while Howard wasn’t precisely sure what feeling Vince was talking about, but he did know that he felt different than he had yesterday. Like a million doors had suddenly been thrown open, each offering both him and Howard an opportunity to flee… to where, he wasn’t sure, but the very prospect was both scary and invigorating. Much like his glimpse of that huge, gray city outside the window. So whatever Vince might mean by break free, Howard thought he could follow that impulse. “Right,” Howard said, turning his attention back to Fossil. “You can’t replace us… because we quit! Ha!”

“Ha!” Vince echoed, bouncing slightly on the soles of his boots.

“Okay, I’m leaving,” Fossil said gruffly, seeming unimpressed by this announcement. “You two are being nuts.” Then he began to move for the door, muttering under his breath.

“Vince… stop him!” Howard hissed, making a useless swipe at Fossil with the glitter tube.

“Why?” Vince said, looking confused.

“Just…!” Howard gestured uselessly, hoping it would somehow magically translate over to Vince that Fossil shouldn’t be allowed to leave the room. Howard had a creeping sensation that if he did, he might lock them in or something, and the prospect of being locked in, of having to stay in this room where it felt like they’d spent their whole lives (despite having never even seen the room before, it still felt like they’d spent years here) filled Howard with unspeakable dread. So many creeping sensations all at once—and all of them new. Weirdly, Howard felt as if he were acting on intuition for the first time in his life, and his heart beat loudly in his ears with words he could clearly decipher: I am, I am, I am, I am.

Vince reacted instantly, with his own brand of intuition that had been honed over years of snatching his friend away from the brink of death and disaster. He unslung the can of hairspray from his back trouser pocket and uncapped it with a single, deft move of his thumb. Then he promptly gave Fossil a face full of maximum shine, maximum hold.

“Fuck me!” Fossil screamed, his hands immediately flying up to his face. “Ow! Oh my fucking fuck that hurts like a mother… fuck!” Fossil’s knees crumpled slightly, as if he might collapse, and Howard grasped him by the shoulders, guiding him to the bed.

“God,” Vince said, paling slightly. “Never heard him swear his tits off quite like that before.”

“Yeah.” Howard licked his lips anxiously. He’d expected Fossil to sound off, but these were the yelps and cries of genuine pain—not the melodramatic nonsense he’d braced himself for. “We’d better tie him up,” Howard said decisively.

“What? Why?”

“Because… I don’t know. He might tell someone that you hairsprayed him,” Howard said desperately. This flying-by-the-seat-of-his-trousers thing was hard to adjust to.

“Fuck right I’ll tell someone,” Fossil snuffled, still rubbing at his eyes.

Vince moved towards the suitcase on the floor. “I’ll find something,” he said, thrusting his hands into the wadded fabrics and unearthing a striped neck-tie.

Within minutes, they had firmly trussed Fossil to the radiator under the window, Vince kindly tucking a pillow behind his head for support. Fossil’s face was a fright of red, swollen tissue, and between frequent bouts of cursing he pleaded with both of them to “stop being assholes” and untie him. “Come on, Julian,” he moaned, “at least leave me the bottle of scotch.”

“Why’s he keep calling you that?” Vince asked, scoring the scotch from the dresser and placing the uncapped bottle between Fossil’s knees.

“I don’t know,” Howard said. “Why’s he keep calling you ‘Noel’?”

Vince shrugged. “He’s gone wrong.”

“You two are such assholes,” Fossil sighed, looking curiously defeated as he managed to tip the bottle of scotch into his mouth without spilling any.

Vince and Howard exchanged shrugs. In all their experiences together, nothing had quite prepared them for this. Whatever this was.

“Come on, let’s go,” Vince said, fetching up a leather jacket from the suitcase and slipping into it. “He’s making my skin crawl.”

“Yeah,” Howard agreed, joining Vince at the suitcase. Unfortunately, everything in it was Vince-sized and Vince-styled. Not a good roomy tweed in sight. “Look at him, sucking on that scotch like a weak little… weak thing.”

“His face all red like a blubbering infant’s,” Vince added, attempting a scowl. The scowl faded as he caught sight of Howard’s own worried face. “Did we do something bad?” he asked in a whisper.

“Bad? To Fossil?” Howard tried hard to sound incredulous, but he could tell from the nervous way Vince was plucking at his wrist-band that he hadn’t fooled either of them. “We really should go,” he said quickly, deciding he would have to brave the outside world without tweed.

“Wait,” Vince said, stopping Howard just as he reached the door. “Where are we goin’?”

“You know…” Howard made what he thought was a perfectly formed up-up-and-away pose. “Away.”

“Oh,” Vince said, slowly grinning. “Right!”

Then they entered the hallway together, facing down the long line of closed doors on either side.

What the truth is, is this:

He wants to be able to read you with certainty. From the expectant drumming of your fingers to the wayward tousle of your hair. It’s should all be straightforward, no mystery about it whatsoever, but that trick you have of smiling with only half your mouth makes him think there are things about you he still doesn’t know. If only your words could come from a script; if only he could write the movement of your lips against his into real life. But it all happens behind the illusion of the curtain: your breath filling him like a slender instrument; your hands anchored on his hips with the promise of ownership. If the tounge that touches his could speak at this moment, what would it say? He wonders. He wants to ask. But he doesn’t have the question—you’ve stolen it from him, but then you pass it back, wet and hot like a kiss. Then the curtain lifts, and it scatters with the fever of applause. Dies away and disappears.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s real, and what’s just for show.

Endnotes: I’ve been writing this between bouts with my thesis these past few weeks, sort of to keep meself motivated at the thought of writing at all, and it spawned into a huge, novel-length premise. So… this first part will most definitely be followed up with a second, and possibly a third. Who knows how massive it could grow, really. But I wanted to get part one out there and see what everyone thought before I continued: it’s a funky premise and I’d like to know if it’s working. So yes, thanks for reading. 🙂