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 4

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Chapter 4

Sometimes, Howard felt as if he were from a different world. A different era, maybe; one full of smoky jazz clubs and men of grand designs. Men in slouchy hats who always spoke the truth, no matter how hard-bitten that truth might be. But as much as he had always enjoyed imagining that world where he was sure he belonged, he had, in the last few hours or so, come to doubt its existence. He’d read once that roughly seventy-two species of insects, plants, and animals became extinct every day, so maybe the same was true of certain types of men, as well. It didn’t help matters that he literally no longer knew who or where he was, and for the first time in quite a while, he gave thanks that he had Vince’s predictable presence to fall back on. His carefree arrogance, his well-honed sense of self-indulgence—if not for that, Howard would have floundered, would have sunk fast into the darker parts of himself that he sometimes sensed were there but had never really examined up close. Like it or not, Vince had fostered within him a desire to stay near the surface, where the sun still reached.

It wasn’t easy, though, experiencing a paradigm shift in the course of a single day—he would have rather been trapped in a box by some regional-specific nutjob. He was tired and in want of a drink, and the little glass of sherry he sipped at did little more than wet his whistle. It wet his mustache, as well, and he blotted it dry with the back of his hand, letting out a silent burp as he did so.

The pub, at least, was quiet and tasteful. And these two men, the not-Naboo and his friend, were treating him and Vince like semi-regular people, not staring at them like they were exotic creatures sent from a different universe. The other bloke, the blue-eyed one, even claimed to like jazz, and Howard orbited near him out of both curiosity and doubt. He had yet to run across another person who really appreciated jazz as he did. Well, another person who didn’t wear a flaming top hat, anyway.

“Miles Davis or Charlie Parker?” Howard asked the man in a low voice. This question was a serious test. Behind him, Vince and Naboo were engaged in a conversation of hushed undertones that he had no trouble ignoring.

“Oh? God, I dunno.” The man waved for another drink. “Miles Davis?”

Howard carefully kept his face neutral. “Okay. But why Miles?”

The man shrugged. Much too careless a gesture as far as Howard was concerned. “I like trumpet better than saxophone, I guess.”

“Yeah, trumpets are pretty good,” Howard confessed. “But you have to admit that there are two schools of jazz music: before Charlie, and after Charlie. I mean, the Bird changed jazz forever. Miles was one of the first to play those low, romantic notes on a trumpet, sure, but only ‘cos he played with Charlie and heard how it was done on the sax.” Howard shivered unconsciously, as he often did when he waxed poetic about one of his passions. “Charlie knew what he was doing. He was the maverick, and Miles followed in his hero’s path.”

The blond man tilted his head to one side. “Haven’t you told me all this before?”

Howard blinked. “Have I?”

The man took a slurp of his bourbon, snickering slightly. “Think so. Anyway, I like the more recent jazz-fusion a lot. You know, loud guitars. Like the stuff you play.”

“I play?” Howard slowly lowered his glass of sherry onto the bar, almost missing and dropping it.

“Sure.”

“But… you mustn’t mean me. I don’t play any—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. There was a clattering of glass, and the unmistakable rustling sound of too-tight trousers being forced to stand upright in a hurry. Howard pivoted around at once, taking in Vince’s wild, animated expression.

“Howard! Howard! We were—” Vince’s mouth jumped up and down, as if unable to continue, and he looked quickly down at Naboo, his abandoned performance occurring to him belatedly. Then he looked back to Howard, his mouth slowly closing. He looked quite as if he’d just been punched in the face, left dazed rather than injured.

“Uh, yeah, Noel?” Howard asked pointedly, lifting his eyebrows at the outburst.

“You said you were finished,” Naboo said to Vince at the same time, clearly hassled but not really all that surprised.

“Nothing,” Vince said stupidly, ducking his head as he tried to help the bartender clean up the mess he’d made with his drink. “Sorry, I am finished. I just… I was born with this tic, you see…”

“Born with a few of them,” Naboo said mildly.

“Haha,” Howard forced a laugh, earning himself daggers from Vince. Howard shrugged apologetically and turned back to the blond man, leaving Naboo to finish scolding Vince. “So. You like the way I play guitar?” He flushed as the words came; they sounded more insinuating than he’d intended.

The man grinned. “You’re being odd tonight,” he said, and the hazy way his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes suggested he was well on his way to being quite drunk. Howard wondered if he could use that to his advantage. It’s what Columbo would do, that’s for sure.

“I guess I am,” Howard said, pausing long enough to order the man another bourbon, as well as one for himself. Screw sherry. It was for housewives and old ladies. “You ever play ‘loose tongues’ before?”

“Play what?”

Howard winced. Loose tongues. That didn’t sound too promising, did it? He was a poet-novelist, but words seemed so slippery now, all attached with a fuse that could ignite like dynamite, bringing about a whole world of wrong. He’d never worried about words before like this; they’d always gotten him from point A to point B, no matter what dodgy detours might’ve come along the way. “It’s just a drinking game,” he explained hurriedly. “Your drinking partner tells you something true about yourself, and if you agree with what they say, you have to take a drink.”

“Um, no.” The man rubbed his eyes sleepily. “Who starts?”

“Me. Tell me something true about Julian Bear—Barratt.” Howard clutched the bourbon glass in his hand, bracing himself. He shot a quick look over his shoulder. Vince’s attention, however, was elsewhere. In his fresh drink, mostly, which he was slurping down with concentration while Naboo said something to him again about that Pamela person he was supposed to telephone.

The man rested his chin in his hand, squinting and looking Howard over. “Julian Barratt is… clearly from Leeds.”

“Yes!” Howard said, a bit too loudly. He couldn’t help but smile as he took his drink.

“That one was easy,” the man admitted. “All right. What’s something true about Dave Brown?”

Howard almost choked on an ice-cube. The invention of his plan hadn’t gone so far as to consider his own participation in it. “Oh, er… Dave Brown?” He stared the man up and down, knowing by now that they (they being Dave and Julian, and not Dave and Howard) were obviously well-acquainted. “Dave Brown is… the hardest working man in show-business?” he said, hazarding a guess.

Dave let out a deep laugh, then took a hearty drink of his bourbon. “That’s a true fucking story. Thank christ I don’t have to wear that ape-suit again for a while.”

“Ape suit?” Howard asked with interest. He’d worn an ape suit himself, once upon a time, and knew they weren’t exactly comfortable. Very humid ‘round the family jewels.

“What are you two talking about?” Vince was watching the scene now, looking decidedly nonplussed as he held his flirtini glass in a loose, half-drunken grip, like that of a pouting diva.

“Just glad the tour’s over, s’all,” Dave said, draining the rest of his tumbler and stretching with a force that sent all his bones popping.

“I’ll drink to that,” Naboo murmured, lifting his pint.

Vince and Howard stared at one another, both sets of eyes wordlessly communicating their mutual confusion. “Why’re you glad?” Vince finally ventured.

“Because it’s fucking tiring,” Dave said, smiling weakly. “Don’t tell me you’re not tired of Vince.”

At this, Vince quite visibly shuddered, and Howard fought the urge to move to his side and put a steadying hand on his shoulder. It would look weird. Especially in a masculine, dark-paneled pub like this one.

“Well… “ Vince began after a moment, still agog and bewildered.

Dave laughed. “Okay, maybe not you, but I know Julian’s tired of being Howard.”

Now it was Howard’s turn to shudder, to experience the creeping sensation of wearing flesh that suddenly didn’t feel like his own. His own was gone, shaken off like dusty scales from a butterfly’s wings. Lost to the daily extinction.

“Yeah,” he finally said. Just that one word, and it came out more like a meek sigh than anything else.

Dave rubbed one of his eyes, drunkenly oblivious to the discomfort he’d just caused. “Mike and I are going to meet Rich across the street. Get some dinner. Wanna come?”

Mike? Howard shot a quick glance at Naboo, who had stood up and pushed his lager glass aside. “No. Thanks, but we’ll stay here.”

“Call Pamela,” Mike-Naboo said sternly, pointing a finger at Vince—not Howard—as he left with Dave.

The silence they left in the wake of their departure was unusually loud. The bartender was arranging his glasses, and their muted clink was the only noise for awhile.

When Howard finally spoke, he let the first word slip out with little thought. “Mike,” he said, then took a swig of his drink, choosing not to elaborate.

“Mike,” Vince echoed, with a smidgen of disgust. “What sort of shaman can get away with a name like that? It’s like if Leroy were a shaman.”

“Leroy!” Julian said, inspired. “Why don’t we ring him? Get out that phone Na—Mike gave you.”

“I don’t know,” Vince said, looking wary as he pulled out the phone and began to search through the memory. “None of these names are familiar. Chris… Christine… Pamela… Paul… No Leroy.

“Pamela. Naboo… I mean, Mike, he said you should call her, yeah?”

“But I’m not going to call anyone who’s furious with me, am I?” Vince poked his tongue into his glass like a hummingbird, found it empty but for a sticky trickle, and gave a dejected sigh. For someone who’d not long ago given him a lecture on inferiority complexes, Howard though Vince was acting awfully sullen. Maybe it was the alcohol. Instead of lifting his spirits, it had filled him like an iron balloon, left him pasty in the dim lights of the pub, and his hair uncharacteristically wilty. His smudged eyeliner leant him a spooky air, and as he hunched over in his barstool Howard noticed that the outline of his spine was a knobby rope, clearly visible through his clingy tee-shirt. In short, Vince looked… not very good, for Vince. Tired and too thin. Howard didn’t know whether to be concerned or relieved to have proof, at last, that Vince was human after all.

“Not a problem, Vince,” Howard said, smiling the kind of false winning smile that can only be brought on by a good stiff drink. “She’s furious with Noel, remember?

Vince sighed again, then re-opened his phone, pushed a button, and pressed the apparatus to his ear.

“Hey…. uh, Pamela? Yeah, okay, I can hold.” He rolled his eyes at Howard. “Pamela! It’s… Noel. Yeah. No. Wait, what? He’s right next to me. You do? Oh, okay.”

Howard could hear a faint female voice from the other end as Vince spoke, but it was hard to say who was more surprised when Vince held out the phone and said “she wants to talk to you. Or Julian, anyway.”

“Me?” Howard carefully lowered his drink back onto the bar. “But you were the one who was supposed to call her!”

“And I’m telling you that she’s asking for Julian. Are you up to being him or not?” Vince pressed the phone into his shoulder as he spoke, masking his words from Pamela’s ears.

“I…” Howard lifted his hand, then hesitated. Julian was clearly from Leeds, according to Dave Brown, and so was Howard. How hard could this really be? “Okay. Give it here.”

He held the phone a few inches away from his ear, then took a deep breath and plunged into the digital static. “Hi, Pamela.”

“Julian!” The voice was tinny and sounded like it belonged to a thirteen year old. A very angry thirteen year old “What the fuck? No, I meant where the fuck. Where the fuck were you two? Robert says he’ll cobble together some live show footage and old interview clips, but shit, he’s hacked off. I promised him ten minutes and you couldn’t fucking deliver? Jesus!”

“Oh.” Howard gulped, then sidled a look at Vince, who was himself leaning in, curious. “Noel and had a bit of a situation this morning… a fan situation. Fans trying to rape our hair. Trying to… take things to a certain level, you know. A sensual level?” He licked his lips nervously. While he might admire improvisation in terms of jazz, it was a slightly different matter to try it out over the phone.

“What, again? Look, don’t let Noel strut around in public so much. This isn’t the anonymous Auto Boosh era anymore…”

Howard closed his eyes against the persistent voice. Boosh. What was it about that word? It meant something, but trying to remember what was like trying to remember the first time he ever heard John Coltrane: impossible, even though he knew it damn well shouldn’t be.

“… NME is doing a write-up. Yeah, another one. Look’s like it’s your arses they’re buttering up this spring, so get ready…”

And what did she mean when she said “don’t let Noel…”? Howard didn’t know about Noel, but Vince always did pretty much whatever the seven hells he wanted. He didn’t listen to Howard, that much was certain. Even now, he was trying to press his head up to Howard’s, his ear greedily seeking out his place in the conversation.

“… God, okay, autumn tour? Paul and the others are still talking, but it’s developing into a possibility. I know what you’re thinking, and I promise it won’t be as long as this one was…”

No, really, she didn’t know what Howard was thinking, because what Howard was thinking was who am I? Where am I? What is this?

“Pamela!” he blurted suddenly. Vince turned his head, strands of his hair getting caught in Howard’s mouth, then pulled away slightly and lifted an eyebrow. “I’ve… got somewhere to be, I think,” Howard said uncertainly. “Noel and I have to get to dinner. With Dave and Na… Dave and Mike.”

“Fine. Call Robert and apologise, if you get a chance. I’m counting on you to patch things up, Julian.”

Howard clicked off and handed the phone back to Vince. He felt dazed. Unreal. Overwhelmed by the responsibilities and respect he had always craved but didn’t now particularly want.

“I heard that,” Vince said, suddenly alert and excited, his cheeks flaring with a lively flush. “NME… a tour… interviews. We’re in a band! We’re famous!”

“It’s not us,” Howard mumbled, his hands scrabbling across the bar for his drink. He tried to imagine himself on the cover of Cheekbone or NME, and failed entirely. Not even having Vince by his side could conjure up the image properly.

“And god, there’s a lot of numbers in this phone. I must be really popular.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, Nathan No Comprehendo?” Howard said, the burn of alcohol lending a bite to his voice. “Noel is popular. Vince is just someone you’re supposed to be tired of being.”

Vince slowly shut his phone, looking not mollified, as Howard had hoped, but curiously calm. Almost gratified. “You mean Howard. You’re supposed to be tired of being Howard.”

“I am Howard!” His hand tightened around his glass, white-knuckled. Then there was a silence in which he could feel Vince peering at him.

“Do you really get tired of being yourself?” Vince finally asked, unconsciously leaning closer as he spoke, his fingers fluttering against Howard’s wrist in concern. “The way you fell from the escalator in Top Shop… you looked, I don’t know. Was it an accident?”

Howard yanked his hand away. “I wasn’t trying to off myself, Vince. I was… in a rage. Riding the bad ju ju. Off my tits on coconut cubes.”

“You were in a Top Strop,” Vince said, smiling very slightly.

“I’m prone to Top Strops while in Top Shop.” Howard’s voice was thin, so he wet it again with the bourbon. It tasted like the old west. Like hot, sun-warmed saddles and lasso burns. Fuck, he was a little drunk. “I just felt like I had to get out of there… Christ, is it just me or has this day seemed to drag on for years?”

“I seems really, really long,” Vince conceded, nodding his head. “Most days fly by in about thirty minutes, seems like.”

“More like twenty-five.”

“You know, they say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes in something like a minute,” Vince said, raising his eyebrows as if he’d just offered up a profound and wise tidbit instead of an absolutely odd segue.

“Is that meant as some jab at the length of my pre-death picture show?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you going to brag about how your pre-death picture show is going to be two hours long, with ice cream at the interval? Because its not the length that matters, it’s the action that you pack in.” Howard pressed a hand to his stomach, feeling it gurgle at the words ice cream. He hadn’t much to eat today, and, as already observed, today was turning out to be really long.

“Pay attention Howard. You’re missing my point. It’s not about pre-death pictures shows, it’s about…” Vince paused rather dramatically here. “… post-death.“

“What about it?”

“Nothing,” Vince said, pivoting slightly in his seat. “Just this.” And with that, he scooted his bar stool over with a skreetch! of alarm, then reached out and gave Howard a very hard and unexpected pinch on his upper arm, causing Howard to let out a yelp.

“What?! What was that?” Howard bolted backwards, nearly tumbling out of his bar stool, and massaged his arm, glaring.

“Oh.” Vince watched Howard’s ministrations, disappointed. “You mean you felt that?”

“Damn right I felt it.” Howard held out his arm. “Look at that! You’ve bruised me up a peach.” He gave Vince a look that was two parts bafflement, one part exasperation. “And this has something to do with death, somehow?”

“Well,” Vince said slowly, massaging his chin in thought. “It’s just that I figured we were dead, and that you’d probably not feel it.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Howard asked, the question almost playful, but tinged with weariness. “Knowing you, you’ve touched me a couple times today, and I was solid enough then, wasn’t I? Plus I’ve been dead before, and your hand didn’t go through me then, either.” Howard shook his head, wondering at Vince’s thick-headed-ness, and where on earth he’d conjured up the notion they were dead. He hadn’t seen a Grim Reaper in months… years… well, it had been a very long time.

“So maybe we are dead, even if we are solid, and this is like… our afterlife,” Vince ventured, his eyes wide, slightly glassy.

“Would you stop? I don’t know where you’re coming up with this nonsense, because I—”

“The last thing I remember is my life flashing before my eyes,” Vince went on, oblivious to Howard’s interjection. “Our life,” he clarified, briefly losing his glassy look as he focused on Howard’s face with an intensity that nearly made Howard blush. “And I was floating, and you were coming at me fast like the northern juggernaut, and I reached out quick as you like and grabbed hold of your hammy-hands, and we took off together.”

Howard shivered with realisation; the scenario Vince was describing sounded ludicrous, but it felt palpably real, like his body recognised it even though his mind did not. “Together where?” he asked, voice dry.

Vince gestured at their surroundings. “Here, I reckon.”

Howard looked around. It was just a pub. Faux-posh, to match the hotel’s image, and not likely set foot in by anyone other than tourists or weary businessmen. It certainly didn’t match his idea of heaven or hell. The best it could be was some kind of purgatory. But it wasn’t, because they weren’t dead. Howard sighed at the very twisted idea, and the bartender, who was polishing glasses, set his rag down and came near, as if anticipating another round of drinks.

“Sorry to interrupt,” the bartender said, his cheeks going pink. “But could I trouble you to sign something?” He paused, and the next words came in a single, hurried breath, as if to spare himself some kind of further embarrassment.

“I’m a really big fan of your show.”

It was past suppertime, and the Zooniverse was closing down. And when the Zooniverse closed down, the Zooniverse closed down. It seemed obscenely dark and deserted as Julian and Noel limped out of the jungle room. Specifically, Julian limped, having banged his knee not in his fall from the ape salon, but in his hurry to wriggle out of Old Gregg’s grip.

And as for Old Gregg…

“He was here. Here was here, I’m telling you!” Julian had said, his tone barbed with defence against the disbelief he seemed to anticipate. But Noel had believed at once, not simply because he had just left behind his own encounter with Rudi, but because Noel always believed Julian. The tell-tale claw marks scribbled across Julian’s ankles were all too real, as well, and looking at them had caused the small leaden ball of guilt in Noel’s gut to build up to more substantial proportions. Soon, it would be a cannon ball. He’d always fancied Old Gregg as a definite, though basically harmless, serial killer, but Julian had always found him a bit more sinister. Until now, Noel had chalked Julian’s unease up to Old Gregg’s garish makeup and tarty costume, to his pathetic desperation, but the scratches on Julian’s skin told a different story. A decidedly more sinister one.

Noel had looked away from the scratches with haste, not prepared to contemplate why he had run into the more benevolent psychedelic monk while Julian had encountered a non-benevolent psycho. A psycho that had been of Noel’s invention, whose desperation had been an unapologetic exaggeration of his own.

And their meeting other versions of themselves, that couldn’t be coincidence, could it? Not here. Unconsciously, Noel patted at his back trousers’ pocket to see that the photograph he’d taken from Rudi’s door of Kukundu was still there. It was.

“I’m all right,” Julian said, gamely shaking off Noel’s pro-offered shoulder. “It’s just a bruise.”

Noel stepped back and let Julian stand on his own. There were insects humming off-key in the trees, and while leaving behind the wilds of the jungle room ought to have been a relief, the labyrinthine walls and passageways of the Zooniverse were less than welcoming now that the sun had dipped out of sight.

“Looks like the works have wound down,” Noel observed. “Guess that means we can knock off.”

Julian frowned and sniffed the air, as if the idea didn’t really appeal to him but he couldn’t think of anything else better to do. “What do Vince and Howard do, exactly, when they knock off?” he asked, sounding exasperated with their alter-egos.

Noel didn’t have an answer for him. All the lapses of real life had never applied to how they had imagined life in the Zooniverse. All the idle nose-pickings while sat on a couch clad in nothing but underpants, or the long intervals spent crouched on the toilet with a magazine while attending to a sickening, squidgy shit. No, for Howard and Vince it was always one madcap adventure after another, except for… “They have a cup of tea,” he finally piped up. “Or they sprawl out and watch Calabus the Crab on telly.”

“I guess some tea would be all right,” Julian said grudgingly. “Would rather have something stronger.” The way he sucked in his lips, as if tasting a sour lemon, suggested he was in an ever darker mood than he was letting on, perhaps holding back as apology for his cruel words from earlier. He needn’t apologise. The way he had shouted for Noel across the jungle room, his voice cracking with need, trusting that Noel would appear, was apology enough.

“We can check the hut again. Maybe there’s booze squirreled away somewhere we haven’t checked.”

Julian lifted an eyebrow, then appeared to mull something over in his mind a moment before speaking. “Maybe you could ask the animals where to get some,” he finally said.

Noel nodded mutely, cautiously taking these words as a sign that Julian had forgiven him for having temporarily inherited Vince’s gifts, or was at least getting used to the idea.

Julian opened his mouth to say more, but was silenced by a thrashing from some nearby bushes—bushes that were not safely ensconced in an animal enclosure. They rustled again, movement now visible in the paltry light, and Noel unconsciously stepped to one side. Both men would have been startled to know how much they looked like Howard and Vince just then, Noel taking cover behind Julian’s taller frame, and Julian’s eyebrows knitting together in an improbable mix of caution and curiosity.

“What if it’s ocelots?” Noel murmured.

“Ocelots?” Julian held up a finger, indicating Noel should lower his voice.

“They’re vicious ‘round here, seems like. Munched down on Tommy Nooka like he was an old twix, remember?”

“But he was part-man, part-cheese. We’re all man. Men.”

Noel fought back a giggle at all man, and the bushes rustled again, this time punctuated by a singular groan, human and not at all animal in nature. Noel and Julian exchanged looks of mingled confusion and surprise, then moved stealthily toward the noise, watching the bush rustle again, a hand appearing as it struggled to grab purchase from the flimsy branches.

“Halp,” a voice strangled out, curiously accented. “Halp.”

Julian parted the branches, and enough of the zoo’s sodium lights penetrated the bush to reveal a ruddy, sweating face and a pair of blood-shot, bright-blue eyes.

“Dave?” Noel gasped. “You’re here, too?”

“Mooner, Vince… halp meh.” Dave croaked, floundering weakly on his back.

“Not Dave,” Julian muttered.

Noel closed his eyes and sighed. Of course not. The accent was a shitty and over-powered version of Crocodile Dundee’s, and the hair was longer, fashioned into a purposeful and unstylish mullet. “What are you doin’ in the bushes, Joey?” he asked, bending over and helping Julian haul the other man to his feet. Once stood upright, Joey proved to be more than just ruddy; his skin was as red as a freshly-steamed lobster’s. In fact, there were tendrils of steam coming from him, curling like cigarette smoke from his dampish hair. He looked, in the words of Dave/Bollo himself, like a jacket potato.

“Ah, I’ve been fried up like a shrimp on the barbie,” Joey said, examining his crimson arms. “What a sight.”

“Fall asleep in your hammock, mate?” Julian asked, giving Noel a secretive smile. Well, he did look awfully funny, and Noel thought it charitable that neither of them had made the “beans or coleslaw?” joke yet.

“No Mooner,” Joey said, glaring. “I was doing your job for you again, transportin’ the bats from the ape salon to their home in moonlight world.”

“What for? They were fine in Roberto’s cupboard.” This from Noel, who found it unfair that Julian should be held accountable for Howard’s ineptitude. Neither of them were real fucking zoo-keepers, and neither was Joey Moose. This wasn’t even a real zoo.

“Roberto keeps his capes in there,” Joey sniffed. “And Mr Fossil wanted the bats transported back to their proper habitat.” He nodded firmly, as if Fossil’s word were law.

“Maybe, but that doesn’t explain the state you’re in,” Julian began, gesturing gingerly at Joey’s person. “What’s bats got to do with you looking like a strip of beef jerky?”

“There’s…” Joey pursed his swollen lips together, looking as if he were debating how much to reveal with his words. “There’s something wrong in the moon world. The closer I got to the place, the more the little fellas acted up.”

“‘Course, you berk,” Noel said easily. “They’re afraid of the place. Told me they can’t get any sleep in there.”

Joey nodded. “Right you are, Noir. And the reason they can’t sleep is because—” Suddenly, the distinct sound of expensive leather shoes was travelling across the courtyard, and he nervously licked his lips and went silent at the sound of their approach..

“Moose! What are you doing over there, huddled up with Moon and Noir?” A man stepped into the light, regarding all three with a sneer that his bushy mustache did little to disguise.

Noel stared at the man, the song from “Mutants” running through his head at a merry clip.

Berry head on an Ayoade body.

Except that wasn’t quite right. Matt and Richard hadn’t been cut apart and spliced back together in slap-dash fashion. Rather, the man before them was an improbable blend of the two: tall and dusky-skinned like Richard, but with Matt’s booming voice and soft, blurry facial features. Judging by the sudden intake of breath from beside him, Julian was just as confounded by the sight as Noel was.

“G’day there, Mr Bainbridge,” Joey said, distancing himself from Julian and Noel with a not-so-casual side step. “I tried to transport the bats, just like you and Mr Fossil asked me, but when I got to the moon world I found that—”

“Quiet, Moose! I find the sound of your voice repulsive, and the bacony texture of your face is making me want to vomit from my eyes. Go see Graham about a salve!” Bainbridge then pointed in a way that left no room for argument, and Joey, limping badly and still steaming a bit around the ears, shuffled off.

“Bainbridge,” Julian murmured. “How fucking perfect.”

“What’s that, Moon?” Bainbridge boomed, still pointing. “Why are you and your ugly girlfriend skulking about after closing?”

“Same could be asked of you,” Noel said, then regretted it at once. He wanted to see the humour in this encounter, but Bainbridge had never been a friend to Howard and Vince on the show, and he probably wouldn’t be a friend to them now. Matt took too much delight in playing Bainbridge as a complete bastard for that to be a possibility.

“I own this zoo. I can skulk wherever and whenever I please.” Bainbridge jabbed at the air triumphantly. “And I can order you two to skulk about in my place. For as it so happens, I’ve got a date tonight, and have no time for skulking.”

“What are you talking about?” Julian asked, frowning.

“The moonlight world, you imbecile! It will destroy the zoo if we let it, so I am ordering you two to skulk out to it, then board up the doors and windows before things spiral even further out of control.”

“What, just because of a few mental bats you want the whole moon world shut down?” Noel pulled a sour face of confusion.

“Maybe he’s locking someone away in there. Another Tommy Nooka type,” Julian suggested. His tone was casually speculative rather than accusatory, but Bainbridge puffed his chest out in indignation anyway.

“What’s that, Moon? If you don’t want to go the way of your precious Tommy Nooka, then I recommend you zip those lips.”

Julian shrugged. “He’s not precious to me. Do whatever you like.”

Bainbridge squinted, clearly caught off guard by “Howard’s” unruffled demeanour. “What’s come over you, Moon? You don’t seem your usual, skittish self.”

“Really now,” Julian said, and Noel thought he might be fighting back a smile.

“Really,” Bainbridge sneered. “And since you’re not skittish, you’ll have no problem shutting down the moon world tonight.” He rummaged through his pockets and pulled something out. Something made of a silky fabric that kept coming and coming in great, swathy lengths, like a magician’s scarf. “Take these with you,” he said, passing the wads of fabric over. “You may need them.”

“Ponchos?” Noel guessed, fingering one of the garments. It seemed entirely shapeless and without function.

“Light mittens,” Bainbridge said, the two words canceling each other out so thoroughly that he might as well have said dark shoes or cold bow ties.

“Mittens?”

“MIT-TENS,” Bainbridge said. His emphasis bit the word in two.

“Mittens are small! And hand-shaped!” Noel protested, flabbergasted by this nonsensical turn of events. He examined the fabric again, and saw no resemblance whatsoever to mittens.

“Would you rather wear a meat girdle?” Bainbridge was practically snarling, but the suggestion seemed to cheer him, somehow. “The meat would be cooked to a crisp, and would drop off in succulent chunks from your body. We would gather ‘round and gobble them up with long pitch-forks.” He smiled now, but it was a villain’s smile. He even reached up and twirled his mustache a little as he let out a laugh.

Julian and Noel looked at each other. He’s gone wrong. The thought was so powerful that Noel wondered if it wasn’t just him thinking it, if the weirdness of the moment hadn’t allowed Julian’s own thought to telekinetically overlap with his own.

“Um, no,” Julian finally said. “No meat girdles, thanks.”

“Then it is settled.” Bainbridge nodded stiffly. “Now, as I said, I have a date—”

“Where are you, my Bainy-boo?” A simpering voice called out from nearby. Fossil’s. He rounded the lemur enclosure and stopped short when he saw three of them. “Oh, it’s you two,” he said, wary. “What are you doing to Bainbridge?”

“Not much,” Noel said, wanting to laugh at the implication in Fossil’s question. “But he wants to eat succulent chunks of meat off my body, or so he says.”

Fossil gasped, appalled, while Julian let out a laugh. The sound bouyed against Noel, pleasant and warm.

“Shut up, Moon,” Bainbridge barked at Julian, even though it was Noel who had smarted off.

“Poppet, I thought we had a date,” Fossil said, his eyes welling up as he gazed puppyishly at Bainbridge.

“That’s right.” Bainbridge was blustering a bit, his cheeks red like apples. “I’m going to spend the evening punching your flabby gut with my fists.”

“Ooh!” Fossil clapped his hands together, delighted, and Bainbridge sighed in disgust, grabbing him by the sleeve of his polyester shirt.

“Take care of the moon world, you fools,” he called out, dragging Fossil along as he left. “Or I’ll see to it that you’re transferred to the zoo for animal offenders.” He let out a booming laugh over his shoulder, his heels sharp on the paving stones as Fossil struggled to keep up.

“What a dick,” Julian said flatly.

“Yeah, didn’t expect much else.” Noel lifted one end of the weird bundle of fabric Bainbridge had given them. “What the fuck do you suppose ‘light mittens’ are? I don’t remember ever writing about something like that, do you?”

Julian shook his head. “We never wrote about the moon world going haywire, either, though.”

Noel chewed on his lip thoughtfully, wondering what it meant if the Zooniverse was sort of… creating its own narratives. Without their help, that is. Was that even possible? Who was writing the story, if not them? Whatever the answer, if was clear they were just players now. Chess pieces being bumped across a board.

“What do you—” Noel began.

“I don’t know what it means,” Julian said, anticipating his question. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do, either. We don’t even know where the moon world is.”

“Ah,” Noel said softly. “Someone… sort of told me how to get there.”

Julian’s eyebrows darted up in surprise. “Who? Roberto the ape?”

“No. Rudi.”

Now the skin between Julian’s eyebrows crinkled up in confusion. “Rudi… my Rudi?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“In the jungle room. After,” he said, meaning after our fight.

Julian appeared to think this over, idly bunching the fabric of the light mittens together between his hands. “Did he look like me?”

“Yeah. But he wasn’t… he was real, you know? The hair, everything. And he was wise,” Noel finished, a teasing note entering his voice.

Julian smiled faintly. “He’s an idiot. But I expect he meant well.”

Noel nodded. There was no way he was going to tell Julian that he’d kissed Rudi. That he’d hoped it would be like kissing the one who’d created him.

“So where is it, anyway?”

“Where’s what?”

“The moon world. You said Rudi told you where it was.”

“Oh, right.” Noel stopped petting his own armload of light mittens. “He said we have to wait for moon rise, then follow the rays to the entrance.”

“What?” Julian sighed and tipped back his head. “See, I told you he’s an idiot. Where the hell is the moon, anyway?”

Noel looked up. Through the trees, the stars were coming out, brighter than any he’d ever seen before. They were almost too starry, constellations as obvious as if they’d been connected dot by dot with a neon marker, and while he watched, a shooting star zipped across the surface of space, squealing in joy as it went. “I guess it’s not up yet,” he said quietly. “God. It’s not going to look like me, is it?”

“Might.”

Noel shook his head. “That’ll be too much.”

“Compared to what’s happened so far?” Julian grinned. “I don’t think so.”

Noel looked up again. He could see the big dipper, and it was dipping, star dust splashing from the bowl and falling across the sky like golden glitter.

Sometimes he wondered if anything would ever be too much for him.

“Hey. Hey. Hey Vince. Am I doing it? Am I? Vince?”

Vince lifted his eyes lazily from the stack of clothes he was folding into colour-cordinated piles on top the hotel carpet, a soothing activity that calmed down the crazed limbic pulsing that was pounding behind his forehead. Most of Howard was hidden beneath the bed, but his arm stuck out from beneath the hanging dust ruffle, waving around aimlessly as if conducting a symphony of lazy musicians.

“Are you doing what?” Vince rolled a studded belt into a tight little coil.

“Pulling shapes!” Howard’s voice was slurry. The bottle of bourbon they’d taken from the bar was on the bedside table, nearly half-drained.

Vince stared at his waving arm. “No. Not even close. Looks like you’re swatting at flies.”

“Damn,” Howard groaned, muffled beneath the bed. “This is hard.”

Vince pushed the stacks of tee-shirts aside and crawled across the floor, grabbing at Howard’s hand. “Get out from there. I’ll show you,” he said, tugging. Howard’s shoulder appeared, then finally his head. A wispy dust-bunny clung to his brow and Vince wiped it away, pulverising it between his fingers. “Come on.” He stood in front of the mirror that was mounted to the wall in from of the dresser, watching as Howard came up behind him on unsteady feet. “Now look,” he instructed, curling his shoulders in, then snapping out his arms. “I’m the side panel of a… “ He stopped and frowned at his reflection, then snapped his arms again.

“What?” Howard asked, trying to imitate his movements.

Vince snapped his arms a third time, his elbows creaking in complaint. “It’s not working. I’m not pullin’ anything.”

Howard squinted. “You’re right. You’re just bouncing around like a popped corn kernel.”

Vince frowned and fluffed up his hair in back. “I’ve had too much to drink,” he said, moving back to his pile of clothes.

“But I want to learn,” Howard complained, still trying to contort his body into shapes in front of the mirror. “I’m bored.”

“You’re bored. Think how I’m feeling.” Vince un-folded and re-folded a weird jacket made out of some papery, tie-dyed fabric, almost too bright to look at. He contemplated putting it on, knowing it would alarm Howard enough to give him something to complain about: looking at that jacket is like having a tropical bird take a dump in my eyes. “Why don’t you work on your novel?”

“I guess I could do.” Howard picked up a pile of crumpled papers that was sat on the dresser. “But I don’t have a type-writer.”

Vince put aside the jacket and folded a tee-shirt until the creases were so sharp they might’ve cut him. The room was thick with the conversation they were both avoiding, and had been avoiding ever since the bartender had spoken to them. I’m a really big fan of your show. Vince closed his eyes. If only he’d just smiled and said “thanks.” If only he hadn’t said…

What show?

“Vince’s Electro Showcase?” Howard suddenly said, with a snort of contempt. “I don’t think this is my novel. Looks more like your work.”

“Nah. I don’t write.” Vince abandoned the clothes and sat down on the bed, reaching for the bourbon. It was a far cry from a tasty flirtini, but he was getting used to the taste. Who’d written Vince’s Electro Showcase? That Noel Fielding, he supposed. But he didn’t want to think about him.

“What do you mean, you don’t write?” Howard placed the crumpled papers back on the dresser. “What about Charlie?”

Vince shrugged, pulling the bottle from his mouth with a slurking sound. “That’s in the past.”

“You could take up the pen again.”

“Nah.” The alcohol burned at the inside of Vince’s cheeks, pleasantly so. “Anyway, I only tried my hand at writing because you wanted to be a writer.”

Howard sat down heavily on the end of the bed. “You did?”

Vince blinked, realising it was true. “Yeah.”

“And the time you joined a band?”

“You said you were a multi-instrumentalist.”

“Vince!” Howard snatched the bottle from his hands, looking annoyed. “Why do you have to always be what I am? That’s what this whole ‘we’re dead’ thing, isn’t it? You want to be dead because I’ve been dead before.”

Vince opened his mouth to argue, but instead opted for reluctant agreement. “Maybe. I don’t really know anymore.”

Howard played with the bottle, all the fight seeming to drain out him. “Yeah, me neither,” he finally said, taking a long pull. “Vince?” he asked, his voice soft with the question.

“Yeah?” Vince leaned back on the pillows, pulling at the duvet with his bare toes.

“You’ve known me for a long time. In all that time… well, have I changed at all?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. Have I changed? Grown? Learned anything?”

Vince chuckled. “You haven’t learned how to stay out of trouble. But don’t worry, I think you’ve grown more wrinkles around your eyes.”

“Do you mind? I’m asking you a serious, heart-to-heart question. Friend-to-friend, now. Tell me the truth.” He made a bracing face. “I can take it.”

Vince looked at his friend through half-lidded eyes, realising that he was indeed serious. He was biting at his lip, clearly stirring himself up over the possibility of Vince’s response. “Not really,” Vince finally said, his voice carefully measured. “You’re always the same. You’re always Howard.”

Howard balled up his fist and hit the mattress. “Why? If you can change, I should be able to, too.”

“Aw, Howard. What are you on about? I’ve never changed or grown or whatever. If anything, I’ve un-grown.”

“No you haven’t,” Howard said, looking him over balefully. “Your hair keeps getting better and better.”

Vince tutted between his teeth. “That doesn’t matter.”

What am I saying?

“Like I said, it’s a sign of whatsit… digression,” he continued, quite cheerful. “My hair gets bigger and my clothes get flashier and my attitude gets snottier.” He didn’t add that he liked his hair bigger and his clothes flashier. And his attitude snottier.

“And I get more pathetic,” Howard said bitterly.

“Wot?” Vince sat up a little straighter, regarding Howard curiously. He’d heard plenty of people call Howard pathetic before, but he’d never heard that particular description from Howard himself. It was worrying, and Vince reaching his hand out and placed it over Howard’s, not necessarily to comfort him, but to see that he was still there. That he was still him. The hand was big and calloused, rough along the knuckles. It was definitely Howard’s hand. “You’re not pathetic,” Vince said. He was surprised at the seriousness of his own voice.

Howard gritted his teeth. “He made me that way.”

“Who?”

Howard glared. “You know who.”

“Oh, come on, Howard.” Vince squeezed his friend’s fingers. “You don’t really believe that what that bartender said is real, do you?”

Howard snatched his hand away from Vince’s. “You come on, Vince. What’s more likely? That we’re dead, or that we’re the creation of two asshole comedians who’ve made a career out of taking the piss out of us?”

Vince stared at him, his mouth falling open. “What’s more likely is that we’re dead,” he protested. “People die all the time. As opposed to realising that they’re fictional. People realise that they’re fictional very rarely, in fact. Point-zero-point-one-point-negative-zero percent of the time.”

Howard shook his head. “That’s what I mean. Dying’s way too normal for us.”

Vince pressed his lips together, unwilling to admit that Howard had a point. “Look,” he said, delicately steering the subject back to safer territory. “You can change. I’ll prove it.”

“How?”

Vince stood up. “Come with me.” He led Howard to the bathroom, ignoring his grunt of doubt, then pushed on his shoulders until he sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. “Stay,” he said, as if addressing a frisky puppy. Then he zipped open the bag of makeup and toiletries that was on the sink, rummaging through its contents.

“Putting eyeliner on me doesn’t prove anything,” Howard said, watching him in the mirror.

“I’m not going to put anything on you,” Vince said, pulling out a safety razor from the jumble of lotions and lipsticks. He held it up to the light and the blue steel blades twinkled ominously.

“Oh no,” Howard said, covering his face. “No you don’t.”

“Don’t be afraid of change, Howard.”

Howard’s eyes were wide over the mask of his hand. “You’ll cut me.”

“Nah. I’ve got a B-Tech National.” Vince sat the razor on the edge of the counter and turned on the hot water, then found a small face towel and dunked it in the steamy surge. Once soaked, he wrung the towel out and presented it to Howard. “Put this on your face. The heat will soften your whiskers.”

Howard scowled. “I don’t want to soften my whiskers.”

Vince leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest, smiling lightly. “You don’t want to change.”

Howard regarded the dripping towel as if it were a particularly foul-tasting medicine, then sighed loudly. “Fine. I can always grow it back later.” He tilted his head back and looped the towel around the lower portions of his face, his eyes blinking and fluttering against the rising steam.

“Yeah, if you have a couple of years,” Vince said under his breath, trying to hide his grin as he picked up a can of shaving cream and shook it with vigour. He wondered if Howard was letting him do this because he thought Vince would prefer him sans mustache. Truth was, Vince liked Howard’s mustache. He liked wondering what was beneath it. Having Howard bald-faced would be almost as much of a change for him as for Howard himself. Who had to look at Howard, day after day? Vince. And it would be strange to no longer catch himself wondering what Howard’s top lip would look like without that half-hearted mocha stain hiding it.

For Vince, this was a bit like peaking at his Christmas presents before Christmas had even properly shown up.

“Okay,” he said, gently uncoiling the towel from Howard’s face. Beneath it, his flesh was pink. Vulnerable looking. Using a small pair of scissors, he barbered the mustache down until it looked sad and prepubescent. Shorn whiskers clung to Howard’s lips, and Vince wiped them clean with the corner of the towel. In his deep concentration, he didn’t notice how intently Howard was watching him, how hard it was for Howard to remain still and trust him. He painted the shaving cream on with his index finger, fussily so, and finally caught Howard’s eye as he approached with the razor. “Don’t worry,” he said, his breath high and tinged with excitement. “It’ll be over quick.”

Howard nodded once, not even wincing as the razor scraped across his top lip, beheading each and every stubbly whisker in its path. It didn’t take long, and when Vince wiped his face clean a second time, Howard felt the remarkable texture of the cloth against his bare skin.

“There.”

Vince studied his own creation. It shouldn’t have been that much of a change, and yet it was. He didn’t even know which change was bigger: Howard’s naked face, or this new Howard who had let him razor his prized moustache clean off. Unable to help himself, Vince reached out and touched the smooth plain of Howard’s upper lip, a strange and thrilling surge passing through him.

I’m the first person to touch this skin.

“Let me see.” Howard pushed Vince aside and leaned into the mirror, studying his reflection. “I look weird.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I’m not used to it.”

Vince nodded. “That’s how change works.”

Howard smiled reluctantly at his reflection. “Hi there, I’m Howard Moon,” he said, stretching out his hand as if to great his new self. Then he caught Vince watching him and his smile turned wicked. “You look pretty proud of yourself, little man.”

Vince grinned and shrugged. “What can I say? I’m pretty good.”

Howard retrieved the scissors from a puddle on the counter and held them up. “Let’s see if I can’t return the favour, shall we?” He turned around and took a step toward Vince, his eyes sparkling.

“What’re you doin’?” Vince protested, backing up and into the toilet.

“Change, Vince. It’s time for you to grow up, don’t you think? Be a man instead of a lady?” He snipped playfully at the air as he spoke.

Vince covered his hair protectively. “No way! You’re the one who wanted to change. I’m happy as is, thanks.”

“If you don’t evolve, you’ll go the way of the platypus.”

“So? Platypusses are cute little creatures, with their webby feet. Unique lookin’, too.”

“Platypi. The plural is platypi,” Howard said, giving up the game and tossing the scissors aside. “So let’s see what you’d look like with a mustache, instead.” He found an eyelining pencil and uncapped it.

“Okay,” Vince relented, holding himself still. Howard crouched down slightly and pressed the waxy tip of the pencil to his upper lip, his free hand cupping Vince’s chin. He made a few flourishes that tickled, then pulled away and steered Vince toward the mirror. The drawn-on mustache was curly and jaunty, like an Edwardian dandy’s.

“I look like the bearded woman in a turn-of-the-century freak show.”

“It’s very confusing,” Howard said with approval. “Much like yourself.”

Vince relaxed his shoulders. This was good. They could distract each other just by being themselves, by doing what they usually did. And they were themselves. Julian and Noel were just… what had Howard called them? A pair of berks.

You want me to describe the show? Your show? Okay, well, it’s a bit surreal, innit? I mean, you have the zoo, that’s a pretty mad place. Then there’s the shaman. I never really understood why you needed a shaman at the zoo? That’s part of the appeal, though, not really knowing why things are the way they are. Like how did two people as different as you two—Howard and Vince, I mean—become friends in the first place? It’s sort of neat to wonder about those things when you’re watching.

It was hard to be themselves, though, while trapped in a room that wasn’t theirs, yet full of evidence of their lives. Their lives, as imagined by a pair of berks. Whoever Noel was, Vince thought he probably hated him. Noel could only dream of being the one and only Vince Noir. Vince would have pitied Noel, if Noel weren’t such an idiot.

The Moon! The Moon’s my favourite, hands down. But… oh? Vince and Howard? Er… they’re just an odd couple, I guess. Everything seems to go right for Vince, even though he’s thick as they come. Howard reminds me of guys who think they’re too smart for uni or honest work, who go on the dole and read books all day, thinking they’ve got so much to offer. Thing is, they really don’t, you know? Howard tries, though. It’s funny to watch him try. Hey, I saw you do stand up once. Late 90s, I think?

But Vince definitely hated Julian more.

Is this for an article? Will my name be in print? ‘Cos it’s Ted Mitchell. M-I-T…

Howard’s elbow plied into Vince’s side, and he stood up with a jolt, realising that he’d slumped into his friend, that he was slightly drunk on his feet. “Let’s go somewhere,” he said abruptly, blinking in the harsh bathroom lighting.

Howard frowned. “Not shopping.”

“The shops are closed. Somewhere else. Somewhere with music.”

“Not one of those clubs,” Howard groaned. “People on the pull, strobe lights that make me want to vomit, watery drinks…”

“Okay, what about that band? The jazz one?” Vince tilted his head, trying to remember the name that Dave bloke had mentioned. “Polar Bear? They’re supposed to be playing someplace. Off the Cuff? Blow the Fuzz?”

“Blow the Fuse.”

“Yeah, that.”

Howard leaned against the counter, reaching up to rub his face and balking when he found it bare and smooth. “It’s jazz, though. You hate jazz.”

Vince smiled. “I do hate it, but I’ve been thinkin’ about a change, see.”

“No, really,” Howard said, unconvinced. “You hate jazz. It’s… extinct. And useless.”

Vince quirked an eyebrow, thinking it strange that Howard would apply such adjectives to his beloved be-bop. “Jazz is… was… be,” he said, holding his chin out firmly.

Howard remained unmoved. “What about autograph hounds?”

“We’re in disguise.” Vince pointed to his drawn-on moustache. “We’ll be jerks and ignore ‘em. They’ll post nasty complaints about Barratt and Fielding on the internet.”

Howard smiled, liking that idea. But he liked the idea of a night of jazz even more.

“All right, get your boots on. We’re going.”

Even before he turned the lights on, Julian could tell something was off. It was the door, he thought. The door to the keeper’s hut didn’t open with the flimsy creak of a badly hung screen door. It opened smoothly this time, hinges oiled, door hung straight and proper. He groped along the wall for the switch plate, and the light clicked on, filling the room with warm, welcoming light.

“What the fuck?” he said, clutching his light mitten to his chest.

“What’s wrong?” Noel came up behind him, his hand a question against his lower back.

The room had changed. Like Naboo’s, it was decorated more like the series two set: nightmarish rorschach-blotch wallpapering, colourful sofa cushions, cartoonish art work. Here and there, completely nonessential but nevertheless significant objects were apparent. A pup tent was pitched in the middle of the room. A guitar that looked suspiciously like “Miranda” (which was in fact not a prop but one of Julian’s own instruments) leaned against the wall.

Noel dropped his light mitten into a puddle on the floor and turned around in a circle. “Who do you suppose did it?” he asked, picking up a cushion and pulling at its fuzzy tassles.

“I’ve no fucking clue.” Julian tossed his own light mitten—whatever the hell that was—on top of Noel’s and sniffed the air suspiciously. “Maybe no one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Things seem to be changing. Losing structure and logic, or something.” Julian crossed his arms over his chest, chilled even though the room was warm. “Maybe we’ve been here too long.”

“The place wasn’t that logical to begin with,” Noel said, plumping the cushion and arranging it amongst the others.

“I mean that it’s deviating from the logic we built into it—what little of it there was. Like entropy.”

Noel made a face. “What the fuck is entropy? That’s one of those words that people always use but they never know what it means.”

Julian smiled. “You mean you don’t know what it means. Entropy is the inevitable deterioration of order in a system.”

“Thanks. I think I preferred not knowing.” Noel flopped on the sofa, his elbow painlessly thwaking the side of the tent.

Julian carefully circled the cluttered area, retrieving the guitar and studying it. The surface was shiny and unblemished, but it could have been his own, restored to mint condition. He plucked absently at the strings, the notes coming with the ease of one who’s played for years and years, but they felt strange against his fingertips. Rough and biting. He studied his hands and saw that his hard-earned callouses were now non-existent. They were the hands of a virgin guitarist.

It was good that Noel was too busy burying his face in cushions just then, because the look on Julian’s face likely surpassed the dim, hopeless horror that had over-taken it in those seconds before he threw himself out the ape salon window. His smooth skin was proof enough that what was happening to them was real—or at least one hell of a vivid and detailed hallucination. To keep the horror from engulfing him and sending him over the edge, Julian strummed the guitar fiercely: a taut, no-nonsense rhythm that hurt his fingers and shook his own body. He closed his eyes and ignored the sparks of pain.

Noel tapped his palm against his knee, catching the rhythm. “Waiting for the moon to rise. Waiting for the moon to rise… ” He sang tentatively, testing the lyric out.

Julian joined in without hesitation, his voice stronger than Noel’s. “Waiting for the moon to rise…. would rather pour bleach in my eyes…“

“Waiting for the moon to rise…. Bainbridge’s pants are an extra-small size…“

“Bainbridge’s pants are made out of meat…. when the moon rises I’ll stab it up a treat…“

“The moon rapes the land with it’s pointy chin…. Hey, look, I found us some gin!”

Julian lifted his head and paused, mid-strum. Noel held up a bottle triumphantly, having dug it out from beneath the sofa cushions, where it had been hiding and poking his bum most rudely.

“Oh thank god,” Julian said, throwing the guitar aside and scrambling around the tent. He sat down on the sofa and Noel handed him the bottle. He uncapped it and sniffed it, as if trying to detect a poison, then put it to his lips and took a cautious taste. It was predictably terrible. Straight gin, particularly cheap gin, had always tasted like perfume to him—or what he imagined perfume to taste like. But it burned his tongue and seared a path down his throat, creating a warm pool in his belly, and that was enough. He would just pretend he was drinking a really, really bad martini.

Noel plied the bottle from his grip and took a gulp, shuddering with his whole body as it went down. “Foul,” he winced.

Julian leaned back and tried to relax. It was difficult, though. With the tent pitched right in front of the sofa, there was no where to put his legs. Both he and Noel had their knees bent toward their chests, like children sitting ‘round the rug during story-hour. “Let’s go in the tent,” he suggested, poking the side of it.

“Are you sure?” Noel asked. He sounded uncertain.

Julian shrugged. “There’s no where else to lounge.” He stood up and found the tent’s circular opening, upzippering it and inspecting the inside. Their sleeping bags from that morning were laid out neatly, waiting for them. For Vince and Howard.

“Did you ever want to sleep in a tent in the middle of nowhere?” Noel enjoyed tangential questions with drinks.

“Middle of nowhere? Like where? Up North?” Julian kicked off his shoes and crawled into the tent. Shining through the blue nylon, the room’s one lamp looked like twilight.

“No. Somewhere like Antarctica.”

Julian folded his arms behind his head as Noel clambered in beside him, the gin sloshing in his grip. “Antarctica’s melting, you know. The world’s leading scientists once said that if Antarctica started melting, we were in real trouble.” Julian swallowed, then continued. “Well, the Larsen B ice shelf slid right into the ocean. Just last year, I think. It’s one of those things they never thought would happen.”

Noel smirked. “You like that, do you? Collecting bleak bits of information and bringing them out just when the party starts.”

Julian nodded, mock-solemn. “They fill my head like dryer lint. Anyway, no. I never really wanted to sleep in a tent in the middle of nowhere.”

Noel’s shoulders relaxed, and Julian wondered why this answer seemed to relieve him, somehow. He wordlessly held out his hand and Noel slipped the bottle of gin into it. A long stretch of minutes passed as they took turns drinking from the bottle, waiting for alcohol to soak their minds until there was no room left for all the things that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

“You know what’s weird?” Noel shifted beside him, his words muffled as he spoke. “This is Howard’s side. You’re on Vince’s.”

Julian raised an eyebrow. “How can you tell?”

“The pillow smells like you.”

Without even wanting to, Julian turned his head so that his nose was pressed against the pillow. He didn’t want to sniff, but breathing made it involuntary. The scent that touched his nose was one that Julian could have described in words even if he’d tried, but it was undeniably Noel’s.

“Where do you think they are?” Noel asked, his voice hushed and spooky.

“Who?”

“Vince and Howard.”

“Stop,” Julian whispered. “I don’t want to think about it. And neither do you, not really.”

But that was a lie. Where were Vince and Howard, really? Did they fail to exist in the Zooniverse once Noel and Julian had entered it? Were they sleeping in a kind of limbo? Were they being kept captive in the moonlight world by Dixon Bainbridge?

Or were they in London, where Noel and Julian were supposed to be.

Don’t even think it, don’t even think it, don’t even think it, his mind chattered hysterically. He tried to quiet it with another drink of gin. Three, gulped in quick succession, did the trick.

“Hey… Ju?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something?”

Julian hesitated. Noel didn’t usually ask before he asked something. “Yeah,” he said slowly.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

It wasn’t the sort of request he’d been prepared for, and Julian looked at Noel to see if he was serious. He was, his brows knitted over his eyebrows in a way that clarified his question even further: tell me something about yourself that you normally wouldn’t. Something that’s true.

Julian rubbed his socked feet together. His legs were too long for the tent and his feet hung out the opening, resting on the hard floor. The air that touched them was cooler, not as thick with their shared breath.

Julian didn’t know how to answer. Mostly, because he didn’t know what Noel wanted to hear. Did he want to know that the first girl he’d kissed wasn’t a twelve year old ginger-haired girl named Susan, but actually his eleven year old cousin Amelia, and how they’d kissed and kissed in the root cellar until he’d gotten an erection, and Amelia thought she’d made him sick and had run to tell their parents, but that up until that point Julian had thought himself as happy as he could possibly be. This is it, he had thought. I don’t need to grow up after this. I don’t need to live or die. I can just… and there his mind had cut off, too young to contemplate the moment further. Did he want to know that Julian often weighed all the possibilities of a situation to the point where any possible outcome seemed equally justifiable, and thus equally pointless. Should he get pissed tonight? No, he shouldn’t. It was bad on the liver and hell on the crow’s feet and he’d wake up in a misery. But then he often woke up in a misery, for some reason or another, and his crow’s feet weren’t going anywhere, so why not. Why not. Did he want to know that with the exception of his parents, Julian thought that the people who loved him were wrong in doing so. Did he want to hear about how he used to eat ice lollies as a kid with the ice in one hand, and a glass of warm water in the other. He’d break off a chuck of the sweet ice and let it melt into the roof of his mouth, the blinding pain building up behind his eyes until he thought he’d live with it for the rest of his life. Then, when he could take no more, he’d take a gulp of the warm water and allow himself the pleasure of basking in its relief. Julian could have told him any of these things, maybe, except he wasn’t always aware of them himself. They were the sort of memories and qualities that came upon him unexpectedly, just before he fell in or out of sleep. Who knows a person better? The one living inside the body, or the one who watches it living?

So what he ended up saying was this: “You already know everything that I know about myself, Noel.” Then he followed it with another sour drink of the gin.

Noel let out a nervy laugh. “That can’t be true.”

Julian didn’t smile. “Go ahead. Tell me something about myself. Something that you know.”

“Um…” Noel shifted on the sofa, clearly uncomfortable with the boon he’d been given. “Okay. But… don’t get cross over any of it, all right?”

“All right.”

“Okay,” Noel repeated, removing the gin from Julian’s hand and taking a fortifying drink. “You… the oddest thing about you is that you think you’re better than everyone else, but it seems like you don’t think very highly of yourself, either. It’s like you’re a critic, but you include yourself in all your harshest judgments.”

Julian was silent. He couldn’t argue with any of that.

Noel sighed and continued. “The best thing about being your friend is knowing that I’ve made the cut. The worst thing is worrying that someday, I’ll fall short.” He laughed again, though mirthlessly. “You know, I just keep waiting to wake up one day to find that all my tricks don’t work anymore and that you’ve gotten bored of me.”

Now Julian was surprised. He turned to regard his friend though glazed vision, his cruel words from earlier that day returning to him: you’re terrified of being ordinary. And so he was. But it wasn’t just the shadow of Vince Noir that Noel had to live in… it was Julian’s, as well? But how could that be? “How can my opinion really matter so much, eh?” he asked, trying to keep the question good natured as he ribbed Noel with his elbow.

“Because it does,” Noel said. It was the maddeningly simple sort of answer that a child would give. And the look he was giving Julian… guileless was the adjective that came to mind. His eyes looked too big for his face, like they wanted to devour everything they lit upon. And right now, they were lit upon Julian.

You’re wrong for doing so.

Julian closed his eyes and took another drink, the gin going down so much like water that he knew he’d already had way too much.

“Ju?”

He looked at Noel through slitted eyes and saw that his friend’s face was alarmingly close, a smutch of dirt on his cheek bone standing out in painful relief against his pasty skin, the tips of his teeth worrying his bottom lip in hesitation. The look in his eyes was one Julian had seen before, many times. When was the first? Maybe when he’d first been invited up to Noel’s flat. You can come in, but you can never leave. Or was it on stage, Noel’s face shadowed by a furry parka as he issued out lines in a voice that was lower and more commanding than his own? Or had it been on a drunken night. That one drunken night, in particular, when he’d passed out on Noel’s floor and had woken up in the dark, a hot hand kneading his thigh as Noel thrashed quietly beside him, his strangled breath leaving no doubt of what he was doing to himself beneath the cushion he had crammed over his lap. Julian had never let on that he’d woken up, and later only remembered it on those occasions when Noel’s stage kiss threatened to turn into something more real, his Old Gregg makeup somehow giving him the same courage as a night of heavy alcohol. But even then, Julian had convinced himself it was just the intoxication of the crowd and their whooping cheers, their insinuating wolf-whistles.

Wrong for doing so.

“Noel. Don’t.”

Noel sucked in his breath and pulled away slightly. The tent creaked. “Don’t what?” He laughed without air, without innocence. Despite his child-like qualities, he was a man, after all. Just as prone to manipulation as anyone else. “I’m not doing nothing.”

“Don’t worry.” Julian blinked. These weren’t the words he thought he would say. “Don’t worry that I’ll get bored.”

Noel laughed again, nervously, but seemed lost for words. Through the gin-haze, he suddenly struck Julian as funny. “Don’t worry,” he said again, ruffling Noel’s hair as if he were a tot. That single, fatherly gestured punctured the tension in the air. A cool draft swept in through the tent opening and whisked the humid air out. Noel smiled, but it was tinged with disappointment.

Julian could have guessed why, but he didn’t want to. Not just then. Wait, his mind said to Noel. I’m not ready.

He closed his eyes. The gin had wrapped him in a thick, soporific haze.

“Don’t sleep.” Noel’s breath was a warm puff on his face. “We’re waiting for the moon to rise.”

Julian smiled. Noel’s words sounded like the beginning of a song. “Someday I will be,” he slurred, rolling over on to his side and sinking into sleep.

Noel watched his friend’s breath even out.

“Someday you’ll be what?” he asked softly. But there was no answer.

Here, it’s always twilight. Between one thing and another.

You lay flat on your back, sleep just out of reach. The gin hasn’t made you as drunk as you would like. You’re too taut, wired like an instrument that’s eager to be played. Beside you, he’s swaddled in sleep, snores shaking the tent walls like an arctic wind.

You watch him, but not too closely. You wish there were some part of him that you could spill all your secrets to, unafraid, but even his sleeping self has his back turned to you.

To pass the time, you try to identify each animal by the noises you hear outside. A hoot, a howl, a strange, alien chitter. But you don’t know anything about animals. You’d recognise a dog, maybe. That’s about it.

And suddenly, there’s no noise at all. Even his snores are gone, cut off as if he’s stopped breathing alltogether.

You look. He’s on his back, his eyes wide open and aware. Afraid, even. All traces of drunkeness are gone, as if wiped clean from a blackboard.

You furrow your brow. Something’s changed. Something big. He holds his body differently: ramrod straight instead of the loose slouch that you’ve come to know. He blinks far too much.

He looks at you, and you know him at last.

“Howard?”

Your question makes the possibility real. It always has.

Endnotes: Evil cliffie. My apologies. No, really!

The next part of this story will be the last, sniff.

Thanks to JC for suggesting that Noel’s psychedelic Kiss jacket makes him look as if a giant tropical bird has taken a shit on him. I was happy to nick that. 😀 Thanks to British Sea Power and Al Gore’s scary documentary for making Julian mope about the tragedy of Larsen B. And thanks to all of you for reading. Oh, and if you are, please leave a comment. I’d really like one. 🙂 Can you believe I’ve been writing this sucker since March? Maybe that makes me the sucker?